August 17, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript

August 17, 2026 - Finance Committee

Autoscroll:

Whaling Finance Committee meeting is all to order. We have a forum in the room and more people online. So the first item is to read the traditional disclaimer. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with the law. When they watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the forward slash committee zoom links tab in the town's home page. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location that's here or by remote access. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
Our agenda is really in three parts. We'll start by taking any public comment and looking at the minutes of August 10th. We will then recess to join a joint meeting of the select board at roughly 7.30. We'll reconvene in this room to consider what we've just heard from that presentation and to consider what we've just heard from the public comment. We'll also consider where we are on the question of a possible proposition two and a half override. Following that, we will continue our review of the finance director's multi-year operating budget model, including discussing the principal's assumptions in the model and the outlook for the fiscal funding aid budget. We'll then confirm our next meeting dates and times and adjourn at 9 o'clock. In the room tonight, members Bill Husk, Iris Hoxha, Brian O'Herlihy, and me, Carl Barnes. I see Satish. Satish Raj online. Anybody else? I'm also here. This is Rob Quimby. Good to see you, Rob. Thank you. Is that Christian? I heard that Satish.
Okay. We don't have Christian coming to your knowledge, Carl, or you don't know? My knowledge he is, but we definitely have a quorum. So is there any members of the public online? No. Okay. No public comment. Any announcements by FinCon members? No? Okay. Then I'd ask that we take a look at the minutes of the meeting of August 10th. Brian, thank you for getting those out. You're welcome. All right. I'm wondering if you could make one small change. Sure. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Group health. What was the other? Did you reference life? I'm going to trust your judgment on that. I just said life because I Googled it today, and that's what came up. But that could have been an AI. Right. I mean, I'll try to confirm that. All right. Thank you. So that's the only comment I had.
Chris, you look like you're reading now. I'm all set. Okay. In that case, will you read that open pen? Yep. I move that we accept the minutes as amended. I will second that motion. We need a roll call, though. And so I'll go first to Satish, who's online. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Bill? Hi. Iris? Same. That's right. We're here. And Brian? I'm a yes. Okay. I'm a yes with that small amendment. I'm also a yes. I'm also a yes. I'm also a yes. I'm also a yes. I'm also a yes. Sorry. I have my camera off, so I'm easy to forget. Well, if I do, just please get something personal. And just to confirm, Krishna, you're not online, are you? He's not. At least I can't see him in the meeting. So that's 5-0-1. All right. Thank you. Thank you. That was, the motion was as revised. Chris, please. Okay. We've kind of, just a couple of minutes. When Robbie comes back, I think, we're going to recess and join the select board meeting. I guess they have to make one of those too, right, sir? Oh, of course. And one of these for Iris. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Brian. Satish, did you get an email from Brian Keveny by chance with an updated slide presentation? Yeah, I did get a slide presentation from... From Brian Keveny in the last 20 minutes? Yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure you've circled that. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm just going to go ahead and circulate them. Rob, do you have a copy, too?
Let me check. Okay. So, that replaces what Carl sent out earlier today.
Yeah. Seems this is the presentation they'll use tonight, right? Correct. Yes. So, you can follow that along on Zoom, but it's helpful to have the hard copy. It really is.
So, let's go to our next slide. Okay. Brian, do we need a motion to recess to that? Okay. In that case, I would ask... Robbie, you can get into that Select Board meeting now. Okay. Okay. Thank you. The only thing I would say is you never know with them if they're on time, even though they just started the meeting. So, I wouldn't want to be sitting there for 15 minutes if... Is there any way to check in on their meeting or someone else? I can check right now. I'm just... see kind of where they are and then they are back is that snap down yeah can you put your face on their screen and say when do you want the finance committee yeah sure it's a really good point thank you sure we could we have 10 minutes we could probably get some discussion going
at least on the next meeting date sorry depends on how comfortable you are taking out of order
the agenda does say that items may be taken up out of order so the worlds are noticed
all right our next regular scheduled meeting let's do that let's move on to that is uh for you from today
i think in terms of agendas it will be
capital budget operating budget i'd like to get back and talk about the warrant articles and yeah and um and then do we have a opportunity to review rob's milestones it wasn't on last week's agenda but him and i we did not know race and actually those basically those core items then okay sounds great yep and the warrant articles i'll have the mural cleaned up and all of those stuff so that's again also a great way for us to present again and just make sure we've fully fleshed out what we think the process should be so then you can help us socialize that and i think really the conversation will probably be more focused around how much help are we asking in terms of things that we don't think require fincom comments who's who's actually teeing those up for yearly operating town handle those and we basically provide a draft. Yeah, there's been some, I've had some discussions offline with great with two members of the slideboard. And I think they're, they're sympathetic to our bike. And so how about you and I talk offline, because it might actually change your your chart. That sounds great. So chatting with Jalen after generally, probably you'd be probably next after a line.
I suppose maybe we can go over Carl and once they see all of us waiting, they'll put out to that right now. Like, keep our fingers crossed. I think we're going to have to wait a little bit longer. I think we're going to have to wait a little bit longer. I think we're going to have to wait a little bit longer.
Try again, say that was beautiful. So Tisha and Rob, did you get the link for the slideboard meeting that was sent around this afternoon? Yeah, I accidentally joined it first. So so the two of you are gonna, we're gonna connect here from the room, I guess, but you two are going to have to connect directly. And then when that meeting is over, you'll have to reconnect again to this meeting. Yep. So we'll see you on the flip side.
Starting again at 7.57. Back on.
Are we live again? Yes, we are. All right. Thank you. So the Finance Committee is reconvening its own meeting at approximately 7.57.
The next topic in general is to consider what we just heard. And I know that there is lots of information that is unknown. But... Okay. Based on what we have heard, we might be able to come to some conclusion about how we feel about the general idea.
One of the things... I'll start. One of the things I took away from that discussion is that whatever else happens, we're looking at $3 million or more in fiscal 2019. Okay. And I know that some of the things we could do to salvage fiscal 28 will make fiscal 29 more challenging.
Well, I think that's true. But if we do... If things break the way they could, and we're talking about a much smaller number, I think I would urge the... I would urge the Finance Director and the Select Board, for that matter, to push hard at not having a fiscal 28 override. To hold up. Yeah, to hold them up. What do you... So I think that's an interesting point. And I'm glad you brought that up, right? Because I agree with you that there's a hard number. And oftentimes, we think in absolutes as opposed to thinking in thresholds, right? Of there's a certain number at which the threshold effectively makes it override. It's worth it versus there might still be a budget gap. At which point, I think what you're suggesting is an override is not worth it. And they just make the cuts and move on.
I think in my mind, you could sort of come to that threshold as an absolute number, as a percentage of the budget. But alternatively, and perhaps what I would be interested in understanding from the school committee is... I would almost want it to... I would want to see it in impact directly to what the cut that would actually need to be made, right? So if every $150,000 effectively is the equivalent of an FTE, so if the threshold is, I don't know, $450,000, right? And that's three FTEs. Is that a trade-off that, to your point, that the town is willing to make to avoid an override? Right. That, I think, is what I would be interested in, right? What's the actual value or, like, the impact of those dollars, as opposed to just a flat dollar amount? Because the dollars, I think, in my mind, it would be hard to just pick a number and say, this is the number at which we should have an override, and this is the number at which we should not. And it may actually just be not filling some open positions rather than letting somebody go. It's just a thought. And unfortunately, I don't feel like outside of median sales... I don't feel like outside of median sales, I don't feel like outside of median sales, I don't feel like outside of median sales, I don't know that I have a great hold on, like, what that actually looks like.
Just in the same way, I thought Brian's point about the only things in the budget he considers fixed are retirement and debt servicing, and everything else is a community decision. I thought that was very interesting and respective. And retirement is fixed in quotes. Once they set the number, it's fixed. But there's a $400,000 potential swing right now. Right. Cool. Once they determine it, it won't be. And so are three-year union contracts, right? They're fixed once they're agreed to. Once they're agreed to, right. Right.
Yeah, I guess, I mean, I kind of concur with you, at least in terms of the really preliminary stuff, that I think there's a likelihood that we'll get close enough that an override for this year would be so small that we might want to defer. What I gathered from some of the discussion, and, you know, it leads into, you know, what I said earlier, is I put probability distributions. It's around the growth rates. And Brian gave me some nice ranges that I can use. And what that does is allow us, you know, to do two things. It's that we can run 1,000 or 10,000 simulations of next year and get a probability. Like, what is the probability that it's less than half a million? What's the probability if it's, you know, between 250 and half a million? So we'll get a probability distribution. We'll also get a ranking of which variables are the most important. Like, is it the school? Or what we get? Is it the state? Is it the insurance? You know, which are the variables that have the highest impact? Some of it might be intuitive, but we can get that, you know, mathematically. So I'm, you know, I want to do another iteration of what I did and sent out was just a demonstration. It wasn't any sort of recommendation. It was just sort of the types of things to do if you had a financial simulation model. Anyway, so I'm, but gut feel right now, if I were to guess, I would say the same thing as you, is that it's small enough that at least for this year we should be able to close it. I do think to Iris's point, and one of the things that was kind of on my mind earlier is, like, I don't feel like this is the first time that conversation has been had, right? And I would want to understand what we're really talking about, because I get the impression that the budgets have been tightened sort of notch by notch over the years to some extent. And I just want to make sure we don't kind of fall into a trap where, you know, one more half million dollars doesn't sound like a lot, but if it's, you know, the nth time you've been asked to trim the budget by half million dollars, you do, you know, you certainly run out of fat and end up in muscle eventually. So to the point of, like, I'd be interested to know what actual cuts might look like before we just say, oh, it's a small number, they should be able to close the gap. And it could be refinancing, so it might not be no cuts. Well, that's a really important point. It may not be cuts. It, you know, pushing out one capital item for a year might be a terrible idea. Sure. But it could save some money this year. Sure. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think my general thought, and apologies because you're right, I'm the one who introduced that language. My general point was it. It would just be helpful to actually understand what the actual tradeoff is for the dollar amounts as opposed to picking just a dollar threshold arbitrarily. That's really my point. Right. Well, if you were looking at something, if you were looking at a one-year override and the next five to ten years looked okay, Yeah. then I think that would be a different conversation. I agree with you. But we're talking about a relatively small override. Let's do the Eiffel Holder. But a relatively small override. One year, followed by a series of positive, very much larger ones. I know it's hard to get in the heads of other voters, but I would be, personally, as a voter, I wouldn't want to do this little one today, again, by the holder, and then a whole series of larger ones. Right. Right. It's voter fatigue and sort of, you know, hey, didn't we just do this last year? Why are we doing it again? Yeah. So, yeah. So, anyone know off the top of their head what the median or average tax bill is last year? Last year, it was 20,000. So, roughly, it was 20,000, right? Just under 20,000, I think. Yeah.
Carl, to your point, my last year on the FinCom, I was really harping. I was harping on not focusing on a single one year of anything, given that we clearly now know that this is a seven, eight-year problem because of the retirement funding that has to occur by 2036, that I've seen other communities strategically look out at least three years, and just because we have a half-million-dollar deficit, or a million-dollar deficit, wherever that number is, they move along in the process, and whenever the variables today will become knowns, right, and that number will become clearer, but just because that's the shortfall doesn't mean that's the number you ask voters as an overwrite. And a number of communities basically asked for, you know, a certain number up front, looking out over three years, reached agreements amongst key boards and committees. So, frankly, if you look at the numbers that came out of the 2018-19 year, we would just say that we do have a half-million-dollar deficit there. And I think we've gotten there as a result of some of the, you know, short-term accuracy that's been shown in the data that we've seen. And a number of communities have said, you know, if we're going to do that, but we're not going to get 30 million. So, frankly, I'll never be the last person to say that by doing that, because we're going to have a lot of things that we've tried to do. And that's really just to get to the bottom of business. So, I'm just wondering, the question is, you know, what do you think about the community being shut down? You know, from my personal perspective, you know, can it be 50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people? don't disagree that some small number half a million you ask the school committee is half a million cut in your budget small they'll tell you no they'll tell you that that is meat and muscle and they'll tell you we did concede seven or eight positions two years ago and just to find out that there was more state aid that there were more local receipts and so that they were I think I said this at a prior meeting I think last year they were feeling a bit duped you know the boy that cried wolf that we were coming up short and and it served a purpose to pull everybody's feet to the fire but nonetheless it was a lot tougher discussion last year and we we had to come up with ways to deal with it other than budget cuts when we were on the working group and hence we came up with the levy debt to exclude a debt on the ebw deferring the long-term bond financing the schools were not willing and so here that school committee is planning to show up on August 31st to encourage the select board be supportive as I think I've mentioned they have every right to request an override be put on the ballot there's nothing to prevent them from doing that and so irrespective of our view of you've got you know you've got to cut your budget or whatever they could still ask the select board to do that so I put in turn as you heard from Carol will look to us for recommendation if we think we're comfortable making one one way or the other and ultimately what budget shows up the town meeting is coming from the Finance Committee and if it's if it's ultimately $500,000 million dollars shorter or lower than what the schools felt in town needed for level service budget again there's nothing to prevent somebody school committee or otherwise to get up at the town meeting and amend the budget that we present so all we can do is decide do we want to lead all right and do we want to provide guidance now that we heard what we heard we can do our own discussions we want to lead before the train really leaves the station and say we think you know we should you know we should多 we should we should be pursuing a no-override budget, or we think you really should be planning for your override budget in a strategic context of the next three years anyway. I happen to be in the camp of, as I said two years ago, pushing for more of the strategic look at it, because if you just isolate it in one year, the problem is just going to get worse. Yes, we could defer at least part of the debt service once again, but I did the math, about a little over 100 basis points of the year-over-year tax increase in Brian's presentation, which is 6.8%, is coming from last year's debt deferral, now hitting this year, so we're getting a double dose of debt service. You ultimately pay the price, and if you get that number, if you defer one more year and you get that number big enough, now you're running a risk. Of getting a no vote, because the number's too big. Whereas if maybe you present a strategic three-year plan, people say, okay, we get it. Okay, you put some parameters around it so you're not back here in year two saying, oh, we spent three years' worth of the money you gave us. So what I'm not seeing, what's frustrating in the last two years, one on the finance committee, one on the budget committee, is there's none of that that I can see, and I'm not partying to whatever conversation. I don't see that level of strategic thinking. I continue to see people focused on, I mean, they're talking about do we go out for a three-year award, but we haven't heard any discussion about year two and three in the budget, right? All we heard about was fiscal 28. If they're truly being strategic, this would have been a three-year presentation. So I think one of the questions for the rest of you is, you know, do we want to be able to do that? Do we want to be leaders and see if there's a majority to stake out a position very early on, or do we want to wait until maybe two weeks from now? And again, Brian's description just so everybody's clear, because I was the one that managed to get the draft assessments for the retirement fund, and I was surprised when I got them, and Brian didn't believe them. But unfortunately, they probably regret having given them to me because, you know, they really can't get into the nuts and bolts of the actuarial study, which will hopefully be posted online in a couple weeks, at which point, you know, I can go through the numbers, Brian can go through the numbers. But they didn't retract. They just said, we can't tell you why we gave you the numbers we gave you. I'm assuming they pulled the numbers off our sheet in the draft actuarial report. Could they have misread the numbers? Could they have used the numbers? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, Michael. Does that answer your question? MichaelSöginaI don't know. Well, I'm sorry. I'm trying to figure out. I'm not sure. ScottlungSugina saintsandsiri-sam plupartdaynagethe King of family. dude, let's go back to the earlier part of our discussion of the number of sellers we put back in, number of sellers, that we have, as of the beginning of May. Before we went through. you have to yeah and so you know there's a part of me that says yes maybe we should look three years out but i would do three years out starting next year i think again i'm speculating on stuff which we don't really even know about and my worry is that the more we talk about it the more we get you know solid in our opinions and we're all too early to be solid in our opinions tonight i think that point though i think and again i'm not privy to the conversations that have occurred between the school administration town manager possibly select board i don't think you've been involved in them periphery but i know over the last couple years when the discussion of overrides have come up the town manager has advocated for doing the ballot part of it before the budget has to be finalized and brought to the town meeting because if his view is if you fail you know budget to build. There's also some concern about the AB budget, which means you got to maybe not people, but you got to start. I've heard the school committee describe this over the years. They did again in a meeting in June. There's going to be no third grade next year. That's their code for we're not going to tell you what people, teachers, whatever are going to be cut, but that number amounts to, you know, one whole section of something. Just just for reference. So I think, I think, to your point, a recommendation, rather than you should be working toward a non override budget could be a recommendation, right, as guidance. Another recommendation, we just don't think it's smart. And Wayland's not done it in the last in the in the decade. That it had four overrides. They were all done at the annual town election. They were all done as with presentation material that we may or may not discuss tonight. The FinCon had more or less a pretty tight, we completed budget that they were working with. So all these what if numbers that we're talking about here that you've modeled out probabilities, they all become known by February, right? Right. And, and so if if we didn't, if I recommend it, I'll just go back to the beginning of that. So what we're, we're going to look at is, we don't think it makes sense, given the variability and need to be a bit more strategic, whatever. We think you should be dealing with an override issue at the annual election, whenever it is, April or May, so that we can see where the budget looks like it's coming in in January. You do need a month, two or three to educate the public. And so you'll see if things start if this retirement number, for example, happened to come in where they told me it was gonna come in. you know the million one is down to 700,000. That's good, right? If you get to, if they decided to proceed with all of the long term bond financing, both fiscal the 26 and prior fiscal 27 projects in November, you know, Brian has, you know, four and a quarter percent interest rate built in the debt service. Well, three months ago, when he was presenting a export, he was using 3.75. Now, long range, have moved on the taxable front, but he'll know in November if he proceeds what the bonds got issued at, right? And so January, we'll know state aid. I'm sure we'll know a lot more about health over the months of December and January as the West Suburban Health Steering Group is meeting. The other way to be more strategic is to make a decision early to say FY29, there'll be an override, and we need to get that prepared and on the ballot early, whether it be November of this upcoming year or whatever. But essentially, look two years ahead and say, look, we can work on not doing an override this year, but there will be an override request a year from now. That gives us plenty of time. We're not rushing around. We can get organized. We can get the campaign out and hit FY29, a decision early. That's what we said a year ago, and it has to happen. Well, we were, I don't think we were privy to that. I'm going to say from the working group side, but we just don't know if a million one is going to be the number that shows up in January, February. And again, in two weeks, we'll either feel more like we should do what you just said, or we're going to say there aren't many more things that are going to come up. We're going to cut our way at the level that we need them. And in two weeks, we can all listen either live or on tape to what the school committee says to the select board. We're not privy to the union contract, the teachers. So, and again, I'm not, I think I personally said, and I will continue to say, I'm not a big fan of overrides. And, um, likely wouldn't the moment wouldn't recommend one of we were pushed in a month or two, to recommend all of you will come to your own decisions. I suspect as we go along, I just happened to be ahead of you all based on the work that I was involved with, um, leading up to this point. So, um, you know, the goal is all I think for you to shepherd us all through in a very short order. But I will say that for this committee, the goal is to, to, to, to, to us. Where do we want to get to in two weeks or four weeks? Um, uh, versus just sitting back and waiting for other people that make decisions. Because again, the bill's point, I think once those decisions start getting, getting made, it just becomes tougher for the finance committee. Uh, you know, there'd be big pressure put from all different directions on the finance committee that sort of get on board. never caused me to work with people to try to evaluate other ways to get there.
Brian, are you saying essentially what I was saying a minute ago, that you would not try to put words in your mouth, that you would not, you're probably not, I don't want, you're not, I don't know. What did you hear, I think, that you're not in favor of an override this year? Yeah, I think, I think if the retirement contribution for fiscal 20 cuts our way based on the numbers we were given, I think with all the other variables, we're probably in a place where, and one thought I have is, given what the school committee saw happen to them two years ago, one thought I have is, recommend they manage to it. No override budget, getting to work right away on a strategic plan for the next two or three years, like right away, right? And, and I would be open myself, can't speak for others, that if they then can do that, and state aid cuts our way, and we get an extra $100,000, $150,000 come next, you know, February, March, and health premiums are now 12%, of 14% in his original model, but there are 10, that's a couple hundred thousand, that I would be open to allowing, if the town and schools had to cut to get there, that I'd be open to letting them, if it's other revenue sources, to go up, even though I understand that I prefer they stay cut, because that ultimately is going to have a ripple effect from a strategic planning part going forward. But as a, you know, as a good faith effort to express openness to that, and I think it might take that to, to get the school committee on board such that they wouldn't do what they typically don't want to do, which is to go their own way all the way down to town meeting floor. And that certainly over the years has been talked about and suggested, and then ultimately, they, the parties have come to some general understanding. So, so yeah, at the moment, I think, ask that question in two weeks, if we hopefully have seen a full actuarial report, and maybe we get more information, relative to the school teachers contract, I have to believe that Brian has a little bit of inside information that we're not privy to, and would note he increased his assumption, his assumption, he didn't increase his assumption for school personnel and town council. Yeah. So, but again, I'm not a believer that the school teachers contract, what you have to do is give us the information, and then hopefully we'll get the answer. Okay. Good. Okay. Thank you, Brian. Great. So, to a general question. So, this is Jerry, two years ago at a time, I, a former student in the state administration for the University of Texas. And I was with Professor Gillespie, he's now retired. He's an employee here at a state administration. He's a senior student. And, he basically, he's a full-time employee. it's on behalf of the taxpayer, the union contracts. Town manager, which is a town union, and then you have a school committee with respect to the school contract, and the town manager, I believe, sits in on the school committee negotiating. Got it. The school committee directly negotiates. Yes. School committee or school administration? School committee.
But at least a member of the chair of the school committee is part of that. I suspect the superintendent's probably a negotiating team, but I would think it would be the superintendent, the chair of the school committee, the town manager, I think is supposed to be able to sit on that. In a perfect world, he's got to deal with whatever comes out of that contract if he hasn't settled the rest of his.
I was hopeful when I saw the library memorandum of understanding, they don't have a contract yet. Their COLAs are 2%. They're 3 years, but that doesn't look like that's going to likely hold up with the other unions.
But back to Bill's point, I mean, I don't know what else to do in terms of getting people working on the strategic plan other than we just have to keep pounding away on it. There's also something to be said for everyone is reticent. There's only so much you can do. Yeah, I understand people got a lot on their plate to do, and so, yeah, okay, well, that's next year, isn't it? I don't think it's that.
Yeah, and quite honestly, again, if you haven't already done so, all you've got to do is go to some of the surrounding communities that have done operating overrides in the last 2 or 3 years. The level of work product and effort and time that those communities have put into their efforts, not the least of which is evidencing to the town that they've looked under every rock and that they actually have yielded some amount of savings. So that's part of the continuum. We went out and found some savings over here. We're going to ultimately need some override that we're going to ask for over here. But the amount of effort that's been put into that is just leaps and bounds ahead of what Wayland has ever done. Right. Yeah. Again, I get it. It's a lot of work, and some of those communities have had failed votes, so maybe that's part of it. Maybe the town of Wayland, which has not had a failed override since maybe the 80s, there was one. Maybe everybody's just of the view that as long as you get school supporters out of the ballot, it's going to be a 60-40 vote or a 65-30 vote, so we don't really have to. We don't really have to do much in the way of education or work.
Well, the meetings I've been at, there's a lot of lip service paid to education. I don't mean the school. I mean educate the public.
But I guess not the last one, but the one before that, I urge people to actually start writing stuff down. Right? Just start with your... The outline of what you want to tell people, what you would want to say to the public. And I don't know that that's happened.
Yeah, I mean, it is. What would we say to the public?
Based on the last 20 minutes, I'm not sure we know what we would say. But even to digest this, like I look at what Brian presented tonight, right? And this is lovely. This is a financial take on an explanation of how we got here. But it's not really a layman's version of like how we got here or why this is needed, right? And so you're fair enough. We don't know what exactly we would say to the public, but I guess that's my point. Sorry, Iris, but I don't know that we would say we support an override or we don't support an override. Even before there, though, Carl, I guess that's my point around education. Even before we get there, you have to know... the basis build a basis for your argument before you can argue one way or the other right and like I'm not even sure that I think we've got like some of the fundamentals but I'm not even sure that we really I don't think this is consumable by the layperson to actually understand where we're at I think someone would look at this and go you have 120 million dollars and you can't find 1.9 or 1.2 I think that is exactly what someone would take away from this and so I think to some extent regardless of whether we support or don't support there's something to be said for just breaking that down and breaking that message down here's why 1.2 is sensitive. Ryan was correct I mean politically it comes down to schools versus taxes and that will be the split that people will say my taxes are high enough I don't want them to go any higher and there'll be another group that says our schools are important it's why our town is what it is and we need to fund the school and that will be no matter what anybody says that will be the political split and whichever group can get the most people out to vote will be the winner I mean it's probably that simple yeah and I think one of this on behalf of schools I mean one of their budgeting challenges as we talked about is the special education costs have been wildly volatile right certainly over the last four or five years if you look at our numbers and they have to fund whatever that cost is right and to extent that they end up having to fund it and it's above what they included in their budget they've got to take it from other places in their budget right and they move money around all the time within their budget but they're loathe to do it they don't want to give up you know they don't have to they don't want to give up any semblance of cushion that's implicit in in their budget and you know unfortunately the first place they start grabbing it from is you know the repair line item the buildings which unfortunately then leads to deteriorating you know infrastructure which therefore leads to higher capital expense down the road and it's it's a vicious cycle but I think part of this goes to what you're asking is is um you know understanding these dynamics I think um you know to be fair to all parties to this discussion I think you need to understand these factors and I I don't have the view that the schools you know overreach um but I also know that until two years ago um or until three years ago children's way was a largely fee sponsored program now albeit town of whaling was one of only a handful of children's way programs and I don't know if you know if you know if you know if Santa Barbara Cityajs a young girl who picked up more than an example um that in in PreK where kindergarten was kindergarten have the associated kindergarten had a part a partial fee and Whalen was one of a handful of communities left in the commonwealth which I I got it right well that got sucked into the budget but under the guise that we've worked out the math and we think our state aid is going to go up proportionately so we're going to cover that um And there was rational explanations of why it didn't after the fact. But, you know, those are each one of those stories is a half a million or more dollar impact on the budget that's now embedded in the budget. Obviously, coming out of COVID, you know, you had, you know, a lot of grant funded positions that a lot of which hung around both town and school. All of a sudden they become part of the budget, right? So, so the question is, do you feel like the finance committee should say, hey, at a minimum, we need a reset? Where we have reset line, we all might have our own opinion, but a half million dollar reset is that a million dollar reset. And you got to unfortunately find it with the understanding that as town manager said, a couple years ago, when we were talking about town services, everybody uses different town services. And so if you're told, you know, five town trails on town conservation property are no longer going to be mowed. So they're going to be overgrown and you're getting ticks all over and you can't use them. Well, we're sorry. We had to cut a half a position in conservation. Those people are going to be upset, right? Or you go to the transfer station. It's now closed because we don't want to put $50,000 a year of general fund subsidy into the transfer station. Well, X hundreds of people that go to the transfer station now have to pay their own way. You know, they haven't picked up at their house.
Those, you know, that if you want to deliver, that's the punchline. If you want to deliver the current level of service and you can't find a way to do it more cheaply. Then the question is, how do you satisfy as many of the people as you can and back to the schools? That's the largest consumer of town service, right? On that note, I had a question related to that. I don't know if anyone here can answer. For the vocational schools, Brian Kentley has mentioned a couple of times now that the transportation is actually the bulk of that cost, not the actual education cost itself.
Or is that a, does it generally work that way? Like, is that?
The town provides transportation to those schools, even though those schools aren't in Wayland. So presumably that's like basically private transportation for those kids to the schools. I believe it's required. I believe it's a part of that, you know, just like special education, you'd have to provide this transportation. And literally you could be talking about one student in those cars or whatever. Well, why would that, why would that be required? I mean, I'm just like, it's just an interesting. I think, I think it's, yeah, I do think we asked that last year, right? And I think the answer was that we're required to make the vocational education opportunities available, including. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm talking about the tuition, right? Like making the education available. Well, I think, I think we basically had the option of offer that curriculum here or offer the opportunity to take it somewhere else covering transportation. I think we're mandated. I think we're mandated to basically choose one of those paths and we don't have the scale to offer it ourselves. So if we're not offering it ourselves, my understanding is we're obligated to pay the transportation, but you know, we can, we can confirm that. I think that would be interesting. I mean, look, it's a trend. That was what Brian pointed out, that it is a trend that more and more kids are opting out of our excellent education system because they want vocational training. And so if that's the trend. Yeah. And most. If that money is spent on transportation as opposed to tuition, then at some point the math changes in terms of. But unfortunately, they may not opt out for that if in fact those families have to pick up either providing transportation themselves, but they can't because both parents work or they were to have to pay Uber drivers every day or whatever it might be. And so that all of a sudden probably puts a limiting factor on some number of those students. Yeah. But I think to Rob's point, I think. No, I meant like offering it in Wayland. Like, that's what I meant of like, at some point, if you're spending a million dollars to pay for kids to go to schools outside of Wayland, because we don't offer, I don't know, mechanical, like mechanics here, like then wouldn't at some point it make sense. Yeah. At some point, just like special ed, they try to, as best they can, they try to provide services in Wayland school system for as many special ed kids. As they can, because it is far cheaper to do it that way. But unfortunately, you can't set your level of service to address every individual case. And I suspect it'd be the same. You know, there might be a break even point where, you know, occasionally, I don't know what kind of courses they'll take these days to be able to justify, you know, hiring the teachers and providing the services. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to look back. I think the most kids we were sending, at one point were maybe 15, 16. That's a lot of them. I don't know how you build an in-town program, you know, around that. But to your point about education, those are the things. It's a natural question. Yeah. But, you know, and over time, part of the education process, the proverbial frequently asked questions and answers. answers yeah is people need to start jotting down the questions yeah making sure everybody agrees on the answers and then that that's one of the things that always shows up in other communities on their websites one of the um i think you were joking there but i'm one of the things on my laundry list of possible ways to massage the budget was boutique transport and i packed one to myself i have no idea what that transportation budget actually is or how many you know when it serves but it might hoopers might actually be cost effective i mean i don't have kids so i i can't speak definitively i i've used uber only a few times myself i can't imagine putting my wife by herself in an uber maybe 99% of the time it's safe but it's that one percent and i i do i do i do i do i do we definitely this came up last year when we were reviewing the budget and we definitely did i think dig in on this topic and there was conversation and i think we did shop around and change vendors for the transportation somewhat recently um so it's definitely i mean it's obviously something we can revisit but i don't think it's sort of unturned ground right and that was i guess one of my takeaways from the budget last year right is that like let's see if we can find some cuts into it like i'm sure there are some but i don't think it's a ton of kind of unexamined you know has anyone thought to or has anyone considered reducing this large expense items in the budget but but i'm sure as we move right well we'll dig into that more i just i wouldn't count on it being an easy win because i think people have already tried to reduce it and brought it down as much as they could yeah i think rob speaking of transferring an item now i think it's I'm thinking of it, looking to things that can cut the other way. The town did negotiate three years ago, maybe four, a new bus contract. And I believe it was a three-year contract with two one-year extensions at cost-of-living increases. And I believe the last year of that may be fiscal 28, at which point a new contract has to be negotiated. And it's a monopoly. And the increases seen by the town, the last negotiation, and that includes both general bus transportation around town, as well as the special ed transportation, they were dramatic increases. I mean, we're talking north of probably a million dollars. So whether that's coming in fiscal 28 on the school side or fiscal 29, you know, that's one that's going to go the other direction. So we have to be prepared for that. One other topic I wanted to talk about, I was happy, Brian, I referred to it, but Iris may have, your point on his presentation may have just been over everybody's head. So last year, the FinCom recommended that the town do a debt exclusion question for the $2 million septic at the high school, the build-out of that. The site board, as you know, chose not to take any action on that. And at that presentation, Brian Keveny said, you've got to have other options. You could use free cash to pay the $2 million. You could take the money out of a real estate reserve, both of which he poo-pooed. Or you can take the $2 million out of the capital stabilization fund, because there's sufficient principal in there. Or you could take the debt service required on borrowing the $2 million within the levy each and every year going forward for 20 years. And initially, I didn't see it as a funding source. Bill Younghold's financial policy for the fiscal year is a plan that will include savings in the future. The funds that are needed are both in the budget, but he pointed out to me, and he referred to it tonight, if you look at the transfer, there's a line item that is not quite correct, the number doesn't match up with the debt service, but it will when he gets it corrected. But in fiscal 20, for example, there's $210,000 of transfer revenue coming from the capital stabilization fund. But also from what sources of revenue are we comfortable recommending to the town? So we're going to have to talk about how people feel about using that capital stabilization fund for that purpose. And if we were to decide we're not comfortable, that's something we'd cut the other way, too. That would increase the deficit he showed by a couple hundred thousand in fiscal 28. It goes down a little bit each year as the debt gets paid off. So there's a lot of these little nuances built into the forecast model at the moment that I'll try to highlight for all of you. And the odd thing is we've been putting $250,000 a year into the capital stabilization fund. And to withdraw it, you've got to get a two-thirds vote at town meeting each year. So are we going to have $250,000 going in? Which I think we've funded with free. And then in the same town meeting, ask for a two-thirds vote to withdraw initially roughly $210,000. So, you know, I know, Bill, you've been focusing. It's looking like when you get the number down, I'm just telling you, there's a thing that we haven't talked about in great detail that are pushing the other way. And so only time will kind of tell how that's going to shake out. You know, maybe what I'm going to suggest is robbing for the future, from the future, but perhaps we don't make a contribution to capitalization, capital stabilization fund this year. If that buys us $250,000. Well, that was it's been funded thus far out of the free caps. Now, one thing we could do this year is a lever we could pull. It was only pulled once during COVID. The OPEP funding comes from taxation. And that's generally been funded. But at $500,000 from taxation and a little bit from transfers. It's transferred. And so during COVID, just given budget constraints, the town administrator said we want to up the funding from $550,000 to $250,000 and fund it with free cash, I think. And the finance director said, I'm really not happy doing that. I prefer to keep the amount level so we eventually work off that liability. And I prefer not to use free cash. Because the town used to rely on free cash to close budget gaps. And it finally weaned itself off of that probably a decade ago. But again, if you get if you get down within shouting distance of your desire is not to do a fiscal 20 override. The thing I would say we could live with funding about free cash. Or just a lower amount. Or a lower amount for one year. Because that one is in our control. I'm like. You know, we're in a state of retirement, where that state statute says you got to be fully funded by 2036, OPEB, we're ahead of many other communities in working our liability down. If you if you recollect last year, Carl, I voted no on that article. And I think as the explanation I said, I wasn't against it. I wanted a lower amount given where the taxation is coming in at. And it's the same principle, right? It's the same idea of like, that is a lever that we have. You work here. So. Yeah. No, and again, I told Carl, I'm not so focused on the override, I'm focused on the 6.8% year-over-year increase in the tax rate. And it doesn't get that much smaller after, you know, I just with a that's why I did that other slide over 20 plus years when it's, you know, including debt exclusions, you know, 4.6% and all of a sudden you're hitting now again, 100 basis points of that is the consequence of deferring the long term financing. Yeah. It's explainable, but you know, 5.8% is still, I mean, you're going to go from $20,000 for the tax bill, average tax bill, three years from now, that household will be paying close to $25,000, 7% year-over-year for three years running, like, that's a, I mean, I think that's a meaningful increase, maybe others disagree, but I think that's a meaningful increase. In the extreme, it eventually affects housing values, too, because it's, our taxes are much higher than the neighboring towns, it's like, hey, I'll move to Sudbury, or my, I won't be able to get as much when I sell my house. Some people. You run into people all the time, I just, another one yesterday, who used to live in Whalen, and their kids get out of the schools, and they left. Mm-hmm. Now, I haven't done that. I've met a lot of people like that. I really like this town, we're not going to do that, but it's a thing. Mm-hmm. Well, and that makes sense, right, because if you're retired, and you all of a sudden are asked to pony up an extra $5,000, you need the capital to support that $5,000 year-over-year expenditure, right? It's an operating expense, right? You're going to need the capital, and that's, your capital has to grow enough for you to be able to continue to support that. It's substantial for many. Sure. All of these are... Considerations that I assume all of us will weigh as to what direction we want to take, and again, Carl, I point back to you, if you need to decide how you want to lead us down the path, and on what time frame, to see what level of impact we might have on the process. Well, I can tell you now that I think we, I want us to have an impact on the process. And I think that means being, continuing to be actively involved in the discussions, and not waiting until we get a draft budget.
It sounds like at least four of us might be leaning toward doing what we can to avoid and override this year. Maybe that's not accurate, but... Go right here. I think we are... You know, we've got, we've got time at our, a lot of, at our very next meeting, a week or the night, to, to talk about this, and I think that if we come to a unanimous, or even a very lopsided, you know, consensus, we need to tell them, and work on that. I mean, the trouble is, we're just not going to know some of these numbers for a long time, and although I certainly respect the analysis that you've done. We'll do. They're just guesses. So, at the end of the day, we're going to know, we're going to know those numbers in short order, if not quickly enough. So. Yeah, I think that'll be one of the, you know, it's not just what our general feeling is, but it's sort of the timing, because, you know, right now, we had a great discussion, but it's general speculation. And at some point, you're going to have to tell us, okay, Monday, we make a decision, or Monday, we need to make a vote. Come to a vote. Come to, you know, without all the information, but come to a vote. Because right now, we're just sitting here. Right. Just speculating and hopefully being open-minded. I mean, I gave my opinion, but it might change. But if you told me, no, we got to vote. But even votes are subject to change. Right. I'll grow that. Right. Like, we could vote, certainly, sooner than later, because we have to provide a way that we're thinking and how we're leaning. But that in and of itself, I mean, in February, we have all the numbers. Right. Right.
But if the select board sticks to pulling in a plan that's too strong, but they're talking about trying to make a decision in October, early November, that would require us to make a recommendation a few weeks before that. So it's not hard. I agree, but we would make a recommendation with the information we have at hand. Oh, absolutely. Right. That's all we can do. And the question is, okay. So let's say the information that we have at hand in five weeks is this information. How do we feel? And you don't have to answer that tonight, but I think that's where we need to turn. I think, to me, there's just, as to the pressures that will come to bear, I think it's just easier if we front run what otherwise would be the more formal top two and a half select board policy process. Absolutely. So we're asking that the school committee says we're requesting they call us say we need you to weigh in with a presentation and a recommendation. Whereas if we could get to them sooner than later, with whatever the recommendation is, you know, again, the easiest one for me right now is someone has made a decision that getting out on the ballot in January, initially, maybe there was some hope that you could get on the ballot in November, which in a perfect world, if we had more concrete numbers, we could get on the ballot in November. Right. and you could get in front of the largest group of voters that are going to show up for the ballot. It would have been the November state election. But weight premature couldn't be done. Someone is making internally the decision that it's a good idea to go to a special election possibly in January or February, which means you've got to do things by October. If we happen to have a majority view that we think actually is better to spend more time waiting for some more concrete information, to do some more strategic planning as to how this fits in a three-year picture, which will inform you a little bit better on whether you ask for one year or three year. But we think waiting until the annual election as the town has done in the past is a better route to go. And then when your final budget is put together, lo and behold, you're within a few hundred thousand of not having to do an override. Then you can make that decision at that time. But as time goes on, if the numbers are starting to cut the wrong way, then you're not getting some of the favorable things you thought. You can have more time to begin your education. So that would be one easy one. I don't know how easy it would be, whether it would be received easily. But why the push for January or February? I know why the push is there, again, is almost a third prong. We do the capital budgeting. We do the operating budgeting. We really don't do the two- to three-year out budget. In other words, we should have a formal process to review FY 29 now. And we don't really have a process for it because 28 is short term. We're rushing around. We can make this change, this change. But who's thinking of 29? I mean, it's on the spreadsheet. But I mean, are we really having a discussion of 29 or 30? Which kind of gets you into the middle of there. kind of gets at the strategic. We don't have a normal process for doing that, really. No, there isn't one as far as I know, but on the other hand, we don't even have the inputs for 2018. Right, it's all... If you look at the finance major report in the last five years' warrants anyway, and look at the recommendations at the end of the report, you will find long-term operating forecasting consistently mentioned, and the good news is there's been a process in the last two or three years through the finance director forming these internal budget working groups. As far as I know, Carl, right now it's just largely staffed and maybe a select board member, but the two years I was serving on it, it was good, vigorous discussion, and even there, where we had a structure focused on forecasting, to your point, the numbers, were there, but most of our attention was spent on the immediate year coming forward. I mean, more specifically, you talked about, hey, well, we could have done a November election, but we now we're talking about a January or February. I'm thinking, I want to talk about the November 2027 election. That's what I want to be planning for. I don't want to worry about November and I don't want to have this deadline coming up that is the January or February. I want to talk now about a November 2027 election and what we have to do. We have to be prepared for that. I feel like that's where we'll get my vote. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I just chimed in real quick. I don't know that I fully understand how this works, right? What gets put on the ballot?
Expenses are going to be what expenses are. We need to sort of recommend an override or not. Are we putting on like an override of up to X dollars or? Yes. So there'd be a question likely including both school and town expenses to increase the town's operating increase the town's prop to an levy limit by a number. And in some communities, they might have two or three different questions. So to that point, go ahead. Sorry. So to that point, right, if we want to do this in January, right, we could say, hey, look, you know, we support an override up to X dollars but not Y dollars, knowing that you know, some of these numbers are uncertain and basically, you know, if you could say we support a million dollar override and if other costs go up by more than that, there need to be cuts. Essentially. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the finance committee recommend or not recommend for that matter. You're right, Rob. The point being that it's not just whether or not to recommend or not recommend. It's also the secondary element of the amount. And so the amount is part of the discussion you're hearing of us just trying to get our arms around.
How do you get to a number that's meaningful that everyone has confidence in? Whether it's a single or multiple years, as you heard the town manager talk about and you know, here we are struggling with one year. How do you then bite the bullet and say, oh, yeah, sure, we'll sign on for 29 and 32 at 29 and fiscal 30. I just don't know how we do that. Certainly not without having the same level of discourse about what's in fiscal 29 and 30. Yeah, it's a funny thing because assuming you could get comfort, again, let's assume the information we have is the information we will have, and we trust those numbers. I think it's an easier it's easier for me to swallow the three-year override of $7 million than it would be a one-year override for 900 grand because it again, you've got to trust the numbers, but those are getting to be serious deficits, right, that you're not going to cut your way out of. So, yeah, my issue with that, Carl, is that this model is useful up to a point for just scoping exercise, but it really hasn't been the same vigorous look-see at any fiscal year beyond 28. And each of those years, as I just mentioned, the bus contract for the schools, each of those fiscal years is going to have its own potential ups and downs, and as a voter, this is just me speaking personally, if I'm being asked to vote three years in a total dollar amount, I just now automatically give the town a credit card to go ahead and spend up to that amount with no real control over that, and without any real comfort as a finance committee member. And as I mentioned, this one community, I said, Carl, at a distributed rescue, I think it was Marblehead, actually had the finance committee select for it, and the school committee entered into a memorandum of understanding that, albeit it was probably non-binding, it was publicly, it was a public document, and there was generally the view that, okay, if we all are behind going out for three years of dollar amount of override, we're going to live, and within that, when we develop our budgets a year from now to the next year, I can't imagine myself ever just giving a carte blanche and, you know, yes, seven million or whatever the number is for three years without more analysis and some agreement like that. That's just me. Well, I'll take that a step further. I don't see how I could recommend that with a vote on the finance committee, forgetting about how it might be. I know that some of these, some of these calls, or, you know, it doesn't matter. I don't think so. Yeah. But it's interesting you raise that, which is true. Some towns have multiple levels. You know, you can vote three different levels. And just from a marketing standpoint, you know, does that have the effect that people not vote for the high level, but they'll say, okay, fine, and I'll choose the low level. So is there a strategy, but, you know, a manipulative strategy? That's the effect. Yeah, right. What the effect would be. I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but there's got to be a reason why they do the tiered amount. So that way, my guess is versus the all or I'm sure they want the highest amount because that's what they need to not have. They figure they'll at least get the what is better than an all or nothing. Right. Exactly. And I'm sure if we look at the results from some communities that did that, which is why most communities don't do it that way. But I think at least one of them failed to get the higher amount to get the middle amount. And then I think it might have even gone back again six months later after they did more work and more education and get ultimately to your point earlier. It just depends on who shows up at the polls and how they vote. Right. And so that's my other concern, which I expressed in the town newspaper. I'm seeing voter apathy. And if you get a very low turnout for an override special election or a very low turnout for an annual election, because there's no contested races, which have become the norm in Wayland. I don't know which way that cuts. And so there's a lot of dynamics to this. But anyway, one minute order. I worry a lot about apathy at town meeting. A quarter of a hundred out of 14,000 people, so 51 people theoretically can make these decisions. I am not worried about apathy for an override vote, personally. I think that people will come to the polls in decent numbers, at least decent Wayland numbers, you know.
If the business of Wayland is education, people really, parents take that really seriously. At the same time, there will be folks more of my demographic who might not want to see their taxes go up. I think people should have a look at the polls. All right. We've hit our nine o'clock magic hour. I really thought this was a really good discussion. And to your point, some of us might be changing our minds. I would have told you a month ago that this was structural. There was no way out. I'm talking about next year. And there's too many big drivers that we can't control, and we needed an override. Now, the numbers may bear that out, but I'm not sure they do right now. Motion to adjourn. So moved. For a second, I guess. You motioned. You can tell I'm tired. Any further discussion? All right. Roll call vote. Bill? Aye. Iris? Aye. Yes. Ryan? Carl's a yes. Rob? Aye. And is there anybody else? No. It's you. No. All right. Thank you all. Thank you.