had today is november twenty seventh welcome to the fox four selections meeting to go the agenda briefly seven o'clock we're going have citizens what as we always do it seven o five chairman's updates for a few minutes at seven fifteen will have a public hearing fourteen revenue and expense forecast in a joint meeting with the school committee at eight thirty we're going to review briefly what the time image of the special town meeting warrant articles that's scheduled to go on a special time meeting on december eleventh at seven thirty and at a forty five we're going to go into executive session to negotiate with nonunion personnel and then we have a half a dozen or so action items so  nice thanksgiving this is a time where you're going to see a lot of people in town doing a lot of volunteer work you've already seen it on the common decorating the trees putting flags and banners up and i know there's a lot of work to do with the discretionary fund as they kick into gear so you get some extra time please make it known and and step up it's a nice time of year to do that to the foxboro varsity worries anyone go to that game  just a quick reach reach out to linda she says she's very quiet about things like this but she stepped up for the second run with her people making it possible to get on a new jersey new york after the kind of hoopla died down with the first strike so thank you for doing that and you know the people that you work thanks to the foxboro planning board in planning director sharon and all the work that they did recently if you're aware they went through a they call the department of housing and community development program where we applied to the state for special approval in what that allows foxborough to do for as a community that has less than ten percent of our housing stock as affordable housing so because if we don't meet that criteria it opens up the doors for kind of unchecked forty developments where people can come in and really brush aside the zoning in the plan but regs and put mass housing stock together which are going to serve it certainly  serves a purpose and i think every community needs it but what this program does is allows foxborough as long as they meet certain requirements like a half a percent a year to get to that goal and everything's done according to the regulations we can tell the big large forty b developments not right now we're phasing it over time and this is good for seven years so it's something that another playing board not only initiated but they worked hard to follow through and to have this a lot of towns don't have that foresight working in a town right now that john to deal with one that hundreds of units coming in and it's a drain on the infrastructure on the school system on the traffic so good job to the plan for that goes a long way  in the last topic i want to talk about i haven't spoke to anyone about this but if your call a few weeks ago the patriots organization craft organization respectfully said thanks but no thanks we're going to hold off on their plans for future development on route one in and if you remember this i think they were in it with the planning board our different committees we set up the water and sewer so they took a breather from that some people looked at that is probably a good thing because it was so much stuff with billboards in casinos and i think that we needed a break other people thought that was a bad thing because business partners on route one certainly is the economic factor in a lot of the stuff that we do so we can either continue to stagnate and not address it in really gets addressed in little bits and pieces at the table through all the applications that we have anyways so what i've done is iraq i reached out through town council to kind of put a line out there to see if there's interest in talking at the same time they were doing it through their town council back to me and it was nice to see that i think we do have some mutual interests to lease it down and figure out  best way to move forward for everybody so we can either try to do another committee which you know i don't know how you guys felt about it but it was pretty painful trying to go through this public process at the table and there's a lot of posturing going on what i'd like to do is reach out through our town council with kevin how the meeting with the with the craft organization as the chairman of the board and sounded out and see what their interests are and what we think our interest is i certainly heard enough from the water and sewer in the planning board in this board and all the residents that i have a sense of you know is this something that we want to entertain and where the benefits are after that meeting i'd like to come back and brief the board on it but i don't want to do that unless it is a little bit of agreement on that i'm not sure any other way to do it at this point so if i get a nod from that i'd like to do that in the next coming weeks if not then i don't really have a suggestion other than we you know when they stopped and they said they don't want to go you know they don't want to bring anything forward up to that point the legal bills were being paid for by the craft organization you know the expenses and that was you know public where they stopped we don't have the budget you've i haven't requested it what i'm saying is moving forward i want to make sure that we're made whole with any legal expenses dick allen specifically dick elements time to meet with them oh i'm so if you i mean the past  on the past statements that were made i'm going to be taking town council bills that are attributable strictly to the discussions we've had the support for your committee the support of the second committee and submit them with a request i don't know  that's going on could you let him know that you know we like to have a meeting and they actually already said back they're willing to have the meeting right but what's missing is can they pay for the attorney through through that through the town and if not then we'll put this on the gender and see if this is something we want to allocate funds for so if you can let us know by the next meeting so is that ok with everybody if we reach out and do that everybody first one is the meeting minutes from october thirtieth and meeting minutes from the the nov fifth meeting minutes yet just to make a disclaimer i am a member of f x but jaycee's i don't sit on the board i don't sing and i am absolutely no financial gain but i would like to get we approved the counting on the comment for december maybe in a little after seven fifteen there is a hearing to be read into that it's the board of selectmen acting as a local licensing authority pursuant to mass general law chapter one forty section one eighty one and section one eighty three eg in chapter one thirty six section four town of fox four revised general bylaws article five section six and also stating rules and regulations will conduct a public hearing on tuesday nov twenty seventh two thousand and twelve beginning at seven fifteen m in the andrew egg allergy in your meeting room for the south street to review the application submitted by m p s l l c for the taylor swift the red tour concert this event is proposed for gillette stadium application for this event is on file at the office of select them all interested parties are welcome to attend is there anyone here from the gillette stadium i went back and forth with dan murphy this afternoon on this item and going to read you an email that he sent about five thirty seven i just spoke with jim can you please postpone or continue the public hearing for the taylor swift concert from this evening to the december eighteenth board meeting otherwise if it's easier to withdraw the application to reapply please let me know and we can initiate the paperwork thank you kevin dan so i move to continue to win the eighteenth motion made so i  yes yeah yeah we perfect timing deb we were about fifteen minutes ahead you want to wait or you have people com gn article to try to get an appropriation to do the architectural structural studies on the post office because that looked pretty promising we had to walk through and it looks very promising but if you frank i believe absolutely correctly ruled that it was outside the four corners because this really says specifically tallent hall fifty south forty sold street it really couldn't washed out and the money for another location and i have a notice of the voters requirement that you couldn't meet so you'll have to be the subject of a future town meeting if we end up having one in that february time frame for the so we're in a civil agreement with norton and mansfield it could certainly included there meantime we're going to have at least two or three months where we're not going to really do much just had a conversation with dick and of feet here where dick offered to do some preliminary stuff drop some things and he has some very intriguing ideas that i found really very intriguing offer to do some citizen work that might be helpful to us so i told him by all means love to have any any help you'd like to do in but i think the formal  confident is going to happen because the finance plan for the for the regional sewer agreement is coming together very nicely it will be ready to present to the school commission in a week or two yeah because mansfield a norton or requiring notification if we are in or out in that time frame they won't wait till the late spring because they're doing all they're appropriate and they've actually mansfield already done it came to build course in the building committee came the architect building commission or any myself and we had a very very productive meeting and for the first time i think i saw a lot of people who kind of coming together and coalescing around you motion made to take no action it was seconded that's under discussion and more discussion owes in favor of favor of taking no action on article five can't motion carries five zero and i apologize but just will have to check not a motion to refer i will write the motion to reflect the call ordinarily or write the motion to reflect your vote but since you don't have one right the motion to reflect the combo but put a notation that the board tell you this i write these motions according to your vote the motions the motions that are made at town meeting all written according to your vote the official motion that's handed out to everybody follows your vote those are my instructions from time  i've never had that happen when there was anybody can get up and speak is typically we've already had i debated but sometimes it the citizens are looking for more and more decisive you know i would say guidance or direction information and you can go up there i mean i've seen every so i've been i've been on board with speaker tell meeting at the podium i absolutely plan on speaking on this article telling me i'm going to so just  vote is important you don't get your vote which is the basis for the motions that i write if we don't vote you support we voted to put it on as an article but then we and then i know we know where everyone is but if you could just introduce yourself to the people that is joining in that would be good the budgets and distribute them by the last wednesday of december nineteenth wednesday of the of elbel for offer advisory committee larry if you don't have a meeting that night or you can let me know we can make the make the sale i can do an overview because a couple things have changed for the better because this is in a zero down here terms of our variance if you know the budget obviously was balanced and so our revenues and our expenses matched and that was zero we got a couple things going our favor the for the library came in you know better than better than planned we got a better rate we got a big premium as well so picked up about fifty thousand there and then and then stayed a for the time being a ctually came in about one hundred forty eight hundred forty one thousand dollars higher than our original plan again we had a pull up stakes in about april and we saw what looked like then we went with that number like we do every year and then when at mid year state you know budget cuts we've been we've been through this movie before and jeff back with the executive director has tried to quantify what that might look like at this point time but of course it's all crystal balling until the state leadership gets together and figures out how they're going to balance it you know they have reserves just like we do but his estimates that it represented in this month's beacon is about possibly one hundred million dollar reduction to the local aid and for foxboro that would translate into one hundred thousand dollars so the good news is is that we didn't plan on using one hundred forty eight thousand this year of the state that we were scheduled to get so even if went down one hundred this what this might look like these are not the budgets the budgets will look different so don't don't take you know this number forty three million to the bank was approximately two million dollars increase in operating budget spend as you know this is this is where we were at the ritz starting point to develop those budgets but we're here to really focus on is this is what the revenue picture looks like at this point however based on what i just laid to you about what's you know what may be brewing in town and that's what the number looks like at this point we usually come pretty close you know trying not to go over being is that the major accounts chapter seventy education aid in the lottery accounts which is that the bulk of all of the a that we get from the state that those numbers would remain flat and that was the early intelligence that we were getting that now it's not looking like that's going to be the case but that's so that's what's in here now and then all of the other items were estimated based on trend look at you know three four five six year trend and project them out you know  as as you're trying to the reason that i'm projecting a reduction in state is this point time is primarily related to the fox for a charter school and we get an assessment from the charter school every year as you know and the assumption at this point not knowing how in rome it's going to change there is that the assessment would remain flat and given the way the there's a reimbursement that the town receives that it's tied to the change in the assessment that we get so  up in a given year we get one hundred percent of that change back in the first year and then twenty five percent of it over the next several several years so assuming a flat flat charter school assessments there is you know there was a big change last year you know we're not going to we're going to capture a big a big change on the reimbursement side even if it went up by a hundred thousand it's it's a wash on the reimbursement side so that's just the mechanics of how the how  fifty thousand from local receipts there's about fifty different lines within local that comprise the number what we do here is we estimate what all of the local receipts items may be you know for the ensuing revenue and there i think everybody knows how we do that because we do not use mules tax revenue to fund operating budgets so we strip that rate out of that line here so what's left is local receipts last meals tax that's the the  net that we're working with so then in the out years fourteen fifteen and sixteen we derive the amount that the put forward for local operating budgets a number that would generate a million and a half  in in what is in essence free cash recharge for the next year so local receipts our budget conservatively in order to generate the necessary free cash to fund the following years it's actually two years out the way the cycle works  operating capital budgets and half as the annual target for the source has been for seven years not under budgeting this this revenue source would create a significant budgetary challenge in the following year and take away the town's financial flexibility this is so it is if you think of it this way let's say we said we're going to use the you know the gross number of any use at all we're not going to try to generate a million and a half well in the next year actually in two years out you will not have that million and a half to go into operating in the capital budget so you we've created a hole and this is a practice that has started you know quite a while ago decades ago and what this practice does is it's it's a dose of fiscal conservatism and it gives the town its financial flexibility i mean by that is is that when the hard times come and you know we go through the cycles  we can then take the our free cash that gets recharged and rather than split it proximately half towards operating and and half towards capital or some something close to that we can emphasize the operating budget so as to maintain services and we start to slow down you know what the investment is and capital that's typically been the priority in this town and that's it that's the financial flexibility that tool that we've had and we've and we've done that so  is we go up the ladder on on how much free cash we we allocate towards the operating budget at a peak we've been at about two million dollars and then when you know if good times last for many cycles we can typically get it down to about a million in terms of what goes into the operating the policy is that the meals tax money will be used for the opeth trust funding as well as roads so fiscal twelve is our first year but it was a stub year and we didn't have a full twelve months be a town we collected sixty six thousand we funded opeth three hundred thousand five thousand miles of roads and so we actually have two hundred ninety two thousand that has fallen out now to free cash there's nothing that can happen to that other than it comes forward to be appropriate at a f meeting for one of those two purposes this year we're estimating seven hundred seventy two thousand we've already allocated four hundred thousand for all the hundred thousand for roads so assuming that forecast comes in to be another two hundred seventy two revisit it every year while we want to allocate the money as far as if it's over expected revenue stream that we would maybe fund something else with that you're the board certainly can do that the current policy of this vote it is to is to fund two items so those are the recommendations that you succeed coming forward to me so far so my recommendation is going out unless the policy changes that we go up the ladder with our old have funding from three one hundred thousand a year let's say got the latter to try to get that number up to the required contribution for the piece that we're not funding which is over two million dollars it's taking a page out of needham's book they started this years ago and they actually moved up to a number they squeezed into their operating budget within now if they're funding their overhead liability at the required number to amortize that liability so that's but as you can see you know once we get out to sixteen you know we're going to have to be making some some other choices if we want to continue to fund all of the state sounds like they're making some ruminations on how they might want to address this addressing how that benefit is administered in that road so again i just left left the remainder here but of course we allocate an amount that we can throw by four percent a year based on the jet's future but we also have ambulance replacement cycles that are that are six years apart that's the other primary use for the endless receipts account but w change in the rate structure with what's charged for anyone services you can see we had a sixty seven percent jump in in receipts and am doing receipts last year up to almost one point two million as you recall the policy that we're following here is that these funds now the excess funds i'm now able to fund all of the fire capital needs you know the the the engines and the not in addition t but the engines all of the other capital that they that that they require and as far as non building capital it's the most expensive capital the cost of the town has an typically what's been happening is that we've been funding the bulk of that through from free cash so it's been a significant drain on free cash which is sort of been starving out you know other capital items so the point here is that now that we're currently up at this level and based on what we voted last at the last town meeting to find all of the fire departments capital needs and some of it was sort of borrowed from some free cash because they're on a run rate will pay us back here that this is hundred thirty seven thousand they should be able to show me the bottom doesn't drop out of this of the revenue they should be able to fund all the capital needs which means more free cash available for other capital so that's a that's really a  major positive in terms of the town's condition and its ability to address its non building related capital needs and so i wanted to see how how significant numbers are and they really have leveled off this year they are going up at another sixty seven percent i mean this is the for operating budgets again these are proxies i really don't want to spend any time on them it's typically in the past people have said well what does it look like you know what's the what's the net it's that if you want to see that it is maybe a quarter million positive but i think i earlier this month talking about you know how we could fund both of those projects through including desks and i think as most of you know now i've backed off that recommendation and i want to explain why what changed my change so quickly so what i proposed earlier in the month was it was identified revenue streams that were certain which is the unclaimed if you will increase tax tax revenues new growth of the four hundred five thousand that we didn't use from last year and including debt service that was coming off the rolls so those things alone would cover the debt service the included debt service for the town hall project and then with what looked like was going to be a savings or an increase in state a but now it doesn't look like it's going to be it would have mostly cover it would have covered all and some of the debt service included debt service for the terfel project that was the revenue side of the picture so before doing the work of the detail work of looking at all of the expenses and how that was going to play out over the next three years i had made some rough estimates without actually doing the hard work that i've now done and i was assuming that that the expansion in the operating budgets would be about twenty five percent less than what you and i have come up with as proxies if this so it's about five hundred thousand more than what i thought i thought we might grow by about a million and a half this point in time the pulmonary asness looks like it might be about two million and we have to do the work so that estimated growth in expenditures are going to gobbled up all of the revenue that i thought would have been available for included that i wasn't able to get this work done prior to you know what the timeline was to speak to the funding on the other two projects but i did share it and that's where we are so what the the multi year forecast shows you know what i've got years of it all the expenditures in the general fund all the revenues that come in i also other sources because these all of these expenditures are funded by other sources a significant commitment of the schools make over two million dollars approximately annually from their from other sources grants revolving funds and recreation the same thing that they commit a significant amount to fund their budget so that's why these numbers might look a little bit different whole you see the other so these deficits manageable disappoint times a year and a half two and a half years out manageable so that's not it's not a scary scenario at this point but so a lot of done as i'm taking that line and i'm showing you five different scenarios that iran so then if you layer on the town hall and turf field projects with included debt you see the numbers become unmanageable in fifteen and sixteen and if you just look at the town hall only sam situation turf field only still you know not something i've become come to with you know myself to offer included that you know these are more manageable numbers these are more of a challenge so the current scenario that we have right now is that's on the table is to finance the field with in essence cash cash assets that we have that would be useful for capital items so that so the those cash assets do not impact the operating budget so therefore in this scenario  growing faster than than than expenses are grown and in essence if you boil it if you boil the whole thing down and you have all this in your package over here you can see the i've given you for your averages this is expenditures so the for your looking at the debt service interest this is what you're talking about is dropped off right in summary it says about seventy five or seventy thousand dollars yes when i look it's it looks like it's going from one hundred seventy six thousand to reserve that capacity was it within include a debt that's rolling off and anticipation of funding this project with included that and i would i guess i would say put a finer point on that if the ultimately you know voted on that that was that was removed in the vote was specific to those two items but again the board i think said when they took the vote that the board could always re that that's how i recalled it being presented also and we had that debate and you know this most of the members on this board were present when we voted that it was only going to be considered for o excluded anything other than roads and open up however that is entirely up to you that's just your policy and it's also important to note that no ta meeting action can legally bind of future time meeting that's a principle of law butts inviolable so irrespective of what one town meeting indicates you cannot bind a future time meeting by one time meeting a decision so if tommy wants to change while things are great we continue to be fairly fortunate in this town especially compared to some things i'm hearing in other town i concur you know what what i take away from this and correct me if i'm wrong but some of the major issues or or biggest things we have to solve continue to be open salaries and if i read presentation right we do that without bankrupting us looking down the road so i'm pleased with the progress on the  also know that one of the jobs we have in front of us is on school side as is a negotiation again with better our group this year and it looks like this helps us with that so so i'm i'm encouraged i guess by how this looks as relates to the turf field you know we continue to be interested in as a school committee and supporting that war and i am primarily because we want to take advantage of the the dollars that are available to us through the n f l grant and again i'm pleased that it looks like you've found a way to  and still maintain a reasonable expectation looking out the next couple years so that's encouraging to so that's been my reaction to this jim the one question i guess i'd ask rudy is you know i know the public's concerned about tax rates and you've put in a couple  is that in an effort to live within the confines of the revenues of the town has that town would over this projected timeframe continue to tax the levy limit meaning increasing the levy by two and a half percent per year so in that scenario you know taxes will rise the rate is just a balancing factor it balances out how your value changed but i think the takeaway is that and in the scenario said it's a it's a moving target to a time so we have to use this is a guy we need to continue to see this going conservative and as you've done in your projections so i think you know certainly the school committee will continue to keep focused on that as well as we hear about our different apartments and the budgets that are going to come forward to us so thank you i thank you and as i think the group knows as you know we get major new pieces of information the first one meeting the roll up of the budget requests these documents to reflect how that looks and the next major item will be the state that the governor proposes at the end of january i think that point will have a good sense for what sewer situation in that town meeting can we consider doing the special town meeting in march so that because when you look at this calendar which takes up all of january i'm not sure how outcome could really study  the water and sewer proposal at the same time i think the answer the question is the timing we're not driving it it's mansfield and no one that are driving it so can we go to marshall i certainly would hope that you know if we were needed time to do that on the mansfield a norden would make any persepolis decisions to exclude us i mean basically that's what's at stake if we don't you know agreed to a reasonable time table to get it clear who's going to do one then those two times could go off in the wrong mansfield google often it's on i don't think that's likely for the matter of thirty days if we decided we really didn't want to cram you know especially going to february and make the job impossible for all of us i can't imagine a to have a an issue with that  in march and then i updated it to do a couple of things to in essence move out the town hall project not to take it off the map but with the understanding that based on the way things are looking  at these projections that it could not be done with included debt so it would be done if they had would have to be other revenues or an expletive debt so typically it's going to be a project that hasn't been voted forward yet and it's going to exclude that i don't i don't include here just like th we know that there will be two school projects coming forward i was showing here is the sort of the seed money to get that going but you know when those projects come forward it's highly likely that those will be excluded the projects would because that's awash with the taxation of the resident short so that's the one change from the five year capital plan and the other changes that i have assumed you know within the within the school capital is the the field project sites i place that in here because that's the current proposal going forward to town meeting and then and then wind up the funding sources within this column that we talked about the other the million from the high school project the money from the overlay of money from from other sort of revolving account schools so your point here about what's this year so this eight hundred fifty thousand dollars negative so what i what i do here the the blog and again these are projections on how to finance all of the capital that's in the plan is free cash so we identified all these other sources that could that are reasonable to fund the capital with and then the plot is how much free cash do we need in order to to balance it so in f y fourteen based on everything that's currently listed and f y fourteen be sustainable we could we could use free cash that we that we had so that nets out to about you know million to towards capital from from free cash at this point times you may have a different view and that's what i've done is i've i've noted here  that five hundred thousand of that you know if that's still priorities could be over than over the next two years but you still would be able to do it off that's a that's a consistent theme with the history of the town's capital you know capital list you know we've we've always you know we've never been ahead of the curve on capital again because when we flex as i've mentioned before with our what we put forward from free cash what we do is we end up the furring capital needs in order to maintain operating the operating budgets and the service levels what we what we tend to stay away from is borrowing for these what i would call for this with government small ticket items and we typically don't you know borrow to go forward cannot be used for the i'll say the smaller capital items that we typically that there would be a funny well baseballs it would be a building project so it so it could be i mean i'm not suggesting this but i'm saying what you know the options are spend it here certainly have the right to do that or you know if the priorities are well we want to make sure we have a million dollars for the viral school the tail school the town halls different but i think the way i heard the coming from you know cash that would be used for capital it doesn't impact the operating budget which is what we're focused on here it's a parity question within the capital budgets and not the five fourteen it's a priority question you know over the you know the five year federal plan but at the very least and it would be a different funding source we keep the one million dollars that we can then apply towards the town hall or the world but that's that's an option right ok i mean that's i think know a couple of things one is i think the point was made is that you know for the for the the project is being proposed for december the capital project really does need to convene before december eleventh you know to consider that project and then beyond that barring you know anything else that is unforeseen the meeting in march that we listed out in the calendar we would be aware of you know all the current number of requests or would you consider but what i'm trying  nothing to do with whether you're for or against it i just want to stick to each other which you mentioned before that the tax rates are going to go up by two and a half percent not the rates the tax levy and the left unless of the you want to have percent was looking at a ford f y fourteen based tax levy based on you know what's already been certified by the department of revenue that's our levy based tax levy going into next year is thirty five point three million that's level under proposition two and a half the town is allowed to increase that base levy by two and a half percent which in this case is eight hundred eighty three thousand so the town is allowed to do that and then  services but as that relates to this question about rate here what goes up is the gross left the rate and then value taxable property you know the value the property those are the balancing equations so we know that we have to raise this amount here because any ethane you have that in growth that exclusions rounding error around so we have to doesn't valuing all the properties so we have this pile of forty million that has to be allocated and based on you know your home or your business is pro rata percentage of the pie of value you're going to get that forty million dollars allocated to you and what the balancing factor is in the math is the rate and if values happen to be increasing then in the rate you know it would typically go down if the math works and the values  are decreasing then the rate would typically go up because you still have to levy this gross number it's still a confusing topic so as i said there are two questions one is the is the levy allowed to here percent or go up to two and a half or so up to two and a half or so so when you miss stated of before when you said we increase it by two and a half a minute increase it up to that we could certainly your you can propose only a one percent increase or and i don't  going up by seven percent it's now that was if that that was if we reverted back to the you know to a single rate so what will the residential taxes go up not to have yes an average the average increase will be about six percent so value increases you know at a higher rate you're going to get a bigger percentage of the share and if we layer on at the ballot box you know more debt exclusions like we have been you know alive or in a public safety and i school then the taxes are go up it's a two and a half percent that exclusions and it's and it's new growth but because we also shifted those relative right because we also shifted the split back more towards residential we did maintain the split that we had that had an impact as well that drove it up from what would've been about a five percent increase to about you know to about a six percent increase you know the shift it was chosen right and i think it's important to by one by the other and i get my percentage increase and that's mine right now with the town gets that's more everybody's mileage will vary and you're saying that's going to be six percent the average for residential based on the dynamics that we have  limit the debt exclusion that we have and the tax the split rate that the board chose that results in an average increase for residential taxpayers of about six percent actually you know for sure that when you're king you no one else from the audience given you had a comment just on my wife accuses me of having a very simple brain which you probably absolutely right and this is pretty simple the size of the pie the tax levy is going to go up by a certain percent every year or two and a half if we let it that's the max and whatever we vote for overrides we out on but each homeowner's piece of that pie is based on the value of their home proportionate to everybody else's value so if you're a little value goes down your piece of the pie goes down if somebody else is goes up so simple is that really really is that simple that people focus on the rate but the rate just is the is the is the number th appreciate you did you find one hundred thousand miles above what kind of it twenty thousand you've got the charts and the columns and rows and you just take a step back and just give a general broad you know we're looking at fourteen but a general understanding of how does our bond rating that it's important it's important question and i think it's been it's been talked about in various various ways over the last couple of months the good news is is that you know based on you know our history up until know general override money like majority leaders around us the rating agencies have given us a very high rating you know double a plus and the highest we can get is a triple a we will never get that you need certain you know socio economic you know demographics you know to to to get that and we would need massive cash reserves you know beyond what we have so we've overachieved meaning our fiscal conservatism over the years you know combined with the good fortune that we've had with the development that's come into the town the proactive steps collectively taken by everybody here in this room you know trying to manage our liabilities the opeth liabilities the way we've you know approached you know contracts you know again labor is is or salaries are is the biggest controllable expense that the town has of these numbers that we're talking about here over sixty sixty percent sixty sixty one sixty two percent of all of the dollars that go out the door for the general fund is all related to salaries so so that's a that's a key reporting item when we have to disclose you know where are we with our contracts what are the wages what are the increases that we're g so so in essence you know that the town has had a decades long practice of being you know fiscal conservatives and so on as far as like the debt that we've taken on i know there's been a lot of talk about you know that the debt that the town  taken on with regards to the important projects the buildings in the town the fact that we you know that we fund them the way that we do that the people you know the voters here in the town the ballot box and the majority you know vote to support the we've been doing when i have to explain to the rating agencies you know how we manage and they ask all the questions what we do in health insurance what's going on how we funding our liabilities what we do with salaries how we manage our capital plan it they cover all the bases and you can read the rating it's on it's online it's on the website and it's been fun it's been positive i will say that's no guarantee of future success you know it's hard work every year it will never be easy for this community it never be easy i wish i wish that was going to be the case but it's not every year we've got to go through this hard process and it's and it's ultimately it's priorities i think what we're starting to hear is you know ideas on priorities and that's that's that's natural that's the process that's that's how it the pluses and minuses to if you can step back if you if you remember last year we voted in favor of the town hall to a point but we were in favor of the finance plan because it was selling the fire department  it was selling some land that was tied up and perhaps with conservation so i think that avenue of doing that plus the traditional bond that we usually do of twenty years and just write a bond like that the library in the school did i think we pushed you away from that saying that's a little risky and can you try this formula so you know going through the taking nickels and dimes from the whole budget it's tight and it showed us that maybe it will work but maybe it won't so i think i don't fault you for going through that exercise i think we needed to do it i wouldn't i would have gone we would have got to a town meeting to vote on something that this building you know that you know whatever that it was this building without me having gone through this exercise would allow that to happen it's waste if there was waste you would have i'm sure there isn't any budget but it's not jumping out that we're in a fat situation right now that we can just pull from all these different places in you know maybe that's a good thing i think it's a good thing but as a result we struggle when we have projects going forward and i think that's what we've seen i think at some point we should end it is there any more you know the question is here your video i have a question for you folks so underlying this presentation it really just gave or literally hundreds of assumptions for revenues expenses etc the biggest question that we're looking at right now that needs a little policy guidance from you is and i'm in a different way the school committee will do the same question we have needs we haven't increased the operating side of the budget  pretty much at all i think we did one school position last year two town positions prior you would into any new positions you have i would into any new positions so we haven't in any measurable way increased services to the citizens in three cycles now through budget cycles i think we're all aware there's a lot of demand out there in a variety of areas and what this basically tells you is that if you want to look at increases in operating budget services that is possible very modestly but it is possible on the other hand if you want to create margins which can be used in the future to support the town hall project or other needs then we can't do that we really need to be very conservative in the budget this year not increase not put new pressure on the operating budget  i'm about to sit down to write a budget superintendents about to sit down to write a budget for five weeks from now will be in those budget so i respect the boards for review it would be helpful i think i don't mean to speak for debbie but i think it probably is obvious it would be helpful if you were to give us any guidance you'd like to give us on any subject but particularly on the subject grow the operating budget or not on other words this is the proverbial and i and i know randy already warned me don't say if you'll deal haters this is the proverbial level services level on we're going to say the word here it is it's do you want the budget to grow do you want to increase services so the town's people in any area or do we want because we can't do both that's what this basically says to you we create margins for future council or we can increase the budget modestly but would you like i didn't say that because there's a lot of confusion percentage of the school versus percentage of them in a civil and if it's not spoken here it's spoken at the advisory committee meeting and we came in at the last year we had a separate meeting just to talk about that at the end of that exercise level service was important to people more so than level budget certainly well and entertain at the school committee and the advisor in this like want to get together is more than a few minutes discussion here to head off the cuff from a presentation but  i just mention this because it's important you know every year we don't do that we don't do very good effective job of that frankly and so every year debbie and i do what we agree bill debbie randy and i agree on these assumptions we go through it in huge detail and we agree on these assumptions what we don't know is if you all agree on these assumptions and if this is the way you want to write a budget absent any further instruction debbie and i will like budgets according to these and to these assumptions because i we have a school board and they're responsible for their budget we do have a budget subcommittee actually the bill and i've been working with which happens to be bruce and katie and we discussed our budget philosophy and and when we put forward the budget to the full committee which will be on december seventeenth that's when you know we'll have we'll start the discussion about budget philosophy and and what they want to put forward and what it represents and then we wrap it up by the end of january it really is a time held tradition that seems to have worked here so our plan is to follow that that same thing we already have had individual meetings with the budgets of getting committee members and we're going from there again right up like well you know i agree we have to have a longer discussion about maybe we could do to our next meeting because you are going to be starting to work on your budgets but you know right away i think of the story that was just told a fiscal conservatism and how we have always historically paid for major projects out of included debt where that is dropping off built major buildings actually excluded from source so where we have done other funding though with included debt and that is trailing off now i think we're losing some of that conservative edge if we don't consider looking at that as a potential source for some of these upcoming projects because historically we've always had downward pressure on our operating budget from that public meeting about the budget and maybe you know we do that again because that's really really got the answer i won't say the two you know i won't say either kevin but you know it's out there and yeah i just like to make one comment i think it's a big movie but you can certainly chime in is that i think the school committee has really focused on a student driven budget and i have complete confidence that we'll continue to do that while we're  certainly mindful and conservative of the information we've gotten tonight but as debbie stated i think our process works pretty well and i think we'll just you know continue with that this point i suspect we won't try to do the meeting before christmas just because it was going to start losing people don't make it time off but i just don't want that kind on only that's that's not that's definitely moving along managers act review that you need to get that going it's been too long and there's one other item that has been lacking so what i'll do is i'll send the agendas out to everybody so everyone can see what it is and then he mailed me back when you're tomorrow with the d p you and the national grid people kevin you're there and i think the fire chief you want to sit there and hopefully we can get that on the next agenda to come up with some type of  overseer at the d p you mark's going to be there kevin the fire chief bob russell and maybe a couple other people from national grid basically which is going to say what what's what's happening with the you know educate us and let's work together better five we are scheduled to go into executive session where the motion to close actually that's not needed the material that we were going to do isn't ready unfortunately so i don't have anything reported ok motion toward your second