cash a short report from our a subcommittee on what transpired at the school finance committee meeting last night i'd like to talk briefly about the process to produce the work committee or this is as of july one two thousand and seventeen is five point six million dollars in the general fund  so the first question in my mind is how does that compare to prior years and to make an apples to apples comparison we need to add back the million dollars that was put in to free cash the town meeting allocated to the stabilization fund it's a town meeting so for comparison purposes we should be looking at six point six million dollars instead of five point six million dollars and on that  basis the free cash number for july one two thousand and sixteen so the prior year was seven point one million so this year is down by half a million dollars and the corresponding number for july one two thousand and fifteen was seven point six million dollars so i don't know if two points or three points determine a trend but for the last two years it's been ticking down at five hundred thousand dollars a year which is jacked up question but that is certainly the trend down but is there a target percentage of our annual budget in does the five i mean it could be that seven point one and seven point six were higher than we were shooting for so is the five six below what we'd like or kind of on target or well we basically have a free cash guideline we'd like to have we'd like free cash to be between three and five percent of the operating budget and how the actual free cash number compares two years before two thousand and fifteen i actually don't know i don't know and i haven't mike have  five point six is at the high end of that three point three to five percent range if it were roughly one hundred million a little over the budget of the seven point six was significantly higher than significant yeah right and we net amount i mean difference between the total amount actually collected less total amount actually spent was five point eight million doesn't thirteen was six point two million then seven point five million then seven point six million and seven point one million in two thousand and sixteen so you know we didn't it has grown and grown we've spent down that number by spent by the putting money in the general stabilization or spending it on things we also put a certain amount into the operating budget every year so i don't what i don't know is i don't know where we ended the year before so in other words like we have so we started with seven point one i don't actually know i don't remember how much we spent last year through the several different things that we did it was operating budget it was general stabilization so we problem i guess is we ended somewhere around ish and if we had a three and a half million dollar turn turn back they could beat us to this well in the future be helpful to have you know have more of a presentation with historical yanni i wanted to at least put the number out there because i only saw it this morning after asking for it since september and then coincidentally it was distributed to ten media members this afternoon but we do need to take a little time to think about how level of free cash in two thousand and thirteen fourteen sounds quite high because the budget was considerably smaller that time so a number at five point six does not raise any immediate alarm bells but to get some more insight into the trend and turn backs i think would also be right because i think a couple years ago we had we had the proceeds from sort of  one time events coming in there and then i remember last spring we took a look at the term at the history of the the turn back to afford to lose is sort of the high water mark and a lot of the term backs in recent years have been more in the two million dollar range so we had a i mean i'm i think we had a better than average year in terms of the amount of money turned back by the town town  ok well i will commit to trying to look at this in a lot more detail and we can make it a subject for one of our future meetings anything else on free cash at this point yes like hopefully that will be different now but a new town administrator has been hired i think i've met her is part of this search process she's i think explicitly good the entire committee was very enthusiastic about her and we will meet her as early as possible in the january meeting ok one other thing that i will under free cash is an issue that came up in the monday board of selectmen meeting which is new growth and this issue got it gets rather technical rather quickly but the upshot is that a new growth number for the  actually have only been finalized in the last few days so real estate assessments are always as of january first of the calendar year the tax bills for calendar two thousand and eighteen have as their starting point real estate assessments from january two thousand and seventeen and part of what goes into that assessment is what's called new growth which is improvements property that are basically new construction or just in this renovation so that and they are taxed above and beyond the regular tuning prop two and a half percentage on existing property there were two unusually large items that figured into free cash into a new growth in the last year one is the new electric substation and the second is the development in the belmont highlands at the time the budget was prepared in the spring the new growth attributable to those two projects was not known so it was estimated in a conservative fashion and the budget that was presented and approved the town meeting was based on those new growth estimates from last spring since that time the whole question of the assessment for the substation was examined again and separately the belmont highland uplands project is proceeding faster than anticipated the net effect of that is a final number for new growth that is considerably higher than what was anticipated back in the spring so just to be clear what that means the as a result of those higher assessments the tax bills that go out in february will reflect those suspects and the additional revenue from those assessments will be available for the two thousand fiscal two thousand and nineteen budget but as i understand this and it was explained to me twice  v the new growth will not yield revenue that's available for the fiscal eighteen budget and there and the reason for that is that the fiscal eighteen budget was passed by town meeting  in the spring and you can't just raise taxes in the middle of the year and park the money in free cash for example you can only tax to pay for items in the budget and at this stage it is late enough in the budget year that it is simply not feasible to reopen the question of the budget there are a you change the tax rate and the s and the and the budget process at this late in the year tax bills get delayed and it interferes with the whole short run insane management of the town so it is i think the right way to think about new growth is that this is very favorable for the fiscal one thousand budget and beyond is that revenue will be available that can be budgeted in the normal course and we're talking about additional revenue on the order of one twenty one point two million dollars  and beyond what what was available what was known this past spring jacket you'll actually have fiscal year nineteen one point nine one point one million plus a carryover from fiscal year eighteen that you actually received or at least received a half a year of that right because it's as of one the whole calendar one one eighty know this is th and i'm concerned about making a misstatement here the there is a technical distinction between the levy  assured that the town is not leaving money on the table so to speak and the full amount of the revenue will be available in fiscal nineteen yes i mean i mean the only way for the time not to leave parcel that is going to get an eight hundred fifty thousand dollar tax of tax that's when that's i mean if that if it were possible somehow to make that possible i mean that's you know that's that's eight hundred fifty thousand dollars i mean you can't simply assess higher property tax in a vacuum i'm puzzled i think the answer to that was because this new growth numbers only been finalized this late in the budget season or this this late in the year the procedure of developing a new budget calling a special town meeting to approve the budget rate i'm not sure we may want to just to further conversation i'm not sure this is right because i think what we're talking about if i'm not mistaken is taxes that are being paid by new buildings that are built right change of the tax so those people think if times yeah that's really don't have it in the budget but we we collect it just get away and i think it in ends up going into free cash i think so i mean i am confused because i think you know they were talking about this in the budget cycle last spring i remember us talking about the substation and what that number was going to be and they're working out they really have it they're going to have it and i'm here to six months later i'm being told we would lose a year from from from having that one when it's taxable as of january connected with the fact that the budget that was approved in the spring would have to be reopened if you were to try to increase taxes in the current if you you know i should say no more heard because of one piece of property here because of some other aspect of it you know because in the past we've had a for a new growth number which is an estimate in the budgets and we have collected more than that number and  not had to readjust the budget i think that they said that in here we collected four or five hundred sixty seven thousand instead of the five hundred thousand that was in the the new growth in the budget i would assume the only reason you'd have to reopen the budget is if you wanted to actually appropriate more new for the new budget but if you didn't want to appropriate it you could collect it but then it would just fall into free cash at the end of the year because it would be in excess of what you had projected or if you're changing a tax rate i think said you said that it wouldn't go into free cash and i think if it's not appropriate and it's collected it becomes an unusual urban and unexpected and budgeted item that gets collective inflows break out yeah that's how much it is whether it's being collected and i that's our ethernet so myself my sense is that that completes because there's always that lag of one year between when they're actually completed and when me and this that's when goes into place right you get the school year eighteen taxes are based on the one seventeen assessed value right so i would imagine by one one eighteen there'll be more value created it and upwards that will be collected in fiscal year and i think the good news is this is a huge amount of challenge the assessment but my understanding is that the new growth number that has emerged represents an expectation of an agreement with every source that they do nothing they do not expect litigation ok so with that the school finance committee met last night and lawrence laughed and lisa fury were there and i asked that the whole budget process this this year is receiving the little bit slower than it has in years past because of the whole situation with television straighter the search process and so forth so i expect there will be an accelerated effort to get the budget together starting very soon the new town administrator will start in the middle of january but as i understand it the the school finance committee met last night to start to get a sense of what some of the larger issues were facing the to share to help round out a picture that is evolving as we work towards the good cycle so to set some time tax some things that have happened to help contribute to what will eventually be we have annual funding from the state that negotiations with the belmont education association have concluded and he agreements are not ratified officially yet but the work has been completed we've had a tentative agreement errors and fine tuning that has taken place over the last couple of weeks even to  relationship you get to form and when you get to learn and also just grueling trying to schedule meetings and work together you really hard issues the teachers and staff work so hard for children and families so public thank you to everybody participated in that process and you also know because you've heard by now every single meeting we have enrollments continue to grow and pose a challenge month after month year after year to our space issues and staffing issues as well so some numbers that i can put out for you you've heard some of these before this information is online for anyone who wishes to look at it in more detail so our total number of industry students in all of our school buildings as of november first because we always wait for october to concluded before we have a we consider to be the most accurate estimate so we have forty six hundred students as our total enrollment and students and build on building was six hundred but that's just for comparison laurie was kind this year october first we had forty six hundred students so you can see those numbers growing over just six years and then for further nuance from edification in terms of our wish to learn or population those numbers to teach students and we need teachers who have english as a second language licensure to work with our students so we reach a certain threshold that requires them to fight another educator to fill that need that's mandated that's not negotiable we feel that as a service to our with almost a tripling over southern i think if i could speak lindsay rinder would be the best person to speak to it but i've heard presentation so it's a delightful compliment to her just strict meaning we provide strong services to our population which is wonderful and again we're talking about people who are working really really hard to them to make this work and i think there has been a trend and this is anecdotal i have no hard data to back this up but people who come from businesses share town every district is really required of doing a census just that those of the students who live in the town and in and and so they're there like seven different different categories and and and so in february when that's out it'll be fun to be interesting to sort of see how that that i'm left out the number of kids in private schools and you should see that that number of belmont students in the public school should be about  for sure and i would just encourage anyone who wants more detail there's a long presentation this was just sort of some excerpts of trying to get a sample of what the overall enrollment in the out of district and english language learners look but there's probably you know twenty slides he says five but as we said it's all available on the web site and actually before you begin i just wanted to say how wonderful it is to have more frequent meetings with members of this body to have this partnership and even our colleagues on the board of selectmen the more just to come and not to be disagreeable i don't know what conclusion to draw but this detail chart that's a live look at the sest page fifteen of the top of this thread graduating class of twenty twenty eight was three twenty and last year is three forty eight this year so it looks like with the exception of one class every graduating class from the years twenty twenty four and higher had substantial increases year over year that's not the bubble moving forward that's all net new enrollments of the same age and i think this is something that lisa can speak to to with more of the planning for the new school i think their role is studies have shown john feal and says sort of a class size of three sixty or an average class of three sixty is what the new normal is expected to be  so when exactly that hits is something probably our education subcommittee will be looking at to get it even from a grass for ourselves or how the enrollment numbers work but it's not going away any time soon i mean this is i think this as we all know has been really i think it was just an idea of they talked about developing leads for fiscal eighteen and this is something that the finance school the school committee finance subcommittee meets every other week on tuesday i know i've been trying to do is just me periodically the work committee and as we said the school committee to meet together i think is really great so they're doing all this work all the time as we sort of get a bird's eye view from time to time so one of the things that we had talked about as one of the work many questions was what they're doing about the special ed reserves and what how the circuit breaker works from year to year and so one of the things that tony the budget director passed around was a report that shows their forecast for f y nineteen i guess one thousand nine hundred twenty they're really trying to take a three year view and they were lucky enough to get them some lab credits which is the collaborative collections in arlington belmont bedford burlington were distributed  recently about four hundred thousand dollars and they want to spread that out over the next three years to be able to again plan carefully and there was also talk about the board of lab as a superintendent's of those districts and to try to make as best they can get a more predictable in flow of the credits or to have a sense of where that is because especially even from my time on the school committee you would get you know a chunk and then nothing for a couple of years and then another big distribution was the source of those credit other district where they're contributing i think is the out of district so not those five towns when others students come from other districts right and they're distributed so that's a source and it's distributed i believe be depending on the space and i mean it's a it's a collaborative so it's like the think by they i mean and they also make knowledge of the use quite conservative estimates because it can be such a destructive force to their budget planning but it looks as though you get through f y twenty now with the lab credits and the expectations of how the special ed expenses will increase over the next couple of years which was good news and i think in terms of the budget update and it was obviously planned carefully for the coming year but also trying to get a three  year plan in place which is something i know we've talked about here and probably from the school side it's really at this point looking at the needs of the district with all this in rome and what does it mean you know even with the modulars of burbank what is going to be required with those classrooms and as was pointed out it's not only if you have four new classes you also have the guidance you have the special you know the desired there are all the facilities services as well so i think they're looking what is needed to service this number of children in the district aside from whether or not there's a new building or not i mean this is the kids are here no matter what so that's something that the explanation was i think and they say you probably know in february when the whole leadership team gets together and they really try i think f each building all the directors really look from the ground up what's going to be needed for those coming year so that will come together the school level in february and i'm sure if we can get an update that would be a great time to come in you know the following month to get a report on what that looks like and then of course the big challenge is to you know this is eye opening to how large the transportation expenses either of you just direction it are you suggesting that because the belmont schools are space constrained to the students have to be sent out  get students from other districts coming to it in fact some districts are really clamoring to join a club or to have and my understanding and again i don't mean to speak out is the superintendent family has really pushed back and i think that's good but the last thing we want to do is take some estimate i mean thinking through it depends you know if you have a new building you don't want to open a new building or not have staff the students who come in that building so much there's a lot of forecasting i think it has to happen and it meet just depending on the configuration what happens in the new high school building there's impact on the other buildings as well and whatever happens to those other buildings because that things are all in flux right now if you've been paying attention to the building committee meetings one thing lindsell it's another it's like a lot of different consequences but choose your own adventure but you know if you do this you know that's what you do this you go that way there's a lot of factors to consider incidents kind of mind dealing and nothing at times but it's wonderful opportunities so yes all of these things have to be considered consider we can't pin an accurate number on it because there are too many variables at this time to know but as we are we forward the purpose of having a three year plan is to provide as much transparency as many opportunities for feedback into it as possible to allow our sort of f y nineteen or twenty even before the new building gets in place that's part of the exercise you know when they look in february is to figure out exactly at what level they expect the classes to increase or where the f t s might be needed in the as you say the observers i mean is i think i know the answer to it but is there a net increase in students across massachusetts and how much higher are we than the overall increase of mass just so without being able to  taking it statewide i think we are we are growing much faster than the statewide numbers and we're growing much faster than you know western wellesley somerville cambridge not surprising that we're growing faster than statewide averages that are for growing significantly faster than lexington or western or wellesley vespers surprise you know i think i didn't enough and i didn't put lexington there i mean i think i think lexington is is is closer to understand but i actually was having a conversation about this with somebody this weekend and i don't have an answer but maybe others do what we're talking about in trends ought to kind of be normalized we're not adding a lot of housing stock and so retired people  elderly folks after the kids have moved out selling their homes and having that been filled with people with children is a dynamic that should have been happening in our community for the last forty years and average household sizes are going down not up so i don't understand not withstanding all of that inner city every kind of inner suburb dynamic why with no housing stock do we suddenly have this excel aeration of that trend because it ought to be based on the rate of housing turning over and that the less that's excel orating well i think that goes on in ways i think the turnover does i also think that  we have had more than this would be an interesting thing to look at but we've had more new building between people splitting up properties single families going to two families some of the it's not huge but it's enough that it creates and we have a lot of rental stuff but as it turns over people and bring families and to access you know again the store we have thirty percent thirty three percent i think is rentals there are folks here here that could actually you know lexington did the very thorough study where they sort of took where the school population was coming from and mapped into the personal records of you know all of the assessors in really try to figure out you know there were there was you know they they sort of made sure that the data data was i'm not a wise or the identity was contained to a very small group but they got a lot of ins think in belmont there tended to be people staying longer after the kids moved out in my area in particular i do start and i think we had the perfect combination here where that was finally turning over and you've had the boom in cambridge she can do square  seaport where this is a very attractive location and so you're having the real the stock come up and you have the people who demand come in that are younger with children a lot of when we were looking at the earlier i don't know there's a whole lot of new construction because in a separate project of mine looking at the like department the number of light meters only increased by a hundred from two thousand and two thousand and sixteen so there's not a whole lot of that new building so it suggests the demographic issue plus people moving in with children that's an odd number  so i would say just speaking for the work committee that we should actually increase the frequency of our contact with the school  committee see whatever we can add to these types of questions because what struck me in the last couple of years is the increase in the education budget has been driven not necessarily primarily by growth in hourly wages so much as just sheer increase in personnel and that that increases not necessarily anything that's controllable when there are so many mandates on staff to do this for this function and for that function you simply have to hire them if you could that population is in your town and  anything we can think up to try to manage that would be helpful but that is a hard problem because a lot of it is outside of local control well it's a twenty nine that there is nothing else on the agenda that i want to cover other than to note the fact that this may be jim gamble's last of unity as a member of the war if you have not signed the card we have to leave