September 8, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
September 8, 2026 - Finance Committee
uh good evening september 8th this is the whalen finance committee um i i see a forum here and i'm
sorry i'll hold the meeting to order um first item on the agenda as always is to state the following
this meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on wake cam as soon as
possible after the meeting pursuant to chapter 2 of the acts of 2025 this meeting will be conducted
in person and via remote access in accordance with the law when they watch or participate
remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the board slash committee zoom links tab on the
talents homepage when required by law or allowed by the chair persons wishing to provide public
comment or otherwise may participate in otherwise who excuse me who may provide public comment or
otherwise participate in the meeting they do so at the meeting location person or
through remote access people public comments should be limited to two minutes per person
our agenda tonight is to review the minutes of august 24th we'll continue our review of the finance director's multi-budget multi-year budget model we will continue our own discussion about the possibility of a proposition two and a half override at fiscal year 2028 um including uh reviewing the information provided as provided at the select board meeting on august 31st um the process and perhaps options for avoiding an override uh again we'll then take a preliminary look at the fiscal 28 capital budget and by your capital plan you will um i believe be reviewing and discussing um uh income's goals and fall timeline um typically rob tends to present on uh need to revisit the town manager's request that we appoint a representative to the fire department's staffing working group we will set our next meetings and dates and times with gold adjourning at approximately uh 9 pm uh with that uh are there any announcements within the committee that's good do the in-person virtual thing yes um in the room tonight i'm carl barnes i'm the chair to my far right is iris hawks the vice chair uh bill huss satish raj in private early online is remember rob clinton um thank you for the reminder um any other announcements i don't see anybody and there's the public online no apparently not
okay they don't know what they're missing so we can move on to those minutes
would be the um it's the original set for this meeting but it's the revised set that i've sent to all of you where i changed a couple dates on page four that makes sense
does and i i didn't review the original version but i reviewed the one mark device and i thought it was apply as written
of it
all right um
okay
all right so all right okay all right all right all right okay okay All right. Carl's an aye. Yes. Rob? Tim Stain. I wasn't here. I'm here. 5-0-1. Thank you. 0-1. Okay.
I continue our discussion of the budget model. You may have seen this last or sometime over the course of the last week, but as of August 31st, Ryan Keveny was predicting a deficit of about $631,000. That is down pretty substantially and due, I believe, entirely to having hard numbers for the retirement contribution for this year and also for next year. That number also includes still... No, I paused it. I can't remember what it is. The cushion? Yes, it includes this $200,000 cushion. The $631,000 doesn't include... Does not include... Okay, my notes are bad. Thank you.
By knowledge, nothing else has changed. The school board, I had expected to make a presentation at the meeting last week. I think most of you have got all of your Senate, they did not make one. They're still trying to get some numbers together. The select board had asked for those numbers for tonight's meeting, but no presentation from the school board was on the agenda for tonight's select board meeting. It seemed they said they need like two weeks. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think they said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, it's not a matter. That's right, it's two weeks from the 31st. Well, I have to say, it is at the outside, but it again, doesn't matter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a bit of a way to end up. May I add to what you just said, Carl? Please. Yeah. I checked with Brian just before I left the house, and he just confirmed that he had not yet received the updated salary information, which is what schools have committed to produce based on the settled contract and what teachers they know they have. Mm-hmm. And that'll become a basis for sure to look forward to see whether their overall payroll falls within, above, below what Brian's carrying in his model at the moment. Right. So we have the information in the memoranda of agreements about how that gets applied with seniority and steps in the main. Yeah, I suspect I think Kirsten Patterson has to, the first payroll, has to go through. Anyway, update everybody's payroll record to reflect cost of living and steps and ways. And I think when she completes that for payroll purposes, she can then, she won't give individuals, but she can provide that aggregate payroll number to Brian, and he can figure out how that fits before it doesn't fit. So that's going to be an important data point. It's a little start of us. It happened pretty soon. Yeah. I don't know when the payroll cycle is, but I know, Bill, you asked, I think at the last meeting, maybe it was time to find out what if any other changes Brian had made. As Carl, you just said, you can see his output as of August 31, it was $831,000. I asked him for the model that produced that number. I went through it, and I didn't, I decided not to give it to you, Carl, to distribute, just because I didn't want to get people bogged down in details tonight. But I'm happy to distribute it after we talk about things tonight. As I was going through it, I identified all of the changes he's made in assumptions. And at a high level, I'm happy to talk about what those changes are. Again, you can see the output, but there were items that caused his result to go up and down.
I did identify a number. It was an item in his debt tab that, in response to a question I had asked him, he made a change, which was based on some information he had provided to Select Board last March. That change reduced his number here by roughly $80,000, to now what it's showing. I, at the same time, had asked Michael Fea, the director of facilities, whether Brian's assumptions as to whether he's going to be able to get the money back. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. A different point of view. And I think Brian, as of late last week, now thinks he will have to borrow the full amount for this particular item. So he's likely going to be rerunning the model that he sent me. I'm sure he's going to rerun it a number of times. But the number you see in the revised August 31 presentation, absent him making other changes, they that offset it. It's likely to be $80,000 higher than what's on the page at the moment. Right here in the 631. Yeah. So with the question, it'll be closer to 911, 911,000.
But as I saw with some of the other changes he made, he decided to adjust some of the assumptions that had been in there since his original model that he provided us, which somewhat offset what would have otherwise been an even higher number here. So at a high level, he went through, there's a half town expenses and the model we've been working with has a town expense assumption and town payroll assumption. We're still carrying a 3% increase. He literally, went through each line item expenses and payroll and put a different inflation number in. I mean, some of the same, but not all of them are the same. So what I did is I sort of backed into what the net effect was of all his changes.
What was that five second updated?
Well, he already had changed his model reflects and 5% increase for school payroll and his reduction from 14 to 12% of health. Cause we're still in our model we've been working with. We're still assuming the 14% of health and four and a half percent on school. So the numbers that produced his result have 5% for school payroll, 12% for health. So anyway, when you look at all of his,
I should have thought I had that. 40% is his number down, I'm supposed to have at this point 75 to a hundred two and twenty-three? Is the number seven in my head?
It is even in half total. Okay.
And if I follow that in my paper, of all his changes C Yay. Almost cleaning up the nut soon.
So the weighted average changed city major expenses went from 1. 03% that we were carrying down a 1.0, 279, six percent, 0.03 percent to just under four percent and um just because of discussions with unions i'm not going to publicly state which ones he is showing at an elevated level at least at the moment and you'll see them when you get the model um and the item that he reduced again is an item that we haven't talked about so in his original model um under under the tpw department there's a couple of different line items for the snow and ice expense one is where the overtime payroll goes the folks that drive around town plow right and then there's another line item for services third-party services and supplies um so that's third-party plow operators etc and historically as in the last three or four years the snow and ice combined budget has been somewhere around 500 to 525 thousand dollars and if you look over the course of the last 10 years the average per year has been roughly about that number there's roughly seven years it was above and seven years it was below 15 year time horizon um uh the most recent snow this past winter um i don't know how it happened but they literally went it's the highest i've ever seen them go over the snow and ice budget uh they're over by 600 000 which required as we all know in the end of june a transfer from a bunch of other expense accounts um and so i guess although he hadn't called it out to me initially um brian in his model that he provided us which is in our model we've been working with increased the services and supplies by a hundred thousand dollars and increased the payroll over time lying by a hundred thousand dollars so pretty big impact relative to the last four or five years and when he made his changes i just talked about uh he eliminated one of those hundred thousand dollar adjustments or kind of offset it, which kind of cuts against only the reason he made them in the first place, which was trying to maybe come up with a more, in his mind, more reasonable snow and ice budget. The thing about the snow and ice budget, and this has been how the town has dealt with it over the years, is that I think I mentioned at our last meeting, there's three or four items in the state law that if you run over budget and you are unable to fund those with excess appropriations and any of your other expense line items, you can put it or you have to put it on the tax recap. So it automatically increases the amount you're going to raise in tax revenue. The town, I don't believe, has had to do that for some time, if ever, and we've generally had enough pushing in other accounts, as it turns out, at the end of the fiscal year to absorb any overage. The flip side is, in years, that the actual expense is lower, a more mild winter, those excess budget amounts end up in free cash. So the town traditionally has not attempted to be overly precise with that number, knowing that there are options to address an overage, and knowing that no one can predict the weather, and knowing that half the time we don't spend the amount that we've been budgeting. So as we move forward, Carl asked, what other ways can we go about reducing the forecast deficit? I'm highlighting this item just because you could make a case that probably it's not being unreasonable to adjust it, climate change, whatever, there's going to be more snow events, we may as well make it a little bit more precise. But you could also make the case that, as practice has been, let's just do what we've done in the last four or five years, and there might be another hundred grand that you could pull out of the forecast and reduce the amount of the overage. So I just plant that as a placeholder when we get to that point. The other... You're going to distribute this new amount? Yeah. I'd like to add to that. Yeah. So is that just average based on the last few years? No, I think what I'm saying is, if you look back to 2011, so 2011 to 2025, the average is 550,000. And I said half the time it was above that number by a little or more than a little, and then half the time it's below that. If you throw out the high and the low, you're probably closer to 525. And although I know what the transfer was in June, 600,000, and I know what the budget was, I haven't asked Brian for the actual numbers, but I'm a little concerned about that. But assuming that means it was 1.1 million, which, again, I just don't... I mean, it was an interesting winter, but I don't view it as being that extreme. But there were reasons, apparently. So much snowfall, certainly, in some of the bigger storms we've had in a number of years. Yes, certainly. In terms of severity. Yeah. And I think there were these days where it was kind of potentially icy. I'm not sure what it wanted to do, and it had to do more salting. So it also seemed to happen over the weekend every month. Yes. So that is true. Yeah. But I view that year, hopefully, I view that year as an absolute aberration. I would agree. By itself, I wouldn't necessarily view it as a reason to crank up the budget that we've been using for the last quarter of years. But if you want to see... What I'm interpreting from what you're saying, Brian, is that historically, we've had a set number. It is tough to predict, not that we couldn't take a look at the data and try to make perhaps a more accurate prediction, but still tough to predict. And I think what I'm hearing you say is there's nothing mechanically wrong with the way we've been operating. And while there is a negative risk that we take in continuing to operate the way we've historically been operating, we have yet to suffer that negative repercussion, because historically, we've had buffer in free cash. We've had buffer in the appropriations to be able to pay up when... For other accounts. Right. Exactly. That's correct. Okay. And so I think what I'm also hearing you say, and maybe this is more reasonable next step is, is any of that in terms of the negative outcome of the risk we take on by continuing to maintain that status quo, is that change as we go into tighter and tighter fiscal budgets? Is the amount of risk still the same as it currently is? Yeah. The tighter line items are budgeted. In theory, the less excess appropriation will be available at the end of the fiscal year. But we still have free cash, right? So, yeah. I mean, at some point, it could have an impact. But for the immediate term, if one was looking for an objective of how do you whittle down what's becoming a smaller number and or predicted to be a smaller number, I just throw out that that's one area that we haven't talked about. And I realized when I was going through his model that that had been in there, and the fact that he had retreated halfway from what he had built in as extra cushion. I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but when you send out the model, there's a little yellow cell that shows that snow. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So, you can see it. That helps. In the other relatively minor change, I guess, state aid for fiscal 27, actual state aid when he finally settled the numbers was $45,000 less than what has been in our model to date. So, that had an impact. So, you will see, and then the retirement expense he factored in, and then this debt item, he hasn't yet factored in. But when I send you the version 7, I'm going to, you're going to see it tying out to a number that's $80,000 higher than what Brian presented to the select board for that reason. But he may, as I said, ultimately come back with something that's different because he, again, wants to offset. So, anyway, you know, we'll hopefully then going forward for some period of time use version 7, which is what I'll distribute. But you're still able to sort of tweak some of the numbers. The other thing that I added, just because I decided myself, I was maybe focusing too much on the percentage year over year increase in the tax levy, which was, you know, six to six and a half percent, a little less. Two times we've looked at it. And I think I mentioned a chunk of that over a hundred basis points related to the debt referral from fiscal 27. So, we get double amount of debt service in fiscal 28. And as I mentioned at the last meeting, which again, you'll see on that first tab, the increased local receipts, increased state aid, drove down the. Estimated year over year tax increase that was printed in the warrant at 4.89%. It's down to 3.39%. So, I decided the simplest way to do it is you'll see a little line that averages 3.39% year over year for fiscal 27 and the six point, whatever it is for fiscal 28 currently. And it comes out a little bit over 5% on an average basis, which is still higher than sort of the last 20 years of 4.6%, whatever it was on that slide that I sent out. But I decided dealing with percentages on that item for that reason, given that prior year got driven lower for two reasons, probably wasn't the right way to be looking at it. So, you can make your own judgments. So, whether you use real dollars or percentages. So, I think other than that. And I made. I just I think it's great that Brian. I think it's great that Brian is making his own decisions. So, I think that's, you know, I think that's pretty good that Brian is making decisions that are easier to make. I think they're pretty good, but I don't think they're paying the same amount of attention to those things that I was doing before, because I'm the only person that worked on those things. I know they're not fucking great. But I, you know, I think it's great that Brian is making these decisions. Brian Atkins is making these decisions, I think. It comes down to those sorts of things that come out of the fiscal year. And leave it to you to make your own decisions. Brian's changes for the school salaries. Payroll, up to five percent. And health, down to 12%. as opposed to just this year into next year when you average out right um the example you just gave and get five percent did you carry that forward until we get to 2030 like if we were to look at and the reason i bring this up is because at our last meeting we had discussed the fact that if you look at every year the percentage increase that's anticipated for the next decade you get to or the taxpayer basically an increase of i think it was like 60 percent something like that right when you average it out did you happen to take a look at what that actually does to that final number um i didn't yet but i can do that i think it would be interesting right and the reason why i say is because i think just being taking that more strategic lens of some of these levers we're trying to pull i think being able to tell a thoughtful story that the reason why these levers matter isn't just the impact now it's the impact for the next decade right no i think that's fair and that impact compounds right either positively or negatively and so we want to see that how do you want to see the average you want to just see a rolling average so i think a rolling average is totally fine if you think that's appropriate i trust you on the math i would just like to see the change in the actual difference okay yeah and ultimately all of you as you know all of you can do whatever you want within the excel model but i will continue to keep what is sort of our latest and greatest version so uh it's probably more by coincidence that what we're carrying is a projected override number at the moment is close to what brian presented on august 31st just because there were numerous changes but that's kind of how it works so um anyway that's um i can tell you about the model at the moment so i think that um the schools their payroll we should have we should be we should be receiving um their their estimate of the payroll increase for the year and that should that should be either immediately available or calculated and we're also looking at the non-payroll expenses and i so any of you corrected if i'm wrong but i think that's the last piece that we will know anytime soon
which is the salaries the salaries and perhaps the non-payroll expenses um yeah i mean they're not payroll squishy because the sped costs are in there and but we can use them yeah we have ranges of yeah we all know if it goes off the chart like it did three or four years ago with you know it's going to be a totally different picture but i think last year they were carrying a really reasonable amount i haven't heard any updates of you know you have to kind of wait until the first quarter and the second quarter reports to find out how much of that's being utilized based on the number of students based on the type of uh a lot of district service they're receiving
you know circuit breaker amounts in the state last year turned out to be higher than had been budgeted and we also got a supplemental which doesn't happen all the time it's the second supplemental in two years so i would say we're probably not going to have real comfort on the school expense side but it'll be up to the schools to i think give a sense to brian and the town manager can can they live within based on their calculations can they live within sort of the five percent five percent assumptions that are baked into brian's model and our model at the moment and obviously if they say no it's gonna you know i mean how much it's you're off by it's going to have a different impact here
but
we just have to you know i'd say we just have to wait but i i still feel we shouldn't wait you know we could we could except you go we could if there was a sentiment to move forward and say something then we could along with our safely the classroom i think we truly don't have to kind of engage with that at all we're it's been a long way from how i think it was Typically we get the same report but we just get it better because typically they don't check out the 速 test test until their eigentlich where since debates tend to be果 traditional we see a lot of vindication it may have been out there which means it's gotta be negotiated so I'm you know i think we have to try that fairly quickly and once we have a standard form of the process we still can't cope but i think true system similar to having an mob at the front end of the process it could always be with a big subject two in the front of it it says subject two getting information from the school side that suggest that they can't live within what's currently in the model my hope is that they come back and say we can live within that Sc Data and When Can a student make I would like to be able to process the new version 7, but, you know, it's fair enough to be able to process the actual data. I think it's very hard for me. I mean, there's a lot of stuff floating around here. First of all, I don't feel comfortable making a recommendation without, well, that's not quite true. I don't know what the number are, but I feel like we could be able to say we might disagree on the outcome. But if this is the number, if it's an $800,000, $1,000, how do we deal with that? For the school committee, there are two people from the committee, a sludge board, and I would sit down with and I made a decision I could share your patient. We can't discuss it. There may be more coming. I do understand that the school committee may be able to accelerate the process, but it's not what I'm looking for. I mean, we all agree on the outcome. perhaps can increase the capital item and it can talk about that eventually yeah um and
i don't know if there's a connection but they may be reluctant to be pushing for an orion segment support a large piece of the way to study it so that the msbm is yeah yeah
yeah you might as well yeah fill in the details on that so in the five-year plan that you all included in your report last year in fiscal
30 there's a million dollar item funded with levy debt and it was intended to be spent for a feasibility study that will be required if the town gets admitted to the
msba building process approval process and the schools having completed their long-term study have decided they want to put in an application in the spring i found out at our city meeting last sipsi meeting that this will not be the first application they've put in in recent history they've actually put in at least two maybe three and some fire have not been invited uh in in five years yeah but those were submitted before they had completed the long-term study which was an involved process and i think their view is eventually the town would need to evidence the financial commitment uh toward paying for a feasibility study anyway and my sense is they feel that that might enhance the town's application by accelerating that from some later year it was really put in fiscal 30 as a placeholder uh and so what they've asked for is uh the sipsi and then ultimately the town manager ultimately finance committee uh that certainly comes through the managers process uh they've asked to accelerate that from fiscal 3 to fiscal 28 and they now think that's going to cost closer to 2 million dollars instead of 1 million dollars um at our last sipsi meeting i asked for at least some semblance of detail as to what that 2 million dollars might get spent on and so far the best that kirstie and patterson could do was to say look that's the input we received from the architect that helped them on the long-term planning and they have a lot of work on planning study that's based on other communities that they've been involved with. That's kind of the going great these days. We said, great, can you give us two or three communities that have spent that kind of money? We'd like to contact them. We'd like to be able to answer the question of okay, fine, we understand. Here's what's involved with the feasibility study. So we're hopeful that we'll get that information at some point. It could be that it doesn't show up until that comes before the Finance Committee and we ask the same question perhaps, right? I'm hoping that's not the case. So anyway, when that when we saw that request, I reached out to the Finance Director and said, okay this was in the five-year plan as levy debt. We don't have room in the levy debt. We stay within the parameters of the five-year plan. What's your recommendation? To which he told me that, told us, the SIPC that even though the apparently, even though the expense relates to a long-term building project, which itself would typically be financed over 20, maybe even 30 years now, the feasibility study of this type, as far as he knows, can only be financed over five years. So $2 million over five years, so you'd have at least $400,000 a year principal through if it was levy debt. So that's going right into the deficit, right? And interest. So first year would be $80,000 to $85,000 of interest. So his recommendation to SIPC was to recommend that it be handled through excluded debt. So at the moment, after our last meeting, that's what SIPC is leaning toward. But again, that'll be a recommendation until we finally decide to the town manager, who in turn, if that's what he decides, will produce. So, you know, his five-year plan with that recommendation, the finance committee, and then ultimately the select board would, as you know, would have a role because at some point, school committee or this committee in favor will have to recommend a ballot initiative either at next year's annual election or if someone advocates for an earlier election, in, you know, January or February. So I think when the school committee heard that from me, I think, initially, as a SIPC member, as I represent them, they weren't sure that was going to be the case, but they view that as an important ask that they want to have some sense that it's going to be successful with the ballot. And given where the number has been trending on the operating budget, I think it caused them, Carl, that even though they're meeting on the 24th of August, it sounded like they were all ready to show up at the select board meeting with both the presentation and a recommendation for a three-year operating override. I think with that information, it caused them to step back a little bit and want to think a bit more strategically about trying to pursue both an operating override and a debt exclusion, which is good for them. I think they're, I think they understand that no one wants to use up the credibility that school committee has, or we don't want to use up any credibility we have. And we've already had a couple of years now where people have said operating override's coming, it's coming, it doesn't show up. It's coming, but maybe yet again, it won't happen for fiscal 28. So that's the status of that situation. Why I wanted to send out that information was one, just to get people familiarized with it. But if in fact that becomes a path down which that item seems to be going, it struck me that FinCom and others involved in strategically thinking about what we're doing, you might want to think about, and SIPC hasn't, we haven't had this discussion yet, but we likely will. Are there one or more other large capital items that already have been approved as levy debt that you might choose to bundle on the same ballot and ask for a debt exclusion? Because right now, the debt service on those larger items is part of the deficit that we're looking at.
The item we're talking about, the MSBA, that won't affect operating budget until, if it was through, if it was levy debt, it wouldn't affect the operating budget until fiscal 29. But that may still be relevant to us if people are still pushing for a three-year override. We're going to need to at some point turn our attention to fiscal 29 and 30. But there are two or three other items that are in the debt tab that were approved in fiscal 25 or 26 that are, you know, a million and a half plus dollars each, which weren't recommended for debt exclusions. But if you were to bundle all of them together, you would say you would move out of levy expense a half a million dollars of debt service in fiscal 28. And it would become, you know, much like we give it a DPW facility, which is 4.7 million. You know, debt that was left. You could also consider, although it would have no effect at the moment on what we're doing here, but the septic loan, which the finance committee recommended be done, has excluded that. I believe at the end of the day, they didn't say why they didn't decide to do anything on it, but I believe they decided not to do anything on it last year because they were concerned about the long-term water project getting through. And didn't want to, again, give, get voter fatigue over being asked for overrides and ballot initiatives. And, you know, we had just done the debt exclusion in the fall of 2025. But if we're going to end up with a ballot question for the MSBA item, in addition to considering are there one or two or three large items that are levy debt at the moment, it makes sense to bundle. Do you want to clean up and go back and add? It's a great question. I think I'm going to go through a number of areas. One is the amendment to the 2 million dollar septic debt and has excluded debt. As I mentioned, right now, Brian is recommending that, because it's levy debt, he's recommending using the cap stabilization fund, each and every year on the debt service, so there's no, if that happens, there's no net effect on the deficit we're looking at. But each year that's going to require a two-thirds vote of town meeting to allow that withdrawal to occur. So from a housekeeping perspective, a logic perspective, I think that would be a good and not having the same long-term water item staring at the voters. My thinking over the weekend was, if we're marching down the path with debt exclusion and MSBA, we really should open up that avenue of thought as a way to contribute toward reducing the $800,000, much as it helped last year to exclude the highway garage debt. I don't think that's a discussion that's occurred at the working group, so feel free to raise it tomorrow when you're there. And I know at a recent Cypher meeting, even though it didn't take you up on your recommendation last year, I believe Bill Whitney said, why aren't we better using excluded debt to manage the operating override situation? So the door may be open a slight bit. Now, the schools in turn may say, hey, you know, we need to focus to be on the MSBA debt exclusion. So we're sure we can get that vote now through. We don't want that cluttered up with town-related debt. That's another discussion. And you can do individual items of debt separately. You can bundle them in town and school separately. You can bundle them all together, which the town has historically done, saying, hey, we're all kind of one town. But that's a whole discussion that I would suggest would be one of the better, you know, near-term options to focus on to close the gap here, which people may begin to gravitate around. So that's its relevance of talking about it prior to the capital budget. Anybody, is any of that confusing? None of this is in the Martin thing. No. Other than the septic debt piece that is there. There's an indirect transfer item to pay the debt service on that, even though the number's not quite right. So we have a policy. The town has a policy on things in the student debt. And that's typically for projects greater than $4.5 or $5 million. I forget. So that's a question. We read it last year, right? And it said that it was recommended, not required, so I think that's true. And also that the threshold that they set, essentially, my understanding is the way that we took a look at it, it was $2 million. And it was everything above $2 million was recommended, if I read that correctly. And we had talked about it because there were a couple of projects that were going to be under. And one of the things I think we had aligned on is the fact that that doesn't mean that we're obligated to use levy debt, the projects that are under. It's mostly just that all the projects above should be excluded debt for sure. And then the projects even under, for me, there's still a conversation to be had of whether or not to use levy debt versus excluded. I'd like that to be right. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I agree with Iris. And I would say if you look back historically at the time of debt exclusion, you'll see a bunch of bundled, so you think it's bundled items of debt in the aggregate, because if you added up all those items I just talked about, it would be around $7.5 million. And so including the $2 million for the septic, so that to me is kind of a housekeeping item. But I do worry about having to get the two-thirds vote every year to make that transfer, because any year it doesn't get approved, that comes out of the levy, right? But $7.5 million is not, I mean, that's not a particularly, and it's a big number, but it's not a particularly large number compared to some of the debt exclusions over the years.
So, anyway, that's just one of, there's probably another half a dozen that we can talk about, other things that might be considered. And if, Carly, you want to get into all those tonight, and then have a laundry list of other things. But I just thought that one, in light of that, asked by the schools, and given they're now focusing on, maybe that's going to influence how hard they're pushing for an operating override this year, I think that just opens up, that opportunity.
And as we talked about, just to remind everybody, debt exclusion is a temporary increase in the tax levy. It goes away when the debt's repaid, as opposed to asking. So if we included the $2 million MSBA item in levy debt, and you have a $400,000 plus interest associated debt service payment each year, and you've asked for an override each year to cover that, five years later, you've built up your, your levy capacity by $2 million plus the accrued interest. And for some, that isn't something they really want to do. You've loaded up the credit card. Now, it may be helpful, though, to your point, in looking out over eight to nine years, which we really have to be looking at, that any one of these items using excluded debt this way is going to chip away at, but still are going to be pretty sizable operating override requests coming, down the pipe. But anything you could do when you have the opportunity, you should think about taking it because once, once the deadline goes by, you kind of lost that opportunity. Agreed. I think that to me is another lever in terms of the idea of bundling for these capital projects and just saying, we know you're going to have a bunch of capital bundles as much as you can, and we will attempt to do an excluded debt to try to preserve the levy capital. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. Appreciating that it doesn't unfortunately have the impact we might want to direct to the president. Right. They're still going to feel the impact of that and they're still going to have to pay. But the benefit is it's not in the levy. We're able to therefore hopefully try to reduce the amount that we asked for in the levy override. Right. And then once we excluded that it's paid for, it goes by. So we're only asking you to pay for it. So the spec would be a five year, All the debt that I referred to is different. The MSBA happens to be five years of the finance director goals. The other two or three items that I identified, which at some point it becomes relevant to Carl, I can share with you. You can share with the appropriate folks, but most of that debt is spread out over 20 years. To Iris's point, which was the case in the fall, excluding debt doesn't add a nickel to what people are seeing in their tax bills. It's a risk mitigator in the fact that it reduces the shortfall in levy capacity over the next eight or nine years and therefore hopefully allows the town to be more sustainable. And we're not going to be successful when it has to go out and ask for operating overrides. Well, it also means that we're not baking in those increases. Correct. Which I think isn't working. But because the sub board wasn't totally transparent with why they chose not to, because your recommendations last year would have been helpful in that regard, albeit they came up with a clever way to achieve the same. Net effect, it just, and again, I get probably why they did it, but, you know, unless they may need four members out of five to vote with the debt exclusion on ballot. So, you know, I think they're going to have to be brought along if this is something that has potential. And it's the argument is no different than it was last fall with the DPW. I mean, it's not a single building, just that it's not a single loan. It's multiple loans that would be bundled, right? The one difference between this, the last fall and now is that we are looking at a million dollar overriding. Yeah. So. And it's a lever. It's a lever. And is there a specific known thing for this MSBH? Is it ready to study? Like this is what we want to do? Or is it just a matter of time? Or is it just a matter of time? They have the long-term study developed and you can, I don't know if I've circulated to people, but I'm happy to send the architect slide deck from a presentation that they made to the school committee about the various options they've explored. Did I distribute that, Carl? I'll send it to you, Carl. That'll give you more sense of what they were studying. I mean, in short, they're looking at all three elementary schools and the middle school, and they had all sorts of different, they had four or five different options. I see. All of which cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 30 years. And obviously, you even want to be able to get the state as a partner when you start marching down that path. But yeah, you know, for people to vote yay on a debt exclusion, for the $2 million, they're going to want to know, what is this? It's kind of like the long-term water supply. When they went before Tammy and kind of said, we need Tammy to vote us to allow us to put an application or statement of interest, whatever it was, and I don't think there's any money involved. People still said, what's the path down which we're starting and what's the number at the end? Right. A lot of money. Yeah. So I'll send that study to Carl. I can distribute it. All right. Thank you.
We could, if the group agrees, we could look at, like, pick around some other possible options for reducing the need for an override. We have to do that. But I think the bigger picture is, I'm not ready to recommend one. Period. I don't recommend an override right now. And I think we don't have enough information.
Yes, we can make assumptions. But, you know, if you trust the modeling, it's showing that it's rather unlikely. I'm not sure I understand the modeling. It's fairly close. It's fairly close and or a low amount. And there's a reasonable finish call. Well, so the second thing, is that we're entirely focused, and I think I mean the talent as well as just this committee, on one year. And I don't like the idea of looking into even thinking about recommending an override for one year without understanding really what's going on, at least in the next two.
Bill, to your point, you've asked to have other people, Brian, as an example, come talk to us. I would certainly like her. I would certainly like to hear from him and probably some others about Fiscal 29 and Fiscal 30 before we were to do that. And the third thing is, quite honestly, I don't have any personal confidence that we can show the diligence to the town yet. I'm not saying people haven't been doing their jobs. I just think they haven't shared it with us. That's my point. That's my point. I'm not saying people haven't shared it with us. I'm not saying people haven't shared it with us. And to just have the brainstorm, like we're doing here, you know, it would be nice to have them as a part of that. I also think that if whatever reason, right, there is, maybe it's because they're concerned about bringing in a $2 million asset. But if that's a reason, capital I, capital F, if that's a reason for not pushing an override, And the reality is they don't need an override. And the reality is they don't need an override. And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? and I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met which is ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up right it's a it's a decade there's there's nothing to suggest that the pressures on the budget ease up for the next decade and so regardless of whether we pass a one year or a three year operating override that's one of what's still to come we will need more there's nothing to suggest that that actually decreases and so in my mind part of this is it might seem to the public at large a bit silly for lack of a better term that we would be pushing so hard on trying to avoid these overrides a year at a time by pulling all these levers but the reality is every decision you make compounds over a decade in terms of impact and that's why I wanted to see it for Brian's modeling like okay we can take what was projected if we pass over this year to be a 60 mid 60s percent increase in taxes over the next decade we can bring that down 10 points to mid 50s I'm pretty happy with that I feel like we can demonstrate that's why we made this choice right as opposed to what we just didn't want to give you four hundred thousand dollars it's not about that it's about the compounding impact to the rest of the world. President's and I think that's worth some due diligence so I would agree with I guess all that to say I would agree with your point Carl that I also another point where I'm prepared to support.
I think there's a serious status thing that I think so I think politically it would be very difficult to defend people I mean I'm not a strategist but I think to the extent that we're showing an even put it off for one year, hey, they must be really trying, you know, they're really making an effort, and then if the override's a little bit larger in the out years, that actually means probably more to them, like, hey, this is real serious now, we've been doing our best, we've seen that we can put it off for two, three, four years, now, you know, we really need your help, and to me, that's an easier sell.
One counterpoint to that, I found an interesting comment at the school committee select board meeting, others picked up on it, but both the school committee chair and the finance director talked about on the one hand, the positive news that the retirement assessment for fiscal 28 went down by close to 400,000, but the finance director actually went as far as to call the middle sector to ask if one could continue the level pay on the theory that you would save through compounding. Your total retirement cost over time, which suggested to me that there's still some measure of rationale for going for an override in fiscal 28, in my mind, only if it's coupled with the other two years. You wouldn't do that particular maneuver for one year, so it was in effect saying, we need to build that 800, we need to build that 800,000 shortfall back up do something higher to basically be able to rationalize that's not what was said but but the amount you would actually save at least in the next nine years it's not i don't know 50 million dollar unfunded liability to pay an extra 400 000 it's not that material um so um and your point i wouldn't i i hear you on the school committees uh now you know spending some time focusing on the impact on having to do a debt exclusion possibly and an override i just think it caused them to step back and again in the interest of maintaining semblance of credibility when they go out and ask whatever they're going to ask for they want to be able to make the case get the voters out that are going to support them and
um you know again they won't know until they get this payroll calculated out whether they really might be okay not to say that it's not going to require some level of potential cuts and you know i still think politically or otherwise and partly it goes to iris's point i still think i'm in the camp of seeing some real budget reduction even if it's three or four hundred thousand dollars because that will have an effect over that long term and it sends a message that you know we're telling you that three or four hundred thousand on whichever side that falls um or more um um that that is causing the elimination of will cause the elimination of services and or impacts on the delivery of educational services that hurts now i get it but you know i think you have to be able to evidence something and looking back at what folks did over the last year or two or three i think in my mind the last year or two or three on the school side what they chose to give up kind of got offset by absorbing full-day kindergarten costs into the budget uh and children's way also got incorporated into the budget um and so those things kind of those were always objective things as well despite the fact that we've been of the school committee to get that done. They got it done. That's good for the town. But what we did two years ago, which they're pointing to, isn't as relevant for what's happening going forward. So I think they're still needing to digest the information and talk strategically about how they want to go about this. And I think hopefully they're going to probably be driving the bus here because they can, anybody, any board or committee could ask for an override, but they're obviously prepared to do so if they feel that's something they need to do so. So I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they don't feel they have push. They said they don't have room in their budget to cut. But then again, you hear the superintendent at that meeting say, but we had a couple of children's weight positions that folks left the positions and we chose not to. We replaced them. We figured out how to cover that.
Yeah, but that was in addition to, well, in addition to that saying that we already have cut what we can and there's not much room. Yeah, I'm negotiating. You've got to stake out your position that speaks to your constituency. I get it. But it was the same issue when the FinCon pushed back three or four years ago and said we need $600,000 to come out of this budget, the increase in tax. The tax rate is too high. Yeah, $360,000 went to the schools, the rest of the town. Schools identified five or six items that they had mentioned at the last meeting, all of which were things they didn't want to do, a couple of which caused 30 or 40 people to show up in our room and tell us why it was important that we not ask for that. And so we can get back to options in that. But one of the things Paul brought up at the last meeting is, you know, I think, the general sense, I think, is that there's still some of the assumptions we're using that are rightly conservative. But if history over the last few years cuts our way, we could end up with less of a problem. And one could basically say, okay, so you sent that as a case, even though you've identified some potential reductions found in school, we as a FinCon are prepared to share some of that. You know, excess. I'm not pointing for giving it all back, but because I still think you need evidence that there is some budget cutting. But I think if folks know that on the front end, that this FinCon, at least the majority is open to that concept, that again, may give people some comfort to say, okay, we'll get on board and figure out how to make it work. So, what about Robin? I think, Rob, do you want to chime in? I heard from you. Yeah, I'm just kind of working.
I guess one of the things that I'm still a little fuzzy on is just kind of the logistics of this, right? Like we're saying we're not prepared to say yes to an override, to, sorry, to recommend an override at this point is what some people in the room are saying. There are clearly, you know, a lot of numbers that are changing kind of week to week in this context. What is the actual like, low of this, right? Like, when do we need to make a recommendation or not? And if we don't recommend one and the things that are uncertain right now, don't break our way, you know, what happens? Is there another bite at that particular apple or just, you know, whatever the, over the shortfall is, it has to be budget cuts and that's the end of things. No, I mean, I think if I understood the process correctly, and if I understood the process correctly, there are some things that are required by law, right, to take place. The timing of it, if I'm, I'm appreciating, can be effectively, the timing of the vote can be basically all the way, right, before town meeting, right? Or after. Or after, right? As long as it's in the fiscal year, is that right, Brian? There's a certain number of days after the town meeting. Okay. Okay. So there you go, Rob. So up until town meeting, even possibly after town meeting within a certain number of days. So we get all the final numbers and have a final budget. February. I mean, right? Like by then we know that outstanding pieces have historically been the healthcare numbers, and some of the other things. Right. Some of their reimbursement numbers. So it is possible to answer your question. It is possible that something happens in February. We get some late breaking number that totally changes the budget. It's not probable, but it's possible, right? So just I'm choosing my words carefully and all of us have a change of heart and we all say, hold on a second. This can't be done. The numbers are too tight. We could then it is required that. We make a presentation to the select board around our recommendation. We could call for the override. We would present that. And then that has to be done six weeks before an election. Or is it just a couple of weeks before select board decides themselves they want an override. And then then two weeks before the sub board were to vote. This is their policy. It's not in the bylaws. Two weeks before they were to take a vote. Okay. They need to hear from the finance committee. Okay. At the moment, there would have to be a second presentation based on their policy general public. And once they vote, there's a certain amount of time they need to vote to get it on whatever whichever election ballot they want to get it on. So all the discussion thus far, as I understand it, has been. How do we not do this at the annual election? Whatever reason? And I think the reason is the town manager is of the view that he'd rather know if a override vote passes or fails before he builds his final budget. So in the past, he's over the last couple of years, he's advocated for a November vote. Turns out we didn't need them this year. He advocated for that again in June. And the sub board weren't in any position to try to make that happen. And so the November concept went out the window. They then started gravitating all around the January, February special election. We still got it done before the final budget had to be done to get it in the warrant. Yeah. And they'd also want to go for a split second to the best of my knowledge. That's where they are now. Yeah, that's the current thinking. And they also wanted to leave six to eight weeks, Rob, to at least do public education in advance of the vote. But by following that schedule, I think the question you're asking, Rob, a number of the assumptions, we won't have the answers to what the real numbers are, right? And it could turn out that you go forward, if you chose to go forward, with an amount of an override request for one, two, or three years. It sounds like they're still focused on if they go forward, three years. And find out, while 29 and 30 probably still are going to require overrides, 28 might turn out that you didn't actually need it for 28, because some of these other assumptions cut the town's way again. And so then you question what I was just saying. Traditionally, the town, going back to the early 2000s, just went through the normal budget process, found out all the information it needed, it looked at its budget, it said, okay, good news, we don't need an override. Oops, looks like we're going to need an override. And built two budgets so they could both appear in the warrant, and get that all done in the February, March timeframe for an election in April or May. I think they've set May as the annual town meeting month, and presumably the annual town election. So, you know, I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think, Rob, one of the questions that we talked about is, I'll come back to the very first meeting we started talking about this. There is a select board policy that sets forth a process that the select board must follow. We play a part in that.
And we could sit back and wait and see, how the select board and school committee, town manager, finance director, decide they want to proceed. And then dutifully show up when we're beckoned, and provide our recommendation based on whatever information we have, and whatever timing they choose to do that. Or, we could communicate that either a majority of the FinCom, based on everything we know at the moment, does not support pursuing an operating override for fiscal 28. Or, we could be more forceful and say, either we want, we don't want to see anything other than an override budget, or we want to see a budget that doesn't exceed X dollars. And then say something about, and we don't want to see it occur other than at the annual election, because we want to give time for the assumptions. And by the way, we're not so sure we want to see three years, because we haven't even gotten through studying fiscal 28 yet. Maybe three years makes sense. But maybe it'll make more sense next year, if we get past 28 without an override, you probably are going to have a desire to do three years. So, I think it's really a question for us as to, when and how do we want to weigh in? So, when I said that I wasn't prepared to support an override right now, frankly, that was shorthand, Rob, not for let's take a vote on yesterday on an override, but I think it's time to send a signal to the town, to the select board, to the school committee, to Michael and Brian. We have to decide what that signal is. But I think we should weigh in. Oh, I guess that kind of tracks that question of how proactive we want to be, or think it's our kind of role to be right now. How proactive do you want to be? Yeah, well, yeah. Or do we think we should be, right? Do you have a personal opinion on how proactive you think you want to be?
I guess in my... Sorry? Go ahead. In my head, it feels like this is... It feels like, to the point, it would be good to try to identify, I guess, what we think this process should be and what we think this flow should be. Right? Because, like you say, like, maybe the right... I guess I'm more interested right now in a conversation about what do we think we actually... Not, like, do we think an override is a good idea. Do we think that we support an override, we don't support an override, or we're reserving judgment until later, right? That feels like the conversation we're having right now. And I guess I'm a little more interested in the conversation of do we think that right now we as a body should be making any statement about that, or do we think that, you know, we should wait until the middle of November when we'll have data points A, B, and C, right? It kind of feels like we're... It's not clear what... And this is, I mean, this dovetails with kind of what I wanted to talk about later, right? It's not clear what the next milestone... What the milestones that lead up to the... What we want the milestones that lead up to the override to be to inform our conversations about whether this conversation is sort of premature, too late, right on time. So, I mean, it sounds from what you described, right? Like, the current plan on the table is that early February-ish, there's an ideal that maybe there should be a vote, that there's a... tentative proposal that there should be a decision on whether there is a vote or not six to eight weeks before that, which would put us in the middle of December. The select... That requires the select board to vote, so prior to the select board's vote, we need to present to them. If we assume this can take us a couple weeks to prepare a presentation for the select board, we're now talking sort of middle or late December, which would be when this body would need to have an opinion about how we feel about this in order for everything else to follow, right? We need to decide early and middle of November. We make the deck. We present to the select board in early December. They decide in the middle of December, you know, eight weeks, and then there's the election, right? So I guess as a... Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, back that up by four weeks, I think is what I've heard from the select board. They think they need to... I think if they... If they're inclined to accept a recommendation to go to a special election, call a special election in January or February, I believe they think they need to be in a position to make a vote by the end of October. Okay. Early November is the latest, which means we'd be in there in three or four weeks, five weeks' time. Yeah, so following up on Carl's point about, you know, what we need, it would be good to actually take a vote to make a decision at some point. You know, my earlier comment was, you know, they said, Bill, can you make a recommendation for or against? It's like, well, I'm not ready to recommend for an override. I'm not ready to recommend against. I would go so far as to say that I'm not ready to recommend for an override at this time, which is sort of the negative side. It's like, I'm not saying I'm against an override. I'm just saying we are not ready, potentially, as a committee, we are not ready to make a recommendation for this time for an override, because we see what they're offering and numbers that are still being discussed. So that at least gives an inkling like, hey, the finance committee might not be on board with an override. It doesn't put us into, yes, we recommend for an override. So it's a little bit more of a nuance. But it does take a stand. It does sort of say, look, we're not ready at this time to recommend an override. Well, nobody's asked us to. Right, right. That's true. That's true. We can volunteer that info. But I guess just, so I just want to respond to Brian's feedback about the four weeks, right? So basically you're saying the select board wants to decide early October, late November, which probably means they want to, sorry, late October, early November, which probably means they want to hear from us no later than mid-October. Is that fair to say? They're probably going to want our presentation and then a couple weeks to talk about it? At the moment, yep. Okay. So that does mean that we probably need to make a decision, you know, early October-ish so that we've got a couple weeks to prepare whatever presentation needs to be presented in the middle of October, right? So when we talk about, you know, recommend, don't recommend, don't yet have an opinion, it sounds like we probably do all need to have an opinion and we probably do need to have a vote by the end of September. Yeah. I think for that purpose, that sounds right, subject to hearing that the group that's meeting to decide the fate of this override decides that they have decided not to proceed with an override at the moment, which case everything will just push out into the future and could get back on the schedule, you know, sometime in early next year, a lot of what we need to be doing. I guess, you know, I, having, I don't know if any of you watched the school committee, school committee discussion on August 24th, but the brief discussion about what their plans were for the select board meeting on August 31st. And they basically were ready to go in and request that the select board place a question on a ballot for three-year override. And, and having watched that, my view was the train left the station and the momentum was all pushing that direction and there's going to be nothing, you know, to stop it at that point. The train maybe isn't going a hundred miles an hour. Maybe it's slowed to 75 at the moment. But my view is the discussion around the debt exclusion has at least slowed that amount down. Slowed that enough that if the FinCom wanted to weigh in and say, whatever we say, I know what I would say, but it would take a majority of this committee to say something that could potentially influence that momentum further. And then it's just a question of, are we prepared to coalesce around something sooner than later so that it will have the impact of potentially slowing that momentum 75 down to 50 to give a little bit more time for some of these other issues to be discussed, other options to be discussed. Understanding that, as Ira said, there could be surprises along the way that don't cut our way, they cut the other way. And that's why I said at the outset of tonight's meeting, anything we did, we could always put a big caveat on the front end of it. Subject to getting new information, like the calculated payroll for the schools coming in above what is currently in the model for the school payroll budget, that would influence how I think about it. But if they come in and don't need to ask for anything higher than that, I think I know what message I would want to deliver. I think the opening is there for them to slow that process down. I think they've already, I think the schools already took one minor step back just to make sure that they're not, again, losing credibility with their voter base. And so to me, it's just a question of do we want to, we almost would have to stake out whatever that message is tonight and have, you know, authorize Carl to deliver it either verbally to the working group tomorrow or, and then follow it up with something in writing, you know, to make sure that that message gets out there. And so I think that's, you know, one of the things that we need to do. Obviously if they, I've been circulating our minutes and draft form in the school committee chair. So you all are aware they're posted online. People can watch the videotapes, which I've encouraged them to watch. And I, you know, I don't know that our discussions over the last three meetings or so have influenced their thinking. I suspect they understand that we're not there. And, you know, the, you know, I think that's something that we can, you know, we can all take a little bit of a break. But, you know, I think it's just a matter of, you know, trying to get that message out there and trying to get it out there. And I think that's just, you know, it's a great way to sort of do some of the work that we're doing and trying to sort of train down the tracks. So I just think it's even stronger for us to deliver a direct message of whatever the direct message is, words in anybody's mouth but i mean it's fine to say yes you would yeah i mean depending on their version of emotion you know i'd be willing to take a vote tonight but i think it takes a little crafting with the word you can't just think of it all top of my head well i'm not going to be ready to recommend a budget and sorry recommend an override in early early october late september when we don't get the budget until december or later um i'm just not um but you said differently you're not prepared to make a recommendation based on the current forecasting information
that's not quite what i said and not quite what i meant
because i was hoping that there'll be more information by september but there won't be enough for me and i think it would be important i'd love to be able to walk in tomorrow if we agree to this that we need to say we would like you to produce a budget that does not alter overriding now that's a recommendation that's not a requirement they don't have to do what we say but i would all my thing on the record if we agree with the other side of it is if we say we don't recommend this but what what do we need to be okay with an override right what what do we like to see i think it needs to be a little bit more than just saying no that there shouldn't be another night
carl's point i thought was an interesting way to phrase it because it wasn't really weighing in on whether you're overriding or not it was saying you would just like to see an override budget that's not saying one way or the other but it's saying look you at least have to consider it i think that's the nuance but i don't consider that one yeah one question maybe
if we say anything about budget cut is is it limited to 28 or they're saying we want to see how we are going to manage your budget better over the next three years so it has an impact to um so at this point over 10 years right yeah my own view and i think bill you said something like this in one of our past meetings i just think um the
the good news is we have a multi-year forecast model the bad news is the town's efforts this is not casting personal attacks at anybody but the town's efforts are lagging what i have seen other communities do in advance of either a single or more importantly multi-year year requests i mean they're just they've spent a lot more time on it there's a lot more material a lot more uh education um and um i think absolutely there has to be a much
you know much um more focused um effort and and i think the working budget working group when i was on last year recommended to the chair of the psych board that and i think the former chair of the finance committee was with me at the meeting in fact he made the recommendation i believe is we think it really requires not just these informal staff slash a couple of volunteer members but it requires what we did back in the early 2000s a you know a form a a budget working committee made up of
five seven nine residents of varying backgrounds that work for you know a solid six to nine months coming up with recommendations ranging from looking for cost efficiencies again evidence that part to the voters evaluating strategically uh is it one year two year three year how do you irish point how do you explain the fact that you know once we go down this path we're likely on this path for a while absent some rabbit out of the hat not to say those don't exist for example the state may finally be set come back and say okay we're going to extend from 2036 to 2046 the time you have to fully fund your retirement and those numbers cut maybe not half but yeah yeah but those are all speculations right even but you have the money you have to evaluate that and and and so yeah hi for one okay you would like to see that type of thing the other thing which i don't think i've circulated it i think you can tell me if i provided a copy of you carl i may have mentioned it um it was marvel ed and i'm sure there are other communities uh you know their select board finance committee and schools may enter into a memorandum of understanding and said okay if if the town approves the three-year override we all agree that the next three-year budgets will come in within yes yeah we're not coming back i'd like to see that so that all out on the table is um so why can't that something like that with a more um detailed recommendation than sort of saying we can't even decide or i think it should be i think it should be part of it because you know it's just it's still with the condition that it based on the information we have now it's based on the numbers which are not finalized um for example you know what can we say okay you know we would be okay with an overwrite if the numbers look like these for next three years and the projected um which which projects into 10 years without any override for outside of those three years right yeah that's not gonna i mean there's i've been saying this for three years and here we are again talking about fiscal 28 potentially trying to sneak by without an override but um i think the numbers that we're looking at are going to be there for a while and the numbers that are in the model for fiscal 29 through 36 are on the high side
based on the way brian built the model and it's you know i think they need to be each year needs to be looked at individually the schools have to do the same if schools need to create a their own uh eight to ten year detailed financial forecast model and i've suggested that to the chair of the school committee that maybe they hire an outside person to come in and assist put that model together because this issue is not going away yeah yeah because if you're saying um we need an override for three years people who are voting for it i mean if they know that it's going to be you know again for three years and again for three years that's a different thing than saying this is just one time and then you know we are good for another five years or seven years or whatever it is this seems like more like never ending yeah absent a few data centers i think we're my new proxy for a new growth yeah but that's on the on the override side but also on the budget side you know what are the concrete steps or proposals from various you know whether it's down to you yeah again i don't it's just my view i don't see the town where the school is cutting their way out of out of what you see in the model in fiscal 29 you can make a dent on it but yeah yeah unless you're prepared to eliminate large numbers of staff um yeah um it's just no i'm not saying the deficit has to be zero we will be as a committee be okay with recommending an override if we see these things and which is so important to cut the budget my view is you'll know when you see it as i said if they come back and say they need the schools need a five and a half percent budget year-over-year increase instead of five that's in the model
the number starts pushing its way north and south its a standard to the first year you know schools pfahm budget year-over-year increase instead of five it's in the model um and the number starts pushing its way north and south um you know that's in the model but for theistics you have it's across the scale uh the um jellyfish right which one you just have any sort of a budget structure what marketing время taken toward four or five in the value is the number number starts pushing its way north of a million again yeah um i for one i'm gonna look at that and say i just don't you know unless we use some financial engineering for this one year i don't see how we're going to get off the train in which case i might point back the other way saying we might be better off asking for some amount of override this year because it will influence the out years yeah override amounts so which we would know in two weeks right or in a week uh as to the school payroll that's what i think maybe people are hoping um so um so i i'm supportive of your ability to send that message um about uh
you know we we really would prefer to see an override budget i would say presented to us and as to timing i'm not a big fan of trying to push this into a special election in january or february just because i think i think we will know as we always have known by february what the numbers are looking like that makes much more sense to me yeah to do it that's great i understand that manager's point of view on this but that's the way the town has done it historically and doesn't mean we can't change but i just think we would be forced into a position of either taking no position because we're not comfortable operating off of forecasted assumptions or possibly voting against because we're not prepared to support it so i i'm sure they you know it doesn't say they can't go forward with it a ballot question with the fincom taking no position or vote against but it's not probably where they would want to be no and again whatever we might say today following this discussion is advisory right we're not telling them they can't produce some budget well ultimately it's going to end up back in front of us in december january when we now have to be comfortable with a budget that we're going to present as our budget right two town meeting and so if we sitting here today we're staring at a budget that looked like this the question is would we say go back and sharpen your pencils and come back with an over a non-override budget because that's what we are sending the town meeting and if they don't and they come in and present a budget that's you know they got a vote it'd be tougher if they go to the ballot for town meeting even if they do that in april but than May. It would be tougher for us if they get the vote at the ballot, albeit it's a majority vote, it would be tougher for us to then attempt to cut something out of the budget that we present. It doesn't mean we can't do it if the majority decides to do it. For me, I think it's not just 28. They are saying it's a three-year, three years.
That's what the school was preparing to ask for. The answer, or the current position, at least I have, is there's no way with these numbers in the potential we can support that. It's too high. You're talking about 28 points. For three years, right? For three years. It's easy to say that you can come back with the budget. That's a different message, which is fine. I think the benefit of doing what Carl is suggesting is that if you can get by fiscal 28, you're not feeling a need to ask for an operating override for whatever the reasons, and you deliver a message to whomever, that is where we're headed. We're not going to do it. need to get a concerted focused effort starting tomorrow on fiscal 29 30 31 32 33 up to 36 with the notion that we'll probably be looking at a three-year override for 29 30 and 31 and we need that focus to continue from tomorrow until whenever next year and the decision is made when you then want to go to the ballot because at that point you may have sufficient time to get on the november ballot which is likely to bring out more people to vote than some special election or the annual town election but you can't you can't do this and people say okay we're going to back off like they did the last two years and then pick up their pencils next june and start again it has to it has to get an absolute focus personally i think there should be a separate appointed committee of some sort that when it's charged to spend the next six months of their lives diving into this much like other communities have done produce a report produce recommendations like the town did yeah i mean just echoing everything you just said i said you know there's going to be a three i support a three-year override but to me it will be a 29 to 31 because that gives us the time to do anything
but that's not what we're going to have for anything and the focus has been on just 28 right even with the 31st meeting and
well i mean it's important because the way the model is set up you have to you have to keep yourselves comfortable with fiscal 28 numbers because they drive all the other numbers which again this goes to my point you really need more detailed work in each of those years at least 29 30 31 particularly on the school side there are things like the bus contract that are going to hit in that three-year term that are going to force their budget up from and then the whole debt situation you know there's debt coming they're getting fully paid off and it's a it's you know it's a pretty involved detail analysis that has to occur so i applaud brian and the modeling i think he's done it's it's helpful but i think it's got to go deeper
okay can we make that happen carl well you have authority to do it sure you have four votes to make
so let's make sure i understand what it is that you're saying um
and if i need informal formal um recommendations and we can be seconded etc that's fine but so saying that we would like to see that produce a no override budget do we agree with that first fiscal 28 okay
we'd like to see a concerted effort made starting tomorrow uh through
june 30th next year um digging into the following three fiscal years heading toward a you know series of recommendations that folks can consider
and so that if an override is indeed required then there is more detail yeah yeah and uh i would add in that um i think we need to keep some of these things in place um because i think that's been a very important issue for us to address and to build a more comprehensive approach to the fiscal year um because i know that i've been on this meeting with the district legislature for a while and i think we have a lot of work to come out of this but i think that we need to keep the process going and i think that's what we need to do and so i think that's what we need to do and i think that's what we need to do and we need to keep the process going and i think the fincom has been represented on these budget working groups over the last three or four years um but i do think the finance committee But I think ultimately the FinCon is the gatekeeper, at least to town media. It is. Right? And so if you look at the other communities, it's all three of those boards are working in tandem over an extended period of time. So everybody ultimately hopes to get onto the same page and is pulling in the same direction. I think there has to be a commitment to that, and again, I think it's going to require a separately appointed committee, because the other people that have to do it have a day job. Right? Right? You know, as much as they'd like to spend time in it, they just go off and say, okay, that's behind me. And then lastly, we don't think if ultimately the decision is made to pursue an override for either fiscal 20, or three years, we don't think that should happen prior to the annual election in May. Yeah. Do we know I mean, I think on the face of it, all of that makes sense. The cost of this is time, right? The main cost of what we just described is that some number of people. Right? Who are doing work on behalf of the town, both paid and unpaid, are going to spend some amount of time on a budget that doesn't end up utilized. Right? That would be the only reason not to do what we just described. What do you mean by used? Do we know? If we agree now, either there's going to be an override or there's not going to be an override. Then people in the town will spend X hours building a budget based on override or not override. If we say, as we just said, that our position is we're not going to agree now, we're not going to agree before town meeting. Our meeting needs to see two budgets, one that's for an override and one that's not. The effort that went into preparing one of those overrides is, to some extent, kind of wasted. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not wasted and wasted. It's still informative. It helps people make their decision about how they want to vote. But it will be work that otherwise wouldn't have needed to happen, had we disagreed to or forbidden override at this point. Right. I guess I'm just trying to figure out, do we know who needs to do how much work? If we say right now we need two budgets for sure going into town meeting? I agree. Yeah, same back. we're not saying that but also if you assuming they you're right right we tell them that our sense as of september 26 is that we want to see a non-override budget that's going or say how do you prepare that well you got a budget or you got a model and you have to start thinking about what to cut for what what other revenue sources might be out there for what um financial engineering i think they have to do that work anyway because if they don't we won't be able to say with a straight face that we the town has done its homework unless people think that they can just get the right pass without any efforts that's right but i don't think people want to risk that no so i don't think it's really extra work
okay
we have some minutes left we'll just
of course so moved just being just being thoughtful about everyone's time no that's i appreciate that so your your motion ryan is that we the consensus of the committee is well we'll find out with the vote if there's a consensus to the committee i move that uh fincom is looking for a no override budget for fiscal 28. we're looking for immediate focus for the next six months potentially with a separate appointed committee on getting recommendations for a up to three-year override no later than june 30th 2027.
we have one other item oh and we have we uh in the event that the decision is made to uh pursue an operating override for fiscal 28 and perhaps fiscal 29 and 30 uh that that uh not be put on uh an election ballot prior to the may annual election
three three parts to my motion and second okay all in favor so i just want to make sure i understand what i'm voting on if that's okay so the first part of the motion is requesting a non-override budget and that
is that does that bind the town in the school to provide a non-override budget at this point is that just that's just a sentiment of the board kind of thing i think rob you're reading too much into we're not telling them not to have an override we're asking them what do the numbers look like without an override we're just asking for the list
to compare which which i think everyone has said which we would need going into town meeting anyway because the public could vote it down so it's not it is extra work to your point but it's work that has to come one way or the other so we would like to see a budget without an override is what you're asking for yes yeah i view it a little more strongly that it's sending a signal that we prefer not to see anything other than a non-override budget yeah but however however people read into what we're asking for and read our minutes of our meetings or watch our discussion on tape i think i think for rob's purpose though he's not taking a vote on whether or not he supports an overhand he's just taking a vote on whether or not like we are just asking to see the numbers we're just asking to see the numbers we're just asking to see the numbers with no override and are we asking to see in like a binding sense and or with any specific timeline so it's to brian's point if if
this is going to mean different it seems like this would mean different things to different people um if this is a a binding requirement that the town produce a budget with no override and we're saying yeah sure i guess can produce an override budget too if you want i think that's going to send a very specific message to the town especially if we volunteer that information without anyone necessarily asking us to provide it um which doesn't mean we can't say that but i just think in terms of how that would be perceived us piping up and saying yeah i think my motion was that the fincom and again people may want to vote against this motion for sure the fincom would prefer to see a non-override budget for fiscal 28. okay so it's it's it's not a binding it's a sense of the town it's a sense of the board as of this moment kind of thing pardon me yes i can okay and again as critical are the other couple elements yeah and because it's both with those especially the second thing we would like to see uh you know more effort towards reducing the number of people who are letting in to the producing more good data, whether for the next three years and so on, that supports this point that I had to say. Right. And of course, the first thing that will happen when somebody sees this videotape or talks to me tomorrow, they'll say, why? And I think I would go back to what I said earlier, which is that I think it's simply too early. We don't have enough information and that we need to be strategic and we need to show our diligence. So let's get started on that. Okay. Before we vote, one last discussion item. I would strongly urge, I know you all look at the minutes very carefully, but I would strongly urge you when you get to the draft ministers meeting that, you know, if you're going to vote, you look at how I word the motions and if there's anything that is off from what we just talked about, I'm sure you'll let me know at the next meeting. We should definitely, and we will. So we have a motion made and seconded, we'll call the vote. I think it was sort of a motion in three parts. We're voting on all three parts in one vote. I'd like to, if we need to change that. Yeah. Okay. We will. And the three parts are the requesting a non-override budget. The FinCom prefers to see a non-override budget for fiscal 28. FinCom requests that immediately the town begins work on looking at the next three years, fiscal 28. The next three years, fiscal 28. And the next three years, fiscal 28. Are there any other votes that are not in favor of the new budget? There is one that I think is a little less than a vote. I think it's not in favor of the new budget. I think it's a little less than a vote. I think it's a vote. Okay. Any other comments, Mr. Chair? No. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we have a motion to approve the new budget to be approved by June 30, 2027. And the second, that no, in any event, no vote be scheduled for a fiscal 28 override prior to the annual town election in May of 2027. Yes, that does. So, we do. We have a motion. directionally require the town to pair two budgets right that third one because if they don't know if they're going to have an override or not until the town meeting they kind of have to be prepared with never mind yeah they're gonna have to do it rob anyway yep for different reasons
okay so for the moment and hopefully hopefully we will be voting on all three of those elements of the motion at the same time unless anybody objects iris hi bill hi um i am with favor as well satish hi yes i am and rob yes okay thank you all um to iris's point it is now eight minutes before uh nine and i will leave it to the group to decide next the next topic would be the preliminary discussion on the capital budget i would say why don't you defer that since you already heard from me on some capital item tonight and hopefully we'll have time at the next meeting and i'll know a little bit more of our city um rob if you would like to uh you're up um
goals and timelines discussion yeah so we bled a little into that this is probably something we kind of chip away at over time i think my what i would like to accomplish with the goals and timelines conversation over time is to figure out just like we kind of talked about with some of the override stuff what key milestones or deliverables this board has over the course of the next over the remainder of the fiscal year and then work back from that to say hey you know again if we need to present to the select board by the middle of october then we need to have a decision by by late october by the late september right um given where we are in time i'd maybe just like to revisit that again in the context of the override conversation so i think we just said we just voted on our current perspective in terms of the next steps in the override conversation
are we expecting the select board to at some point definitively tell us are we expecting them to request a presentation from us is that like the next logistical step if this is going to proceed
well either the select board on its own motion or the school committee or some other town board committee would request an override conversation um and i think okay yeah that's the next step and that'll kick off a discussion on timing and hopefully our input will have been previously registered and depending on how that discussion goes that timing will either be accelerated because they're targeting january february or it'll be a more normal approach but the total time required for that process should be the same it's just either be shifted from the fall yeah
kind of a remarched time frame well obviously if it were a later a later timeline it could expand a bit right so someone's gonna someone would request an override which is the select board the school committee those are the two likely sources probably okay okay and then once that happens
maybe we don't need to go too deep in the weeds on this so from our perspective sounds like this isn't necessarily a topic we need to revisit until someone makes a formal request or not if and when someone makes a formal request you know we essentially probably have a couple of weeks to put together a presentation to to vote on our official position and then put together a presentation about why that is our official position yeah i think the only caveat i would say to that is the reason we got talking about this a month ago is because the train is moving 100 miles an hour down the path of a of a override at a special election in january february and the notion was as to this art warrant articles and other things to reviewing capital budgets to try to front end as much of that work as we could to smooth it out so we're not all bunched up in you know january february march next year um so i think the answer to your question is that would be the absolute starting point if the request is made and the select board tells carl or sends him a note here you go the clock's ticking but i think we'd be better served is as we go along here carl will presumably be plugged in to whatever discussions are occurring and if he senses the train speeding up again uh i for one would like to see us get going on on the figure out what kind of present even though we can't put numbers and things but at least we can talk about what do we envision in in that presentation um so it's it's kind of the hybrid of what you just said but if he goes to meeting tomorrow and they say carl we're still on the track of doing this and carl reports that back next week i think i think we need to carve out time on our agendas to focus on who's going to do what if that happens i will report it back yeah but but i also agree no sense worrying about that right this second until we kind of have to worry about it either because carl tells us we have to worry about it or we get a civic request because they keep carl in the dark a solid policy okay so and i guess laying this out in some sort of a far yeah yep yep and i'm kind of working on that right just sort of you know and basically so i can show you guys my very very very aggressively working process right be done with the uh draft warrant articles um and i guess that's kind of where i'm at right which is that i i kind of i'm trying to sort of times flowing from the top to the bottom work streams or or by column right but to just kind of frame out some idea of hey you know what are the big deliverables both going to be in terms of the warrant article process right how far through that do we need to be by when um to your point just to try to space the work right to say you know what needs to be delivered when when can we start on each piece of work and how do we make sure we're we're spreading it out reasonably over time and we're not surprised by anything um so this is like i said very work in process in part because i don't necessarily know what all the steps are but this is something where i think um even just chipping away at this sort of column by column and saying hey you know we talk about override communication i can kind of fill some of this in right the entire talk about budget right when do we expect to have what drafts and how much time do we want to book in in advance to review it um you know same with capital budget warren articles um so this is this is what i have in mind it is obviously very very far from finished and it's something that i don't think i can realistically complete on my own but we can maybe chip away at it in some of the meetings this is also something that i would hope um can be a somewhat persistent document right so not just this year's fincom but next year and the year after that the milestones and the timelines are probably going to be mostly the same so maybe carl if rob could distribute that to everybody in its current form and we could all based on maybe not the new folks but those that have been on the fincom before can all jot down our own notes and then um come prepared if it fits on the agenda next meeting and then it wouldn't be a bad thing once it's set up to as you have the minutes at the front end of the meeting and deal with those maybe you have a brief 10-minute look-see where are we on the chart each meeting are you ready to share that even in this form uh i can share it by our next meeting well i mean either way right you can you can see most of what it is um if it is useful to people in its current form or if it's not useful to people in its current form or if it's useful to people in its current form or if it's not useful to people in its current form i am happy to share it um if you if you send it via email then folks can distribute feedback so that way we
uh we could do that but he probably cannot then share it again share that back to everybody until we're in a meeting sounds good sounds good yeah so whatever you might just do respond directly to raw not to the rest of us correct you can't share it again until the live meeting yeah okay great well thank you um so that'll be on the agenda for next week um we really do need to appoint a representative need not the income member but i don't know anybody else outside the committee who's interested uh to this new fire department staffing working group um because it's late i will volunteer to do it unless somebody else does but it's gotta get done so so all in favor okay okay now uh next the next meeting dates and times so this is what happens when you plan your life out in advance um i've talked about this a lot at different times when i've worked with a lot of I will miss the next two meetings, because I'll be out of town, and I won't have internet access. These two items have been on my calendar for a few months or so. So, all right, Iris, we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. Yep, so for the next meeting, I will send out the agenda. It'll have the capital budget line item, the review of the, do you want to do milestone goals and timelines next, or on the 21st drop? Give you a little more time to collate feedback. Let's, well, let me actually double check. Let's pencil in the 21st. I think I'm actually going to miss next meeting also. So the 21st would be much better, now that I think about it. And then, are there other agenda items that we would like to go next? Yeah, we could put the capital item on. We could have, I prefer to have everybody here, but folks can watch the tape, hopefully. I'd like to get going on the capital five-year plan. And SIPC is making pretty good progress. So my goal is to, again, get people up the curve so that when the town manager finally delivers something, we don't have actually a lot of homework. And then, I anticipate by the 21st, so I had sent an email to Satish just looking for some help around those drafts, which they said yes to. So my hope is, at least for myself, I should have a little capacity by the 21st. Before the 21st, you all should receive a copy of a draft article. Send me your feedback, and then on the night of the 21st, we'll vote through it as a group. Okay, terrific. And hopefully, just to show you all, like, an example of how this might look. And hopefully, that also gives us some other things to get moving on. One other item for the agenda is on the 14th. Sure. You will have a draft of the FinCon 2026 report. Yeah. Probably by Friday, certainly. Well, yeah, certainly over the weekend, if not by Friday. Okay. And you could do whatever you want to it. Rip it apart. Approve it unanimously. You know, whatever on the 14th. Sounds great. If you have it, if it's not in perfect shape, and you have no reason to think that you won't have your own comments, you can send them back to me, and I'll get it back to you for the 21st. Sounds great. Okay. And I would suggest that you keep the 710 item and 735 item. Don't think we need as much time. Just as a standard agenda item. Which one? I'm sorry. The... Continue to review the multiyear budget item and the one right behind it and the prop two and a half, just because there may be things that we learn from Carl's meeting tomorrow to get this whole payroll information. I'll roll those over. Those should be a standard. Okay. You got it. I'll roll those forward. All right. So I will aim to get both of those agendas out actually on Thursday, just to make things a little bit easier for myself, and then in the spirit of meetings that are coming up. So Carl, you'll be out the 14th and the 21st. I will not be here the 28th. Okay. I'll be out for 28th as well. And probably not the 5th. So... Is that retaliatory? So Carl will probably need to come out with agendas while I'm out. All right. 28th, 10th, 5th. Bill, you're out. 28th. 20th. 20th. 21st. 20th. 20th. 20th. 20th. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. zajiaaaj. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 1st. 211. 111. 1. 1. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. Yeah. But I think if you're a office owner, you should be able to know where this was your decision. satish hi brian yes do we still have no rob dropped
all right thank you thank you all
our agenda tonight is to review the minutes of august 24th we'll continue our review of the finance director's multi-budget multi-year budget model we will continue our own discussion about the possibility of a proposition two and a half override at fiscal year 2028 um including uh reviewing the information provided as provided at the select board meeting on august 31st um the process and perhaps options for avoiding an override uh again we'll then take a preliminary look at the fiscal 28 capital budget and by your capital plan you will um i believe be reviewing and discussing um uh income's goals and fall timeline um typically rob tends to present on uh need to revisit the town manager's request that we appoint a representative to the fire department's staffing working group we will set our next meetings and dates and times with gold adjourning at approximately uh 9 pm uh with that uh are there any announcements within the committee that's good do the in-person virtual thing yes um in the room tonight i'm carl barnes i'm the chair to my far right is iris hawks the vice chair uh bill huss satish raj in private early online is remember rob clinton um thank you for the reminder um any other announcements i don't see anybody and there's the public online no apparently not
okay they don't know what they're missing so we can move on to those minutes
would be the um it's the original set for this meeting but it's the revised set that i've sent to all of you where i changed a couple dates on page four that makes sense
does and i i didn't review the original version but i reviewed the one mark device and i thought it was apply as written
of it
all right um
okay
all right so all right okay all right all right all right okay okay All right. Carl's an aye. Yes. Rob? Tim Stain. I wasn't here. I'm here. 5-0-1. Thank you. 0-1. Okay.
I continue our discussion of the budget model. You may have seen this last or sometime over the course of the last week, but as of August 31st, Ryan Keveny was predicting a deficit of about $631,000. That is down pretty substantially and due, I believe, entirely to having hard numbers for the retirement contribution for this year and also for next year. That number also includes still... No, I paused it. I can't remember what it is. The cushion? Yes, it includes this $200,000 cushion. The $631,000 doesn't include... Does not include... Okay, my notes are bad. Thank you.
By knowledge, nothing else has changed. The school board, I had expected to make a presentation at the meeting last week. I think most of you have got all of your Senate, they did not make one. They're still trying to get some numbers together. The select board had asked for those numbers for tonight's meeting, but no presentation from the school board was on the agenda for tonight's select board meeting. It seemed they said they need like two weeks. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think they said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, it's not a matter. That's right, it's two weeks from the 31st. Well, I have to say, it is at the outside, but it again, doesn't matter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a bit of a way to end up. May I add to what you just said, Carl? Please. Yeah. I checked with Brian just before I left the house, and he just confirmed that he had not yet received the updated salary information, which is what schools have committed to produce based on the settled contract and what teachers they know they have. Mm-hmm. And that'll become a basis for sure to look forward to see whether their overall payroll falls within, above, below what Brian's carrying in his model at the moment. Right. So we have the information in the memoranda of agreements about how that gets applied with seniority and steps in the main. Yeah, I suspect I think Kirsten Patterson has to, the first payroll, has to go through. Anyway, update everybody's payroll record to reflect cost of living and steps and ways. And I think when she completes that for payroll purposes, she can then, she won't give individuals, but she can provide that aggregate payroll number to Brian, and he can figure out how that fits before it doesn't fit. So that's going to be an important data point. It's a little start of us. It happened pretty soon. Yeah. I don't know when the payroll cycle is, but I know, Bill, you asked, I think at the last meeting, maybe it was time to find out what if any other changes Brian had made. As Carl, you just said, you can see his output as of August 31, it was $831,000. I asked him for the model that produced that number. I went through it, and I didn't, I decided not to give it to you, Carl, to distribute, just because I didn't want to get people bogged down in details tonight. But I'm happy to distribute it after we talk about things tonight. As I was going through it, I identified all of the changes he's made in assumptions. And at a high level, I'm happy to talk about what those changes are. Again, you can see the output, but there were items that caused his result to go up and down.
I did identify a number. It was an item in his debt tab that, in response to a question I had asked him, he made a change, which was based on some information he had provided to Select Board last March. That change reduced his number here by roughly $80,000, to now what it's showing. I, at the same time, had asked Michael Fea, the director of facilities, whether Brian's assumptions as to whether he's going to be able to get the money back. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. A different point of view. And I think Brian, as of late last week, now thinks he will have to borrow the full amount for this particular item. So he's likely going to be rerunning the model that he sent me. I'm sure he's going to rerun it a number of times. But the number you see in the revised August 31 presentation, absent him making other changes, they that offset it. It's likely to be $80,000 higher than what's on the page at the moment. Right here in the 631. Yeah. So with the question, it'll be closer to 911, 911,000.
But as I saw with some of the other changes he made, he decided to adjust some of the assumptions that had been in there since his original model that he provided us, which somewhat offset what would have otherwise been an even higher number here. So at a high level, he went through, there's a half town expenses and the model we've been working with has a town expense assumption and town payroll assumption. We're still carrying a 3% increase. He literally, went through each line item expenses and payroll and put a different inflation number in. I mean, some of the same, but not all of them are the same. So what I did is I sort of backed into what the net effect was of all his changes.
What was that five second updated?
Well, he already had changed his model reflects and 5% increase for school payroll and his reduction from 14 to 12% of health. Cause we're still in our model we've been working with. We're still assuming the 14% of health and four and a half percent on school. So the numbers that produced his result have 5% for school payroll, 12% for health. So anyway, when you look at all of his,
I should have thought I had that. 40% is his number down, I'm supposed to have at this point 75 to a hundred two and twenty-three? Is the number seven in my head?
It is even in half total. Okay.
And if I follow that in my paper, of all his changes C Yay. Almost cleaning up the nut soon.
So the weighted average changed city major expenses went from 1. 03% that we were carrying down a 1.0, 279, six percent, 0.03 percent to just under four percent and um just because of discussions with unions i'm not going to publicly state which ones he is showing at an elevated level at least at the moment and you'll see them when you get the model um and the item that he reduced again is an item that we haven't talked about so in his original model um under under the tpw department there's a couple of different line items for the snow and ice expense one is where the overtime payroll goes the folks that drive around town plow right and then there's another line item for services third-party services and supplies um so that's third-party plow operators etc and historically as in the last three or four years the snow and ice combined budget has been somewhere around 500 to 525 thousand dollars and if you look over the course of the last 10 years the average per year has been roughly about that number there's roughly seven years it was above and seven years it was below 15 year time horizon um uh the most recent snow this past winter um i don't know how it happened but they literally went it's the highest i've ever seen them go over the snow and ice budget uh they're over by 600 000 which required as we all know in the end of june a transfer from a bunch of other expense accounts um and so i guess although he hadn't called it out to me initially um brian in his model that he provided us which is in our model we've been working with increased the services and supplies by a hundred thousand dollars and increased the payroll over time lying by a hundred thousand dollars so pretty big impact relative to the last four or five years and when he made his changes i just talked about uh he eliminated one of those hundred thousand dollar adjustments or kind of offset it, which kind of cuts against only the reason he made them in the first place, which was trying to maybe come up with a more, in his mind, more reasonable snow and ice budget. The thing about the snow and ice budget, and this has been how the town has dealt with it over the years, is that I think I mentioned at our last meeting, there's three or four items in the state law that if you run over budget and you are unable to fund those with excess appropriations and any of your other expense line items, you can put it or you have to put it on the tax recap. So it automatically increases the amount you're going to raise in tax revenue. The town, I don't believe, has had to do that for some time, if ever, and we've generally had enough pushing in other accounts, as it turns out, at the end of the fiscal year to absorb any overage. The flip side is, in years, that the actual expense is lower, a more mild winter, those excess budget amounts end up in free cash. So the town traditionally has not attempted to be overly precise with that number, knowing that there are options to address an overage, and knowing that no one can predict the weather, and knowing that half the time we don't spend the amount that we've been budgeting. So as we move forward, Carl asked, what other ways can we go about reducing the forecast deficit? I'm highlighting this item just because you could make a case that probably it's not being unreasonable to adjust it, climate change, whatever, there's going to be more snow events, we may as well make it a little bit more precise. But you could also make the case that, as practice has been, let's just do what we've done in the last four or five years, and there might be another hundred grand that you could pull out of the forecast and reduce the amount of the overage. So I just plant that as a placeholder when we get to that point. The other... You're going to distribute this new amount? Yeah. I'd like to add to that. Yeah. So is that just average based on the last few years? No, I think what I'm saying is, if you look back to 2011, so 2011 to 2025, the average is 550,000. And I said half the time it was above that number by a little or more than a little, and then half the time it's below that. If you throw out the high and the low, you're probably closer to 525. And although I know what the transfer was in June, 600,000, and I know what the budget was, I haven't asked Brian for the actual numbers, but I'm a little concerned about that. But assuming that means it was 1.1 million, which, again, I just don't... I mean, it was an interesting winter, but I don't view it as being that extreme. But there were reasons, apparently. So much snowfall, certainly, in some of the bigger storms we've had in a number of years. Yes, certainly. In terms of severity. Yeah. And I think there were these days where it was kind of potentially icy. I'm not sure what it wanted to do, and it had to do more salting. So it also seemed to happen over the weekend every month. Yes. So that is true. Yeah. But I view that year, hopefully, I view that year as an absolute aberration. I would agree. By itself, I wouldn't necessarily view it as a reason to crank up the budget that we've been using for the last quarter of years. But if you want to see... What I'm interpreting from what you're saying, Brian, is that historically, we've had a set number. It is tough to predict, not that we couldn't take a look at the data and try to make perhaps a more accurate prediction, but still tough to predict. And I think what I'm hearing you say is there's nothing mechanically wrong with the way we've been operating. And while there is a negative risk that we take in continuing to operate the way we've historically been operating, we have yet to suffer that negative repercussion, because historically, we've had buffer in free cash. We've had buffer in the appropriations to be able to pay up when... For other accounts. Right. Exactly. That's correct. Okay. And so I think what I'm also hearing you say, and maybe this is more reasonable next step is, is any of that in terms of the negative outcome of the risk we take on by continuing to maintain that status quo, is that change as we go into tighter and tighter fiscal budgets? Is the amount of risk still the same as it currently is? Yeah. The tighter line items are budgeted. In theory, the less excess appropriation will be available at the end of the fiscal year. But we still have free cash, right? So, yeah. I mean, at some point, it could have an impact. But for the immediate term, if one was looking for an objective of how do you whittle down what's becoming a smaller number and or predicted to be a smaller number, I just throw out that that's one area that we haven't talked about. And I realized when I was going through his model that that had been in there, and the fact that he had retreated halfway from what he had built in as extra cushion. I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but when you send out the model, there's a little yellow cell that shows that snow. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So, you can see it. That helps. In the other relatively minor change, I guess, state aid for fiscal 27, actual state aid when he finally settled the numbers was $45,000 less than what has been in our model to date. So, that had an impact. So, you will see, and then the retirement expense he factored in, and then this debt item, he hasn't yet factored in. But when I send you the version 7, I'm going to, you're going to see it tying out to a number that's $80,000 higher than what Brian presented to the select board for that reason. But he may, as I said, ultimately come back with something that's different because he, again, wants to offset. So, anyway, you know, we'll hopefully then going forward for some period of time use version 7, which is what I'll distribute. But you're still able to sort of tweak some of the numbers. The other thing that I added, just because I decided myself, I was maybe focusing too much on the percentage year over year increase in the tax levy, which was, you know, six to six and a half percent, a little less. Two times we've looked at it. And I think I mentioned a chunk of that over a hundred basis points related to the debt referral from fiscal 27. So, we get double amount of debt service in fiscal 28. And as I mentioned at the last meeting, which again, you'll see on that first tab, the increased local receipts, increased state aid, drove down the. Estimated year over year tax increase that was printed in the warrant at 4.89%. It's down to 3.39%. So, I decided the simplest way to do it is you'll see a little line that averages 3.39% year over year for fiscal 27 and the six point, whatever it is for fiscal 28 currently. And it comes out a little bit over 5% on an average basis, which is still higher than sort of the last 20 years of 4.6%, whatever it was on that slide that I sent out. But I decided dealing with percentages on that item for that reason, given that prior year got driven lower for two reasons, probably wasn't the right way to be looking at it. So, you can make your own judgments. So, whether you use real dollars or percentages. So, I think other than that. And I made. I just I think it's great that Brian. I think it's great that Brian is making his own decisions. So, I think that's, you know, I think that's pretty good that Brian is making decisions that are easier to make. I think they're pretty good, but I don't think they're paying the same amount of attention to those things that I was doing before, because I'm the only person that worked on those things. I know they're not fucking great. But I, you know, I think it's great that Brian is making these decisions. Brian Atkins is making these decisions, I think. It comes down to those sorts of things that come out of the fiscal year. And leave it to you to make your own decisions. Brian's changes for the school salaries. Payroll, up to five percent. And health, down to 12%. as opposed to just this year into next year when you average out right um the example you just gave and get five percent did you carry that forward until we get to 2030 like if we were to look at and the reason i bring this up is because at our last meeting we had discussed the fact that if you look at every year the percentage increase that's anticipated for the next decade you get to or the taxpayer basically an increase of i think it was like 60 percent something like that right when you average it out did you happen to take a look at what that actually does to that final number um i didn't yet but i can do that i think it would be interesting right and the reason why i say is because i think just being taking that more strategic lens of some of these levers we're trying to pull i think being able to tell a thoughtful story that the reason why these levers matter isn't just the impact now it's the impact for the next decade right no i think that's fair and that impact compounds right either positively or negatively and so we want to see that how do you want to see the average you want to just see a rolling average so i think a rolling average is totally fine if you think that's appropriate i trust you on the math i would just like to see the change in the actual difference okay yeah and ultimately all of you as you know all of you can do whatever you want within the excel model but i will continue to keep what is sort of our latest and greatest version so uh it's probably more by coincidence that what we're carrying is a projected override number at the moment is close to what brian presented on august 31st just because there were numerous changes but that's kind of how it works so um anyway that's um i can tell you about the model at the moment so i think that um the schools their payroll we should have we should be we should be receiving um their their estimate of the payroll increase for the year and that should that should be either immediately available or calculated and we're also looking at the non-payroll expenses and i so any of you corrected if i'm wrong but i think that's the last piece that we will know anytime soon
which is the salaries the salaries and perhaps the non-payroll expenses um yeah i mean they're not payroll squishy because the sped costs are in there and but we can use them yeah we have ranges of yeah we all know if it goes off the chart like it did three or four years ago with you know it's going to be a totally different picture but i think last year they were carrying a really reasonable amount i haven't heard any updates of you know you have to kind of wait until the first quarter and the second quarter reports to find out how much of that's being utilized based on the number of students based on the type of uh a lot of district service they're receiving
you know circuit breaker amounts in the state last year turned out to be higher than had been budgeted and we also got a supplemental which doesn't happen all the time it's the second supplemental in two years so i would say we're probably not going to have real comfort on the school expense side but it'll be up to the schools to i think give a sense to brian and the town manager can can they live within based on their calculations can they live within sort of the five percent five percent assumptions that are baked into brian's model and our model at the moment and obviously if they say no it's gonna you know i mean how much it's you're off by it's going to have a different impact here
but
we just have to you know i'd say we just have to wait but i i still feel we shouldn't wait you know we could we could except you go we could if there was a sentiment to move forward and say something then we could along with our safely the classroom i think we truly don't have to kind of engage with that at all we're it's been a long way from how i think it was Typically we get the same report but we just get it better because typically they don't check out the 速 test test until their eigentlich where since debates tend to be果 traditional we see a lot of vindication it may have been out there which means it's gotta be negotiated so I'm you know i think we have to try that fairly quickly and once we have a standard form of the process we still can't cope but i think true system similar to having an mob at the front end of the process it could always be with a big subject two in the front of it it says subject two getting information from the school side that suggest that they can't live within what's currently in the model my hope is that they come back and say we can live within that Sc Data and When Can a student make I would like to be able to process the new version 7, but, you know, it's fair enough to be able to process the actual data. I think it's very hard for me. I mean, there's a lot of stuff floating around here. First of all, I don't feel comfortable making a recommendation without, well, that's not quite true. I don't know what the number are, but I feel like we could be able to say we might disagree on the outcome. But if this is the number, if it's an $800,000, $1,000, how do we deal with that? For the school committee, there are two people from the committee, a sludge board, and I would sit down with and I made a decision I could share your patient. We can't discuss it. There may be more coming. I do understand that the school committee may be able to accelerate the process, but it's not what I'm looking for. I mean, we all agree on the outcome. perhaps can increase the capital item and it can talk about that eventually yeah um and
i don't know if there's a connection but they may be reluctant to be pushing for an orion segment support a large piece of the way to study it so that the msbm is yeah yeah
yeah you might as well yeah fill in the details on that so in the five-year plan that you all included in your report last year in fiscal
30 there's a million dollar item funded with levy debt and it was intended to be spent for a feasibility study that will be required if the town gets admitted to the
msba building process approval process and the schools having completed their long-term study have decided they want to put in an application in the spring i found out at our city meeting last sipsi meeting that this will not be the first application they've put in in recent history they've actually put in at least two maybe three and some fire have not been invited uh in in five years yeah but those were submitted before they had completed the long-term study which was an involved process and i think their view is eventually the town would need to evidence the financial commitment uh toward paying for a feasibility study anyway and my sense is they feel that that might enhance the town's application by accelerating that from some later year it was really put in fiscal 30 as a placeholder uh and so what they've asked for is uh the sipsi and then ultimately the town manager ultimately finance committee uh that certainly comes through the managers process uh they've asked to accelerate that from fiscal 3 to fiscal 28 and they now think that's going to cost closer to 2 million dollars instead of 1 million dollars um at our last sipsi meeting i asked for at least some semblance of detail as to what that 2 million dollars might get spent on and so far the best that kirstie and patterson could do was to say look that's the input we received from the architect that helped them on the long-term planning and they have a lot of work on planning study that's based on other communities that they've been involved with. That's kind of the going great these days. We said, great, can you give us two or three communities that have spent that kind of money? We'd like to contact them. We'd like to be able to answer the question of okay, fine, we understand. Here's what's involved with the feasibility study. So we're hopeful that we'll get that information at some point. It could be that it doesn't show up until that comes before the Finance Committee and we ask the same question perhaps, right? I'm hoping that's not the case. So anyway, when that when we saw that request, I reached out to the Finance Director and said, okay this was in the five-year plan as levy debt. We don't have room in the levy debt. We stay within the parameters of the five-year plan. What's your recommendation? To which he told me that, told us, the SIPC that even though the apparently, even though the expense relates to a long-term building project, which itself would typically be financed over 20, maybe even 30 years now, the feasibility study of this type, as far as he knows, can only be financed over five years. So $2 million over five years, so you'd have at least $400,000 a year principal through if it was levy debt. So that's going right into the deficit, right? And interest. So first year would be $80,000 to $85,000 of interest. So his recommendation to SIPC was to recommend that it be handled through excluded debt. So at the moment, after our last meeting, that's what SIPC is leaning toward. But again, that'll be a recommendation until we finally decide to the town manager, who in turn, if that's what he decides, will produce. So, you know, his five-year plan with that recommendation, the finance committee, and then ultimately the select board would, as you know, would have a role because at some point, school committee or this committee in favor will have to recommend a ballot initiative either at next year's annual election or if someone advocates for an earlier election, in, you know, January or February. So I think when the school committee heard that from me, I think, initially, as a SIPC member, as I represent them, they weren't sure that was going to be the case, but they view that as an important ask that they want to have some sense that it's going to be successful with the ballot. And given where the number has been trending on the operating budget, I think it caused them, Carl, that even though they're meeting on the 24th of August, it sounded like they were all ready to show up at the select board meeting with both the presentation and a recommendation for a three-year operating override. I think with that information, it caused them to step back a little bit and want to think a bit more strategically about trying to pursue both an operating override and a debt exclusion, which is good for them. I think they're, I think they understand that no one wants to use up the credibility that school committee has, or we don't want to use up any credibility we have. And we've already had a couple of years now where people have said operating override's coming, it's coming, it doesn't show up. It's coming, but maybe yet again, it won't happen for fiscal 28. So that's the status of that situation. Why I wanted to send out that information was one, just to get people familiarized with it. But if in fact that becomes a path down which that item seems to be going, it struck me that FinCom and others involved in strategically thinking about what we're doing, you might want to think about, and SIPC hasn't, we haven't had this discussion yet, but we likely will. Are there one or more other large capital items that already have been approved as levy debt that you might choose to bundle on the same ballot and ask for a debt exclusion? Because right now, the debt service on those larger items is part of the deficit that we're looking at.
The item we're talking about, the MSBA, that won't affect operating budget until, if it was through, if it was levy debt, it wouldn't affect the operating budget until fiscal 29. But that may still be relevant to us if people are still pushing for a three-year override. We're going to need to at some point turn our attention to fiscal 29 and 30. But there are two or three other items that are in the debt tab that were approved in fiscal 25 or 26 that are, you know, a million and a half plus dollars each, which weren't recommended for debt exclusions. But if you were to bundle all of them together, you would say you would move out of levy expense a half a million dollars of debt service in fiscal 28. And it would become, you know, much like we give it a DPW facility, which is 4.7 million. You know, debt that was left. You could also consider, although it would have no effect at the moment on what we're doing here, but the septic loan, which the finance committee recommended be done, has excluded that. I believe at the end of the day, they didn't say why they didn't decide to do anything on it, but I believe they decided not to do anything on it last year because they were concerned about the long-term water project getting through. And didn't want to, again, give, get voter fatigue over being asked for overrides and ballot initiatives. And, you know, we had just done the debt exclusion in the fall of 2025. But if we're going to end up with a ballot question for the MSBA item, in addition to considering are there one or two or three large items that are levy debt at the moment, it makes sense to bundle. Do you want to clean up and go back and add? It's a great question. I think I'm going to go through a number of areas. One is the amendment to the 2 million dollar septic debt and has excluded debt. As I mentioned, right now, Brian is recommending that, because it's levy debt, he's recommending using the cap stabilization fund, each and every year on the debt service, so there's no, if that happens, there's no net effect on the deficit we're looking at. But each year that's going to require a two-thirds vote of town meeting to allow that withdrawal to occur. So from a housekeeping perspective, a logic perspective, I think that would be a good and not having the same long-term water item staring at the voters. My thinking over the weekend was, if we're marching down the path with debt exclusion and MSBA, we really should open up that avenue of thought as a way to contribute toward reducing the $800,000, much as it helped last year to exclude the highway garage debt. I don't think that's a discussion that's occurred at the working group, so feel free to raise it tomorrow when you're there. And I know at a recent Cypher meeting, even though it didn't take you up on your recommendation last year, I believe Bill Whitney said, why aren't we better using excluded debt to manage the operating override situation? So the door may be open a slight bit. Now, the schools in turn may say, hey, you know, we need to focus to be on the MSBA debt exclusion. So we're sure we can get that vote now through. We don't want that cluttered up with town-related debt. That's another discussion. And you can do individual items of debt separately. You can bundle them in town and school separately. You can bundle them all together, which the town has historically done, saying, hey, we're all kind of one town. But that's a whole discussion that I would suggest would be one of the better, you know, near-term options to focus on to close the gap here, which people may begin to gravitate around. So that's its relevance of talking about it prior to the capital budget. Anybody, is any of that confusing? None of this is in the Martin thing. No. Other than the septic debt piece that is there. There's an indirect transfer item to pay the debt service on that, even though the number's not quite right. So we have a policy. The town has a policy on things in the student debt. And that's typically for projects greater than $4.5 or $5 million. I forget. So that's a question. We read it last year, right? And it said that it was recommended, not required, so I think that's true. And also that the threshold that they set, essentially, my understanding is the way that we took a look at it, it was $2 million. And it was everything above $2 million was recommended, if I read that correctly. And we had talked about it because there were a couple of projects that were going to be under. And one of the things I think we had aligned on is the fact that that doesn't mean that we're obligated to use levy debt, the projects that are under. It's mostly just that all the projects above should be excluded debt for sure. And then the projects even under, for me, there's still a conversation to be had of whether or not to use levy debt versus excluded. I'd like that to be right. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I agree with Iris. And I would say if you look back historically at the time of debt exclusion, you'll see a bunch of bundled, so you think it's bundled items of debt in the aggregate, because if you added up all those items I just talked about, it would be around $7.5 million. And so including the $2 million for the septic, so that to me is kind of a housekeeping item. But I do worry about having to get the two-thirds vote every year to make that transfer, because any year it doesn't get approved, that comes out of the levy, right? But $7.5 million is not, I mean, that's not a particularly, and it's a big number, but it's not a particularly large number compared to some of the debt exclusions over the years.
So, anyway, that's just one of, there's probably another half a dozen that we can talk about, other things that might be considered. And if, Carly, you want to get into all those tonight, and then have a laundry list of other things. But I just thought that one, in light of that, asked by the schools, and given they're now focusing on, maybe that's going to influence how hard they're pushing for an operating override this year, I think that just opens up, that opportunity.
And as we talked about, just to remind everybody, debt exclusion is a temporary increase in the tax levy. It goes away when the debt's repaid, as opposed to asking. So if we included the $2 million MSBA item in levy debt, and you have a $400,000 plus interest associated debt service payment each year, and you've asked for an override each year to cover that, five years later, you've built up your, your levy capacity by $2 million plus the accrued interest. And for some, that isn't something they really want to do. You've loaded up the credit card. Now, it may be helpful, though, to your point, in looking out over eight to nine years, which we really have to be looking at, that any one of these items using excluded debt this way is going to chip away at, but still are going to be pretty sizable operating override requests coming, down the pipe. But anything you could do when you have the opportunity, you should think about taking it because once, once the deadline goes by, you kind of lost that opportunity. Agreed. I think that to me is another lever in terms of the idea of bundling for these capital projects and just saying, we know you're going to have a bunch of capital bundles as much as you can, and we will attempt to do an excluded debt to try to preserve the levy capital. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. Appreciating that it doesn't unfortunately have the impact we might want to direct to the president. Right. They're still going to feel the impact of that and they're still going to have to pay. But the benefit is it's not in the levy. We're able to therefore hopefully try to reduce the amount that we asked for in the levy override. Right. And then once we excluded that it's paid for, it goes by. So we're only asking you to pay for it. So the spec would be a five year, All the debt that I referred to is different. The MSBA happens to be five years of the finance director goals. The other two or three items that I identified, which at some point it becomes relevant to Carl, I can share with you. You can share with the appropriate folks, but most of that debt is spread out over 20 years. To Iris's point, which was the case in the fall, excluding debt doesn't add a nickel to what people are seeing in their tax bills. It's a risk mitigator in the fact that it reduces the shortfall in levy capacity over the next eight or nine years and therefore hopefully allows the town to be more sustainable. And we're not going to be successful when it has to go out and ask for operating overrides. Well, it also means that we're not baking in those increases. Correct. Which I think isn't working. But because the sub board wasn't totally transparent with why they chose not to, because your recommendations last year would have been helpful in that regard, albeit they came up with a clever way to achieve the same. Net effect, it just, and again, I get probably why they did it, but, you know, unless they may need four members out of five to vote with the debt exclusion on ballot. So, you know, I think they're going to have to be brought along if this is something that has potential. And it's the argument is no different than it was last fall with the DPW. I mean, it's not a single building, just that it's not a single loan. It's multiple loans that would be bundled, right? The one difference between this, the last fall and now is that we are looking at a million dollar overriding. Yeah. So. And it's a lever. It's a lever. And is there a specific known thing for this MSBH? Is it ready to study? Like this is what we want to do? Or is it just a matter of time? Or is it just a matter of time? They have the long-term study developed and you can, I don't know if I've circulated to people, but I'm happy to send the architect slide deck from a presentation that they made to the school committee about the various options they've explored. Did I distribute that, Carl? I'll send it to you, Carl. That'll give you more sense of what they were studying. I mean, in short, they're looking at all three elementary schools and the middle school, and they had all sorts of different, they had four or five different options. I see. All of which cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 30 years. And obviously, you even want to be able to get the state as a partner when you start marching down that path. But yeah, you know, for people to vote yay on a debt exclusion, for the $2 million, they're going to want to know, what is this? It's kind of like the long-term water supply. When they went before Tammy and kind of said, we need Tammy to vote us to allow us to put an application or statement of interest, whatever it was, and I don't think there's any money involved. People still said, what's the path down which we're starting and what's the number at the end? Right. A lot of money. Yeah. So I'll send that study to Carl. I can distribute it. All right. Thank you.
We could, if the group agrees, we could look at, like, pick around some other possible options for reducing the need for an override. We have to do that. But I think the bigger picture is, I'm not ready to recommend one. Period. I don't recommend an override right now. And I think we don't have enough information.
Yes, we can make assumptions. But, you know, if you trust the modeling, it's showing that it's rather unlikely. I'm not sure I understand the modeling. It's fairly close. It's fairly close and or a low amount. And there's a reasonable finish call. Well, so the second thing, is that we're entirely focused, and I think I mean the talent as well as just this committee, on one year. And I don't like the idea of looking into even thinking about recommending an override for one year without understanding really what's going on, at least in the next two.
Bill, to your point, you've asked to have other people, Brian, as an example, come talk to us. I would certainly like her. I would certainly like to hear from him and probably some others about Fiscal 29 and Fiscal 30 before we were to do that. And the third thing is, quite honestly, I don't have any personal confidence that we can show the diligence to the town yet. I'm not saying people haven't been doing their jobs. I just think they haven't shared it with us. That's my point. That's my point. I'm not saying people haven't shared it with us. I'm not saying people haven't shared it with us. And to just have the brainstorm, like we're doing here, you know, it would be nice to have them as a part of that. I also think that if whatever reason, right, there is, maybe it's because they're concerned about bringing in a $2 million asset. But if that's a reason, capital I, capital F, if that's a reason for not pushing an override, And the reality is they don't need an override. And the reality is they don't need an override. And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? And I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met, which is, ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up, right? and I think the point that I want to just make is the same one that I think dawned on me last time we met which is ties into this idea of looking more broadly across what's coming up right it's a it's a decade there's there's nothing to suggest that the pressures on the budget ease up for the next decade and so regardless of whether we pass a one year or a three year operating override that's one of what's still to come we will need more there's nothing to suggest that that actually decreases and so in my mind part of this is it might seem to the public at large a bit silly for lack of a better term that we would be pushing so hard on trying to avoid these overrides a year at a time by pulling all these levers but the reality is every decision you make compounds over a decade in terms of impact and that's why I wanted to see it for Brian's modeling like okay we can take what was projected if we pass over this year to be a 60 mid 60s percent increase in taxes over the next decade we can bring that down 10 points to mid 50s I'm pretty happy with that I feel like we can demonstrate that's why we made this choice right as opposed to what we just didn't want to give you four hundred thousand dollars it's not about that it's about the compounding impact to the rest of the world. President's and I think that's worth some due diligence so I would agree with I guess all that to say I would agree with your point Carl that I also another point where I'm prepared to support.
I think there's a serious status thing that I think so I think politically it would be very difficult to defend people I mean I'm not a strategist but I think to the extent that we're showing an even put it off for one year, hey, they must be really trying, you know, they're really making an effort, and then if the override's a little bit larger in the out years, that actually means probably more to them, like, hey, this is real serious now, we've been doing our best, we've seen that we can put it off for two, three, four years, now, you know, we really need your help, and to me, that's an easier sell.
One counterpoint to that, I found an interesting comment at the school committee select board meeting, others picked up on it, but both the school committee chair and the finance director talked about on the one hand, the positive news that the retirement assessment for fiscal 28 went down by close to 400,000, but the finance director actually went as far as to call the middle sector to ask if one could continue the level pay on the theory that you would save through compounding. Your total retirement cost over time, which suggested to me that there's still some measure of rationale for going for an override in fiscal 28, in my mind, only if it's coupled with the other two years. You wouldn't do that particular maneuver for one year, so it was in effect saying, we need to build that 800, we need to build that 800,000 shortfall back up do something higher to basically be able to rationalize that's not what was said but but the amount you would actually save at least in the next nine years it's not i don't know 50 million dollar unfunded liability to pay an extra 400 000 it's not that material um so um and your point i wouldn't i i hear you on the school committees uh now you know spending some time focusing on the impact on having to do a debt exclusion possibly and an override i just think it caused them to step back and again in the interest of maintaining semblance of credibility when they go out and ask whatever they're going to ask for they want to be able to make the case get the voters out that are going to support them and
um you know again they won't know until they get this payroll calculated out whether they really might be okay not to say that it's not going to require some level of potential cuts and you know i still think politically or otherwise and partly it goes to iris's point i still think i'm in the camp of seeing some real budget reduction even if it's three or four hundred thousand dollars because that will have an effect over that long term and it sends a message that you know we're telling you that three or four hundred thousand on whichever side that falls um or more um um that that is causing the elimination of will cause the elimination of services and or impacts on the delivery of educational services that hurts now i get it but you know i think you have to be able to evidence something and looking back at what folks did over the last year or two or three i think in my mind the last year or two or three on the school side what they chose to give up kind of got offset by absorbing full-day kindergarten costs into the budget uh and children's way also got incorporated into the budget um and so those things kind of those were always objective things as well despite the fact that we've been of the school committee to get that done. They got it done. That's good for the town. But what we did two years ago, which they're pointing to, isn't as relevant for what's happening going forward. So I think they're still needing to digest the information and talk strategically about how they want to go about this. And I think hopefully they're going to probably be driving the bus here because they can, anybody, any board or committee could ask for an override, but they're obviously prepared to do so if they feel that's something they need to do so. So I just want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they don't feel they have push. They said they don't have room in their budget to cut. But then again, you hear the superintendent at that meeting say, but we had a couple of children's weight positions that folks left the positions and we chose not to. We replaced them. We figured out how to cover that.
Yeah, but that was in addition to, well, in addition to that saying that we already have cut what we can and there's not much room. Yeah, I'm negotiating. You've got to stake out your position that speaks to your constituency. I get it. But it was the same issue when the FinCon pushed back three or four years ago and said we need $600,000 to come out of this budget, the increase in tax. The tax rate is too high. Yeah, $360,000 went to the schools, the rest of the town. Schools identified five or six items that they had mentioned at the last meeting, all of which were things they didn't want to do, a couple of which caused 30 or 40 people to show up in our room and tell us why it was important that we not ask for that. And so we can get back to options in that. But one of the things Paul brought up at the last meeting is, you know, I think, the general sense, I think, is that there's still some of the assumptions we're using that are rightly conservative. But if history over the last few years cuts our way, we could end up with less of a problem. And one could basically say, okay, so you sent that as a case, even though you've identified some potential reductions found in school, we as a FinCon are prepared to share some of that. You know, excess. I'm not pointing for giving it all back, but because I still think you need evidence that there is some budget cutting. But I think if folks know that on the front end, that this FinCon, at least the majority is open to that concept, that again, may give people some comfort to say, okay, we'll get on board and figure out how to make it work. So, what about Robin? I think, Rob, do you want to chime in? I heard from you. Yeah, I'm just kind of working.
I guess one of the things that I'm still a little fuzzy on is just kind of the logistics of this, right? Like we're saying we're not prepared to say yes to an override, to, sorry, to recommend an override at this point is what some people in the room are saying. There are clearly, you know, a lot of numbers that are changing kind of week to week in this context. What is the actual like, low of this, right? Like, when do we need to make a recommendation or not? And if we don't recommend one and the things that are uncertain right now, don't break our way, you know, what happens? Is there another bite at that particular apple or just, you know, whatever the, over the shortfall is, it has to be budget cuts and that's the end of things. No, I mean, I think if I understood the process correctly, and if I understood the process correctly, there are some things that are required by law, right, to take place. The timing of it, if I'm, I'm appreciating, can be effectively, the timing of the vote can be basically all the way, right, before town meeting, right? Or after. Or after, right? As long as it's in the fiscal year, is that right, Brian? There's a certain number of days after the town meeting. Okay. Okay. So there you go, Rob. So up until town meeting, even possibly after town meeting within a certain number of days. So we get all the final numbers and have a final budget. February. I mean, right? Like by then we know that outstanding pieces have historically been the healthcare numbers, and some of the other things. Right. Some of their reimbursement numbers. So it is possible to answer your question. It is possible that something happens in February. We get some late breaking number that totally changes the budget. It's not probable, but it's possible, right? So just I'm choosing my words carefully and all of us have a change of heart and we all say, hold on a second. This can't be done. The numbers are too tight. We could then it is required that. We make a presentation to the select board around our recommendation. We could call for the override. We would present that. And then that has to be done six weeks before an election. Or is it just a couple of weeks before select board decides themselves they want an override. And then then two weeks before the sub board were to vote. This is their policy. It's not in the bylaws. Two weeks before they were to take a vote. Okay. They need to hear from the finance committee. Okay. At the moment, there would have to be a second presentation based on their policy general public. And once they vote, there's a certain amount of time they need to vote to get it on whatever whichever election ballot they want to get it on. So all the discussion thus far, as I understand it, has been. How do we not do this at the annual election? Whatever reason? And I think the reason is the town manager is of the view that he'd rather know if a override vote passes or fails before he builds his final budget. So in the past, he's over the last couple of years, he's advocated for a November vote. Turns out we didn't need them this year. He advocated for that again in June. And the sub board weren't in any position to try to make that happen. And so the November concept went out the window. They then started gravitating all around the January, February special election. We still got it done before the final budget had to be done to get it in the warrant. Yeah. And they'd also want to go for a split second to the best of my knowledge. That's where they are now. Yeah, that's the current thinking. And they also wanted to leave six to eight weeks, Rob, to at least do public education in advance of the vote. But by following that schedule, I think the question you're asking, Rob, a number of the assumptions, we won't have the answers to what the real numbers are, right? And it could turn out that you go forward, if you chose to go forward, with an amount of an override request for one, two, or three years. It sounds like they're still focused on if they go forward, three years. And find out, while 29 and 30 probably still are going to require overrides, 28 might turn out that you didn't actually need it for 28, because some of these other assumptions cut the town's way again. And so then you question what I was just saying. Traditionally, the town, going back to the early 2000s, just went through the normal budget process, found out all the information it needed, it looked at its budget, it said, okay, good news, we don't need an override. Oops, looks like we're going to need an override. And built two budgets so they could both appear in the warrant, and get that all done in the February, March timeframe for an election in April or May. I think they've set May as the annual town meeting month, and presumably the annual town election. So, you know, I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think, Rob, one of the questions that we talked about is, I'll come back to the very first meeting we started talking about this. There is a select board policy that sets forth a process that the select board must follow. We play a part in that.
And we could sit back and wait and see, how the select board and school committee, town manager, finance director, decide they want to proceed. And then dutifully show up when we're beckoned, and provide our recommendation based on whatever information we have, and whatever timing they choose to do that. Or, we could communicate that either a majority of the FinCom, based on everything we know at the moment, does not support pursuing an operating override for fiscal 28. Or, we could be more forceful and say, either we want, we don't want to see anything other than an override budget, or we want to see a budget that doesn't exceed X dollars. And then say something about, and we don't want to see it occur other than at the annual election, because we want to give time for the assumptions. And by the way, we're not so sure we want to see three years, because we haven't even gotten through studying fiscal 28 yet. Maybe three years makes sense. But maybe it'll make more sense next year, if we get past 28 without an override, you probably are going to have a desire to do three years. So, I think it's really a question for us as to, when and how do we want to weigh in? So, when I said that I wasn't prepared to support an override right now, frankly, that was shorthand, Rob, not for let's take a vote on yesterday on an override, but I think it's time to send a signal to the town, to the select board, to the school committee, to Michael and Brian. We have to decide what that signal is. But I think we should weigh in. Oh, I guess that kind of tracks that question of how proactive we want to be, or think it's our kind of role to be right now. How proactive do you want to be? Yeah, well, yeah. Or do we think we should be, right? Do you have a personal opinion on how proactive you think you want to be?
I guess in my... Sorry? Go ahead. In my head, it feels like this is... It feels like, to the point, it would be good to try to identify, I guess, what we think this process should be and what we think this flow should be. Right? Because, like you say, like, maybe the right... I guess I'm more interested right now in a conversation about what do we think we actually... Not, like, do we think an override is a good idea. Do we think that we support an override, we don't support an override, or we're reserving judgment until later, right? That feels like the conversation we're having right now. And I guess I'm a little more interested in the conversation of do we think that right now we as a body should be making any statement about that, or do we think that, you know, we should wait until the middle of November when we'll have data points A, B, and C, right? It kind of feels like we're... It's not clear what... And this is, I mean, this dovetails with kind of what I wanted to talk about later, right? It's not clear what the next milestone... What the milestones that lead up to the... What we want the milestones that lead up to the override to be to inform our conversations about whether this conversation is sort of premature, too late, right on time. So, I mean, it sounds from what you described, right? Like, the current plan on the table is that early February-ish, there's an ideal that maybe there should be a vote, that there's a... tentative proposal that there should be a decision on whether there is a vote or not six to eight weeks before that, which would put us in the middle of December. The select... That requires the select board to vote, so prior to the select board's vote, we need to present to them. If we assume this can take us a couple weeks to prepare a presentation for the select board, we're now talking sort of middle or late December, which would be when this body would need to have an opinion about how we feel about this in order for everything else to follow, right? We need to decide early and middle of November. We make the deck. We present to the select board in early December. They decide in the middle of December, you know, eight weeks, and then there's the election, right? So I guess as a... Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, back that up by four weeks, I think is what I've heard from the select board. They think they need to... I think if they... If they're inclined to accept a recommendation to go to a special election, call a special election in January or February, I believe they think they need to be in a position to make a vote by the end of October. Okay. Early November is the latest, which means we'd be in there in three or four weeks, five weeks' time. Yeah, so following up on Carl's point about, you know, what we need, it would be good to actually take a vote to make a decision at some point. You know, my earlier comment was, you know, they said, Bill, can you make a recommendation for or against? It's like, well, I'm not ready to recommend for an override. I'm not ready to recommend against. I would go so far as to say that I'm not ready to recommend for an override at this time, which is sort of the negative side. It's like, I'm not saying I'm against an override. I'm just saying we are not ready, potentially, as a committee, we are not ready to make a recommendation for this time for an override, because we see what they're offering and numbers that are still being discussed. So that at least gives an inkling like, hey, the finance committee might not be on board with an override. It doesn't put us into, yes, we recommend for an override. So it's a little bit more of a nuance. But it does take a stand. It does sort of say, look, we're not ready at this time to recommend an override. Well, nobody's asked us to. Right, right. That's true. That's true. We can volunteer that info. But I guess just, so I just want to respond to Brian's feedback about the four weeks, right? So basically you're saying the select board wants to decide early October, late November, which probably means they want to, sorry, late October, early November, which probably means they want to hear from us no later than mid-October. Is that fair to say? They're probably going to want our presentation and then a couple weeks to talk about it? At the moment, yep. Okay. So that does mean that we probably need to make a decision, you know, early October-ish so that we've got a couple weeks to prepare whatever presentation needs to be presented in the middle of October, right? So when we talk about, you know, recommend, don't recommend, don't yet have an opinion, it sounds like we probably do all need to have an opinion and we probably do need to have a vote by the end of September. Yeah. I think for that purpose, that sounds right, subject to hearing that the group that's meeting to decide the fate of this override decides that they have decided not to proceed with an override at the moment, which case everything will just push out into the future and could get back on the schedule, you know, sometime in early next year, a lot of what we need to be doing. I guess, you know, I, having, I don't know if any of you watched the school committee, school committee discussion on August 24th, but the brief discussion about what their plans were for the select board meeting on August 31st. And they basically were ready to go in and request that the select board place a question on a ballot for three-year override. And, and having watched that, my view was the train left the station and the momentum was all pushing that direction and there's going to be nothing, you know, to stop it at that point. The train maybe isn't going a hundred miles an hour. Maybe it's slowed to 75 at the moment. But my view is the discussion around the debt exclusion has at least slowed that amount down. Slowed that enough that if the FinCom wanted to weigh in and say, whatever we say, I know what I would say, but it would take a majority of this committee to say something that could potentially influence that momentum further. And then it's just a question of, are we prepared to coalesce around something sooner than later so that it will have the impact of potentially slowing that momentum 75 down to 50 to give a little bit more time for some of these other issues to be discussed, other options to be discussed. Understanding that, as Ira said, there could be surprises along the way that don't cut our way, they cut the other way. And that's why I said at the outset of tonight's meeting, anything we did, we could always put a big caveat on the front end of it. Subject to getting new information, like the calculated payroll for the schools coming in above what is currently in the model for the school payroll budget, that would influence how I think about it. But if they come in and don't need to ask for anything higher than that, I think I know what message I would want to deliver. I think the opening is there for them to slow that process down. I think they've already, I think the schools already took one minor step back just to make sure that they're not, again, losing credibility with their voter base. And so to me, it's just a question of do we want to, we almost would have to stake out whatever that message is tonight and have, you know, authorize Carl to deliver it either verbally to the working group tomorrow or, and then follow it up with something in writing, you know, to make sure that that message gets out there. And so I think that's, you know, one of the things that we need to do. Obviously if they, I've been circulating our minutes and draft form in the school committee chair. So you all are aware they're posted online. People can watch the videotapes, which I've encouraged them to watch. And I, you know, I don't know that our discussions over the last three meetings or so have influenced their thinking. I suspect they understand that we're not there. And, you know, the, you know, I think that's something that we can, you know, we can all take a little bit of a break. But, you know, I think it's just a matter of, you know, trying to get that message out there and trying to get it out there. And I think that's just, you know, it's a great way to sort of do some of the work that we're doing and trying to sort of train down the tracks. So I just think it's even stronger for us to deliver a direct message of whatever the direct message is, words in anybody's mouth but i mean it's fine to say yes you would yeah i mean depending on their version of emotion you know i'd be willing to take a vote tonight but i think it takes a little crafting with the word you can't just think of it all top of my head well i'm not going to be ready to recommend a budget and sorry recommend an override in early early october late september when we don't get the budget until december or later um i'm just not um but you said differently you're not prepared to make a recommendation based on the current forecasting information
that's not quite what i said and not quite what i meant
because i was hoping that there'll be more information by september but there won't be enough for me and i think it would be important i'd love to be able to walk in tomorrow if we agree to this that we need to say we would like you to produce a budget that does not alter overriding now that's a recommendation that's not a requirement they don't have to do what we say but i would all my thing on the record if we agree with the other side of it is if we say we don't recommend this but what what do we need to be okay with an override right what what do we like to see i think it needs to be a little bit more than just saying no that there shouldn't be another night
carl's point i thought was an interesting way to phrase it because it wasn't really weighing in on whether you're overriding or not it was saying you would just like to see an override budget that's not saying one way or the other but it's saying look you at least have to consider it i think that's the nuance but i don't consider that one yeah one question maybe
if we say anything about budget cut is is it limited to 28 or they're saying we want to see how we are going to manage your budget better over the next three years so it has an impact to um so at this point over 10 years right yeah my own view and i think bill you said something like this in one of our past meetings i just think um the
the good news is we have a multi-year forecast model the bad news is the town's efforts this is not casting personal attacks at anybody but the town's efforts are lagging what i have seen other communities do in advance of either a single or more importantly multi-year year requests i mean they're just they've spent a lot more time on it there's a lot more material a lot more uh education um and um i think absolutely there has to be a much
you know much um more focused um effort and and i think the working budget working group when i was on last year recommended to the chair of the psych board that and i think the former chair of the finance committee was with me at the meeting in fact he made the recommendation i believe is we think it really requires not just these informal staff slash a couple of volunteer members but it requires what we did back in the early 2000s a you know a form a a budget working committee made up of
five seven nine residents of varying backgrounds that work for you know a solid six to nine months coming up with recommendations ranging from looking for cost efficiencies again evidence that part to the voters evaluating strategically uh is it one year two year three year how do you irish point how do you explain the fact that you know once we go down this path we're likely on this path for a while absent some rabbit out of the hat not to say those don't exist for example the state may finally be set come back and say okay we're going to extend from 2036 to 2046 the time you have to fully fund your retirement and those numbers cut maybe not half but yeah yeah but those are all speculations right even but you have the money you have to evaluate that and and and so yeah hi for one okay you would like to see that type of thing the other thing which i don't think i've circulated it i think you can tell me if i provided a copy of you carl i may have mentioned it um it was marvel ed and i'm sure there are other communities uh you know their select board finance committee and schools may enter into a memorandum of understanding and said okay if if the town approves the three-year override we all agree that the next three-year budgets will come in within yes yeah we're not coming back i'd like to see that so that all out on the table is um so why can't that something like that with a more um detailed recommendation than sort of saying we can't even decide or i think it should be i think it should be part of it because you know it's just it's still with the condition that it based on the information we have now it's based on the numbers which are not finalized um for example you know what can we say okay you know we would be okay with an overwrite if the numbers look like these for next three years and the projected um which which projects into 10 years without any override for outside of those three years right yeah that's not gonna i mean there's i've been saying this for three years and here we are again talking about fiscal 28 potentially trying to sneak by without an override but um i think the numbers that we're looking at are going to be there for a while and the numbers that are in the model for fiscal 29 through 36 are on the high side
based on the way brian built the model and it's you know i think they need to be each year needs to be looked at individually the schools have to do the same if schools need to create a their own uh eight to ten year detailed financial forecast model and i've suggested that to the chair of the school committee that maybe they hire an outside person to come in and assist put that model together because this issue is not going away yeah yeah because if you're saying um we need an override for three years people who are voting for it i mean if they know that it's going to be you know again for three years and again for three years that's a different thing than saying this is just one time and then you know we are good for another five years or seven years or whatever it is this seems like more like never ending yeah absent a few data centers i think we're my new proxy for a new growth yeah but that's on the on the override side but also on the budget side you know what are the concrete steps or proposals from various you know whether it's down to you yeah again i don't it's just my view i don't see the town where the school is cutting their way out of out of what you see in the model in fiscal 29 you can make a dent on it but yeah yeah unless you're prepared to eliminate large numbers of staff um yeah um it's just no i'm not saying the deficit has to be zero we will be as a committee be okay with recommending an override if we see these things and which is so important to cut the budget my view is you'll know when you see it as i said if they come back and say they need the schools need a five and a half percent budget year-over-year increase instead of five that's in the model
the number starts pushing its way north and south its a standard to the first year you know schools pfahm budget year-over-year increase instead of five it's in the model um and the number starts pushing its way north and south um you know that's in the model but for theistics you have it's across the scale uh the um jellyfish right which one you just have any sort of a budget structure what marketing время taken toward four or five in the value is the number number starts pushing its way north of a million again yeah um i for one i'm gonna look at that and say i just don't you know unless we use some financial engineering for this one year i don't see how we're going to get off the train in which case i might point back the other way saying we might be better off asking for some amount of override this year because it will influence the out years yeah override amounts so which we would know in two weeks right or in a week uh as to the school payroll that's what i think maybe people are hoping um so um so i i'm supportive of your ability to send that message um about uh
you know we we really would prefer to see an override budget i would say presented to us and as to timing i'm not a big fan of trying to push this into a special election in january or february just because i think i think we will know as we always have known by february what the numbers are looking like that makes much more sense to me yeah to do it that's great i understand that manager's point of view on this but that's the way the town has done it historically and doesn't mean we can't change but i just think we would be forced into a position of either taking no position because we're not comfortable operating off of forecasted assumptions or possibly voting against because we're not prepared to support it so i i'm sure they you know it doesn't say they can't go forward with it a ballot question with the fincom taking no position or vote against but it's not probably where they would want to be no and again whatever we might say today following this discussion is advisory right we're not telling them they can't produce some budget well ultimately it's going to end up back in front of us in december january when we now have to be comfortable with a budget that we're going to present as our budget right two town meeting and so if we sitting here today we're staring at a budget that looked like this the question is would we say go back and sharpen your pencils and come back with an over a non-override budget because that's what we are sending the town meeting and if they don't and they come in and present a budget that's you know they got a vote it'd be tougher if they go to the ballot for town meeting even if they do that in april but than May. It would be tougher for us if they get the vote at the ballot, albeit it's a majority vote, it would be tougher for us to then attempt to cut something out of the budget that we present. It doesn't mean we can't do it if the majority decides to do it. For me, I think it's not just 28. They are saying it's a three-year, three years.
That's what the school was preparing to ask for. The answer, or the current position, at least I have, is there's no way with these numbers in the potential we can support that. It's too high. You're talking about 28 points. For three years, right? For three years. It's easy to say that you can come back with the budget. That's a different message, which is fine. I think the benefit of doing what Carl is suggesting is that if you can get by fiscal 28, you're not feeling a need to ask for an operating override for whatever the reasons, and you deliver a message to whomever, that is where we're headed. We're not going to do it. need to get a concerted focused effort starting tomorrow on fiscal 29 30 31 32 33 up to 36 with the notion that we'll probably be looking at a three-year override for 29 30 and 31 and we need that focus to continue from tomorrow until whenever next year and the decision is made when you then want to go to the ballot because at that point you may have sufficient time to get on the november ballot which is likely to bring out more people to vote than some special election or the annual town election but you can't you can't do this and people say okay we're going to back off like they did the last two years and then pick up their pencils next june and start again it has to it has to get an absolute focus personally i think there should be a separate appointed committee of some sort that when it's charged to spend the next six months of their lives diving into this much like other communities have done produce a report produce recommendations like the town did yeah i mean just echoing everything you just said i said you know there's going to be a three i support a three-year override but to me it will be a 29 to 31 because that gives us the time to do anything
but that's not what we're going to have for anything and the focus has been on just 28 right even with the 31st meeting and
well i mean it's important because the way the model is set up you have to you have to keep yourselves comfortable with fiscal 28 numbers because they drive all the other numbers which again this goes to my point you really need more detailed work in each of those years at least 29 30 31 particularly on the school side there are things like the bus contract that are going to hit in that three-year term that are going to force their budget up from and then the whole debt situation you know there's debt coming they're getting fully paid off and it's a it's you know it's a pretty involved detail analysis that has to occur so i applaud brian and the modeling i think he's done it's it's helpful but i think it's got to go deeper
okay can we make that happen carl well you have authority to do it sure you have four votes to make
so let's make sure i understand what it is that you're saying um
and if i need informal formal um recommendations and we can be seconded etc that's fine but so saying that we would like to see that produce a no override budget do we agree with that first fiscal 28 okay
we'd like to see a concerted effort made starting tomorrow uh through
june 30th next year um digging into the following three fiscal years heading toward a you know series of recommendations that folks can consider
and so that if an override is indeed required then there is more detail yeah yeah and uh i would add in that um i think we need to keep some of these things in place um because i think that's been a very important issue for us to address and to build a more comprehensive approach to the fiscal year um because i know that i've been on this meeting with the district legislature for a while and i think we have a lot of work to come out of this but i think that we need to keep the process going and i think that's what we need to do and so i think that's what we need to do and i think that's what we need to do and we need to keep the process going and i think the fincom has been represented on these budget working groups over the last three or four years um but i do think the finance committee But I think ultimately the FinCon is the gatekeeper, at least to town media. It is. Right? And so if you look at the other communities, it's all three of those boards are working in tandem over an extended period of time. So everybody ultimately hopes to get onto the same page and is pulling in the same direction. I think there has to be a commitment to that, and again, I think it's going to require a separately appointed committee, because the other people that have to do it have a day job. Right? Right? You know, as much as they'd like to spend time in it, they just go off and say, okay, that's behind me. And then lastly, we don't think if ultimately the decision is made to pursue an override for either fiscal 20, or three years, we don't think that should happen prior to the annual election in May. Yeah. Do we know I mean, I think on the face of it, all of that makes sense. The cost of this is time, right? The main cost of what we just described is that some number of people. Right? Who are doing work on behalf of the town, both paid and unpaid, are going to spend some amount of time on a budget that doesn't end up utilized. Right? That would be the only reason not to do what we just described. What do you mean by used? Do we know? If we agree now, either there's going to be an override or there's not going to be an override. Then people in the town will spend X hours building a budget based on override or not override. If we say, as we just said, that our position is we're not going to agree now, we're not going to agree before town meeting. Our meeting needs to see two budgets, one that's for an override and one that's not. The effort that went into preparing one of those overrides is, to some extent, kind of wasted. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not wasted and wasted. It's still informative. It helps people make their decision about how they want to vote. But it will be work that otherwise wouldn't have needed to happen, had we disagreed to or forbidden override at this point. Right. I guess I'm just trying to figure out, do we know who needs to do how much work? If we say right now we need two budgets for sure going into town meeting? I agree. Yeah, same back. we're not saying that but also if you assuming they you're right right we tell them that our sense as of september 26 is that we want to see a non-override budget that's going or say how do you prepare that well you got a budget or you got a model and you have to start thinking about what to cut for what what other revenue sources might be out there for what um financial engineering i think they have to do that work anyway because if they don't we won't be able to say with a straight face that we the town has done its homework unless people think that they can just get the right pass without any efforts that's right but i don't think people want to risk that no so i don't think it's really extra work
okay
we have some minutes left we'll just
of course so moved just being just being thoughtful about everyone's time no that's i appreciate that so your your motion ryan is that we the consensus of the committee is well we'll find out with the vote if there's a consensus to the committee i move that uh fincom is looking for a no override budget for fiscal 28. we're looking for immediate focus for the next six months potentially with a separate appointed committee on getting recommendations for a up to three-year override no later than june 30th 2027.
we have one other item oh and we have we uh in the event that the decision is made to uh pursue an operating override for fiscal 28 and perhaps fiscal 29 and 30 uh that that uh not be put on uh an election ballot prior to the may annual election
three three parts to my motion and second okay all in favor so i just want to make sure i understand what i'm voting on if that's okay so the first part of the motion is requesting a non-override budget and that
is that does that bind the town in the school to provide a non-override budget at this point is that just that's just a sentiment of the board kind of thing i think rob you're reading too much into we're not telling them not to have an override we're asking them what do the numbers look like without an override we're just asking for the list
to compare which which i think everyone has said which we would need going into town meeting anyway because the public could vote it down so it's not it is extra work to your point but it's work that has to come one way or the other so we would like to see a budget without an override is what you're asking for yes yeah i view it a little more strongly that it's sending a signal that we prefer not to see anything other than a non-override budget yeah but however however people read into what we're asking for and read our minutes of our meetings or watch our discussion on tape i think i think for rob's purpose though he's not taking a vote on whether or not he supports an overhand he's just taking a vote on whether or not like we are just asking to see the numbers we're just asking to see the numbers we're just asking to see the numbers with no override and are we asking to see in like a binding sense and or with any specific timeline so it's to brian's point if if
this is going to mean different it seems like this would mean different things to different people um if this is a a binding requirement that the town produce a budget with no override and we're saying yeah sure i guess can produce an override budget too if you want i think that's going to send a very specific message to the town especially if we volunteer that information without anyone necessarily asking us to provide it um which doesn't mean we can't say that but i just think in terms of how that would be perceived us piping up and saying yeah i think my motion was that the fincom and again people may want to vote against this motion for sure the fincom would prefer to see a non-override budget for fiscal 28. okay so it's it's it's not a binding it's a sense of the town it's a sense of the board as of this moment kind of thing pardon me yes i can okay and again as critical are the other couple elements yeah and because it's both with those especially the second thing we would like to see uh you know more effort towards reducing the number of people who are letting in to the producing more good data, whether for the next three years and so on, that supports this point that I had to say. Right. And of course, the first thing that will happen when somebody sees this videotape or talks to me tomorrow, they'll say, why? And I think I would go back to what I said earlier, which is that I think it's simply too early. We don't have enough information and that we need to be strategic and we need to show our diligence. So let's get started on that. Okay. Before we vote, one last discussion item. I would strongly urge, I know you all look at the minutes very carefully, but I would strongly urge you when you get to the draft ministers meeting that, you know, if you're going to vote, you look at how I word the motions and if there's anything that is off from what we just talked about, I'm sure you'll let me know at the next meeting. We should definitely, and we will. So we have a motion made and seconded, we'll call the vote. I think it was sort of a motion in three parts. We're voting on all three parts in one vote. I'd like to, if we need to change that. Yeah. Okay. We will. And the three parts are the requesting a non-override budget. The FinCom prefers to see a non-override budget for fiscal 28. FinCom requests that immediately the town begins work on looking at the next three years, fiscal 28. The next three years, fiscal 28. And the next three years, fiscal 28. Are there any other votes that are not in favor of the new budget? There is one that I think is a little less than a vote. I think it's not in favor of the new budget. I think it's a little less than a vote. I think it's a vote. Okay. Any other comments, Mr. Chair? No. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we have a motion to approve the new budget to be approved by June 30, 2027. And the second, that no, in any event, no vote be scheduled for a fiscal 28 override prior to the annual town election in May of 2027. Yes, that does. So, we do. We have a motion. directionally require the town to pair two budgets right that third one because if they don't know if they're going to have an override or not until the town meeting they kind of have to be prepared with never mind yeah they're gonna have to do it rob anyway yep for different reasons
okay so for the moment and hopefully hopefully we will be voting on all three of those elements of the motion at the same time unless anybody objects iris hi bill hi um i am with favor as well satish hi yes i am and rob yes okay thank you all um to iris's point it is now eight minutes before uh nine and i will leave it to the group to decide next the next topic would be the preliminary discussion on the capital budget i would say why don't you defer that since you already heard from me on some capital item tonight and hopefully we'll have time at the next meeting and i'll know a little bit more of our city um rob if you would like to uh you're up um
goals and timelines discussion yeah so we bled a little into that this is probably something we kind of chip away at over time i think my what i would like to accomplish with the goals and timelines conversation over time is to figure out just like we kind of talked about with some of the override stuff what key milestones or deliverables this board has over the course of the next over the remainder of the fiscal year and then work back from that to say hey you know again if we need to present to the select board by the middle of october then we need to have a decision by by late october by the late september right um given where we are in time i'd maybe just like to revisit that again in the context of the override conversation so i think we just said we just voted on our current perspective in terms of the next steps in the override conversation
are we expecting the select board to at some point definitively tell us are we expecting them to request a presentation from us is that like the next logistical step if this is going to proceed
well either the select board on its own motion or the school committee or some other town board committee would request an override conversation um and i think okay yeah that's the next step and that'll kick off a discussion on timing and hopefully our input will have been previously registered and depending on how that discussion goes that timing will either be accelerated because they're targeting january february or it'll be a more normal approach but the total time required for that process should be the same it's just either be shifted from the fall yeah
kind of a remarched time frame well obviously if it were a later a later timeline it could expand a bit right so someone's gonna someone would request an override which is the select board the school committee those are the two likely sources probably okay okay and then once that happens
maybe we don't need to go too deep in the weeds on this so from our perspective sounds like this isn't necessarily a topic we need to revisit until someone makes a formal request or not if and when someone makes a formal request you know we essentially probably have a couple of weeks to put together a presentation to to vote on our official position and then put together a presentation about why that is our official position yeah i think the only caveat i would say to that is the reason we got talking about this a month ago is because the train is moving 100 miles an hour down the path of a of a override at a special election in january february and the notion was as to this art warrant articles and other things to reviewing capital budgets to try to front end as much of that work as we could to smooth it out so we're not all bunched up in you know january february march next year um so i think the answer to your question is that would be the absolute starting point if the request is made and the select board tells carl or sends him a note here you go the clock's ticking but i think we'd be better served is as we go along here carl will presumably be plugged in to whatever discussions are occurring and if he senses the train speeding up again uh i for one would like to see us get going on on the figure out what kind of present even though we can't put numbers and things but at least we can talk about what do we envision in in that presentation um so it's it's kind of the hybrid of what you just said but if he goes to meeting tomorrow and they say carl we're still on the track of doing this and carl reports that back next week i think i think we need to carve out time on our agendas to focus on who's going to do what if that happens i will report it back yeah but but i also agree no sense worrying about that right this second until we kind of have to worry about it either because carl tells us we have to worry about it or we get a civic request because they keep carl in the dark a solid policy okay so and i guess laying this out in some sort of a far yeah yep yep and i'm kind of working on that right just sort of you know and basically so i can show you guys my very very very aggressively working process right be done with the uh draft warrant articles um and i guess that's kind of where i'm at right which is that i i kind of i'm trying to sort of times flowing from the top to the bottom work streams or or by column right but to just kind of frame out some idea of hey you know what are the big deliverables both going to be in terms of the warrant article process right how far through that do we need to be by when um to your point just to try to space the work right to say you know what needs to be delivered when when can we start on each piece of work and how do we make sure we're we're spreading it out reasonably over time and we're not surprised by anything um so this is like i said very work in process in part because i don't necessarily know what all the steps are but this is something where i think um even just chipping away at this sort of column by column and saying hey you know we talk about override communication i can kind of fill some of this in right the entire talk about budget right when do we expect to have what drafts and how much time do we want to book in in advance to review it um you know same with capital budget warren articles um so this is this is what i have in mind it is obviously very very far from finished and it's something that i don't think i can realistically complete on my own but we can maybe chip away at it in some of the meetings this is also something that i would hope um can be a somewhat persistent document right so not just this year's fincom but next year and the year after that the milestones and the timelines are probably going to be mostly the same so maybe carl if rob could distribute that to everybody in its current form and we could all based on maybe not the new folks but those that have been on the fincom before can all jot down our own notes and then um come prepared if it fits on the agenda next meeting and then it wouldn't be a bad thing once it's set up to as you have the minutes at the front end of the meeting and deal with those maybe you have a brief 10-minute look-see where are we on the chart each meeting are you ready to share that even in this form uh i can share it by our next meeting well i mean either way right you can you can see most of what it is um if it is useful to people in its current form or if it's not useful to people in its current form or if it's useful to people in its current form or if it's not useful to people in its current form i am happy to share it um if you if you send it via email then folks can distribute feedback so that way we
uh we could do that but he probably cannot then share it again share that back to everybody until we're in a meeting sounds good sounds good yeah so whatever you might just do respond directly to raw not to the rest of us correct you can't share it again until the live meeting yeah okay great well thank you um so that'll be on the agenda for next week um we really do need to appoint a representative need not the income member but i don't know anybody else outside the committee who's interested uh to this new fire department staffing working group um because it's late i will volunteer to do it unless somebody else does but it's gotta get done so so all in favor okay okay now uh next the next meeting dates and times so this is what happens when you plan your life out in advance um i've talked about this a lot at different times when i've worked with a lot of I will miss the next two meetings, because I'll be out of town, and I won't have internet access. These two items have been on my calendar for a few months or so. So, all right, Iris, we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to talk about. Yep, so for the next meeting, I will send out the agenda. It'll have the capital budget line item, the review of the, do you want to do milestone goals and timelines next, or on the 21st drop? Give you a little more time to collate feedback. Let's, well, let me actually double check. Let's pencil in the 21st. I think I'm actually going to miss next meeting also. So the 21st would be much better, now that I think about it. And then, are there other agenda items that we would like to go next? Yeah, we could put the capital item on. We could have, I prefer to have everybody here, but folks can watch the tape, hopefully. I'd like to get going on the capital five-year plan. And SIPC is making pretty good progress. So my goal is to, again, get people up the curve so that when the town manager finally delivers something, we don't have actually a lot of homework. And then, I anticipate by the 21st, so I had sent an email to Satish just looking for some help around those drafts, which they said yes to. So my hope is, at least for myself, I should have a little capacity by the 21st. Before the 21st, you all should receive a copy of a draft article. Send me your feedback, and then on the night of the 21st, we'll vote through it as a group. Okay, terrific. And hopefully, just to show you all, like, an example of how this might look. And hopefully, that also gives us some other things to get moving on. One other item for the agenda is on the 14th. Sure. You will have a draft of the FinCon 2026 report. Yeah. Probably by Friday, certainly. Well, yeah, certainly over the weekend, if not by Friday. Okay. And you could do whatever you want to it. Rip it apart. Approve it unanimously. You know, whatever on the 14th. Sounds great. If you have it, if it's not in perfect shape, and you have no reason to think that you won't have your own comments, you can send them back to me, and I'll get it back to you for the 21st. Sounds great. Okay. And I would suggest that you keep the 710 item and 735 item. Don't think we need as much time. Just as a standard agenda item. Which one? I'm sorry. The... Continue to review the multiyear budget item and the one right behind it and the prop two and a half, just because there may be things that we learn from Carl's meeting tomorrow to get this whole payroll information. I'll roll those over. Those should be a standard. Okay. You got it. I'll roll those forward. All right. So I will aim to get both of those agendas out actually on Thursday, just to make things a little bit easier for myself, and then in the spirit of meetings that are coming up. So Carl, you'll be out the 14th and the 21st. I will not be here the 28th. Okay. I'll be out for 28th as well. And probably not the 5th. So... Is that retaliatory? So Carl will probably need to come out with agendas while I'm out. All right. 28th, 10th, 5th. Bill, you're out. 28th. 20th. 20th. 21st. 20th. 20th. 20th. 20th. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. zajiaaaj. 21st. 21st. 21st. 21st. 1st. 211. 111. 1. 1. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. 10 to closed. Yeah. But I think if you're a office owner, you should be able to know where this was your decision. satish hi brian yes do we still have no rob dropped
all right thank you thank you all