new friday mornings could be so that i would get out here to the fire for and that's ok our capital projects subcommittee has met with the police department and the d p w and invited them in to give a brief presentation on the status of their buildings and it's pretty painful to watch they had slides they had graphic stories it was horrible but the purpose was to really take a look at what's going on there and then just say all right let's see if we can find a little money they all have studies that were done in the last several years find a little money to update those studies so that we have real figures on what the cost would be to renovate or replace those structures but in both cases the question arises where would it be onsite or would it be somewhere else so we at least service it in a numerated the questions that really should be answered we at least  said ok let's see if we can identify some small funds to upgrade their information so that when we look at all of the capital projects that are remaining in town we're looking at a level playing field and updated information we'll be meeting with the library people in the next couple weeks so basically was informational but i think we really have to start talking long and hard about the police station they are in terrible shape and they need to be done sooner rather than later i would also like to add from the capital budget side we of course as we go through our deliberations we meet with the department heads they have their requests we talk about them in the end we approve so many of the requests that we're going to fund based on how much money we have woods emerged is that our guidelines of capital budget committee as to what is capital really need to be updated the guidelines were formed probably in the early eighty's they been updated so when we say you know we look at a capital project as something that is a non recurring i don't that has a useful life of at least ten years and that cost at least ten thousand dollars well those criteria now are fairly ridiculous the ten thousand dollars is silly because it's in one nine hundred eighty ish dollars the ten year life span starts to get a little silly when you're talking about technology because we put out large sums of money for technology but what's the lifespan in some cases it's like five minutes we're not funding those but it's three or four or five years so does that fit our definition of capital no so when we're done preparing all of our material for a town meeting in june we're going to continue to meet a couple times just to refine our definitions and then probably go back to the department heads and say ok this is what we're doing because some of our requests really don't fit under the old by lines and it was sympathetic to the items that people need but we only have seven hundred eighty one thousand dollars of useful money that's not already identified to pay bonding and some of those things that's not a lot for the number of requests that we have the end thank you any questions for the spend on chapel each year it's guidelines didn't we i don't know whether we have we really don't have one per se we probably underspent it overall from a cap perspective there's a larger bill things that we have to concern ourselves with further exasperates the issues as it relates to these buildings sure because as the operating budgets get squeezed the departments just take oh i can take this in this and throw it over to the capital budget and still get it funded right financial taskforce terms of how to reproach all of the major buildings to be repaired but beyond that there are some guys terms of should we have a capital project spending policy if you kill each year and it gets tighter every year as you know we extent the extent that it's in badly need a replacement was a shock to me in terms of some of the issues that are there so pretty tough conditions  buildings and operations which would of kill with what the capital group is looking at and a report on compensation the compensation report is going to remain closed for the time being because we are in contact comprehensive negotiations with all represented employees they will have access to the information as part of the bargaining process but that doesn't become public until we get at least a ten the special education report is there is what i'm presenting to you now i'm not going to read the report you're capable of doing that i do want to put this in the context of a commitment that's been made nationwide ever since the  sixty s to support the needs of children who have special educational requirements special needs and there is a tremendous a ray of what constitutes special needs the majority of special needs are met in district in classes daily by special interventions various kinds of accommodations of instruction all of which are described and identified in something called an individual plan and i e that he is developed in consultation with educators and the parents or guardians of the special needs child to the the group to form the individual education plan when there are particular kinds of needs that cannot be met in the district and students are are placed in something called an outplacement and a discount it's called a lab credit issue back because many of the classrooms that lab offers are offered in member districts school buildings we have programs over the butler we have a program high school we have over and over and those particular programs are especially successful because to the extent that we can integrate the special needs child that is in and out four and those i would like to point out a significant amount of financial resources are allocated to district special education expenses in every district and they represent a significant part of each district's budget about a third is for trends in the past three year period the change or increase in total district general education expenditures has been approximately four million five hundred four point five million dollars or twenty three point twelve percent that breaks down to an annual increase of approximately seven point seven one percent the total district general education expenditures now the corresponding change in special education funds in the same three year time period is one point four million or thirteen point nine three percent this breaks down to an annual increase for approximately four hundred eighty thousand four point six four percent that's unusual and i don't want to say the sun usually it indicates that we have seen a special educational leveling trend trending down in the numbers of students in the cost of special education as a subset of this change in the out district placements ody place but expenses over the past three years has been approximately two hundred thirty nine thousand or nine point four one percent that breaks down to a scandal increase of about three point one four percent actual education expenses as a percentage of regular education expenses as i mentioned before about a third of the total budget the number of students who have i eat peas it's about it runs between twelve and fourteen percent of the school population right now our school population is forty two hundred students not all of most in fact i will have a cost but not necessarily the kind of significant indicates that we are doing well financially to support the special needs population this is a cost center of course but it's not one that has a great deal of control we have  federal mandates state mandates to to meet in special education let me leave the rest of the report general recommendations for you to read but if there are questions that we can address by all means here in the state yet central so that's the total number there or there is something called circuit breaker which helps support with federal with state funds which are also federally connected tony isn't that right for the questions time just for me i guess i never knew was more than a third of our school budget so rough math over twelve million dollars plus that right from there ye  from an average respect as it relates to massachusetts and belmont were lower yeah they also did pick up on one of the recommendations and that's really intervention which makes sense seems to make sense to me anyway is that part of we are focused on in her early intervention we also have a legal mandate to do something called child find which means through local medical services pediatricians and others  have to identify children at the age of two years and nine months who may have a special education need and on the basis of that develop for those children and individual education plan so that the h h three they can enter a pre kindergarten program that does provide support or at least we can i get a benefit what kind of support we need to our preschool program in fact is it's what's called an integrated program half the class  has children who have special needs either as has children who have not been identified as special needs children so that there is as much as possible a very normal kind of classroom and that early intervention  along with the accommodations of to make for children is successful the earlier you can identify a special needs and address that needs the more successful a child tends to be higher than what we heard of that were part of it really was funded by the circuit breaker i mean there are dedicated here at all and state funds right circuit breaker only applies for those eighty plus students who are not of district placements ok on that so it's a very small offer however the tender balance of all this is the circuit breaker is a state funded program and so some use it's funded at seventy closer to the seventy five some years is funded a little bit less than that so when you put your budgets together that little delta of percentage dream burst man makes a huge difference because that's the difference between having available resources to cover other things in the budget as opposed to making up the difference yes in the overall special ed charging one hundred thousand dollars for not a district placement for example which would not be unusual cannot raise that rate without going through the state approval process so there is continuing monitoring patrol their local when we were going through the counseling with the hospital and it cetera one of the comments that was made was this is you know what you the belmont the belmont is probably one of the best communities in the great boston massachusetts for special needs students i think it's not because of the bunny it's because i because of the money is because of the no no no no it's because of the way we we deal with it and so you know what happens is that's like education to the better you the board track if it becomes the more people want to participate of that and it just it just continues to to still vote so we're doing a great job in that area we should continue to do a great job of that area despite ways to deal with it with the costs associated with it because and i really do think one of the reasons we see a leveling in tranche here is because the what's called response to intervention tiered intervention by massachusetts to or get a pension system or something like that does have a addressed first and foremost you can if there are various cost options it has to be last in the list of priorities that you're looking at right by by legislation but in you know we did reach two years ago s education stabilization fund you know for sure we were able to see that again this year but i think it is speak to the need for us to to see to it to really increase that score a million dollars which is not a small sum but clearly not a large other district need or significant significant cost to provide the services that were required to provide we could tap that fund with the approval of the town but it's more that you had an interest paid as we were putting the construct to put it together  but i guess some superintending maybe you want to take a moment because i think it's one of those facts that no news is good news but the district did go through a full evaluation by the state with regard to our special education process and procedures and why is that important because there are couple things that can happen out of that process either you're not doing what is required by law and then frankly the state mandates that you come up to speed and that usually has a significant cost associated with that actually came through that review process with high marks which a couple things means that resources and time do not need to be diverted trying to address the checklists that the state came up with but also means you're operating the way you part was very good news and then i think that it's reflected in the fact that our are crossing to be reasonably stable at the present time to the point of a further questions from time any any any of our recommendations will be run through david from the standpoint of kind of a gatekeeper with all of the stuff that's happening within the community we want to make sure that those recommendations not in conflict with what might be going on in other parts of the community and dan and shock have started look at the pilot programs and  at this point that's about where we're read just to reiterate as i've said a couple times this is a committee that we have agreed that will stay in place through june of two thousand and fifteen this is cruel and  june of two thousand and fifteen we'll leave that up to the selectmen if they want to keep this group together i would strongly recommend that there should be an ongoing committee that takes a look at revenue opportunities on an annual basis document collaboration's and for a partnership to the other cities and towns and just to demonstrate that we are collaborating and trying to provide services with other cities and towns to either provide enhanced service or achieve efficiencies and the like so i think we started down that track and then at the same time we've asked our departments to document force just so we get a sense of what what are the tasks and duties of each of the departments that are statutorily mandated either from the state or the feds or from local ordinances by wise in terms of what their charges to  a task on a daily basis and then we ask them in addition to that to give us a sense of what they believe some of the services that they currently don't provide that they wish they could provide of resources were available just to get a sense of of perspective about what the things that again we get request and we get inquiries about why don't we do this why don't we do this and i think this was a an opportunity just to list the things that you know again if resources were available what additional services should we be providing could we be providing and in addition to that having the departments take a look at where they see their charging their functions the next five years what's on the horizon that they need to started to subpoena and what impact does that have on our financial resources and then also a segment of about opportunities a efficiency in terms of our delivery miles what recommendations are they make to us so that's ongoing and then the third track of the fore is we've we've started meeting with our major departments and just to get  perspective i think yesterday at the war committee me sort of hit me because we've asked the fire in the police and public works and commune of all men we haven't met with them all yet but again if you were  designing your department from scratch what would that department look like and i think it gives you a little bit of perspective about what we currently provide versus what our a professional department heads believe on a department and i think it allows the contractors i guess at the warren committee the subcommittee meeting with the fire department i think was somewhat of an eye opener about what we have to count resources and staffing and service delivery versus what that other model might look like and what that w mean so again not in the guise of just trying to say that we need different resources absolutely but what would it mean if resources were available in terms of what kinds of services citizens may be looking for and what that would mean  addition let mark pick up here is the subcommittee is broken off into two branches we decided that we clearly cannot meet with all of our comparison communities but we felt that if we picked two and we chose winchester which  interesting we surely can't afford to do that i think we need to catch them to go back and think about from this perspective clearly we have it has its state rights what's the current state and what the future today may look whether it's feasible whether it's practical i think we need to approach from from the perspective of if we white board it if we start we can't do anything innovative way then which is why we need right so that and what we've asked them to go back and think about it's just innovative really if you could have a wish list in terms of how we could approach the delivery of services differently what would that mean to think about it from that perspective and why poured it in then we can might look at some of those things and say this is possible says again he brought a perspective of not only the current role that he's in which is the county into for the for the from winchester but also as a mayor think he served with nine years these are very successful mayor taki just decided not to run again it wasn't like he was the team who lectures well well thought of in the town of the city more than in the issues that he dealt with there so very very informed individual interest is very similar in size in other ways to belmont is that we have that they don't have a right there as as a result of the of of of the electric light department and the other thing is one of the reasons for their very successful in this is something for us to keep in mind all the time but they're very explicit successful school that explosion is the fact that they haven't been hit with a bunch of small ones ok it's not a constant every two years or every three years we've got you know that if you wish for this good that are true for that because of that if we do something else what they do and they've they've had a lot of the pushes have been defeated as well but but but it's the whole strategy of that that exclusion not just that a solution by itself but the strategy as part of how they project the about with him is sort of innovation ways of doing things and you know again you know there's a practical aspect to it i mean is it what you sort of the wish list and it's a practical aspect of it he did say that you know in terms of the you talk a little bit about education david for recall what i think i walked away from when i walked away was that we're looking at sort of the same things as they are they're not doing anything more than we are they had to struggle at the same issues  challenged by them as we are as well but i also thought i also walk away thinking that we should continue the dialogue with these communities in the boat together if you will trying to figure out how to address the challenges from an operator perspective in a spend on it we'll go back and talk with them again about that and you know where there's some savings based on if you're you you know in terms of how you as an employee if you're participate in the wellness program versus if you don't seemed like their in their budgets it was you know they have very long term plans you know kind of five and ten year plans in terms of where they are when they've come to the voters in the past for overrides it's been a you know we make a commitment not to come to you and in two years or three years four years so that was some of the takeaway you know we have their budget here i know laurie you have it i thought they did a really nice job will make this available kind of in our subcommittee of comparing a lot of the different towns that we talk about in terms of new growth population density percent of commercial revenue percent of property tax revenue and almost listed in all these charts so it's just kind of help for us to know i think they actually make money on their recreation department they said in terms of  fees the other thing that we talked about also was kind of regionalization is as a result of the fire department you know there weren't speaking on behalf of the town but they seem to you know that this idea of reason is a show i know that has been talked about for years and years but it does seem you know where the service delivery side of what i really want a way from with was that they were concentrating on the revenue side as paul said they sort of had this three to five year plan or i think because they had recently joined the g i c some of that horizon was the overrides were taking them out further than they initially expected and they said they had really strong cost containment goals and i have to look more carefully at the book that they gave us in the plan but they said the town was limited to three and a half percent growth in their budget the schools were limited to three and a half percent growth but their budget i think special ed was seven percent so they sort of went out to the voters with very strict guidelines and very conservative revenue estimates and it was that kind of planning i think is angela was mentioning as well that they tax point is this more of a plan for a plan they have sort of guidelines around expenditures they have guidelines around capital to the point i made earlier again it's important because you know not spent today is two dollars tomorrow it not maybe a question for today maybe it's fundamental reworking of how about how to operate that's a significant charter cheated which would take years to do and the fact that we make available now that it comes to money they do have a handy self there there was a we had the department of revenue big about it but i would say that i think in terms of i'm sorry the chairman of the work to really help us to he's been in place thirty plus years charlie fossett on a capital budget he's been in place probably thirty plus years so you get very stable leadership at those positions stabilization at very key positions in the community and they get a lot of buy in money and they expended expenditure levels of the finance committee focuses strictly on a within it and i think what we are doing though paul and i think we've been successful with with under david's leader is we are i have seen us to be we are collaborating more than we have historically not only with the school apart which has been enormously successful  as well so david has reached out into the so called community if you will outside you know outside of the whole governance concerns and issues that it was alluding to her ability at times to have as a board to have influence over some of these departments that are governed by separate elected boards i think that david has had success with a that's the route that we went in which of us push more for a collaborative approach rather than try to change which is significant and it's no that they wanted to incorporate that again if you're looking for that but i think you made this point in the cost containment goals were a commitment to the community as a relates to their successful over votes so we can certainly have cost containment called where they went to the community they were successful to six million and six million over and they said ok if if we're successful in doing will we will maintain to a cost of governors on spend as relates excess of you know one of the levee increase of six million dollars is it used in year one so whatever they need to balance their budget that excess in the levy raised goes into a stabilization because the way that model works  each year you collect that same additional six but each year you're using more of it to balance the budget so at the end of the day when you get two years four and five or six basically now you're tapping the stabilization fund because you've reached the level  limit in terms of not having you know access so and that frankly is the incentive of their whole plan which is we won't come back to the voters for five years if you give us a six million dollar and i think they have done two of these t obviously when they did their projection that got them to a five year horizon in terms of the levy increase of the levy however then there's an incentive so that if in fact health insurance is less than what your project that means you've saved more money to get you to year sex or love you in the five year while what you're doing basically is there's an incentive there's a built in incentive to be able to the next time you need to go to the voters to say we asked you for an override and we promised you we wouldn't come back for six years or five years but we're coming back to an eight years because we've been able to have smaller increases than what we had as part of our plan we presented it to five years ago so clearly if things break right in terms of negotiate salary increases special ed tuitions health insurance and the like basically what you're doing is you're extending that window that you originally promised to something longer so that you can demonstrate to the voters that basically you have had the ability to control costs or took advantage of me again there's a there's a there's a discipline there because clearly for example let's say special ed tuitions only went up three percent instead of the projected five ft seven while you have a choice you either don't spend that delta between the three in the seventy's and you bank it basically or you can spend it on programs you know and in theory you know work or do something like that if you have to differential in salary a differential in health and and so there's a built in discipline to basically make sure that you keep your budget increases at a moderate level but do it the guise of your banking years so that your story in five years is a better story than saying well here we are f allow it to happen is something that we need to be done because i think trying to do it on your own is probably difficult because you need those institutional mechanisms to deal with those major issues that are going to be resolved relationships for example we have a joint electrical inspection program with watertown we have a joint plumbing inspection services program with water watertown so where we can find opportunities to do that we try to do that except for these larger global issues that are really where the potential savings are those are not as easy to implement just because there are i'm much more financial and long term obligations that need to be worked out a different where as i said as we now start to collect information we start thinking about how we want to construct this will be probably a and a better position to meet and sort of talk about how we want to do that so that's ongoing but i i've seen because i was on a budget book study group years ago or if it were the table was with me and we saw some of the budget books mother towns to get awards at em and then made that we think we can learn from and it hits our budget books