October 5, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
October 5, 2026 - Finance Committee
Well, thank you. Welcome. This is the meeting of the Finance Committee. It's October 5th, and we have a quorum, so let us begin.
Remind yourself what to do here.
I am. Thank you. First, I'll tell everybody who is listening now or later that this meeting is being recorded. It will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, the meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law.
One may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the board slash committee Zoom links tab on the town's homepage.
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, either in person or through remote access.
Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
Our agenda for tonight, begin with public comment, if any, members' responses, and then move on to reviewing the minutes of the September 14th meeting.
We'll continue our review of the Finance Director's multi-year budget model, talk about the most recent assumptions and the projected year-over-year tax increase.
From then, we'll move on to a continuation of our discussion on the possibility of a Proposition 2.5 override in fiscal 2028.
We'll then continue our discussion of the fiscal 2028 capital budget and a five-year capital plan and process for that plan.
Rob, do you intend to present on the goals and timelines tonight? I have something I could present, but given that we have four people, I'm fine either doing it today or waiting until we have more of a quorum, more of the membership. We have a quorum. Well, I think that might make sense, and we'll get us out of here earlier, too, so it's up to you. So we may cover that topic, and we may not. We will see. We will set the dates and times of our next meeting or two, and with right now, an approximate time of a journey at about 8.30.
In the room, I'm Carl Barnes. I'm the chair. We have Brian O'Hurlihy and Bill Huss. Online is Robert Quimby, and I think that is still all of us, correct? You say Satish might be on or without the video. I don't see anybody else connected to the Zoom. Okay. And if you happen to see Satish show up, if you could just let us know, we could clock him in. He told me about 6.30 that he had just landed at Logan. He'd be calling in, but we wouldn't see his face. Question is out tonight. I'm sorry? Tonight, yeah. Question is out tonight, or Satish? I'm sorry. I said, I don't know. I met Satish. And I was going to call him? That he was going to call him. And Krishna, you didn't hear from? Okay. And Iris had told us a while ago. Okay. Got it.
One quick announcement. There is a group of the financial, what they call the self-financial planning group. It's the town manager, chair of the school committee, Dr. Fleischman, Carol Martin, and Doug Levine from the select board, and so far, just me from the finance committee. The next meeting of that group is scheduled for October 28th at 8.30 in the morning. I cannot be there, and it would be helpful if we can have a representative. Many of us have day jobs, so I know that might be tough, but I'll at least throw it out, and we'll see if we can get somebody to, who can step up. It's the only announcement that I have. Anything from anybody else? Okay.
There being no members of the public available, we'll skip the public comment.
They're a little long on the tooth now, but we have the minutes of the September 14th meeting that Ryan had prepared and circulated. I have a couple of edits. Thank you. On page four. Item number seven, delete the words and various graphs, they're not included in that particular email, and then I'm going to add language for item nine, which was B.O. Herlihy's edits to the annual report, which got circulated to the numbers before the meeting.
We'll be adding an item number. I'll be adding that as number nine. Right.
Questions edits. It looked okay to me. Rob, any comments or changes, questions? No. I was not here for the meeting, so no. I wasn't either. I've read them, but I really can't comment on them. So that leaves the possibility, I think there's no reason why we can't do this, to approve them, potentially. I move that we accept the minutes from, was it September 16th, 14th, as amended by Brian. Okay. I will second that.
And we need a roll call, though. So I'll go around the circle to the left. Yes. Yes. Bill. Yes. Okay. Carl abstains. And Rob? Rob also abstains. Okay. 202 passes. Thank you. Moving on now to the further discussion of the budget model. Well, I haven't seen anything else from the town or from the select board with any new numbers or any new projections. The exception being, and Brian had circulated, or I circulated it, his suggestion, some information from the school committee, which we'll come back to, nor have I seen anything from the select board or anybody else. The last, the last meeting that I attended of this financial planning group, it really began to look like there was not going to be a lot of enthusiasm for an override, but we'll come back to that as well.
Brian, when you got those school projections, did you reflect those in your model? Yes. I thought so, but I was a little bit confused because I didn't see any, you know, on your summary page. Yeah. In a new, I'm sorry, in a new model, or are we still, I guess, the model we talked, version 7, or do we have a new version? I think we're up to 9. Or up to 9. Do you have the email that I sent that out just to be sure I got the right, either 8 or 9? Well, okay. I missed it. Okay. I didn't update anything on my end. Rob, do you have that email? What I'm looking at is version 8. Version 8, correct. But I'm not sure. So that is your latest? Whatever was attached to the email you just sent out on Friday. No. I can pull that out for just a second. I wasn't looking at the email. Carl, the one that's attached to Carl's email.
And just let me know what version it is. It should be 8, I think.
Version 8 is a multi-year model, yeah. Version 8? Yep. So Rob will pull that up on the screen. I can tell you where I made those particular adjustments. I mean, I see on the summary page, it still shows school expenses and payroll, each increasing by 5%. Yeah, you'll see that I added a, well, you'll see when he pulls it up on the screen, unless you're looking at it now. I do have it in here. I added a carrot footnote. We have another FinCom members who has joined us. So that might be Satish, maybe?
Hello.
Welcome. Krishna or Satish? My eyes are too bad. Who do we have? This is Krishna. It is. Thank you, Krishna. Oh, nice. 7, 11 p.m.
Yeah, I do have your footnote. I'm seeing that now. If you just make that a little larger. So in the upper left corner, below the assumption table, at the top, you'll see a footnote. The carrot says, this version reflects schools' forecasted expenses and payroll for fiscal 28, 29, and 30. And then the percentages, as I'll show you in a second, are basically driving increases in fiscal 31 through 37. Rob, if you go to the town expense tab and scroll down to the school payroll and expense line item, and then scroll over to fiscal 28, 29, and 30. Sure.
Sorry, not me. This is a thing.
Now I've lost school. Down below. There we go. All right. So you should see there in 28, 29, and 30, a bunch of highlighted numbers. Starting with, reading off of the school projections, you should see personnel, 48,783,886.
29, 50,815,886. And fiscal 30, 52 million. Pardon me, but Rob, what line item is it? You know, what line or what the row is it? It's 69, W is the fiscal 30 personnel. Row 69, item number 53 is school personnel services. Yeah. Okay. Got them. Thank you. For this? So starting with the 48.7 million, 50.8 million, 52.6 million and change, those came off of the school projections that Brian Keveney sent to me. And the expenses should show 11.2 million and change, 12 million and some change, and 12.8 million and some change. Those are correct numbers. So in the case of those three years, I basically removed the formula, which was escalating in that 5% from fiscal 27. I just plugged right in the projections that the school came up with. And so fiscal 31, I left the formula in for the prior year, escalated by whatever. Shows up on the assumption page, and I left it at 5% for the out years. Following that? So it's just 5% for the out years. From fiscal 31 out to 37. And then the rest is hardwired. Hardwired, yeah, this time. So I see that. Actually, I don't see that. I see it's still, what I'm looking at shows 5% increase in fiscal 28 as well.
I'm not sure I'm going to have the right document.
Which one you're looking at? I got this from your email.
You're looking at version 7? Yeah. Yeah, what he's got up on the screen, you said, Rob, is version 8, correct? Yeah, this is labeled version 8. Right. And that's the one that was attached to Carl's email that he sent out with a bunch of documents on Friday or Sunday, or whenever you sent that out. This was attached, to be fair, to the one that he sent out actually for the last meeting. So it's possible, I guess, that maybe there was a regression. I pulled this out of the email from 924 to tee up the meeting that didn't happen last week. So it's possible that the most recent email. I didn't open the one you attached to your email you just sent out. Maybe you attached the wrong one. But anyway, the one that Rob has up on the screen is the one that is current. Okay. Is that the 8 version? So if you guys want to look at the screen or find the 924 email, but I'll walk you through again. So I took the projection that Brian Keveney sent me, which I believe Carl sent out as well.
And I think it went out before the canceled meeting, which there was a spreadsheet of school projections, and then I added some analysis on that page. Is that also attached, Rob, to the email you're looking at? The school projections sheet? Yeah. It sure is. Let me bring that up.
What would you guys do if I actually came to one of these meetings in person? I have a thumb drive in my pocket if we needed to put it up on the screen. Good to be prepared. So the sheet that's up on the screen right now, Carl, at the top of the page, those are the projections that just the top center of the page, that's what I received from Brian Keveney. I then added a bunch of analysis below that to the left of it and to the right of it. And if we just focus for the moment on the school projections, you'll see that they are projecting at the moment, or as of two weeks ago anyway, the year-over-year increase of 4.2% in fiscal 28, 4.7% in 29, and 4.2% in 30. That's combined for personnel and expenses. And that contrasts with the 5% for each of those line items that we were carrying in version 7. And if you look just below that school projection set of numbers, there's per Excel model version 7. And you'll see that's where we were carrying 5%. And then you scroll further down, you'll see the variances between those two sets of numbers. And the notes to the right of those numbers, do these make sense? And there's a new bus contract in there, were questions that I put in there. And I was basically sending this back to Brian Keveney, who subsequently confirmed to me that the expense projections include some estimate of a new bus contract increase. And as to do these reductions make sense, his response to me was the schools had a number of teachers retire before the school year started. And they have replaced those positions with apparently teachers at lower salary ranges, just because they presume they're not as far along in their careers. Um, and so, um, you know, this, this particular sheet was just intended to give people an opportunity to, you know, evaluate what I guess to me was not a huge surprise, but a little surprise that the schools would, um, come forth with a set of numbers that were below the 5% that was being carried in version 7. Um, but that's great. I mean, they hopefully are now committed to their budget for these, for at least for fiscal 28 of being no greater, absent some surprise, no greater than this projection. So I've not seen a new version from Brian Keveney. So I went into version 7 and basically I said hard coded in these three years on the town expense tab, these actual projection numbers. And in version 8, when you look at fiscal 31 and beyond, I left it, uh, as escalating at whatever percentage we have inserted on the assumption table on the top left corner of the summary page. Does that make sense, everybody? And what I'm doing in real time on version 7 is just changing those to 1.042. Will that be the correct number for 28, uh, the escalation for the, uh, school expenses and payroll to, um, um, 2%? Yeah. I mean, each, each one is at a, if you look to the right side, you'll see the payroll went up 2.8% and expenses went up 10.8%. So if you want to check that I got it in there, 2.8, yeah, they're not, you know, the numbers are 1.8. Okay. All right. I will. Thanks. Rob, Prisha, you have any questions, um, about this, this particular sheet? Um, no, no question. The only question is like, uh, well, I have a question. Okay. So, uh, Rob, if you go up, it's 2.8, 4.23, then that's good. Personally, I kept in on a file and expenses are like 10, seven, and six. Is that reasonable?
Um, you know, we will find out more when the school. The school actually puts their budget together. Um, these percentages, I believe the bus contract may be up in fiscal 28, but I'm not, I'm not positive if it's 28 or 29. Yeah. So that could drive a year over year percentage increase. Um, and, uh, you know, sometimes special ed will bump the numbers a bit, but, you know, until we, until they provide us with a bit more granular detail when they actually produce a natural budget. Um, it's hard to answer your question as to, um, are, are these reasonable expense increases? We, we've certainly seen that kind of percentage increase in the expense line in the past. I think, I think the one that's equally interesting is the, um, that the personnel year over year at 2.8% is a little bit counterintuitive since the union agreement provided for a three and a half percent COLA, um, for fiscal 28. Um, that, that's because again, they, they may not have filled some positions, which helps drag down the overall personnel costs. And to the extent they replaced with lower priced, um, new teachers, uh, that would also bring that year over year percentage down. Okay. And, uh, maybe dance for my, I have one other question around this expenses, right? Uh, sometimes I've seen some reserves be part of the expenses as well. Do we know the buckets under expenses is a reserve in their expenses. Are you asking? Um, yeah, I've never seen an actual reserve line item in the school detail budget. Uh, on the other hand, uh, is it possible that in doing this projection, they, um, you know, left some, uh, cushion and some, some of their expense line items when they did their, I don't know how detailed they got in their projection, whether they were literally projecting individual line items in their budget. Um, but, uh, my, my, my, my guess would be that, yeah, there's probably some cushion in there somewhere. Right. Because, uh, the reason is, uh, in our condo, like, uh, I have a condo, so we, some, we put in some reserves and expenses. It's a reserve fund. So I'm in the same way I'm thinking the schools might have put reserves for, you know, uncategorized expense line items. Yeah, not, not, you'll not see that as a separate line item when you get the detail, you know, in three or four months. Okay. Or if you look back at last year's school budget on the school website, if you, if you scroll through their large budget document, you'll see their detailed budget sort of line by line. Okay. And you can go through it. You won't find a line item that says reserve. Oh, I guess, keep me honest here. In practice, the reserve would, to some extent, kind of be the town's free cash, right? Like, like, ultimately, if the schools had a large unexpected expense, that's how they would fund that? Uh, no, um, not unless they went back to town meeting and asked for a, uh, current year transfer. I think it's more likely they would shift. Yeah, they have to shift within their own budget. It's what they usually have to do.
You know, this has lots of caveats since I'm doing this in real time, but if I make just those two changes to the increase in the, uh, school expenses and the increase to the school payroll, Brian's number goes down to about 244,000 and my simulation number, which of course, you know, has ranges for some of the other variables is basically zero. Uh, and the fact that it's greater than a 50% chance that we would have a surplus. So it sounds like this largely wipes out the concern about having a potential override. Anyway, that's all caveat. And I'm doing it in real time. And I may have missed something along the way. Um, so why don't we go back, Rob, to, uh, uh, back to version eight that you had up before and, um, go back to the summary tab. And if you just bring it up a little bit larger for those in the room, if they don't have it up on their own machine, and just scroll down a little bit so we can see, okay. So right there. So in fiscal 28, by making, uh, by inserting, um, the school projections for 28, 29, 30, but the 28 in particular, uh, it drove what had been, um, a $911,923 potential override amount down to $458,500. Um, $577,000, which includes $200,000 of, uh, cushion. That's the difference between, I took the $200,000 out. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, uh, I think, um, obviously that, that has put a big dent in the potential need for an override, which I suspect is why, um, and I know, Carla, you've had one of those meetings, uh, since these projections came out, or I know they had an advance calculation, but they went back to re-look at it. Yeah, I think the last meeting was before the projections came out, um, but at the last meeting we were in, I think we're looking at closer to 600 to 800, if you, depending on when you include the preserters. And there didn't seem to be much appetite, uh, from the two members of the select board who were there. At that moment. Yeah. So. Um, and more recently at the September, we're mixing up topics a little bit, but I think, you know, I think it makes sense, uh, on the 23rd of September, which is the last, most recent meeting I saw on, you know, on WACAM, um, the school, school committee, uh, is thinking that they will not need to, uh, ask for another ride. Um, and that I think was confirmed at the last school committee meeting by the chair of the school committee, when she told her members that, um, based on what we're talking about right now, um, without getting into specific numbers, that her sense was what Carl just said. Um, and that, uh, she then went on to say something that I found curious, which was, uh, what, and we'll talk about in a minute, um, that she noted to her members, there had been some discussion about trying to get the year over year tax increase percentage down and therefore the schools might be asked to, uh, uh, contribute more in the way of budget, um, reductions. Um, wasn't specific about amounts, um, how real that was, but, um, wanted to let her put her members on notice. And, uh, she also, um, mentioned that she's anticipating that the, uh, their capital requests for the $2 million for the MSBA, uh, feasibility study, um, will likely have to be done in the form of an article with, uh, excluded debt subject to, of course, the select board agreeing and agreeing to put it on the ballot. So, uh, I believe that, um, she was positioning for her committee that the, the focus for 28 seems to be off of needing to ask for an override the schools, uh, and on to ensuring that the $2 million ballot question, assuming it's on the ballot for debt exclusion, gets the ultimate support it needs at the ballot. And there was some feedback from her members that, geez, wouldn't it be nice knowing that they're likely going to need to be overrides for 29 forward, that there couldn't be a, a dual message being delivered to the school related voters, if you will. And, uh, she said, we'll have to talk about that later. So, um, so it's sounding like from both what Carl's accounting and what I heard on that meeting, um, that, uh, we're not likely going to be asked to make a presentation about an operating override in the near term. Um, and I know that the select board and their last two meetings have had very little on their agenda to talk about on the budget. And in fact, I don't know if this is a marketing plan, but it's both at the schools and the select board are now referring, and you just referred to it at the beginning of the session. Everybody seems to now be referring to this as financial planning, as opposed to budget override planning. So that suggests to me that people are, uh, switching gears to, uh, hopefully a little bit longer term. And, uh, I would hope, Carl, when you go to these meetings, um, you really push hard on our recommendation that they get going right away, possibly setting up another committee, um, that gets going on out years. At the last meeting, which, which was a day or two after we took that vote, uh, there hasn't been a subsequent meeting in that group since. Um, but I was, I think I was quite clear about that, but like everything else, I think we just have to keep saying it. Yeah. One thing I was going to suggest, it's up to you and the other members, um, the recommendations that we voted on that you delivered in person at the group financial planning meeting. I've not heard those brought up at a select board meeting since, and I'm just wondering whether you think it might be a good idea. And you could certainly check with Carol so you don't blindside her, but you could certainly send those recommendations directly to the board members, um, or alternatively ask Carol to share those if she hasn't. Um, because I think until you get it up to the table at the select board, and particularly that one about considering a committee and getting going on the planning and try to come up with something by next June, that really needs to be a commitment at the board of select on level. Um, but anyway, before we get into the other item on this summary sheet that I know you want to talk about, Carl, um, I just wanted to highlight, um, while there hasn't been, um, as Carl said, any substantive change to this being that the primary, uh, assumption change. Um, I just want to point out and, and, and just suggest to you that there's still, um, at least eight or nine moving parts in the operating budget fiscal 28 going both directions. And I just want to summarize them for you and I'm going to put them in the minutes, um, um, and read my writing. Um, so, uh, the, uh, the medical insurance, obviously we won't know until February, uh, that could go up or down from the 12% assumption we're using, uh, the debt service. It looks like Brian Keveney's moving forward with doing two years worth of borrowing, uh, come November. Um, and, uh, toward the end of this month, he should have a pretty good fix on what the rates are. And, um, we know what he's carrying in this forecast. It's a four and a half percent, um, that may turn out to be a good number given where long rates have gone over the last couple months. But should those come in lower than four and a half percent, that's going to drop this $450,000, um, number down further. Um, another item that I asked Brian about, um, is, uh, on the revenue side is ambulance fees. Um, he increased in the local, in the, uh, other income tab, other revenue tab. He increased ambulance fees by, I think, two and a half percent year over year. But, um, those fees historically, those fees historically have covered, um, uh, both, um, indirect. Cost related to providing ambulance service and, uh, some portion of debt service. Um, uh, most recently it's been covering, uh, debt service on a fire truck. But in the capital budget, either last, I think it was last year, there was a new ambulance being purchased. And it's being purchased with debt. And the old fire truck debt is being retired or has been retired. And the debt on the ambulance is, is a little higher than what the debt was on the fire truck. And then I also asked Brian, and by the way, if you intended to try to cover with the ambulance fees, at least direct personnel costs, the people that do nothing but drive the ambulance. Because the ambulance fees are intended to reimburse the pound for its costs. And he didn't answer that question, but my sense is if the finance committee pushed him, um, and there's a reserve balance in that fund. He told me what it was. And the fire chief told SIPC that it had recently increased the ambulance fees substantively. And so there's going to be more revenue flowing into that account. So if need be, we can push him, Brian Keveney, to consider whether he should up that, um, assumption and ultimately in what appears in the budget, um, local receipts, we talked about a couple of meetings ago. Um, there's a risk to the upside downside. I would just have to keep an eye on that state aid, um, you know, state aid at the moment in the model is probably a couple hundred thousand dollars short. Of what we've been seeing over the last couple of years. So again, if that comes in, that'll close that gap further, which is part of your simulation. Um, energy, um, we talked about at our last meeting, um, what had been a potential 30% increase now the town manager is referencing a 20% increase. Um, and, uh, still nothing specific, um, has come back, uh, to the questions I asked the facilities director about, um, when were they planning to fix, um, the gas contract or the electricity contract? There's just one quick comment on that. Cause I brought that up at the energy meeting and the gas contract apparently is in place. So that's, that's, that's, that one's not going up in the electric increase was only, and I may get this switch, but it's only on the commodity side, not on the distribution side. So the, the large increase at that point, it was 30%, maybe it's 20 now, wasn't for the entire energy budget. It was just that line. And I'm not sure how that equates to the entire. Um, and Brian increased the year over year increase to 7% in this model. So all I'm pointing out is we just have to keep an eye on that. And that one could move a little bit away from us. So, um, I was not aware that the gas contract has been settled. Um, quite to hear it. That's, that's right. But what I did hear, uh, at the most recent select board meeting, they're meeting again tonight, at least the most recent one. That's available, you know, the, the, where there's a video available is that recently the town entered into a one-year electricity contract. There was apparently a little different rates. So they jumped on it, um, just for one year. Okay. Um, yeah. So when that information becomes available, I'm assuming Brian at some point is going to update his model. Um, tomorrow I'll send an email just saying, next time you update your model, send me a copy. I'll do the same thing I did the last time and try to figure out what he's changed. Um, one of the items that may move away from us, um, in what's in the forecast is that, as we'll get to in the capital budget, um, SIPC has had several conversations now with the IT director, which, uh, which, uh, uh, we'll talk about the impact on the capital plan. Um, uh, but in responding to our questions and in particular, to me, uh, he provided in a copy to Brian Keveny, uh, he provided, um, his view that his operating budget is woefully below what he needs. Um, given that he points out the cost of two or three town software packages, including Munis, which is the accounting software have like gone up 50% or something. And are eating up a huge chunk of his budget that he needs for other things. And I'm pretty sure if I understood his, uh, email to me correctly, you know, his, if the, if the town manager were to agree to it, his operating budget could go up by a hundred to $150,000 above what's in the forecast. But again, no need for us to get into that detail. Now I'm just highlighting things that I'm aware of, um, you know, sort of up or down, um, on the board of public works meeting, their last meeting, um, they were talking about amongst other things, water rates. And the, they were talking about municipal water rates because apparently, uh, the town is paid at the lowest tier on all the water it uses. And the discussion that the punchline in the discussion was, well, since the select board didn't agree to split the cost, um, partly between taxation and water rates on the $38.6 million long-term project. Um, we think we need to basically be charging the town on the same basis that all residential customers pay, which is a four tiered system. And obviously the town uses a lot more water than a typical residential customer. And therefore a lot of that water is going to end up in tier four, which is the highest rate. Um, I just don't know how much money that translates into, but, uh, the chair of the board of public works was saying that they plan to communicate with the select board and with all the town boards and town departments. So that as they do their fiscal 28 budgeting, uh, they take into account that they're going to have to cover that cost. And I've not come back to look at the water line item, wherever it might appear in the budgets, but again, that this is, you got all these factors moving up, down, sideways. Um, you would think at a minimum of being on the commercial rate structure that might not be, but to compare it to a residential doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. So we have a separate, so they would all be better tiers of use. Okay. Interesting. And so there may be, you know, they may get some pushback, but they set the rates. So, uh, I, I get it. And, you know, um, more to come on that. So my only point in recounting all those, uh, we also talked about, um, other ways to, um, close the gap when it was larger. Uh, OPEB, uh, is still forecast to be fully funded with taxation, $500,000. Um, and we talked about, um, um, you know, sort of, uh, financial engineering with debt. So there's still other levers that could be pulled if one needed to, to close the gap relative to a proposition, two and a half override. Um, I tell you all those other things less for that at this point, uh, but more for the second topic. I think Carl, you wanted to get to, which, um, if you want to set the stage and I'll, I'll give you a couple of other numbered tidbits. Before we go there, um, quick question, I had, uh, raise my hand, uh, quick question. If you can share the same screen, uh, uh, who was sharing, Rob, right? Were you sharing the screen? Okay. I have a quick question. So, um, maybe Carl or Brian, you can answer this. So when I'm looking at the spreadsheet, right, um, I'm looking at the potential override amount. Row 30 for 20, 27, 0, 20, 28, 4, 58, you know, K and then, you know, so on, so forth, 20, 29, 20, 30. Do we know what were these amounts last year same time? Meaning last year I would have seen 20, 26, 20, 27, 20, 28, 20, 29. Uh, I have, I have, I don't have them with me, but I have that file, um, from the budget working group I was on. Yeah. The reason I ask is, uh, right now we are in 20, 26, the 20, 28 number is for 58K. And then 20, 29 is 2.6 mil, right? So now in the last year, was it 2.69, 20, 29? Was it like 1.5 mil or was it like 4 mil? Do we know? No, it was much, it was much higher. Um, in fact, if you go just, all you have to do is go back to June. Uh, when the finance director did a presentation with the select board. And at that time, um, based on the information he had at that time, fiscal 28 showed a two and a half million dollar potential override. Uh, all, all those other numbers were at least a million or two higher. Okay. So, so that, that's good. That's good information. So if it, in the six months, it come down by a million each. So next year, then it come down by even more, one, one, one million, right? So next year, 20, 29, it'd be like 458K or something along those lines. No, it's, it, 29 came down from the impact of 28 going down, uh, because, uh, and, and the largest contributor of that, as we talked about was the million dollar plus increase in local receipts. That, um, personally, I don't expect is going to get, we're not going to get year after year increases in local receipts of a million dollars. Okay. So, um, so, uh, I get your point and, uh, the history of this forecasting over the last three or four years is that it, it, it, they have tended to be on the conservative side, finance search has been on the conservative side and 26, 27, 28, all of which at some point in time showed the need for an override. And here we are going into a third year in that three year cycle and likely not likely not needing one, but, um, never say never, but it's just hard to see how that's going to repeat itself in 29, 30 and, and beyond. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Brian, before we move on to that next topic, assuming I know which next topic you're thinking about, um, have you heard anything, uh, from the assessor about new growth? Oh, I'm sorry. Um, yeah. So on this, I thought I put it on this, yeah, on the summary page, if you look on the new growth line item far to the right, um, the assessor at their second to last meeting, uh, told the board of assessors that through two weeks ago, their office had identified somewhere between 580,000 to 600,000 of new growth. And that was before adding in, uh, personal property, new growth, which was apparently gets fed to the town by an outside, um, group. Uh, and he had told me previously when I talked to him that on average, that number has been somewhere in the $90,000 range. So, uh, based on what they had collected, assuming it gets certified ultimately the next month or two by the state, um, that covers what's in the forecast of the 600,000 of assumption. And, um, we'll see what they include in the tax recap, but it's, it's sounding like what's going to be in the tax recap will be 700,000 or so. So that would be an extra a hundred thousand again, that will further reduce this 458. So there's two or three items that are pretty likely going to, as Bill's simulation show, pretty likely to drive the need for an override down basically close to zero. Um, is that helpful? It is. Thank you. And again, the new growth, it really is just relative to our levy capacity. It doesn't really relate to year over year tax increase other than without the levy capacity, you're limited in what you can raise in taxes, which derivatively affects what your year over year tax increases. So where we are today, according to this model is we, we need an extra $458,000 of levy capacity.
Well, they're dollars, right? I mean, there's different ways to get there in revenue or expense cuts, right? But with, with, um, one way or the other, either we, well, no, no, no, let's, let's, let's, so let's assume we drive, let's assume that it's into a tax rate. And the model here is showing 6.06%. Does that assume that we raised that 458 through an override or where's the 6.06? Yeah. I mean, that, that assumes that, um, that we did an override and therefore we could raise those taxes. Okay. Um, one, one thing we could do, um, Rob, I'm going to bring that model back up. If you, um, just cause it's easiest line item to manipulate. And I think it's a hundred thousand dollar increments. Um, um, if, if you go to the insurance 32 B line and change 1.12 to 1.08, and I might have to go to 1.1, but. Yeah. Yeah. So that leaves you with what? 303 dollars potential override. Exactly. So what's the tax rate showing there now? Do you remember your tax increase? 5.58. 5.58. So as a point of reference for the discussion you want to have about the tax rate, um, if you assume one way or the other through more state aid, a little lower medical premium, insurance premiums through a little less debt service, or we get rid of a hundred grand that Brian stuck in the snow budget, um, the $200,000, sort of what I would call non muscle, non painful sort of cuts and or revenue. Um, we're probably going to get that potential override need down to zero, which means you don't have to raise that in taxes, which means your year over year would be in the five and a half, five point 6% range. And, um, I think the question that was posed at your last group meeting was, uh, how do people feel about and whether people are looking at the six or in Brian's model, it might have been higher than that because he hadn't adjusted yet to the school projections, but it may have been discussion. Well, how do people feel about trying to drive that down toward 5%, okay? And so if Rob, you change that 1.2.
Well, I don't, nevermind. I don't think I did it on this version. I have a version nine that I'll send out after the meeting, um, right below, right above the budget summary title, you'll see a town's school and unclassified budget number, um, on version nine, I've got that tied into, um, linked into where it appears in the, in one of the tabs. And then what I did is I drove the insurance line item down to 1.03, which equates to about a million dollar cut. So that would wipe out the 458 plus another 600,000. That's what it would, a million dollars is what it takes to get the year over your tax increase down to 5%. Okay. So one way to look at that is there's probably 450,000 of not too painful things that are going to happen without schools in town having to actually cut their budgets. But if people really want to get it down to 5%, you're probably going to have to cut, um, you know, roughly $600,000 from the town and school budget, um, beyond whatever is in these school projections. Um, and so I think the point you want to discuss tonight is how do people feel about that? So before you open it for discussion, what I did was I just want to, because I have my own view on it, which I'll share at the end, but, um, I wanted to, uh, looking for the select board meeting room, uh, this, this select board meeting room, but it's not the select board. Yeah. They're down the end of the hall. Um, where am I here? Yeah. Down at the end of the hall, turn left and then turn right. Turn. Turn. Aren't they in the, uh, wheeling? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Go all the way to the end of this hall, then turn right. Go all the way to the end. Thank you very well. Got myself backwards. So, um, Rob, can you bring up the, uh, tax rate spreadsheet that Carl had on his, um, email? Just again, make it large enough to all have that here in the room.
That will take me a minute. That was a PDF. Is it a PDF file? Yeah, I don't think it's a spreadsheet. Okay. Sometimes when I do this for my own purposes, I don't necessarily put it in logical order, which I'll explain in a minute, but, um, and tell you what I was trying to look at here. Now, just blow it up a little bit. So if there's anybody online watching, uh, they have a chance to read that. Um, that's good. So I'm going to start in the bottom of the, of the page where it says, uh, per 2026 annual town meeting warrant.
So if you look at the warrant and you scroll down to year over year increase fiscal 27, you'll see a 4.89% year over year tax increase number. That's what was projected in the warrant for the 2026 annual town meeting. And that number was calculated based on the, uh, projected tax raise needed shown in the warrant at 96.3 million, um, and comparing it to the prior year, 91.8 million. That equates to a 4.89% year over year increase. Now I'm going to stick with this column for a minute. Um, between the town meeting warrant and today, uh, if you look down further on that column, you'll see the 96.309, which was in the warrant is the starting expected taxation. We've since come to learn that we had over a million dollars of additional local receipts, an additional state aid of 276 million, which gives us an adjusted tax raise of 94.9 million. And when you do that same math, comparing it to fiscal 26, that equates to a 3.39% year over year increase, which if you can scroll up that column under the per forecast, you'll see on the year, year over year increase fiscal 27 litem 3.39. So, um, as a starting point, what was expected to be 4.8.9% residents are going to see 3.39% attributable to those extra revenues. Okay. Everybody with me on that? Any questions?
So then the second thing I did was, um, down at the bottom again, um, I went into the debt tab and I looked at the debt service that was attributable to the, the, the bonds that would otherwise have been issued last November. That's November of 2025. And I identified the debt service that's showing up in the fiscal 28, uh, budget. And I also looked at the short-term ban interest that was in fiscal 27 by virtue of the fact that we delayed the long-term financing and the net difference between those two, if the long-term financing had occurred in November of 25, we would not have incurred ban interest, but we would have incurred 900, some odd thousand dollars of, long-term bond interest in principle. And so in fiscal 27 budget, we would have had an extra $844, thousand dollars of expense. So if you look again, down into the ATM warrant section, um, had that financial engineering not been done last year, what was in the warrant at 4.89% would have actually shown up at 5.81%. Okay. People following that. And if you do that same math, um, looking at what is now likely to be the year-over-year increase after reflecting local receipts, et cetera, the 3.39% actually would have been 4.31%. And I'll explain why that's relevant in a second.
If you move that debt service back one year, if, again, we didn't do that financial engineering, um, the effect of that on fiscal 28 is a net reduction of $202,000 of debt service because we're shifting about $900,000 of bond interest in principle backwards one year. And, uh, we're left with whatever the debt services on the upcoming borrowing for what was approved at the Springtown meeting. And when you then do the math on fiscal 28 sticking with the 6.06 as our starting point per minute, which is in the version eight we're, we're looking at a second ago, that would push that down to 4.92% or 115 basis point reduction. So the point of this exercise, and I, I got at this a little bit by giving you an average in the, in the summary page before where I was showing an average between those two years of 4.73%. But if we hadn't done that financial engineering, the year-over-year increase based on this current forecast version eight would be 4.92%, not 6.06%. So we're already below 5%. So basically, go ahead. If I'm just kind of summarizing, we used a short-term measure to artificially reduce 27, which kind of doubly hits us on 28, because one, we need to pay a little more due to the short-term measure. And two, we're measuring against kind of an artificially low baseline. Right. And we're doubling up on the bond interest. Correct. And the fact is we did that, but if that's what's driving us from a 4.92%, which would have been a 4.92%, all things being equal to 6.06, to me, I'm a little troubled by asking the town and the schools to go back and, I never turned away a budget cut that's offered, okay? So don't get me wrong. I think people should look for as much efficiency as they can find. It's going to be important in pitching for overrides. But I also want to provide transparency to people financially. And you could argue that it's the financial engineering that's driving us from under 5% to 6.06%. So why should the town and schools be asked to further cut their budgets to try to drive the 6.06% or 5.58% if you assume that other factors will get us down, you know, to no override needed. So that was the purpose of this analysis. As I said, you can use the averages as a perhaps quicker way to get there, but I thought I would give you all the math involved. And this is something that, you know, I think would be appropriate if asked that we make available to your working group and to the school chair in particular, because, you know, I'd hate for people to be sort of nudged. Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't go look for efficiencies, but I don't want people feeling like, unless, you know, members of this committee, a majority of this committee feel like, well, yeah, but the facts are it got deferred. And the fact is optically, we don't like a 6% or a 5.5%. We prefer to be at 5% or lower optically, even if we can explain the 115 basis points as attributable to a financial engineering maneuver that we took, which, oh, by the way, we really didn't need to take in hindsight, because we ended up with $2.5 million of excess levy capacity. So anyway, that's the purpose of this analysis. And I just want to see if there are any questions, and then Carl, I'll throw it to you to see how strongly people feel about driving to 5%. And I'll wait till the end to tell you what I feel.
I have no questions about that presentation. But going back to the model, if we're right now looking for some way to shed or raise revenue to the extent, well, let's talk in terms of shedding, either deferring or cutting, right, at $458,000. That's going to be very ballpark, about a half a percent, right? Correct. So that brings us from 6.06 to 5.5, you know, 5.6. And again, it's very rough. Frankly, that's a lot better already. I think that explaining what you just said to us, but it's going to take me more time to really get in my old brain. To voters, it's going to be very difficult. Not wrong, but very difficult, right? Well, I envision, we did this a couple years ago in the FinCom report. I envision a simple chart that starts with the year-over-year tax increase, whatever it ends up being. Line item, impact of deferring debt service from fiscal 25 to 26, 115 basis points, revised year-over-year tax increase, and then accounting for the large drivers that is similar to what chart you had in there, at least from a presentation standpoint, would be what I would envision. But if your view is getting it to 5.5, likely through not having to cut the budget anymore, just because some of these other things are likely going to cut in the town's favor, you know, three or four months from now. But if people are planning to send folks back in the town of schools and say, go find us a half million dollars of expenses, again, I wouldn't stand in the way of that, because that will ultimately help in going forward years as well. So I don't want to say or do anything tonight that dissuades that pressure at the group level. But I also feel like the schools got duped over the last couple of years, that we've said before, where, you know, these forecasts were used to drive them to do things, and then most of the assumptions proved to be overly conservative, and they weren't able to claw back. And I just don't mind the result, but I just felt that as a process matter, I just believe in full disclosure, if they, you know, I just don't think it's fair to be able to explain things like this to people.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not a marketing, you know, consultant, but I'm on the finance committee. It's that I think, as an individual, and maybe in general, people are going to look at the first number. So you're either in the fives or in the fours. Probably not a whole lot of difference between 5.0 and 5.5. If you can get it to 4.9, then you start to get some advantage. You know, I also think people will tend to benchmark to inflation rates. So if inflation is around 4%, you know, they might be looking for something in the forest. That may be unrealistic. And then to your other point, I do think that there's some incentive to always keep a little bit of pressure on and just sort of say, hey, there's no more pressure. Don't worry about it, you know. So anyway, I'm not being definitive in my comments, but that's just sort of what's going through my mind.
I am going to need to step away for a minute, but I, while I understand kind of the marketing components and the pressure components, I do think the contention that this is sort of a problem we made for ourselves last year is a very good one, that we would already be below this 5% had we not already made cuts last year, or made, you know, made the changes we did last year. And just in general, it feels like having the front, the headline number be a 4 or a 5 is not, well, from a messaging perspective, I understand the importance of that. It is a very arbitrary reason to request or expect cuts. Well, I don't use the term cut, I mean, it's deficiencies. I mean, to ask people, hey, what would you have to do to get it lower? I mean, I think we should always be asking that question.
I think that's the right question. Yeah, I would agree. Certainly in the context of what's looking like 29 through 36 are going to be, that has to be at the top of the list, because you have to be able to evidence that you did look for and hopefully find cost savings as part of contribution toward lowering the amount you have to ask for the override. But I kind of view that as a separate and appropriate line of dialogue, as opposed to just driving to a particular year-over-year. Yeah, I wouldn't agree. I don't think you pick a year-over-year and say you have to meet this number. I agree.
I do need to step away for a minute, but I'll be back shortly. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I would agree too. I don't think we gain much
by picking a number, right? But I do think that, ask the question, what would it take to
what efficiencies are left, right, is I guess another way of putting it. But if we get to... And then probably not just accepting the obvious answer is, there aren't any efficiencies left. Well, like I said, we're already looking at
the likelihood that much of this will go away. And it becomes a 5.5% of the trend already. True. True. True. In a world in which some large costs increase by 20% or 12% or whatever, I don't feel too bad about that. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the big hurdle is prop 2.5. And as long as we're not doing that, the difference between a 5.5% and a 5.5%. It's a problem. Yeah. So do I have anything to add there on that topic? Yeah, sir. Any thoughts? No, I'm like, I think I really like the point that Brian made that when we are all using this engineering and then why could they say, why do you have to reduce the budget, right? That will come up differently. So the early comment, but absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And to Brian's point earlier about longer range planning, one can also sort of, you know, couch it in the, you may not have a lot of pressure this year to lower your budget, but you will next year. And you might want to be thinking now about that. Yeah. I think, well, when we close this year, I think it depends on, I think, as you know, as Brian mentioned, right, few things go positive and few things go negative, right? We will end up in a place where we can do a call on what will happen in 2029 and then see, but it's too early to say, well, you know, override is required for 29, 30, 31. Given that, at least in the last four months, I've seen that things have drastically changed. When I walked in and like, you know, maybe three months ago, that was different, but at least what I know, and now it's like completely different. And three months from now, I think that's, and I'm hoping things will be in a better shape. And that was the reason I was asking, what was the, you know, budget last year, same time? I just wanted to see. And then obviously we have different reasons, right? Where it's not going to go down as it went down this year. Right. But I think, um, the longterm, uh, perspective, we can, um, my opinion is to wait for the end of the year to settle down and see. Well, one thing, just, just to remind everybody, which we mentioned earlier, the 458,000 that's showing up in version eight is the potential override amount. Again, that includes $200,000 of, of, of reserve cushion. So it isn't going to take all that much on those other, uh, assumptions to, to move our way. Um, um, um, but in any event. And frankly, I think, yes, there's always going to be an opportunity for more efficiencies, but where we are today, town expenses are projected to go up less than 3%. I think that's below inflation. Uh, town payroll is less than 4%. Uh, school payroll less than 3%. Right. The big number here. Well, that's actually the big percentage, um, is school expenses. I'd like to dig more into what goes far and why it started up, why they're projecting 10%. But otherwise, those are pretty, pretty good numbers. Um, it's the unclassified budget. It's unfortunately that, that is not controllable and it's got the larger year over year increases. I think Brian said at one point unclassified was already over 3% year over year of the total budget increase that obviously eats up two and a half percent plus something before you even get to, uh, these, but, uh, yeah, so I think you can, you can start to see at least as the fiscal 28, as you're sinking down the road to your report that, um, you know, there's a, you probably can recount a little bit of the travels over the last few months. And then, you know, once you get a bit more detail on the school expenses, hopefully there's a couple of items that pop out and you just highlight that whatever it is. Yeah. Um, all right. Well, I will, um, I'll check in with Brian Kebany just to see if he's done any updating in his model. If he did, I'll have him send it along. I'll send you a version nine Carl at some point. Um, if, if there's something, something to send around a little bit longer, but that's, that's great. Uh, should we move on to the, uh, capital budget, Brian? Yep. Let me let me know when Ross comes back. I don't keep track of time and just make sure he rejoins us. Um, so again, I think Carl district, I think Iris had distributed to all a couple copies of 50 minutes, um, at the last meeting or after the last meeting. And then Carl recirculated those two plus two additional sets. Um, I can either assume everybody's, everybody's reviewed those. Um, but I think that the reason that I thought it made sense for you all to look at those is because, um, they will provide you with a, I think a pretty good trail leading up to what hopefully will be a report that SIPC completes, uh, uh, sometime, uh, in a week or so. At which point you all have a copy of the report, which will be the final work product for this cycle. Uh, there may be addendum to that report, um, between, uh, its issuance and, uh, uh, just prior to town meeting to the extent other capital requests come up through the, um, the warrant article process, um, or department heads approach the town manager and, you know, have other things that they want included. Um, as we go through this, and I, again, my hope is over a series of meetings leading up to late November, early December, when hopefully the town manager's capital budget five year plans show up for our review. My hope is that you all will be reviewing these things and just jotting down your questions. And I'm happy to respond to specific questions. I prefer not to, uh, sit here and regurgitate a lot of stuff at you. Um, however, um, I will call out a couple of, um, uh, one process item, which I don't recall. I mentioned at the last meeting and then one or two, um, specific capital requests that came up in the last couple of meetings. Um, if I did, if I did mention this, I apologize, but, um, um, um, last year, uh, I know I mentioned this last year, 60 took a look at every single capital request that came in from department managers. We understood there was a prior year, five-year plan, but we said, we're not going to apply ourselves to that. We're going to look at every single request anew, understand what it's about, prioritize, et cetera. Um, then we said, okay, we now identified the things we want to prioritize, how, you know, how are we going to fund that? And we said, well, we, we need to know what the limitations are in our funding sources. Um, both last year and this year, we really didn't get any real formal guidance from the finance director. Last year, we used a set of, uh, FinCom guidelines that were developed a number of years ago, which were printed in the fiscal 20, the 2025 annual town meeting warrant. They were not printed in the 26 warrant. And, um, so at this point, um, for this cycle, we were left saying, well, what do we do? Um, one thing for you on some future agenda is I think this committee should take a look at the, those guidelines from the fiscal 25 warrant, which were the same as they had been for a number of years, which had been developed by the former town administrator with the finance director. And I think we should look at them. And while we do now have a set of capital, uh, capital planning policy and a debt policy that the select board approved, um, the finance committee, if it so desires can do what it has done in the past, which is have its own financial parameters. So when it reviews things like the capital budget, if it says, okay, our parameters on debt, our levy debt are three to 5 million, and the requests come in at 8 million, we could say, everybody, you knew that our, our parameters were three to 5 million. Why is it eight? Right? So we need to, I told SHPSI, I would mention here that we need at some point to spend an agenda item on that topic and, uh, either decide we're not going to do it, or we're going to do it, but we're going to update it. We're going to look at the debt and capital policy, try to marry the two anyway. So when it came to this, so we use those policies as a governor on our allocations for funding sources last year. Um, we know what happened, um, our priorities, our priorities were different at the end of the day than what town manager had and our funding sources were different in some cases. This year, we agreed as a process matter that we were going to use the funding sources shown in the finance committee's report. Um, I think it's table 10. Correct. Um, we're going to use those for fiscal 28 through 31 as the governor on how much funding source we have available, because again, we didn't have any, any other guidance from the finance director at the time. So we took in all the requests, we kind of looked at them and said, okay, do we feel strongly about moving things in or out now? How do we fund them? And so we, we really focused on the bottom line funding sources. So the total levy debt, the total free cash, we weren't concerned about what was in the five-year plan by specific project as to what was assigned to it, you know, free cash, levy debt, um, finance director may have, again, a different view on that, but we just said, as long as we try to bring it in, so we're not coming in more of the levy debt or more free cash subsequently, then that should hopefully make the finance director happy because his forecast that we've been just looking at, he plugs in the five-year capital plan sources. And so his debt tab has the five-year plan built into it. So if we go adding a million dollars, the levy debt, that screws up. So we said, we get it. So that's what we did. And then for the fifth year, we use the FinCom guidelines, um, as, as our parameters, right. Um, so I just want to mention that process and you'll see that mentioned, I think in the report, um, eventually we did get the finance director to send us, um, his, uh, model that he usually sends onto the FinCom eventually. And he took the CIPs that came in the submission forms. He quickly prioritized them, however he prioritized them, he assigned funding sources to them and sent that along to us. And when we looked at it, um, 28, 29, where we were kind of in the same ballpark, but 30 and 31, he came in below what the funding sources in total were in the warrant. And so we said, well, was that intentional in light of, you know, the ongoing deficit, were you looking to, in fact, roll back what you had already agreed to the prior year? And he didn't really respond to us. So, um, we, we, as a process matter, we just said, we're just going to tie into that five-year plan and last year's warrant and the spring's warrant. And we'll have to wait and see what is done by the finance director and the town manager. But the good news is we were generally able to fit things in. Um, but we had a couple of exceptions. So, um, in last year's five-year plan, albeit in the text, not in the table, uh, the town manager included $5.4 million for town building repairs. So you had everything in the table for fiscal 28, uh, plus 5.4 million in fiscal 28 for town building. Um, in SIPC's report last year, we had told the building, uh, director, um, no, you can't, we can't fund all $2 million for your full roof repair. Uh, why don't you phase it over four years and we'll include your phasing, which is what we did in our report. Um, uh, this year he came in and, and in his submissions, put 5.4 million in because it was in the five-year plan that was in the warrant. And then he also plugged in his phased roof repairs. So it was kind of a double counting to some degree as to the roof. Um, so we, uh, we initially said, okay, we're going to include the 700,000 for your phase two roof on the section of the building. Um, but we're, we're not going to include the following two years. We're going to put them in a separate bucket, which we did last year, pending the outcome of a working group that's been set up to evaluate what's going on with the town building. Is it going to be used long-term and we put the 5.4 million in the same bucket. Um, and so, um, we had $700,000 in, and then two weeks ago at our prompting, when we met with him a month ago, the IT director came back and said, okay, I went back, looked at this, talked to the town manager. Um, I need an additional $1.5 million over, uh, fiscal 28 through 32, and I need $700,000 of it up front in fiscal 28. So what you'll see in the minutes is we basically went back to the town manager and said, we assume you're in the loop on this. Uh, why don't you let us know, uh, whether you view this IT request as a higher priority than fixing the roof, which also is a $700,000 cost. He talked to the building director, IT director, Dean back us and said, yeah, I think it's a higher priority. We all happen to think it was. Um, and, um, we, uh, uh, the building director said, can I have 25 grand for planning for the 700 grand? He said, yes. And then eventually we put 700 grand in 29, even though all the other roof stuff is still kind of held in this in advance bucket. And, um, two meetings ago we met and we're preparing to go into an executive session so that the IT director could explain, uh, in detail what the, um, uh, the challenges were. And we were told caution by the town manager, you don't want to have that discussion in public session. There's an exception for it under the open meeting rules. Uh, at the meeting, ultimately we decided as a committee, we didn't think we needed to get into the detail. As long as we knew the town manager was in the loop, as we expected he was, that he and the IT director were comfortable with the amounts they were asking for, that at least they have front-ended it on the theory that they're going to fix the most important things first. We felt we didn't want to know and need to know the details. Um, I'm only saying that because that's what happened, but this committee, there may be members on this committee by the time that budget arrives here, if that item's still in there, there may be people on this committee that want to dig in and understand what it's really for, uh, this committee will have to make that same determination. And if they want to get into the details, you know, majority is going to have to vote to go into executive session. Um, so that was a big swing, but we simply moved one big item out and brought that item in and it didn't affect, um, sort of our borrowing. Right. Um, and then I said in multiple years thereafter, he had significant changes. Um, you don't see it in the minutes because we haven't talked about it yet at our meeting. He came back yet again with a final, final, um, revision because we sent him back to look at a couple of descriptions that were wrong and weren't last year. And it looked like he was repeating those errors again. Uh, well, it actually wasn't his error last year, but he was repeating that again. And basically he came back and reworked a number of his requests, but the net of everything he did actually took a few hundred thousand dollars out of fiscal 31. Um, but all the bigger requests were still in there. Um, so I wanted to highlight that one just because it is likely going to get a little bit more airtime in the report. Um, undoubtedly, you know, this committee is going to want to understand that a bit more detail. Um, I think I mentioned already the other big item that came in from outside of fiscal 28 in the five-year plan, the middle school had a couple hundred grand out in fiscal 30, I think it was for upgrades of fire sensors at the middle school. And whatever firm supports that said it wasn't going to support it anymore. So the building pressure, I got to move that up to fiscal 28. And by the way, now we got to do rewiring and a bunch of other stuff, and it's now 970,000, not 200,000. So, you know, those are the kind of items that, um, you know, as, as you all read through the minutes and then ultimately the report, and you'll have all the detail. Um, again, I would invite a better process would be to invite members to ask specific questions where I can hopefully answer most of them, if not all of them. So we don't have to wait, uh, until we get the town manager's, um, uh, budget, so. I think that's a very good idea. By the way, he's going to take a pretty interesting reading. I'll stop there. I mean, if, based on what everybody's already read, are there any process questions? Are there any things that stuck out to people that they'd like right now to know more about? I saw that, but I, I followed it correctly. So that the, uh, IT items that were incorrectly described last year, the conclusion is that money can only be sent for, for items that are described. Uh, ultimately that was the conclusion. And so, but meanwhile, the IT director doesn't plan to use that money for those items and doesn't want to return it. Uh, the, the, one of the items that was the problem was the, the, the thing that ended up being talked about the most at town meeting, like 10 times longer than the $38.6 million long-term water supply article. So, uh, this is the cameras. So, uh, he ended up, uh, I'm benoing to him getting a $250,000 appropriation for something that he actually had submitted to us a CIP for 150. Uh, we, um, uh, I think we included it in our report, but the town manager did not include it in his plan. Uh, so he had estimated he only needed 150. So we of course said, well, you got 250, can you return the hundred? Um, he decided that, you know, look, until I really have worked through with the schools and the library, exactly what we're doing, I kind of prefer to hang onto that because it may turn out I need to spend more than 150,000. I don't want to have to go back and ask for it again, which is fine. So he just sort of hung onto that. Uh, whereas, uh, the item he was shorted on, which is cybersecurity, um, modernization, et cetera, that's the light item that is jumping up to 850,000. Um,
God, thank you. Uh, it took a number of meetings and discussions to get to that, um, acceptance of that conclusion. Well, this does ails into, so what you are hoping will happen, Brian, is I think very close to what happened last year. Um, we got the report. We, we, we all read it. We, we talked about our modern cells. We, uh, Kelly Levin came to talk to us. I would, by the way, I'm sorry, we were about 820. Um, more or less. Pardon me. Um, you know, we, um, we worked through the various, um, items, um, in the, in the report, um, with, with, I'll be honest, great deference to SIPC because if you had groups spent much more time, um, than we had. And so we did, you know, we, we, we asked questions, but I, I mean, do you, um, I'll quote on this. Bill, do you or, um, um, recall any significant differences in our views and SIPC's? No, we were pretty close to SIPC's view. Um, um, yeah, then, then, yeah, dollar wise, I think you split the difference, but, um, the, the, the big item, the field item, um, you followed SIPC's recommendation to leave that where it was. And we basically, in terms of my own thought process was we had two different budgets. We had SIPC and we had what the town produced. Yeah. So we looked for one of the differences. Right. And then evaluated, you know, which, which group we thought had more credibility. And you guys had put a lot more effort into it. The council budget was significantly higher. And, um, um, in part it was that, that, that school project. Right. But, you know, there may be, again, I'm, and I think I said it when, at the meeting you weren't here, when we first started talking about the capital, um, I'm going to be careful not to drive the discussion on the capital, just because I will have sat on SIPC. I plan to try to be a resource when people have questions, but you all should reach your own independent conclusions. And, and, uh, but that said, um, you know, I think, you know, I think there, there will, there were last year, I can't tell you exactly which ones they were, but there were last year, and there likely will be this year, uh, parties. I will give you an example. So last year and this year, um, DPW included a half a million dollar request for, um, Route 20 South landfill cap, uh, restoration or something to that effect, the landfill cap. And, uh, we, we should have had Tom Holder change the description last year, but we didn't. And this year, I think we will get him to agree to change it. But, um, he told us last year that originally there was some notion they were going to have to spend, you know, half a million dollars doing something to fix damage caused by roots growing into the cap of the old landfill. But it is, they fixed that by cutting all the trees down and killing roots. And so, but he left it, it was in the plan. And so he brought it forward. And as I think all of you know, there's, the select board has set up a committee to do some visioning on what that site could be used for. They completed their work. They issued a report. It's a priority of the select board. We all get that. And he, he, Tom Holder had that included this year, half a million dollars, albeit still described the other way. And, um, and as we went through and had to prioritize, and again, we were applying the governor of these funding sources. We ultimately said two things. One, um, we still hadn't been presented with an actual scope of the larger project. No one had brought forth, come talk to us. And so when that happens, our view is we don't want to be spending half a million dollars without really knowing what the full cost could be. Right. And timing, et cetera. And then two, we just didn't have the funding sources. At least we thought other things took priority. We viewed that more as a want than a need, right? So this year, again, we're not including that in our five-year plan recommendation. It's in this bucket of other stuff. So I got an email from Carol Martin, um, chair of the select board, who I send copies of the SIPSI minutes as our liaison. And she read the last set and said, oh, by the way, is that half a million dollars for the South landfill in the plan? And I responded, no, it's not for the same reason I just described. And she said, oh, um, I guess we're going to have to get you some information. I said, well, we're pretty close to done with our report. It doesn't mean you can't provide that to SIPSI. And if, if there's RAD and Alford doing an addendum, it can do that, right? I'm not going to be on SIPSI at that point. I said, but I'll just let you know that we don't think the resources are there, but if the town manager wants to dip into some other resource that we, you know, aren't, don't have access to, or, you know, make a recommendation from. So, um, you know, there's an example where, um, we did the best we could with the information we had or we didn't have something that somewhat happened with the ball field last year. It wasn't that we were opposed, which is, we kept asking and asking, give us, you know, tell us why it's good to do it now. And no one ever came forth until well after the process. So, you know, there very could be differences, but I think the point is that approach sounds like an appropriate one because you could identify differences that are one of priority. And then you just have to say, okay, either looking at SIPSI's minutes or asking me the question and then asking the finance director, the town manager, well, why do you think that's more important than this? Ultimately, it'll come down to the finance committee having to make that judgment, um, which you did last year on the ball field. For example, you let the half million, you left the half million in the five-year plan for the Route 20 South landfill, even though it wasn't in SIPSI's report. So there's an example where you went the other way. You may not have talked about it at all, but, um, so, so I think that is a good iterative process. Um, and as long, my view is, as long as there's new information, that's fair game. And even I'll sit here and say, well, if I knew that time's on SIPSI and you tell me how to pay for it, or, or you're okay going over the, the, uh, the governor that we were using, but we weren't, that's your prerogative. And then the finance committee will have to decide, you know, where do you want to draw the financing line? Uh, and I'm happy when the time comes to prepare, you know, a side-by-side, um, variance analysis to make it hopefully a little quicker. Um, the other thing, Carl, and I'm happy to provide it when and if you want it, uh, we have a consolidation Excel file of all the CIP submission forms that all roll up into a consolidated five-year plan, um, that Kelly put together. And, and obviously, the CIP submission forms, all of which are in revised forms. So they have a bit more detail. Um, they have the descriptions and rankings and other things in them. Um, a lot of individuals, specific questions probably could easily be answered if they have that file. They go to CIP number three under DPW, read the description, look at the ranking. Um, I mean, I, I just give you a silly one. I, you know, Kelly's got a table that's going on a report that shows fiscal 28 instead of our medium high low, which we didn't do this year. We use departmental rankings for fiscal 28, department head rankings. Um, the IT director ranked, um, I think it just worked out this way. His ranking on fixing the AV and, and I'm presuming it's in town building is two points higher than it's ranking on the IT, um, cybersecurity appliance. And, um, so I, I'm going to raise that in our next meeting. I said, it just looks wrong. And, you know, I'm sure he looked at him in a vacuum, but, um, but, uh, so anyway, um, there's plenty of detail. It's just a question, you know, do you, how much do you want to overwhelm people with information, but I'll have it. So that sounds like it would be useful information. Um, just quite on when, um, but you're, you're not really done with it. No, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't give it to you until after we issued the report, because we still have a few things probably going to move around at this week's meeting and, um, move around before we finish the report, but once we're done the report, if, if you want that, I'll send it to you and I'll help Kelly give me the finished version of that. And I think it would be good to have, and, and, you know, people couldn't weigh in, you know, weight into it as much as they want to, or as little as they want to, but I'd rather have it. Um, yeah, you know, last year, I mean, despite the deference, um, we did have a couple of different meetings where, um, on the school issue, the school fields issue, we had, we had, you know, Michael McCall and Brian Keveney, you know, come talk to us about why they wanted what they wanted. Um, you know, I think it really was an iterative process for, and, and frankly, um, you know, when we kind of running out of time and told them, uh, what changes we wanted, the answer was, okay. Yeah. They were very, they were not fighting us on it. Um, and those were based on everything I've heard so far, those were much bigger changes and were let's, let's say variances between SIPC's recommendation and the counts, you know, that I think we will see this year. Right.
The proof will be in the play. Yeah. I mean, I, I tend to, I mean, I like to understand the process and I like to understand the differences between, but you know, your committee has spent tons of time, you know, tons of meetings. And then, so I'm reluctant to second guess the expertise and the analysis. I just want to understand the process and, and what differences you might have with what the town has. But, but, you know, other than that, I mean, you guys have spent the time with this and I respect that. So, yeah, I mean, the one, again, the one piece that was missing with the exception of this IT issue. And that's in part because we specifically pushed that out to the town manager and said, you know, this is big enough. We need your, we need to weigh in on its priority. Um, we, we would have preferred more as we were going through the process. We'd preferred more sort of back and forth during the process where if the town manager saw we were going or the finance director saw we were going in a particular direction that they would kind of weigh in. Now the fact they've been getting the minutes, et cetera. So they're privy to that information. You know, who knows, maybe at the end of this cycle, because it's more timely, um, what comes out will be pretty darn close to what we do. We'll find out, but, yeah. Um, but, uh, you'll see that as a recommendation in the report. We, we, we still need more collaboration to occur. And, um, with Kelly and I both going off, that committee is going to need, uh, the financial horsepower. The other three are bright people and capable, but, and they've now got, um, you know, a year and a month under their belt. Um, but, um, and, and this, this committee itself has to, um, with the sub board to come up with a designee, um, to replace Kelly, uh, because when the report's done, she's going off and I'm going off. Robert, Chris, have any quick questions on the capital stuff at the moment? Rob is shaking his head. Not here. So, uh, not a question, but, uh, there were some meeting minutes from the capital improvement planning committee, but are there any spreadsheets? Yeah. In your emails? Um, I think, uh, I'm looking at, uh, my emails here. Are you referring to the, uh, the appendix or the exhibits in the minutes that show spreadsheets? Okay. No, no, I think similar to the model, are there any spreadsheets that we have to look into the capital improvement? I'm not understanding what you're asking. No, I meant like, uh, for the budget, we have seen the model budget, but first similar to that for capital improvement, do we have any spreadsheets that we have to look into besides the meeting minutes that were attached to the prior email? No, Excel, you don't have actual Excel spreadsheets yet. Um, the, um, the, uh, the exhibits on that I attached to the minutes were intended to give the public a sense of what's in those spreadsheets, some of them. Okay. Uh, and then the very large workbook that I was just talking to Carl about, uh, contains every individual capital improvement request form for department managers, and then it rolls it all up into a five year summary. Uh, that workbook when it's final after we issue a report in a, in another week or so, uh, it sounds like Carl's going to distribute to everybody on the finance committee. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think I see it now. I think, uh, there were, for some reason I thought I went down the couple of, uh, meeting minutes and then at the, after the adjournment, I stopped reviewing them, but beyond that adjournment, there is a lot of details in it. Okay. I completely missed those things. Okay. And then there's a list as there are in our minutes here, there's a list of, uh, of, uh, documents and there's plenty of references to spreadsheets and things so that if, again, I'm, I'm only going to provide you folks with what I think, uh, contains meaningful, uh, but, but excruciating detail for those that want to, you know, dive all the way down to, uh, individual requests. And again, the minutes, the usefulness of the minutes are that they provide at least a summary of the deliberation. And for those that really have nothing else to do with their time, uh, if, if, if a particular issue is really of importance, you can just go watch the way cam videos of the meeting and listen to the back and forth. Can you, um, if you're watching. Right. I don't know which controls that. Probably one of these. Sure. Sure. We'll find out. It's too late. Oops. And, uh, you guys are still on Zoom though, right? And Carl, uh, I have to get going in like five minutes to pick up my son. They're on Zoom, so we're good. Okay. Um, that's fine. Um, I think we've covered this topic for tonight. Um, I don't know if Rob is still on, but I'm going to carry on the suggestion that we defer, um, if we defer long enough, we won't need to. I'll be honest. One of the big goals I have for that is that next year, instead of starting out with a conversation about what we need to do when, we just have a kind of weave behind artifact of how a year on finance committee is supposed to work.
So I'm fine deferring. Okay. Um, how about, how about we just plan for that next week? Sounds good. Um. Sounds good. Okay, good. Thank you. Um, that brings us to the last topic, which is the next meeting. Um, as Brian alluded, um, it's a meeting on a Tuesday, the 13th, because, uh, the 12th is, uh, a public holiday. Um, after that, I think we're back on the Monday schedule. Um, so the week, the one after that would be the 19th. Right. Yeah. And, uh, I think, because I was saying before the meeting, I, um, probably not going to be able to attend on the 13th. And I, I know you told me we're pondering having the town manager and the finance director in at some point. And, uh, I don't know if it was on that night, but don't worry about me. Uh, no, I appreciate you the reminder, um, about your schedule. So I haven't typically done this, but I actually plan to circulate a couple of, um, uh, potential agenda items. Um, and I'll ask each of you just to write back and say, yeah, or nay, or if you have other ideas, because one of those topics will be, um, you know, um, when do we want to meet with those guys? They've, they've volunteered. Um, I think we also need to be speaking with the school committee. Um, I'm not quite sure when is the best time, but we should, we should assess it. I reserve the right that we may meet for more than once, but I think that's totally fair too. Yeah. I think doing it in advance, meaning to us to understand a lot of what you've already told us. And then when the information actually becomes available, also getting a commitment that we will get as the bylaws states, uh, at least something to look at at the end of the year, by the end of the year, understanding that schools don't really do their release their full budget until late January. Okay. But, but if they're tying into some number, that's ultimately being discussed. Right. Agreed. That can be plugged in the, you know, whatever the town manager pulls together. Agreed. All right. Uh, uh, quick on the question on the next meeting. I thought this is supposed to be we meet like biweekly, but not weekly.
So if you're meeting today, we shouldn't be meet 1026 or like not 1026 or 10, um, not next week, the week after. No, we've been meeting weekly. Uh, we did cancel a meeting, um, recently, um, because we might not have had a quorum, but no, we've been weekly. Oh, that is a good question. I think last year you met biweekly. I think this year, this year we thought we'd better schedule tentatively weekly, because we thought we might have to deal with an override presentation. I guess the question is, is there enough substance to be meeting every week or do we go to every couple of weeks? I mean, my opinion is biweekly is fine for, I mean, unless there's a big news item or whatever, but I mean, it's an interesting discussion, but I don't know if we can't do it. One of the ones, there's unlikely to be any new information by the 13th. Right. Right. You're not, your report is not due until for two days and we'll, you know, it'll take us a while to absorb it anyway. Right. So I'm, I'm perfectly content to not meet next, you know, in the next week. That's my feeling is to go for two weeks. Yeah. 10, 19.
Oh, I'm just looking, you're out.
Hopefully Brian back by then. So you're out, Carl, the 26th of October, the 2nd of the 9th. But if we're, if we're doing biweekly, we'll skip the 13th. Yeah. At some point, and it may not be very far from now. We'll probably want to go back to the, to week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, once, once we get like the capital budget in, we can bang that out.
You know, there was, there was a discussion earlier on Iris is out here, of course, but you know, we're hoping also to get some, you know, some early movement on, on war and art articles. And that's right. And there's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if something comes up and you can always call a, you know, a quick meeting too and say, Hey, we just got some really important information. Can you guys meet on Monday? So we're, you know. Okay. So no meeting on the 13th and we'll meet again on the 19th and Carl circulated agenda items for that meeting. Okay. Okay. I think we're done. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. I'll second. Rob. Okay. Uh, last roll call point of the night. Um, Ryan. Yes. Hello. Yes. Carl's a yes. Um, Krishna. Yeah. And Rob. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you guys.
We'll then continue our discussion of the fiscal 2028 capital budget and a five-year capital plan and process for that plan.
Rob, do you intend to present on the goals and timelines tonight? I have something I could present, but given that we have four people, I'm fine either doing it today or waiting until we have more of a quorum, more of the membership. We have a quorum. Well, I think that might make sense, and we'll get us out of here earlier, too, so it's up to you. So we may cover that topic, and we may not. We will see. We will set the dates and times of our next meeting or two, and with right now, an approximate time of a journey at about 8.30.
In the room, I'm Carl Barnes. I'm the chair. We have Brian O'Hurlihy and Bill Huss. Online is Robert Quimby, and I think that is still all of us, correct? You say Satish might be on or without the video. I don't see anybody else connected to the Zoom. Okay. And if you happen to see Satish show up, if you could just let us know, we could clock him in. He told me about 6.30 that he had just landed at Logan. He'd be calling in, but we wouldn't see his face. Question is out tonight. I'm sorry? Tonight, yeah. Question is out tonight, or Satish? I'm sorry. I said, I don't know. I met Satish. And I was going to call him? That he was going to call him. And Krishna, you didn't hear from? Okay. And Iris had told us a while ago. Okay. Got it.
One quick announcement. There is a group of the financial, what they call the self-financial planning group. It's the town manager, chair of the school committee, Dr. Fleischman, Carol Martin, and Doug Levine from the select board, and so far, just me from the finance committee. The next meeting of that group is scheduled for October 28th at 8.30 in the morning. I cannot be there, and it would be helpful if we can have a representative. Many of us have day jobs, so I know that might be tough, but I'll at least throw it out, and we'll see if we can get somebody to, who can step up. It's the only announcement that I have. Anything from anybody else? Okay.
There being no members of the public available, we'll skip the public comment.
They're a little long on the tooth now, but we have the minutes of the September 14th meeting that Ryan had prepared and circulated. I have a couple of edits. Thank you. On page four. Item number seven, delete the words and various graphs, they're not included in that particular email, and then I'm going to add language for item nine, which was B.O. Herlihy's edits to the annual report, which got circulated to the numbers before the meeting.
We'll be adding an item number. I'll be adding that as number nine. Right.
Questions edits. It looked okay to me. Rob, any comments or changes, questions? No. I was not here for the meeting, so no. I wasn't either. I've read them, but I really can't comment on them. So that leaves the possibility, I think there's no reason why we can't do this, to approve them, potentially. I move that we accept the minutes from, was it September 16th, 14th, as amended by Brian. Okay. I will second that.
And we need a roll call, though. So I'll go around the circle to the left. Yes. Yes. Bill. Yes. Okay. Carl abstains. And Rob? Rob also abstains. Okay. 202 passes. Thank you. Moving on now to the further discussion of the budget model. Well, I haven't seen anything else from the town or from the select board with any new numbers or any new projections. The exception being, and Brian had circulated, or I circulated it, his suggestion, some information from the school committee, which we'll come back to, nor have I seen anything from the select board or anybody else. The last, the last meeting that I attended of this financial planning group, it really began to look like there was not going to be a lot of enthusiasm for an override, but we'll come back to that as well.
Brian, when you got those school projections, did you reflect those in your model? Yes. I thought so, but I was a little bit confused because I didn't see any, you know, on your summary page. Yeah. In a new, I'm sorry, in a new model, or are we still, I guess, the model we talked, version 7, or do we have a new version? I think we're up to 9. Or up to 9. Do you have the email that I sent that out just to be sure I got the right, either 8 or 9? Well, okay. I missed it. Okay. I didn't update anything on my end. Rob, do you have that email? What I'm looking at is version 8. Version 8, correct. But I'm not sure. So that is your latest? Whatever was attached to the email you just sent out on Friday. No. I can pull that out for just a second. I wasn't looking at the email. Carl, the one that's attached to Carl's email.
And just let me know what version it is. It should be 8, I think.
Version 8 is a multi-year model, yeah. Version 8? Yep. So Rob will pull that up on the screen. I can tell you where I made those particular adjustments. I mean, I see on the summary page, it still shows school expenses and payroll, each increasing by 5%. Yeah, you'll see that I added a, well, you'll see when he pulls it up on the screen, unless you're looking at it now. I do have it in here. I added a carrot footnote. We have another FinCom members who has joined us. So that might be Satish, maybe?
Hello.
Welcome. Krishna or Satish? My eyes are too bad. Who do we have? This is Krishna. It is. Thank you, Krishna. Oh, nice. 7, 11 p.m.
Yeah, I do have your footnote. I'm seeing that now. If you just make that a little larger. So in the upper left corner, below the assumption table, at the top, you'll see a footnote. The carrot says, this version reflects schools' forecasted expenses and payroll for fiscal 28, 29, and 30. And then the percentages, as I'll show you in a second, are basically driving increases in fiscal 31 through 37. Rob, if you go to the town expense tab and scroll down to the school payroll and expense line item, and then scroll over to fiscal 28, 29, and 30. Sure.
Sorry, not me. This is a thing.
Now I've lost school. Down below. There we go. All right. So you should see there in 28, 29, and 30, a bunch of highlighted numbers. Starting with, reading off of the school projections, you should see personnel, 48,783,886.
29, 50,815,886. And fiscal 30, 52 million. Pardon me, but Rob, what line item is it? You know, what line or what the row is it? It's 69, W is the fiscal 30 personnel. Row 69, item number 53 is school personnel services. Yeah. Okay. Got them. Thank you. For this? So starting with the 48.7 million, 50.8 million, 52.6 million and change, those came off of the school projections that Brian Keveney sent to me. And the expenses should show 11.2 million and change, 12 million and some change, and 12.8 million and some change. Those are correct numbers. So in the case of those three years, I basically removed the formula, which was escalating in that 5% from fiscal 27. I just plugged right in the projections that the school came up with. And so fiscal 31, I left the formula in for the prior year, escalated by whatever. Shows up on the assumption page, and I left it at 5% for the out years. Following that? So it's just 5% for the out years. From fiscal 31 out to 37. And then the rest is hardwired. Hardwired, yeah, this time. So I see that. Actually, I don't see that. I see it's still, what I'm looking at shows 5% increase in fiscal 28 as well.
I'm not sure I'm going to have the right document.
Which one you're looking at? I got this from your email.
You're looking at version 7? Yeah. Yeah, what he's got up on the screen, you said, Rob, is version 8, correct? Yeah, this is labeled version 8. Right. And that's the one that was attached to Carl's email that he sent out with a bunch of documents on Friday or Sunday, or whenever you sent that out. This was attached, to be fair, to the one that he sent out actually for the last meeting. So it's possible, I guess, that maybe there was a regression. I pulled this out of the email from 924 to tee up the meeting that didn't happen last week. So it's possible that the most recent email. I didn't open the one you attached to your email you just sent out. Maybe you attached the wrong one. But anyway, the one that Rob has up on the screen is the one that is current. Okay. Is that the 8 version? So if you guys want to look at the screen or find the 924 email, but I'll walk you through again. So I took the projection that Brian Keveney sent me, which I believe Carl sent out as well.
And I think it went out before the canceled meeting, which there was a spreadsheet of school projections, and then I added some analysis on that page. Is that also attached, Rob, to the email you're looking at? The school projections sheet? Yeah. It sure is. Let me bring that up.
What would you guys do if I actually came to one of these meetings in person? I have a thumb drive in my pocket if we needed to put it up on the screen. Good to be prepared. So the sheet that's up on the screen right now, Carl, at the top of the page, those are the projections that just the top center of the page, that's what I received from Brian Keveney. I then added a bunch of analysis below that to the left of it and to the right of it. And if we just focus for the moment on the school projections, you'll see that they are projecting at the moment, or as of two weeks ago anyway, the year-over-year increase of 4.2% in fiscal 28, 4.7% in 29, and 4.2% in 30. That's combined for personnel and expenses. And that contrasts with the 5% for each of those line items that we were carrying in version 7. And if you look just below that school projection set of numbers, there's per Excel model version 7. And you'll see that's where we were carrying 5%. And then you scroll further down, you'll see the variances between those two sets of numbers. And the notes to the right of those numbers, do these make sense? And there's a new bus contract in there, were questions that I put in there. And I was basically sending this back to Brian Keveney, who subsequently confirmed to me that the expense projections include some estimate of a new bus contract increase. And as to do these reductions make sense, his response to me was the schools had a number of teachers retire before the school year started. And they have replaced those positions with apparently teachers at lower salary ranges, just because they presume they're not as far along in their careers. Um, and so, um, you know, this, this particular sheet was just intended to give people an opportunity to, you know, evaluate what I guess to me was not a huge surprise, but a little surprise that the schools would, um, come forth with a set of numbers that were below the 5% that was being carried in version 7. Um, but that's great. I mean, they hopefully are now committed to their budget for these, for at least for fiscal 28 of being no greater, absent some surprise, no greater than this projection. So I've not seen a new version from Brian Keveney. So I went into version 7 and basically I said hard coded in these three years on the town expense tab, these actual projection numbers. And in version 8, when you look at fiscal 31 and beyond, I left it, uh, as escalating at whatever percentage we have inserted on the assumption table on the top left corner of the summary page. Does that make sense, everybody? And what I'm doing in real time on version 7 is just changing those to 1.042. Will that be the correct number for 28, uh, the escalation for the, uh, school expenses and payroll to, um, um, 2%? Yeah. I mean, each, each one is at a, if you look to the right side, you'll see the payroll went up 2.8% and expenses went up 10.8%. So if you want to check that I got it in there, 2.8, yeah, they're not, you know, the numbers are 1.8. Okay. All right. I will. Thanks. Rob, Prisha, you have any questions, um, about this, this particular sheet? Um, no, no question. The only question is like, uh, well, I have a question. Okay. So, uh, Rob, if you go up, it's 2.8, 4.23, then that's good. Personally, I kept in on a file and expenses are like 10, seven, and six. Is that reasonable?
Um, you know, we will find out more when the school. The school actually puts their budget together. Um, these percentages, I believe the bus contract may be up in fiscal 28, but I'm not, I'm not positive if it's 28 or 29. Yeah. So that could drive a year over year percentage increase. Um, and, uh, you know, sometimes special ed will bump the numbers a bit, but, you know, until we, until they provide us with a bit more granular detail when they actually produce a natural budget. Um, it's hard to answer your question as to, um, are, are these reasonable expense increases? We, we've certainly seen that kind of percentage increase in the expense line in the past. I think, I think the one that's equally interesting is the, um, that the personnel year over year at 2.8% is a little bit counterintuitive since the union agreement provided for a three and a half percent COLA, um, for fiscal 28. Um, that, that's because again, they, they may not have filled some positions, which helps drag down the overall personnel costs. And to the extent they replaced with lower priced, um, new teachers, uh, that would also bring that year over year percentage down. Okay. And, uh, maybe dance for my, I have one other question around this expenses, right? Uh, sometimes I've seen some reserves be part of the expenses as well. Do we know the buckets under expenses is a reserve in their expenses. Are you asking? Um, yeah, I've never seen an actual reserve line item in the school detail budget. Uh, on the other hand, uh, is it possible that in doing this projection, they, um, you know, left some, uh, cushion and some, some of their expense line items when they did their, I don't know how detailed they got in their projection, whether they were literally projecting individual line items in their budget. Um, but, uh, my, my, my, my guess would be that, yeah, there's probably some cushion in there somewhere. Right. Because, uh, the reason is, uh, in our condo, like, uh, I have a condo, so we, some, we put in some reserves and expenses. It's a reserve fund. So I'm in the same way I'm thinking the schools might have put reserves for, you know, uncategorized expense line items. Yeah, not, not, you'll not see that as a separate line item when you get the detail, you know, in three or four months. Okay. Or if you look back at last year's school budget on the school website, if you, if you scroll through their large budget document, you'll see their detailed budget sort of line by line. Okay. And you can go through it. You won't find a line item that says reserve. Oh, I guess, keep me honest here. In practice, the reserve would, to some extent, kind of be the town's free cash, right? Like, like, ultimately, if the schools had a large unexpected expense, that's how they would fund that? Uh, no, um, not unless they went back to town meeting and asked for a, uh, current year transfer. I think it's more likely they would shift. Yeah, they have to shift within their own budget. It's what they usually have to do.
You know, this has lots of caveats since I'm doing this in real time, but if I make just those two changes to the increase in the, uh, school expenses and the increase to the school payroll, Brian's number goes down to about 244,000 and my simulation number, which of course, you know, has ranges for some of the other variables is basically zero. Uh, and the fact that it's greater than a 50% chance that we would have a surplus. So it sounds like this largely wipes out the concern about having a potential override. Anyway, that's all caveat. And I'm doing it in real time. And I may have missed something along the way. Um, so why don't we go back, Rob, to, uh, uh, back to version eight that you had up before and, um, go back to the summary tab. And if you just bring it up a little bit larger for those in the room, if they don't have it up on their own machine, and just scroll down a little bit so we can see, okay. So right there. So in fiscal 28, by making, uh, by inserting, um, the school projections for 28, 29, 30, but the 28 in particular, uh, it drove what had been, um, a $911,923 potential override amount down to $458,500. Um, $577,000, which includes $200,000 of, uh, cushion. That's the difference between, I took the $200,000 out. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, uh, I think, um, obviously that, that has put a big dent in the potential need for an override, which I suspect is why, um, and I know, Carla, you've had one of those meetings, uh, since these projections came out, or I know they had an advance calculation, but they went back to re-look at it. Yeah, I think the last meeting was before the projections came out, um, but at the last meeting we were in, I think we're looking at closer to 600 to 800, if you, depending on when you include the preserters. And there didn't seem to be much appetite, uh, from the two members of the select board who were there. At that moment. Yeah. So. Um, and more recently at the September, we're mixing up topics a little bit, but I think, you know, I think it makes sense, uh, on the 23rd of September, which is the last, most recent meeting I saw on, you know, on WACAM, um, the school, school committee, uh, is thinking that they will not need to, uh, ask for another ride. Um, and that I think was confirmed at the last school committee meeting by the chair of the school committee, when she told her members that, um, based on what we're talking about right now, um, without getting into specific numbers, that her sense was what Carl just said. Um, and that, uh, she then went on to say something that I found curious, which was, uh, what, and we'll talk about in a minute, um, that she noted to her members, there had been some discussion about trying to get the year over year tax increase percentage down and therefore the schools might be asked to, uh, uh, contribute more in the way of budget, um, reductions. Um, wasn't specific about amounts, um, how real that was, but, um, wanted to let her put her members on notice. And, uh, she also, um, mentioned that she's anticipating that the, uh, their capital requests for the $2 million for the MSBA, uh, feasibility study, um, will likely have to be done in the form of an article with, uh, excluded debt subject to, of course, the select board agreeing and agreeing to put it on the ballot. So, uh, I believe that, um, she was positioning for her committee that the, the focus for 28 seems to be off of needing to ask for an override the schools, uh, and on to ensuring that the $2 million ballot question, assuming it's on the ballot for debt exclusion, gets the ultimate support it needs at the ballot. And there was some feedback from her members that, geez, wouldn't it be nice knowing that they're likely going to need to be overrides for 29 forward, that there couldn't be a, a dual message being delivered to the school related voters, if you will. And, uh, she said, we'll have to talk about that later. So, um, so it's sounding like from both what Carl's accounting and what I heard on that meeting, um, that, uh, we're not likely going to be asked to make a presentation about an operating override in the near term. Um, and I know that the select board and their last two meetings have had very little on their agenda to talk about on the budget. And in fact, I don't know if this is a marketing plan, but it's both at the schools and the select board are now referring, and you just referred to it at the beginning of the session. Everybody seems to now be referring to this as financial planning, as opposed to budget override planning. So that suggests to me that people are, uh, switching gears to, uh, hopefully a little bit longer term. And, uh, I would hope, Carl, when you go to these meetings, um, you really push hard on our recommendation that they get going right away, possibly setting up another committee, um, that gets going on out years. At the last meeting, which, which was a day or two after we took that vote, uh, there hasn't been a subsequent meeting in that group since. Um, but I was, I think I was quite clear about that, but like everything else, I think we just have to keep saying it. Yeah. One thing I was going to suggest, it's up to you and the other members, um, the recommendations that we voted on that you delivered in person at the group financial planning meeting. I've not heard those brought up at a select board meeting since, and I'm just wondering whether you think it might be a good idea. And you could certainly check with Carol so you don't blindside her, but you could certainly send those recommendations directly to the board members, um, or alternatively ask Carol to share those if she hasn't. Um, because I think until you get it up to the table at the select board, and particularly that one about considering a committee and getting going on the planning and try to come up with something by next June, that really needs to be a commitment at the board of select on level. Um, but anyway, before we get into the other item on this summary sheet that I know you want to talk about, Carl, um, I just wanted to highlight, um, while there hasn't been, um, as Carl said, any substantive change to this being that the primary, uh, assumption change. Um, I just want to point out and, and, and just suggest to you that there's still, um, at least eight or nine moving parts in the operating budget fiscal 28 going both directions. And I just want to summarize them for you and I'm going to put them in the minutes, um, um, and read my writing. Um, so, uh, the, uh, the medical insurance, obviously we won't know until February, uh, that could go up or down from the 12% assumption we're using, uh, the debt service. It looks like Brian Keveney's moving forward with doing two years worth of borrowing, uh, come November. Um, and, uh, toward the end of this month, he should have a pretty good fix on what the rates are. And, um, we know what he's carrying in this forecast. It's a four and a half percent, um, that may turn out to be a good number given where long rates have gone over the last couple months. But should those come in lower than four and a half percent, that's going to drop this $450,000, um, number down further. Um, another item that I asked Brian about, um, is, uh, on the revenue side is ambulance fees. Um, he increased in the local, in the, uh, other income tab, other revenue tab. He increased ambulance fees by, I think, two and a half percent year over year. But, um, those fees historically, those fees historically have covered, um, uh, both, um, indirect. Cost related to providing ambulance service and, uh, some portion of debt service. Um, uh, most recently it's been covering, uh, debt service on a fire truck. But in the capital budget, either last, I think it was last year, there was a new ambulance being purchased. And it's being purchased with debt. And the old fire truck debt is being retired or has been retired. And the debt on the ambulance is, is a little higher than what the debt was on the fire truck. And then I also asked Brian, and by the way, if you intended to try to cover with the ambulance fees, at least direct personnel costs, the people that do nothing but drive the ambulance. Because the ambulance fees are intended to reimburse the pound for its costs. And he didn't answer that question, but my sense is if the finance committee pushed him, um, and there's a reserve balance in that fund. He told me what it was. And the fire chief told SIPC that it had recently increased the ambulance fees substantively. And so there's going to be more revenue flowing into that account. So if need be, we can push him, Brian Keveney, to consider whether he should up that, um, assumption and ultimately in what appears in the budget, um, local receipts, we talked about a couple of meetings ago. Um, there's a risk to the upside downside. I would just have to keep an eye on that state aid, um, you know, state aid at the moment in the model is probably a couple hundred thousand dollars short. Of what we've been seeing over the last couple of years. So again, if that comes in, that'll close that gap further, which is part of your simulation. Um, energy, um, we talked about at our last meeting, um, what had been a potential 30% increase now the town manager is referencing a 20% increase. Um, and, uh, still nothing specific, um, has come back, uh, to the questions I asked the facilities director about, um, when were they planning to fix, um, the gas contract or the electricity contract? There's just one quick comment on that. Cause I brought that up at the energy meeting and the gas contract apparently is in place. So that's, that's, that's, that one's not going up in the electric increase was only, and I may get this switch, but it's only on the commodity side, not on the distribution side. So the, the large increase at that point, it was 30%, maybe it's 20 now, wasn't for the entire energy budget. It was just that line. And I'm not sure how that equates to the entire. Um, and Brian increased the year over year increase to 7% in this model. So all I'm pointing out is we just have to keep an eye on that. And that one could move a little bit away from us. So, um, I was not aware that the gas contract has been settled. Um, quite to hear it. That's, that's right. But what I did hear, uh, at the most recent select board meeting, they're meeting again tonight, at least the most recent one. That's available, you know, the, the, where there's a video available is that recently the town entered into a one-year electricity contract. There was apparently a little different rates. So they jumped on it, um, just for one year. Okay. Um, yeah. So when that information becomes available, I'm assuming Brian at some point is going to update his model. Um, tomorrow I'll send an email just saying, next time you update your model, send me a copy. I'll do the same thing I did the last time and try to figure out what he's changed. Um, one of the items that may move away from us, um, in what's in the forecast is that, as we'll get to in the capital budget, um, SIPC has had several conversations now with the IT director, which, uh, which, uh, uh, we'll talk about the impact on the capital plan. Um, uh, but in responding to our questions and in particular, to me, uh, he provided in a copy to Brian Keveny, uh, he provided, um, his view that his operating budget is woefully below what he needs. Um, given that he points out the cost of two or three town software packages, including Munis, which is the accounting software have like gone up 50% or something. And are eating up a huge chunk of his budget that he needs for other things. And I'm pretty sure if I understood his, uh, email to me correctly, you know, his, if the, if the town manager were to agree to it, his operating budget could go up by a hundred to $150,000 above what's in the forecast. But again, no need for us to get into that detail. Now I'm just highlighting things that I'm aware of, um, you know, sort of up or down, um, on the board of public works meeting, their last meeting, um, they were talking about amongst other things, water rates. And the, they were talking about municipal water rates because apparently, uh, the town is paid at the lowest tier on all the water it uses. And the discussion that the punchline in the discussion was, well, since the select board didn't agree to split the cost, um, partly between taxation and water rates on the $38.6 million long-term project. Um, we think we need to basically be charging the town on the same basis that all residential customers pay, which is a four tiered system. And obviously the town uses a lot more water than a typical residential customer. And therefore a lot of that water is going to end up in tier four, which is the highest rate. Um, I just don't know how much money that translates into, but, uh, the chair of the board of public works was saying that they plan to communicate with the select board and with all the town boards and town departments. So that as they do their fiscal 28 budgeting, uh, they take into account that they're going to have to cover that cost. And I've not come back to look at the water line item, wherever it might appear in the budgets, but again, that this is, you got all these factors moving up, down, sideways. Um, you would think at a minimum of being on the commercial rate structure that might not be, but to compare it to a residential doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. So we have a separate, so they would all be better tiers of use. Okay. Interesting. And so there may be, you know, they may get some pushback, but they set the rates. So, uh, I, I get it. And, you know, um, more to come on that. So my only point in recounting all those, uh, we also talked about, um, other ways to, um, close the gap when it was larger. Uh, OPEB, uh, is still forecast to be fully funded with taxation, $500,000. Um, and we talked about, um, um, you know, sort of, uh, financial engineering with debt. So there's still other levers that could be pulled if one needed to, to close the gap relative to a proposition, two and a half override. Um, I tell you all those other things less for that at this point, uh, but more for the second topic. I think Carl, you wanted to get to, which, um, if you want to set the stage and I'll, I'll give you a couple of other numbered tidbits. Before we go there, um, quick question, I had, uh, raise my hand, uh, quick question. If you can share the same screen, uh, uh, who was sharing, Rob, right? Were you sharing the screen? Okay. I have a quick question. So, um, maybe Carl or Brian, you can answer this. So when I'm looking at the spreadsheet, right, um, I'm looking at the potential override amount. Row 30 for 20, 27, 0, 20, 28, 4, 58, you know, K and then, you know, so on, so forth, 20, 29, 20, 30. Do we know what were these amounts last year same time? Meaning last year I would have seen 20, 26, 20, 27, 20, 28, 20, 29. Uh, I have, I have, I don't have them with me, but I have that file, um, from the budget working group I was on. Yeah. The reason I ask is, uh, right now we are in 20, 26, the 20, 28 number is for 58K. And then 20, 29 is 2.6 mil, right? So now in the last year, was it 2.69, 20, 29? Was it like 1.5 mil or was it like 4 mil? Do we know? No, it was much, it was much higher. Um, in fact, if you go just, all you have to do is go back to June. Uh, when the finance director did a presentation with the select board. And at that time, um, based on the information he had at that time, fiscal 28 showed a two and a half million dollar potential override. Uh, all, all those other numbers were at least a million or two higher. Okay. So, so that, that's good. That's good information. So if it, in the six months, it come down by a million each. So next year, then it come down by even more, one, one, one million, right? So next year, 20, 29, it'd be like 458K or something along those lines. No, it's, it, 29 came down from the impact of 28 going down, uh, because, uh, and, and the largest contributor of that, as we talked about was the million dollar plus increase in local receipts. That, um, personally, I don't expect is going to get, we're not going to get year after year increases in local receipts of a million dollars. Okay. So, um, so, uh, I get your point and, uh, the history of this forecasting over the last three or four years is that it, it, it, they have tended to be on the conservative side, finance search has been on the conservative side and 26, 27, 28, all of which at some point in time showed the need for an override. And here we are going into a third year in that three year cycle and likely not likely not needing one, but, um, never say never, but it's just hard to see how that's going to repeat itself in 29, 30 and, and beyond. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Brian, before we move on to that next topic, assuming I know which next topic you're thinking about, um, have you heard anything, uh, from the assessor about new growth? Oh, I'm sorry. Um, yeah. So on this, I thought I put it on this, yeah, on the summary page, if you look on the new growth line item far to the right, um, the assessor at their second to last meeting, uh, told the board of assessors that through two weeks ago, their office had identified somewhere between 580,000 to 600,000 of new growth. And that was before adding in, uh, personal property, new growth, which was apparently gets fed to the town by an outside, um, group. Uh, and he had told me previously when I talked to him that on average, that number has been somewhere in the $90,000 range. So, uh, based on what they had collected, assuming it gets certified ultimately the next month or two by the state, um, that covers what's in the forecast of the 600,000 of assumption. And, um, we'll see what they include in the tax recap, but it's, it's sounding like what's going to be in the tax recap will be 700,000 or so. So that would be an extra a hundred thousand again, that will further reduce this 458. So there's two or three items that are pretty likely going to, as Bill's simulation show, pretty likely to drive the need for an override down basically close to zero. Um, is that helpful? It is. Thank you. And again, the new growth, it really is just relative to our levy capacity. It doesn't really relate to year over year tax increase other than without the levy capacity, you're limited in what you can raise in taxes, which derivatively affects what your year over year tax increases. So where we are today, according to this model is we, we need an extra $458,000 of levy capacity.
Well, they're dollars, right? I mean, there's different ways to get there in revenue or expense cuts, right? But with, with, um, one way or the other, either we, well, no, no, no, let's, let's, let's, so let's assume we drive, let's assume that it's into a tax rate. And the model here is showing 6.06%. Does that assume that we raised that 458 through an override or where's the 6.06? Yeah. I mean, that, that assumes that, um, that we did an override and therefore we could raise those taxes. Okay. Um, one, one thing we could do, um, Rob, I'm going to bring that model back up. If you, um, just cause it's easiest line item to manipulate. And I think it's a hundred thousand dollar increments. Um, um, if, if you go to the insurance 32 B line and change 1.12 to 1.08, and I might have to go to 1.1, but. Yeah. Yeah. So that leaves you with what? 303 dollars potential override. Exactly. So what's the tax rate showing there now? Do you remember your tax increase? 5.58. 5.58. So as a point of reference for the discussion you want to have about the tax rate, um, if you assume one way or the other through more state aid, a little lower medical premium, insurance premiums through a little less debt service, or we get rid of a hundred grand that Brian stuck in the snow budget, um, the $200,000, sort of what I would call non muscle, non painful sort of cuts and or revenue. Um, we're probably going to get that potential override need down to zero, which means you don't have to raise that in taxes, which means your year over year would be in the five and a half, five point 6% range. And, um, I think the question that was posed at your last group meeting was, uh, how do people feel about and whether people are looking at the six or in Brian's model, it might have been higher than that because he hadn't adjusted yet to the school projections, but it may have been discussion. Well, how do people feel about trying to drive that down toward 5%, okay? And so if Rob, you change that 1.2.
Well, I don't, nevermind. I don't think I did it on this version. I have a version nine that I'll send out after the meeting, um, right below, right above the budget summary title, you'll see a town's school and unclassified budget number, um, on version nine, I've got that tied into, um, linked into where it appears in the, in one of the tabs. And then what I did is I drove the insurance line item down to 1.03, which equates to about a million dollar cut. So that would wipe out the 458 plus another 600,000. That's what it would, a million dollars is what it takes to get the year over your tax increase down to 5%. Okay. So one way to look at that is there's probably 450,000 of not too painful things that are going to happen without schools in town having to actually cut their budgets. But if people really want to get it down to 5%, you're probably going to have to cut, um, you know, roughly $600,000 from the town and school budget, um, beyond whatever is in these school projections. Um, and so I think the point you want to discuss tonight is how do people feel about that? So before you open it for discussion, what I did was I just want to, because I have my own view on it, which I'll share at the end, but, um, I wanted to, uh, looking for the select board meeting room, uh, this, this select board meeting room, but it's not the select board. Yeah. They're down the end of the hall. Um, where am I here? Yeah. Down at the end of the hall, turn left and then turn right. Turn. Turn. Aren't they in the, uh, wheeling? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Go all the way to the end of this hall, then turn right. Go all the way to the end. Thank you very well. Got myself backwards. So, um, Rob, can you bring up the, uh, tax rate spreadsheet that Carl had on his, um, email? Just again, make it large enough to all have that here in the room.
That will take me a minute. That was a PDF. Is it a PDF file? Yeah, I don't think it's a spreadsheet. Okay. Sometimes when I do this for my own purposes, I don't necessarily put it in logical order, which I'll explain in a minute, but, um, and tell you what I was trying to look at here. Now, just blow it up a little bit. So if there's anybody online watching, uh, they have a chance to read that. Um, that's good. So I'm going to start in the bottom of the, of the page where it says, uh, per 2026 annual town meeting warrant.
So if you look at the warrant and you scroll down to year over year increase fiscal 27, you'll see a 4.89% year over year tax increase number. That's what was projected in the warrant for the 2026 annual town meeting. And that number was calculated based on the, uh, projected tax raise needed shown in the warrant at 96.3 million, um, and comparing it to the prior year, 91.8 million. That equates to a 4.89% year over year increase. Now I'm going to stick with this column for a minute. Um, between the town meeting warrant and today, uh, if you look down further on that column, you'll see the 96.309, which was in the warrant is the starting expected taxation. We've since come to learn that we had over a million dollars of additional local receipts, an additional state aid of 276 million, which gives us an adjusted tax raise of 94.9 million. And when you do that same math, comparing it to fiscal 26, that equates to a 3.39% year over year increase, which if you can scroll up that column under the per forecast, you'll see on the year, year over year increase fiscal 27 litem 3.39. So, um, as a starting point, what was expected to be 4.8.9% residents are going to see 3.39% attributable to those extra revenues. Okay. Everybody with me on that? Any questions?
So then the second thing I did was, um, down at the bottom again, um, I went into the debt tab and I looked at the debt service that was attributable to the, the, the bonds that would otherwise have been issued last November. That's November of 2025. And I identified the debt service that's showing up in the fiscal 28, uh, budget. And I also looked at the short-term ban interest that was in fiscal 27 by virtue of the fact that we delayed the long-term financing and the net difference between those two, if the long-term financing had occurred in November of 25, we would not have incurred ban interest, but we would have incurred 900, some odd thousand dollars of, long-term bond interest in principle. And so in fiscal 27 budget, we would have had an extra $844, thousand dollars of expense. So if you look again, down into the ATM warrant section, um, had that financial engineering not been done last year, what was in the warrant at 4.89% would have actually shown up at 5.81%. Okay. People following that. And if you do that same math, um, looking at what is now likely to be the year-over-year increase after reflecting local receipts, et cetera, the 3.39% actually would have been 4.31%. And I'll explain why that's relevant in a second.
If you move that debt service back one year, if, again, we didn't do that financial engineering, um, the effect of that on fiscal 28 is a net reduction of $202,000 of debt service because we're shifting about $900,000 of bond interest in principle backwards one year. And, uh, we're left with whatever the debt services on the upcoming borrowing for what was approved at the Springtown meeting. And when you then do the math on fiscal 28 sticking with the 6.06 as our starting point per minute, which is in the version eight we're, we're looking at a second ago, that would push that down to 4.92% or 115 basis point reduction. So the point of this exercise, and I, I got at this a little bit by giving you an average in the, in the summary page before where I was showing an average between those two years of 4.73%. But if we hadn't done that financial engineering, the year-over-year increase based on this current forecast version eight would be 4.92%, not 6.06%. So we're already below 5%. So basically, go ahead. If I'm just kind of summarizing, we used a short-term measure to artificially reduce 27, which kind of doubly hits us on 28, because one, we need to pay a little more due to the short-term measure. And two, we're measuring against kind of an artificially low baseline. Right. And we're doubling up on the bond interest. Correct. And the fact is we did that, but if that's what's driving us from a 4.92%, which would have been a 4.92%, all things being equal to 6.06, to me, I'm a little troubled by asking the town and the schools to go back and, I never turned away a budget cut that's offered, okay? So don't get me wrong. I think people should look for as much efficiency as they can find. It's going to be important in pitching for overrides. But I also want to provide transparency to people financially. And you could argue that it's the financial engineering that's driving us from under 5% to 6.06%. So why should the town and schools be asked to further cut their budgets to try to drive the 6.06% or 5.58% if you assume that other factors will get us down, you know, to no override needed. So that was the purpose of this analysis. As I said, you can use the averages as a perhaps quicker way to get there, but I thought I would give you all the math involved. And this is something that, you know, I think would be appropriate if asked that we make available to your working group and to the school chair in particular, because, you know, I'd hate for people to be sort of nudged. Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't go look for efficiencies, but I don't want people feeling like, unless, you know, members of this committee, a majority of this committee feel like, well, yeah, but the facts are it got deferred. And the fact is optically, we don't like a 6% or a 5.5%. We prefer to be at 5% or lower optically, even if we can explain the 115 basis points as attributable to a financial engineering maneuver that we took, which, oh, by the way, we really didn't need to take in hindsight, because we ended up with $2.5 million of excess levy capacity. So anyway, that's the purpose of this analysis. And I just want to see if there are any questions, and then Carl, I'll throw it to you to see how strongly people feel about driving to 5%. And I'll wait till the end to tell you what I feel.
I have no questions about that presentation. But going back to the model, if we're right now looking for some way to shed or raise revenue to the extent, well, let's talk in terms of shedding, either deferring or cutting, right, at $458,000. That's going to be very ballpark, about a half a percent, right? Correct. So that brings us from 6.06 to 5.5, you know, 5.6. And again, it's very rough. Frankly, that's a lot better already. I think that explaining what you just said to us, but it's going to take me more time to really get in my old brain. To voters, it's going to be very difficult. Not wrong, but very difficult, right? Well, I envision, we did this a couple years ago in the FinCom report. I envision a simple chart that starts with the year-over-year tax increase, whatever it ends up being. Line item, impact of deferring debt service from fiscal 25 to 26, 115 basis points, revised year-over-year tax increase, and then accounting for the large drivers that is similar to what chart you had in there, at least from a presentation standpoint, would be what I would envision. But if your view is getting it to 5.5, likely through not having to cut the budget anymore, just because some of these other things are likely going to cut in the town's favor, you know, three or four months from now. But if people are planning to send folks back in the town of schools and say, go find us a half million dollars of expenses, again, I wouldn't stand in the way of that, because that will ultimately help in going forward years as well. So I don't want to say or do anything tonight that dissuades that pressure at the group level. But I also feel like the schools got duped over the last couple of years, that we've said before, where, you know, these forecasts were used to drive them to do things, and then most of the assumptions proved to be overly conservative, and they weren't able to claw back. And I just don't mind the result, but I just felt that as a process matter, I just believe in full disclosure, if they, you know, I just don't think it's fair to be able to explain things like this to people.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not a marketing, you know, consultant, but I'm on the finance committee. It's that I think, as an individual, and maybe in general, people are going to look at the first number. So you're either in the fives or in the fours. Probably not a whole lot of difference between 5.0 and 5.5. If you can get it to 4.9, then you start to get some advantage. You know, I also think people will tend to benchmark to inflation rates. So if inflation is around 4%, you know, they might be looking for something in the forest. That may be unrealistic. And then to your other point, I do think that there's some incentive to always keep a little bit of pressure on and just sort of say, hey, there's no more pressure. Don't worry about it, you know. So anyway, I'm not being definitive in my comments, but that's just sort of what's going through my mind.
I am going to need to step away for a minute, but I, while I understand kind of the marketing components and the pressure components, I do think the contention that this is sort of a problem we made for ourselves last year is a very good one, that we would already be below this 5% had we not already made cuts last year, or made, you know, made the changes we did last year. And just in general, it feels like having the front, the headline number be a 4 or a 5 is not, well, from a messaging perspective, I understand the importance of that. It is a very arbitrary reason to request or expect cuts. Well, I don't use the term cut, I mean, it's deficiencies. I mean, to ask people, hey, what would you have to do to get it lower? I mean, I think we should always be asking that question.
I think that's the right question. Yeah, I would agree. Certainly in the context of what's looking like 29 through 36 are going to be, that has to be at the top of the list, because you have to be able to evidence that you did look for and hopefully find cost savings as part of contribution toward lowering the amount you have to ask for the override. But I kind of view that as a separate and appropriate line of dialogue, as opposed to just driving to a particular year-over-year. Yeah, I wouldn't agree. I don't think you pick a year-over-year and say you have to meet this number. I agree.
I do need to step away for a minute, but I'll be back shortly. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I would agree too. I don't think we gain much
by picking a number, right? But I do think that, ask the question, what would it take to
what efficiencies are left, right, is I guess another way of putting it. But if we get to... And then probably not just accepting the obvious answer is, there aren't any efficiencies left. Well, like I said, we're already looking at
the likelihood that much of this will go away. And it becomes a 5.5% of the trend already. True. True. True. In a world in which some large costs increase by 20% or 12% or whatever, I don't feel too bad about that. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the big hurdle is prop 2.5. And as long as we're not doing that, the difference between a 5.5% and a 5.5%. It's a problem. Yeah. So do I have anything to add there on that topic? Yeah, sir. Any thoughts? No, I'm like, I think I really like the point that Brian made that when we are all using this engineering and then why could they say, why do you have to reduce the budget, right? That will come up differently. So the early comment, but absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And to Brian's point earlier about longer range planning, one can also sort of, you know, couch it in the, you may not have a lot of pressure this year to lower your budget, but you will next year. And you might want to be thinking now about that. Yeah. I think, well, when we close this year, I think it depends on, I think, as you know, as Brian mentioned, right, few things go positive and few things go negative, right? We will end up in a place where we can do a call on what will happen in 2029 and then see, but it's too early to say, well, you know, override is required for 29, 30, 31. Given that, at least in the last four months, I've seen that things have drastically changed. When I walked in and like, you know, maybe three months ago, that was different, but at least what I know, and now it's like completely different. And three months from now, I think that's, and I'm hoping things will be in a better shape. And that was the reason I was asking, what was the, you know, budget last year, same time? I just wanted to see. And then obviously we have different reasons, right? Where it's not going to go down as it went down this year. Right. But I think, um, the longterm, uh, perspective, we can, um, my opinion is to wait for the end of the year to settle down and see. Well, one thing, just, just to remind everybody, which we mentioned earlier, the 458,000 that's showing up in version eight is the potential override amount. Again, that includes $200,000 of, of, of reserve cushion. So it isn't going to take all that much on those other, uh, assumptions to, to move our way. Um, um, um, but in any event. And frankly, I think, yes, there's always going to be an opportunity for more efficiencies, but where we are today, town expenses are projected to go up less than 3%. I think that's below inflation. Uh, town payroll is less than 4%. Uh, school payroll less than 3%. Right. The big number here. Well, that's actually the big percentage, um, is school expenses. I'd like to dig more into what goes far and why it started up, why they're projecting 10%. But otherwise, those are pretty, pretty good numbers. Um, it's the unclassified budget. It's unfortunately that, that is not controllable and it's got the larger year over year increases. I think Brian said at one point unclassified was already over 3% year over year of the total budget increase that obviously eats up two and a half percent plus something before you even get to, uh, these, but, uh, yeah, so I think you can, you can start to see at least as the fiscal 28, as you're sinking down the road to your report that, um, you know, there's a, you probably can recount a little bit of the travels over the last few months. And then, you know, once you get a bit more detail on the school expenses, hopefully there's a couple of items that pop out and you just highlight that whatever it is. Yeah. Um, all right. Well, I will, um, I'll check in with Brian Kebany just to see if he's done any updating in his model. If he did, I'll have him send it along. I'll send you a version nine Carl at some point. Um, if, if there's something, something to send around a little bit longer, but that's, that's great. Uh, should we move on to the, uh, capital budget, Brian? Yep. Let me let me know when Ross comes back. I don't keep track of time and just make sure he rejoins us. Um, so again, I think Carl district, I think Iris had distributed to all a couple copies of 50 minutes, um, at the last meeting or after the last meeting. And then Carl recirculated those two plus two additional sets. Um, I can either assume everybody's, everybody's reviewed those. Um, but I think that the reason that I thought it made sense for you all to look at those is because, um, they will provide you with a, I think a pretty good trail leading up to what hopefully will be a report that SIPC completes, uh, uh, sometime, uh, in a week or so. At which point you all have a copy of the report, which will be the final work product for this cycle. Uh, there may be addendum to that report, um, between, uh, its issuance and, uh, uh, just prior to town meeting to the extent other capital requests come up through the, um, the warrant article process, um, or department heads approach the town manager and, you know, have other things that they want included. Um, as we go through this, and I, again, my hope is over a series of meetings leading up to late November, early December, when hopefully the town manager's capital budget five year plans show up for our review. My hope is that you all will be reviewing these things and just jotting down your questions. And I'm happy to respond to specific questions. I prefer not to, uh, sit here and regurgitate a lot of stuff at you. Um, however, um, I will call out a couple of, um, uh, one process item, which I don't recall. I mentioned at the last meeting and then one or two, um, specific capital requests that came up in the last couple of meetings. Um, if I did, if I did mention this, I apologize, but, um, um, um, last year, uh, I know I mentioned this last year, 60 took a look at every single capital request that came in from department managers. We understood there was a prior year, five-year plan, but we said, we're not going to apply ourselves to that. We're going to look at every single request anew, understand what it's about, prioritize, et cetera. Um, then we said, okay, we now identified the things we want to prioritize, how, you know, how are we going to fund that? And we said, well, we, we need to know what the limitations are in our funding sources. Um, both last year and this year, we really didn't get any real formal guidance from the finance director. Last year, we used a set of, uh, FinCom guidelines that were developed a number of years ago, which were printed in the fiscal 20, the 2025 annual town meeting warrant. They were not printed in the 26 warrant. And, um, so at this point, um, for this cycle, we were left saying, well, what do we do? Um, one thing for you on some future agenda is I think this committee should take a look at the, those guidelines from the fiscal 25 warrant, which were the same as they had been for a number of years, which had been developed by the former town administrator with the finance director. And I think we should look at them. And while we do now have a set of capital, uh, capital planning policy and a debt policy that the select board approved, um, the finance committee, if it so desires can do what it has done in the past, which is have its own financial parameters. So when it reviews things like the capital budget, if it says, okay, our parameters on debt, our levy debt are three to 5 million, and the requests come in at 8 million, we could say, everybody, you knew that our, our parameters were three to 5 million. Why is it eight? Right? So we need to, I told SHPSI, I would mention here that we need at some point to spend an agenda item on that topic and, uh, either decide we're not going to do it, or we're going to do it, but we're going to update it. We're going to look at the debt and capital policy, try to marry the two anyway. So when it came to this, so we use those policies as a governor on our allocations for funding sources last year. Um, we know what happened, um, our priorities, our priorities were different at the end of the day than what town manager had and our funding sources were different in some cases. This year, we agreed as a process matter that we were going to use the funding sources shown in the finance committee's report. Um, I think it's table 10. Correct. Um, we're going to use those for fiscal 28 through 31 as the governor on how much funding source we have available, because again, we didn't have any, any other guidance from the finance director at the time. So we took in all the requests, we kind of looked at them and said, okay, do we feel strongly about moving things in or out now? How do we fund them? And so we, we really focused on the bottom line funding sources. So the total levy debt, the total free cash, we weren't concerned about what was in the five-year plan by specific project as to what was assigned to it, you know, free cash, levy debt, um, finance director may have, again, a different view on that, but we just said, as long as we try to bring it in, so we're not coming in more of the levy debt or more free cash subsequently, then that should hopefully make the finance director happy because his forecast that we've been just looking at, he plugs in the five-year capital plan sources. And so his debt tab has the five-year plan built into it. So if we go adding a million dollars, the levy debt, that screws up. So we said, we get it. So that's what we did. And then for the fifth year, we use the FinCom guidelines, um, as, as our parameters, right. Um, so I just want to mention that process and you'll see that mentioned, I think in the report, um, eventually we did get the finance director to send us, um, his, uh, model that he usually sends onto the FinCom eventually. And he took the CIPs that came in the submission forms. He quickly prioritized them, however he prioritized them, he assigned funding sources to them and sent that along to us. And when we looked at it, um, 28, 29, where we were kind of in the same ballpark, but 30 and 31, he came in below what the funding sources in total were in the warrant. And so we said, well, was that intentional in light of, you know, the ongoing deficit, were you looking to, in fact, roll back what you had already agreed to the prior year? And he didn't really respond to us. So, um, we, we, as a process matter, we just said, we're just going to tie into that five-year plan and last year's warrant and the spring's warrant. And we'll have to wait and see what is done by the finance director and the town manager. But the good news is we were generally able to fit things in. Um, but we had a couple of exceptions. So, um, in last year's five-year plan, albeit in the text, not in the table, uh, the town manager included $5.4 million for town building repairs. So you had everything in the table for fiscal 28, uh, plus 5.4 million in fiscal 28 for town building. Um, in SIPC's report last year, we had told the building, uh, director, um, no, you can't, we can't fund all $2 million for your full roof repair. Uh, why don't you phase it over four years and we'll include your phasing, which is what we did in our report. Um, uh, this year he came in and, and in his submissions, put 5.4 million in because it was in the five-year plan that was in the warrant. And then he also plugged in his phased roof repairs. So it was kind of a double counting to some degree as to the roof. Um, so we, uh, we initially said, okay, we're going to include the 700,000 for your phase two roof on the section of the building. Um, but we're, we're not going to include the following two years. We're going to put them in a separate bucket, which we did last year, pending the outcome of a working group that's been set up to evaluate what's going on with the town building. Is it going to be used long-term and we put the 5.4 million in the same bucket. Um, and so, um, we had $700,000 in, and then two weeks ago at our prompting, when we met with him a month ago, the IT director came back and said, okay, I went back, looked at this, talked to the town manager. Um, I need an additional $1.5 million over, uh, fiscal 28 through 32, and I need $700,000 of it up front in fiscal 28. So what you'll see in the minutes is we basically went back to the town manager and said, we assume you're in the loop on this. Uh, why don't you let us know, uh, whether you view this IT request as a higher priority than fixing the roof, which also is a $700,000 cost. He talked to the building director, IT director, Dean back us and said, yeah, I think it's a higher priority. We all happen to think it was. Um, and, um, we, uh, uh, the building director said, can I have 25 grand for planning for the 700 grand? He said, yes. And then eventually we put 700 grand in 29, even though all the other roof stuff is still kind of held in this in advance bucket. And, um, two meetings ago we met and we're preparing to go into an executive session so that the IT director could explain, uh, in detail what the, um, uh, the challenges were. And we were told caution by the town manager, you don't want to have that discussion in public session. There's an exception for it under the open meeting rules. Uh, at the meeting, ultimately we decided as a committee, we didn't think we needed to get into the detail. As long as we knew the town manager was in the loop, as we expected he was, that he and the IT director were comfortable with the amounts they were asking for, that at least they have front-ended it on the theory that they're going to fix the most important things first. We felt we didn't want to know and need to know the details. Um, I'm only saying that because that's what happened, but this committee, there may be members on this committee by the time that budget arrives here, if that item's still in there, there may be people on this committee that want to dig in and understand what it's really for, uh, this committee will have to make that same determination. And if they want to get into the details, you know, majority is going to have to vote to go into executive session. Um, so that was a big swing, but we simply moved one big item out and brought that item in and it didn't affect, um, sort of our borrowing. Right. Um, and then I said in multiple years thereafter, he had significant changes. Um, you don't see it in the minutes because we haven't talked about it yet at our meeting. He came back yet again with a final, final, um, revision because we sent him back to look at a couple of descriptions that were wrong and weren't last year. And it looked like he was repeating those errors again. Uh, well, it actually wasn't his error last year, but he was repeating that again. And basically he came back and reworked a number of his requests, but the net of everything he did actually took a few hundred thousand dollars out of fiscal 31. Um, but all the bigger requests were still in there. Um, so I wanted to highlight that one just because it is likely going to get a little bit more airtime in the report. Um, undoubtedly, you know, this committee is going to want to understand that a bit more detail. Um, I think I mentioned already the other big item that came in from outside of fiscal 28 in the five-year plan, the middle school had a couple hundred grand out in fiscal 30, I think it was for upgrades of fire sensors at the middle school. And whatever firm supports that said it wasn't going to support it anymore. So the building pressure, I got to move that up to fiscal 28. And by the way, now we got to do rewiring and a bunch of other stuff, and it's now 970,000, not 200,000. So, you know, those are the kind of items that, um, you know, as, as you all read through the minutes and then ultimately the report, and you'll have all the detail. Um, again, I would invite a better process would be to invite members to ask specific questions where I can hopefully answer most of them, if not all of them. So we don't have to wait, uh, until we get the town manager's, um, uh, budget, so. I think that's a very good idea. By the way, he's going to take a pretty interesting reading. I'll stop there. I mean, if, based on what everybody's already read, are there any process questions? Are there any things that stuck out to people that they'd like right now to know more about? I saw that, but I, I followed it correctly. So that the, uh, IT items that were incorrectly described last year, the conclusion is that money can only be sent for, for items that are described. Uh, ultimately that was the conclusion. And so, but meanwhile, the IT director doesn't plan to use that money for those items and doesn't want to return it. Uh, the, the, one of the items that was the problem was the, the, the thing that ended up being talked about the most at town meeting, like 10 times longer than the $38.6 million long-term water supply article. So, uh, this is the cameras. So, uh, he ended up, uh, I'm benoing to him getting a $250,000 appropriation for something that he actually had submitted to us a CIP for 150. Uh, we, um, uh, I think we included it in our report, but the town manager did not include it in his plan. Uh, so he had estimated he only needed 150. So we of course said, well, you got 250, can you return the hundred? Um, he decided that, you know, look, until I really have worked through with the schools and the library, exactly what we're doing, I kind of prefer to hang onto that because it may turn out I need to spend more than 150,000. I don't want to have to go back and ask for it again, which is fine. So he just sort of hung onto that. Uh, whereas, uh, the item he was shorted on, which is cybersecurity, um, modernization, et cetera, that's the light item that is jumping up to 850,000. Um,
God, thank you. Uh, it took a number of meetings and discussions to get to that, um, acceptance of that conclusion. Well, this does ails into, so what you are hoping will happen, Brian, is I think very close to what happened last year. Um, we got the report. We, we, we all read it. We, we talked about our modern cells. We, uh, Kelly Levin came to talk to us. I would, by the way, I'm sorry, we were about 820. Um, more or less. Pardon me. Um, you know, we, um, we worked through the various, um, items, um, in the, in the report, um, with, with, I'll be honest, great deference to SIPC because if you had groups spent much more time, um, than we had. And so we did, you know, we, we, we asked questions, but I, I mean, do you, um, I'll quote on this. Bill, do you or, um, um, recall any significant differences in our views and SIPC's? No, we were pretty close to SIPC's view. Um, um, yeah, then, then, yeah, dollar wise, I think you split the difference, but, um, the, the, the big item, the field item, um, you followed SIPC's recommendation to leave that where it was. And we basically, in terms of my own thought process was we had two different budgets. We had SIPC and we had what the town produced. Yeah. So we looked for one of the differences. Right. And then evaluated, you know, which, which group we thought had more credibility. And you guys had put a lot more effort into it. The council budget was significantly higher. And, um, um, in part it was that, that, that school project. Right. But, you know, there may be, again, I'm, and I think I said it when, at the meeting you weren't here, when we first started talking about the capital, um, I'm going to be careful not to drive the discussion on the capital, just because I will have sat on SIPC. I plan to try to be a resource when people have questions, but you all should reach your own independent conclusions. And, and, uh, but that said, um, you know, I think, you know, I think there, there will, there were last year, I can't tell you exactly which ones they were, but there were last year, and there likely will be this year, uh, parties. I will give you an example. So last year and this year, um, DPW included a half a million dollar request for, um, Route 20 South landfill cap, uh, restoration or something to that effect, the landfill cap. And, uh, we, we should have had Tom Holder change the description last year, but we didn't. And this year, I think we will get him to agree to change it. But, um, he told us last year that originally there was some notion they were going to have to spend, you know, half a million dollars doing something to fix damage caused by roots growing into the cap of the old landfill. But it is, they fixed that by cutting all the trees down and killing roots. And so, but he left it, it was in the plan. And so he brought it forward. And as I think all of you know, there's, the select board has set up a committee to do some visioning on what that site could be used for. They completed their work. They issued a report. It's a priority of the select board. We all get that. And he, he, Tom Holder had that included this year, half a million dollars, albeit still described the other way. And, um, and as we went through and had to prioritize, and again, we were applying the governor of these funding sources. We ultimately said two things. One, um, we still hadn't been presented with an actual scope of the larger project. No one had brought forth, come talk to us. And so when that happens, our view is we don't want to be spending half a million dollars without really knowing what the full cost could be. Right. And timing, et cetera. And then two, we just didn't have the funding sources. At least we thought other things took priority. We viewed that more as a want than a need, right? So this year, again, we're not including that in our five-year plan recommendation. It's in this bucket of other stuff. So I got an email from Carol Martin, um, chair of the select board, who I send copies of the SIPSI minutes as our liaison. And she read the last set and said, oh, by the way, is that half a million dollars for the South landfill in the plan? And I responded, no, it's not for the same reason I just described. And she said, oh, um, I guess we're going to have to get you some information. I said, well, we're pretty close to done with our report. It doesn't mean you can't provide that to SIPSI. And if, if there's RAD and Alford doing an addendum, it can do that, right? I'm not going to be on SIPSI at that point. I said, but I'll just let you know that we don't think the resources are there, but if the town manager wants to dip into some other resource that we, you know, aren't, don't have access to, or, you know, make a recommendation from. So, um, you know, there's an example where, um, we did the best we could with the information we had or we didn't have something that somewhat happened with the ball field last year. It wasn't that we were opposed, which is, we kept asking and asking, give us, you know, tell us why it's good to do it now. And no one ever came forth until well after the process. So, you know, there very could be differences, but I think the point is that approach sounds like an appropriate one because you could identify differences that are one of priority. And then you just have to say, okay, either looking at SIPSI's minutes or asking me the question and then asking the finance director, the town manager, well, why do you think that's more important than this? Ultimately, it'll come down to the finance committee having to make that judgment, um, which you did last year on the ball field. For example, you let the half million, you left the half million in the five-year plan for the Route 20 South landfill, even though it wasn't in SIPSI's report. So there's an example where you went the other way. You may not have talked about it at all, but, um, so, so I think that is a good iterative process. Um, and as long, my view is, as long as there's new information, that's fair game. And even I'll sit here and say, well, if I knew that time's on SIPSI and you tell me how to pay for it, or, or you're okay going over the, the, uh, the governor that we were using, but we weren't, that's your prerogative. And then the finance committee will have to decide, you know, where do you want to draw the financing line? Uh, and I'm happy when the time comes to prepare, you know, a side-by-side, um, variance analysis to make it hopefully a little quicker. Um, the other thing, Carl, and I'm happy to provide it when and if you want it, uh, we have a consolidation Excel file of all the CIP submission forms that all roll up into a consolidated five-year plan, um, that Kelly put together. And, and obviously, the CIP submission forms, all of which are in revised forms. So they have a bit more detail. Um, they have the descriptions and rankings and other things in them. Um, a lot of individuals, specific questions probably could easily be answered if they have that file. They go to CIP number three under DPW, read the description, look at the ranking. Um, I mean, I, I just give you a silly one. I, you know, Kelly's got a table that's going on a report that shows fiscal 28 instead of our medium high low, which we didn't do this year. We use departmental rankings for fiscal 28, department head rankings. Um, the IT director ranked, um, I think it just worked out this way. His ranking on fixing the AV and, and I'm presuming it's in town building is two points higher than it's ranking on the IT, um, cybersecurity appliance. And, um, so I, I'm going to raise that in our next meeting. I said, it just looks wrong. And, you know, I'm sure he looked at him in a vacuum, but, um, but, uh, so anyway, um, there's plenty of detail. It's just a question, you know, do you, how much do you want to overwhelm people with information, but I'll have it. So that sounds like it would be useful information. Um, just quite on when, um, but you're, you're not really done with it. No, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't give it to you until after we issued the report, because we still have a few things probably going to move around at this week's meeting and, um, move around before we finish the report, but once we're done the report, if, if you want that, I'll send it to you and I'll help Kelly give me the finished version of that. And I think it would be good to have, and, and, you know, people couldn't weigh in, you know, weight into it as much as they want to, or as little as they want to, but I'd rather have it. Um, yeah, you know, last year, I mean, despite the deference, um, we did have a couple of different meetings where, um, on the school issue, the school fields issue, we had, we had, you know, Michael McCall and Brian Keveney, you know, come talk to us about why they wanted what they wanted. Um, you know, I think it really was an iterative process for, and, and frankly, um, you know, when we kind of running out of time and told them, uh, what changes we wanted, the answer was, okay. Yeah. They were very, they were not fighting us on it. Um, and those were based on everything I've heard so far, those were much bigger changes and were let's, let's say variances between SIPC's recommendation and the counts, you know, that I think we will see this year. Right.
The proof will be in the play. Yeah. I mean, I, I tend to, I mean, I like to understand the process and I like to understand the differences between, but you know, your committee has spent tons of time, you know, tons of meetings. And then, so I'm reluctant to second guess the expertise and the analysis. I just want to understand the process and, and what differences you might have with what the town has. But, but, you know, other than that, I mean, you guys have spent the time with this and I respect that. So, yeah, I mean, the one, again, the one piece that was missing with the exception of this IT issue. And that's in part because we specifically pushed that out to the town manager and said, you know, this is big enough. We need your, we need to weigh in on its priority. Um, we, we would have preferred more as we were going through the process. We'd preferred more sort of back and forth during the process where if the town manager saw we were going or the finance director saw we were going in a particular direction that they would kind of weigh in. Now the fact they've been getting the minutes, et cetera. So they're privy to that information. You know, who knows, maybe at the end of this cycle, because it's more timely, um, what comes out will be pretty darn close to what we do. We'll find out, but, yeah. Um, but, uh, you'll see that as a recommendation in the report. We, we, we still need more collaboration to occur. And, um, with Kelly and I both going off, that committee is going to need, uh, the financial horsepower. The other three are bright people and capable, but, and they've now got, um, you know, a year and a month under their belt. Um, but, um, and, and this, this committee itself has to, um, with the sub board to come up with a designee, um, to replace Kelly, uh, because when the report's done, she's going off and I'm going off. Robert, Chris, have any quick questions on the capital stuff at the moment? Rob is shaking his head. Not here. So, uh, not a question, but, uh, there were some meeting minutes from the capital improvement planning committee, but are there any spreadsheets? Yeah. In your emails? Um, I think, uh, I'm looking at, uh, my emails here. Are you referring to the, uh, the appendix or the exhibits in the minutes that show spreadsheets? Okay. No, no, I think similar to the model, are there any spreadsheets that we have to look into the capital improvement? I'm not understanding what you're asking. No, I meant like, uh, for the budget, we have seen the model budget, but first similar to that for capital improvement, do we have any spreadsheets that we have to look into besides the meeting minutes that were attached to the prior email? No, Excel, you don't have actual Excel spreadsheets yet. Um, the, um, the, uh, the exhibits on that I attached to the minutes were intended to give the public a sense of what's in those spreadsheets, some of them. Okay. Uh, and then the very large workbook that I was just talking to Carl about, uh, contains every individual capital improvement request form for department managers, and then it rolls it all up into a five year summary. Uh, that workbook when it's final after we issue a report in a, in another week or so, uh, it sounds like Carl's going to distribute to everybody on the finance committee. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think I see it now. I think, uh, there were, for some reason I thought I went down the couple of, uh, meeting minutes and then at the, after the adjournment, I stopped reviewing them, but beyond that adjournment, there is a lot of details in it. Okay. I completely missed those things. Okay. And then there's a list as there are in our minutes here, there's a list of, uh, of, uh, documents and there's plenty of references to spreadsheets and things so that if, again, I'm, I'm only going to provide you folks with what I think, uh, contains meaningful, uh, but, but excruciating detail for those that want to, you know, dive all the way down to, uh, individual requests. And again, the minutes, the usefulness of the minutes are that they provide at least a summary of the deliberation. And for those that really have nothing else to do with their time, uh, if, if, if a particular issue is really of importance, you can just go watch the way cam videos of the meeting and listen to the back and forth. Can you, um, if you're watching. Right. I don't know which controls that. Probably one of these. Sure. Sure. We'll find out. It's too late. Oops. And, uh, you guys are still on Zoom though, right? And Carl, uh, I have to get going in like five minutes to pick up my son. They're on Zoom, so we're good. Okay. Um, that's fine. Um, I think we've covered this topic for tonight. Um, I don't know if Rob is still on, but I'm going to carry on the suggestion that we defer, um, if we defer long enough, we won't need to. I'll be honest. One of the big goals I have for that is that next year, instead of starting out with a conversation about what we need to do when, we just have a kind of weave behind artifact of how a year on finance committee is supposed to work.
So I'm fine deferring. Okay. Um, how about, how about we just plan for that next week? Sounds good. Um. Sounds good. Okay, good. Thank you. Um, that brings us to the last topic, which is the next meeting. Um, as Brian alluded, um, it's a meeting on a Tuesday, the 13th, because, uh, the 12th is, uh, a public holiday. Um, after that, I think we're back on the Monday schedule. Um, so the week, the one after that would be the 19th. Right. Yeah. And, uh, I think, because I was saying before the meeting, I, um, probably not going to be able to attend on the 13th. And I, I know you told me we're pondering having the town manager and the finance director in at some point. And, uh, I don't know if it was on that night, but don't worry about me. Uh, no, I appreciate you the reminder, um, about your schedule. So I haven't typically done this, but I actually plan to circulate a couple of, um, uh, potential agenda items. Um, and I'll ask each of you just to write back and say, yeah, or nay, or if you have other ideas, because one of those topics will be, um, you know, um, when do we want to meet with those guys? They've, they've volunteered. Um, I think we also need to be speaking with the school committee. Um, I'm not quite sure when is the best time, but we should, we should assess it. I reserve the right that we may meet for more than once, but I think that's totally fair too. Yeah. I think doing it in advance, meaning to us to understand a lot of what you've already told us. And then when the information actually becomes available, also getting a commitment that we will get as the bylaws states, uh, at least something to look at at the end of the year, by the end of the year, understanding that schools don't really do their release their full budget until late January. Okay. But, but if they're tying into some number, that's ultimately being discussed. Right. Agreed. That can be plugged in the, you know, whatever the town manager pulls together. Agreed. All right. Uh, uh, quick on the question on the next meeting. I thought this is supposed to be we meet like biweekly, but not weekly.
So if you're meeting today, we shouldn't be meet 1026 or like not 1026 or 10, um, not next week, the week after. No, we've been meeting weekly. Uh, we did cancel a meeting, um, recently, um, because we might not have had a quorum, but no, we've been weekly. Oh, that is a good question. I think last year you met biweekly. I think this year, this year we thought we'd better schedule tentatively weekly, because we thought we might have to deal with an override presentation. I guess the question is, is there enough substance to be meeting every week or do we go to every couple of weeks? I mean, my opinion is biweekly is fine for, I mean, unless there's a big news item or whatever, but I mean, it's an interesting discussion, but I don't know if we can't do it. One of the ones, there's unlikely to be any new information by the 13th. Right. Right. You're not, your report is not due until for two days and we'll, you know, it'll take us a while to absorb it anyway. Right. So I'm, I'm perfectly content to not meet next, you know, in the next week. That's my feeling is to go for two weeks. Yeah. 10, 19.
Oh, I'm just looking, you're out.
Hopefully Brian back by then. So you're out, Carl, the 26th of October, the 2nd of the 9th. But if we're, if we're doing biweekly, we'll skip the 13th. Yeah. At some point, and it may not be very far from now. We'll probably want to go back to the, to week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, once, once we get like the capital budget in, we can bang that out.
You know, there was, there was a discussion earlier on Iris is out here, of course, but you know, we're hoping also to get some, you know, some early movement on, on war and art articles. And that's right. And there's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if something comes up and you can always call a, you know, a quick meeting too and say, Hey, we just got some really important information. Can you guys meet on Monday? So we're, you know. Okay. So no meeting on the 13th and we'll meet again on the 19th and Carl circulated agenda items for that meeting. Okay. Okay. I think we're done. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. I'll second. Rob. Okay. Uh, last roll call point of the night. Um, Ryan. Yes. Hello. Yes. Carl's a yes. Um, Krishna. Yeah. And Rob. Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you guys.