School Committee: April 8, 2024

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 Can people hear me now?

0:04 How is it now? Can You hear it now? You can hear us now. Okay. Yes. All right, perfect. Well, I’m not gonna go through all that again, but I think those of you that are on this meeting have probably heard most of it already. But, um, anyways, where was I? So the schools like Health and Waste, like Park and Rec, like others that have these other revenue sources revolving accounts, um, part participated in this exercise to really dig in and see what available funds were in there. Um, in order to, um, presumably present a, a a, a budget in excess of, um, the balance budget from the general fund, um, to be able to hopefully not have to cut additional, uh, significant costs for fiscal year 25. Um, that being said, I do acknowledge that a number of those, uh, costs like health

0:50 and waste, for example, um, just to do a comparison are, are one time. And, you know, as we move into the future, and we’ll talk a lot more later tonight about, about the longer term plan continuing to be developed, um, some of those will have to be revisited because, um, you know, without some sort of solution to our revenue challenge, um, it’ll be difficult to continue to carry those without being able to rely on all of those revolving, um, and reserve funds that, that the schools are looking at this year. Um, so with that, I just wanted to get through my kind of quick summary since I’ve clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this and, and collaborating with the schools. Um, so I guess Theresa and Sarah, um, do you want me to share your, um, one of your kind of presentations that you shared today to kind, I

1:36 Think that makes it easier for folks? Sure. Uh, yeah, so

1:44 We can, these, I just gotta make sure I’ve got the right one. You already prepared needs to know, also uploaded, all the slides are uploaded on the school committee.

2:00 I, yeah. Anything reference, all slides are also uploaded, loaded on the committee. All slides are uploaded on the school committee website as well. Um, I’m trying to find, I, Sarah, I don’t know if you called us to order yet or already committee, but Sarah, maybe it’s on my other Screen. Alec, hello? Yes. Um, I don’t know if Sarah called us to order or not, but I couldn’t hear anything. So we’re not called to order till she does that. Can you turn the volume up? Possibly? I can hear you now, but I couldn’t, Sorry, I can’t hear you right now. Yeah, I Did call to order at six. Yep. Sarah called us to order. I I we weren’t to order. You gotta do it again, Sarah. ‘cause I couldn’t hear anything That Jen. Oh, lemme change right here. Yeah, sorry, Jen. The, the, the volume on our end is not working

2:46 too. When we’re ready. Well, Okay, so, oh, there you go. Can’t Sarah, you need to call us to order again because it wouldn’t count at six o’clock ‘cause I couldn’t hear anything.

2:57 Okay. I’ll call us to Order again at six 10. Great. Okay. So, alright, so let me pull up the file.

3:15 All right, so I have it on screen. I don’t know why it’s not showing up there yet. Maybe I’m sharing my document. One second. There we go. There we go. There. It’s, so I guess my big question is the solution to how we funded this thing from a couple weeks ago. I know that, like I just rambled on about, there were significant revolving accounts that were drawn from presumably, um, some reserves were drawn from within those revolving accounts and maybe some other things as well. So I guess can we bridge the gap from, you know, that level services budget that we were looking at the last couple months versus where we’re landing tonight? Yeah, sure. I’ll start and then, um, Mary can, so we started

4:04 with level services, but then we went quickly to reduce services, um, when there was such a discrepancy. So we sat around 2.3 million for a little while in some of the presentations. And I really appreciate where the school committee got us to in terms of both their approval and in their direction of, uh, looking at our revolving and reserve funds in a different way than we have in the past. They’ve built up over four years, which is terrific and aspirational as we discussed in our meetings that we’ve had with you before. However, you know, it’s not aspirational to need to cut 36 positions. Um, and so we came to a place under the direction of school committee to go to tap those reserves, um, for one time, um, incident that we’re in this year. And so in order to restore back from 36 positions

4:53 to about um, three, well it’s three points, seven FTEs or five positions, um, that would result in layoffs from the 36 original ones. Um, in order to do that, in order to restore that, um, we came up with just shy of 1.4 million by leveraging these revolving funds. And Mary could talk a little bit more about that a minute, um, by tuitions just to a higher extent. And then of course the allocation thank you from the town. Um, so we did a lot of work on that over the last week since we met on April 1st with the school committee. Um, but specifically Mary, do you wanna talk a little bit about those revolving reserve council? Yeah, I know there were a lot of discussions about a couple in particular.

5:40 One was the, um, pre-K and uh, kindergarten tuition account. Um, what I learned in analyzing the FY 25 budget is that, uh, we were not fully burdening those revolving funds. Those tuition evolving funds with the, uh, cost half of the cost of the preschool and the kindergarten staff. So that was most of the change that happened was that we fully burned the pre-K and K tuition involving account with 25 of all the staff that work programs we use 0.5 because preschool, it’s about half the students are special education students, half are typically progressing peers and with kindergarten, half of the day is compulsory.

6:28 The other half of the day is basically sheet based. It’s why we, that’s how we use that tuition. We did not need to tap into the circuit breaker. So that is still fully funded at hundred percent. Um, certainly, you know, future discussions about that. But we were able to tackle the, the revenue side. Yeah. And, and that we talked about, um, we did a little research and you know, ‘cause Michelle had said that’s, you know, a common good financial practice and I actually found, um, kind of a poll of 25 communities or so, and it feels like every community would be doing this financial practice if they could. And most are trying to carry at least 70 to 80%. Obviously some are less than that circumstances.

7:13 But, um, that’s, that’s good financial practice for what I would consider one of the school’s most challenging, um, budget items to navigate from a financial perspective. Right. So the other 600,000 approximately came from, um, basically we are aware at this point that looks like we are carrying an unencumbered balance right now of about $900,000 in the FY 24 budget. Um, I think we have reasonable confidence that we can use 600,000 on that to prepay things that otherwise showed up in our FY 45 budget. Most notably tuition, uh, special tuition, which is allowed by law as well as pre purchases of technology that we can do in hard fiscal year. Yeah. And, uh, absorb those expenses 25 budget.

8:00 Yeah. And um, I just wanna make a point, we always talk about economies of scale when we’re talking about the town side. We have to think about it in the other way now too because we’re talking about a 47, 40 $8 million budget. So to me, this ability to prepaid special education tuitions, which is fairly consistent with prior year practices, around half a million, it’s probably good practice. That leaves probably a surplus of what, couple hundred thousand, three or four. That to me is not where we were in fiscal year 23. And this kind of confirms the trend as for to where we’re going. Well We also have, uh, part of, part of that surplus is we’ve been carrying vacant position. We’re in negotiations right now, but some of our positions, um, the stuff

8:47 that we don’t need them, it’s with where we are with our collective bargaining right now. We pay so little we can’t attract people. Yeah. For instance, our tutors or our paras right now are the starting step one is below minimum wage. So those are things we’re, we’re looking to fix so that we can attract people to these positions. But right now we are, we are carrying that money because not that we don’t need the position, we just can’t Yeah. Give you people to work for that amount. Yeah. This is a hard question, so it no worries if you don’t have the answer, but is, is there a way to quantify what piece of that surplus is from positions that are not you not able to fill because of that? We had some midyear, uh, departures too. So there’s some, um, we not, there was some

9:34 ed money there too, so it, I don’t know with the current software, but that’s an easy answer. Um, hopefully as we migrate to unis, we’ll be able to print reports much more quickly. But right now the reporting mechanisms through soft right. Require Ds and Ds, uh, of data analysis to do what other programs would do. So, long story, I don’t think he’s, Yeah, and I, I just wanna mention on, on the position side of things, that was really at least the presentation of that 23 budget surplus. That was really the salaries and wages were what was overfunded. What we saw was that actual expenses on the expense side were more than what were funded. So it looks to me, I know you can’t see the details on screen as closely

10:21 ‘cause they’re pretty small, but if you look at what was budgeted in 23, that’s 37.6 million in wages. We’re only at 38 million right now. So over two years, obviously a lot of positions that were funded back in 23 came out last year, but we’ve still only seen last year we saw a decrease in the overall budget and then we saw an increase about 1% just over 1% this year. So presumably some of those positions coming out and then the positions that stayed in that we all know grow at three to 4%. It feels like that line item is, you know, from a budget standpoint a lot closer to where it will probably land in 25. Um, that’s just So Alex, Alex can, can, can you hear me okay? Yep. Okay, great. Um, I just had a question

11:06 and maybe Mary Del I can clarify this, but when I voted last week for the budget that I voted for as well as the one we just voted an hour ago, I was under the understanding that the transfer utility reserve and the transfer Medicare premiums, both the expense and the revenue had already been baked into that budget. It was not added on, which I’m seeing here added on. I I just split it out, um, because I wanted to do the analytics, Jen. So I this 46 7 5 9 1 10 number is probably what you voted. I just, like Mary said, a little bit of a data geek, like to see the comparisons of what was actually in the budgets the last two years.

11:52 So I just put that down the bottom so we could see, make, you Know, those were kind of, I wanna to make sure both the expenses and the revenue are included in that. They are, they are, they’re, um, the, the number, number we voted this, Alec came up with this spreadsheet to kind of show Data because it just, it’s a little bit off putting ‘cause you just plucked out two different, you know, expense items that appear to me like they were added in, um, from the FY 25 reduced services budget to like, I don’t know after the fact. No, I’m just, this is comparing to 24. So they weren’t there. They were absolutely the number we both voted included those Chad, Both the expense and the revenue. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yep. Thank you. Mary, could we just borrow your experience

12:39 for a second and when you’re thinking about a budget this size, what would you target for the end of year sort of unencumbered surplus funds? Do you think? We had mentioned you will end after the prepayment of three, 400,000. Is that reasonable? Is that low? What would you be targeting if you were running this? It is an interesting question. Uh, it’s not uncommon to have anywhere about 10%, um, on a budget. So, uh, right. Well, 1%, right? So a budget of 46,000,004 60,000 or so. Um, I think there are a lot of variables here. When I look at this budget, I, I certainly think that

13:26 marblehead the town and the schools, um, probably struggle with what is not and not to beat the dead horse, but what is not the best tool available in terms of soft right. And how to use that. I think sometimes if you don’t have good tools that don’t give you just in time numbers, you tend to have a tendency to make sure that you’ve, uh, budgeted and sometimes you over budget to accommodate that. I do think once you implement UN in this town, um, and I’d love to see both the payroll and the accounting side implemented, uh, all within one product. I think it allows you to get much closer and have much more confidence in the budget numbers, uh, than I think what your existence to. I also think that the practice of

14:13 actually putting into your budget very clearly transparently what the offsets are. So if you are spending, you know, three say $500,000 in kindergarten salaries and you know, you’re collecting tuition revenue and you can offset say two 50 of that, that your budget document clearly has an offset of two 50. Yeah. To make that very specific and wherever there’s an opportunity to be able to use those budget offsets in the budget, if you’re using your facility rental to offset utilities, be very specific about that and show your gross budget with the offsets and then the help resolve a lot of the confusion. Yeah, that, that was where my next question was going.

14:58 ‘cause as we, we talked about in other, um, budget hearings, liaison meetings about, you know, continuing the development of a longer term plan where we’re support in that, um, both sides have committed, you know, the schools are ready to, to finish this thing off and, and, and finalize this long-term plan entering next year. And so is the town and the town has said they’re willing to work with the schools and kind of collaborate and, and figure out what makes the most sense for Marblehead as a whole. Um, my question was, um, very similar to what you just said, I think is that your experience in other communities would say when we review this detailed line item by line item budget, um, not just the schools but all the town, uh, departments, we historically, I’ve been on this committee for seven years or so, um, only are looking at costs that are being funded

15:46 by the general fund. Um, and as a private accountant, I always think wouldn’t you start with all of your costs on a detailed level and then almost split it into columns as to how those costs are being funded. Um, I’d like to see that, um, best practice which presumably is happening in other towns be done not only by the schools, but I’d like to see it for health and waste park and rec all town departments because when you have such a challenge on the, on the property tax aspect of the revenue, which makes up what, 70, 80% of the revenue, um, we really should be budgeting all costs and figuring out, you know, from my perspective, departments could find ways to fund certain things in other ways outside of whatever growth rate they are assigned, ideally in the future. Um, so it sounds like

16:32 that’s something you’ve seen in other communities and that’s consistent with what the CFO Alicia has said too. She’s seen, um, departments kinda show things a little bit more in depth in, in the town she’s been in as well That work there. Yep. Um, I just wanna make sure I heard you correctly. Did, did you say you were estimating approximately a 10%, um, surplus One? I’m sorry, one per typically 1%. 1%. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. And that’s just my experience in terms of where I typically have seen budgets fall this time of year for the school, for a school department is about 1% of the, That seems quite reasonable. Thank you. Yeah, So, so it, the projection based on the most re end

17:20 of third quarter summary is on the order of 2% little. So that’s the reason you feel comfortable using approximately 1% of that 600 k is actually more than one, more than 1% of the total budget, more than half of the projected surplus for, um, towards reducing the number of positions you’re gonna have to eliminate. So that’s, Yeah. No, and it still leaves you a reasonable cushion. I think it, the, the comment I made about the 47 40 8 million, right? Like if, if you have a $48 million budget and you come in, you know, $500,000 under, like that to me is pretty good budgeting. Right. Um, if you’re coming in two and a half million dollars under, I think

18:06 that maybe there’s some padding in there. So Just so you all know, because we’re going to be be getting under that 1%. Yeah. Um, with, with the reliance the 600 that roughly 600,000 to balance next year, um, the school committee voted last week to, um, just for the rest of this term, any, any decisions that will have a financial implication will just come in front of us more so that, so we can be keeping a very tight tally. Um, and we know right away if, if we for some reason are spent not gonna have that 600 so we can make things movement as we see fit All along. So they’ll come to the school committee for, for Yeah. We don’t anticipate it being a problem, but we really wanted to make sure

18:51 because we are relying on that surplus Yeah. Yeah. To balance us that we’re, we’re tracking it very, very close. Okay. Something Pat had confirmed earlier in the process I saw in the notes this morning reminded me, you are prepared if these, um, local receipts articles don’t pass to amend your budget for article 26, it will require potentially an an additional $200,000 less because that would, it’s a net reduction in total allocation and the projection for revenues for the town as again as 50 50 split. So just something to be aware of that if it does happen,

19:40 we we will have to vote both the town and the Yeah. The ballot, the budget that we’re voting. My Understanding is if that unfortunate event happens Yeah. That we’re not gonna sit in the floor of town meeting and all figure out where that two hundred’s gonna come from, that will be figured. Well what will happen is we will vote, we, the recommendation will be for a reduced budget of $400,000 total. Mm-Hmm. Because that’s what would be required for us to have the revenue figure presented Tom y balance budget 400. Yeah. Within your budget that you’re proposing tonight, you, you have a number and that’s our job is to, is to project a number that

20:26 results in a balanced budget. You’re going to an Area, none of us wanna have a conversation because it’s not Alec, you know, as well as I do, we’ve been around, around the mulberry bush. It is the school committee who decides power number. Right. Period. And it is the town that approves it or does not approve it. Right. If that unfortunate event happens, we will figure that out. But I do wanna be clear, we have gotten legal counsel that has weighed in on this, the school committee, according to mass general law votes, our budget and the four of town meeting Approve. Well, and then it’s appropriated by town meetings. Sarah. Yes. It approved yet that’s what it is voted by town meeting. So I don’t even know how anything could change without an approval of a town meeting or a special town meeting.

21:12 Just curious. I mean, that’s just, We would have, the school committee would have to revote our number on the, at, uh, town meeting. Yeah. I mean it’s 200 grand. It’s not huge as compared to this, uh, large budget. Um, let’s hope we don’t have to go down that route. But we will, uh, it, it’s going to be presented tonight as part of the warrant hearing that town and schools will have to figure it out together. Is that vote prior to the budgets or a, it must be the budget first and then Those are early on are, yes, it’s prior to the, prior to Article 26. I don’t remember the number. Yeah. But, and there’s two separate articles and each have included a hundred for the revenue side of it. So either could pass or one could pass, one couldn’t. Um, So Article 26 is the town budget. Wow.

21:59 Yes. Yeah. Yep. That’s pretty far along there. It’s 30 last year. Oh, I always thought it was like 10, 11, 12. I didn’t realize that. All right. No. Okay. So as long so we’ll know. Right. We’ll know whether the, The Yeah. You’ll know. I mean, I don’t wanna say it ‘cause I don’t, I don’t wanna figure out how many nights town meeting will be, but we started with 30 last year, let’s put it that way. It took a whole night just to get through the first, um, yeah. 29 or so order. So the issue is one, we have to pass these, the new tax levy. Um, and then two, hopefully the projections are conservative. So Yeah, they are conservative. Um, but the balanced budget as presented in 26 includes an assumption that those would pass the town

22:48 and the schools presumably need to be prepared to amend the expense side of that balanced budget should it not. Okay. In 25. 25. Let’s see what happens when we get there. Yep.

23:01 Okay. Um, anybody on the fin com have any other questions? I know that we shared some pretty detailed notes. And are we going to go through the school committees slides? Um, that’s really for your knowledge. You don’t have to go through, I mean, they’re backup. I think we covered most of probably the bridge of where we last left off with them, which were our notes to, to tonight. Um, we don’t have a lot of time tonight to go through the whole slide deck. Thank you. Uh, in that case, could I just ask a question? Yep. About one of the slides of course. Um, uh, slide number six, which are the budget offset slides. Uh, I noticed there a note saying in the reduced services budget, the food service director will be allocated from the food services revolving fund.

23:48 Are any other positions in the cafeteria or food services people were there? I’m sorry. They were always 100% covered by the revolving fund. The only thing, um, just to note, the insurance, the health insurance for those, um, people are covered in the revolving fund as well, not the general fund. So the only, uh, historically the only item that had been in, um, general fund has been the director. It was an administrative position. So this year we moved that to, to, um, the revolving fund as Well. And there’s been a significant increase in that recently. Right. That that fund did not used to generate as much of a margin. Yeah. Actually margin as we’ll call actually A little bit of deficit. The, the funding mechanism for that.

24:34 We used to charge students for lunch with Covid. What happened is, first the federal government was picking up all school lunch and now the state government is, is doing that. We’re hoping that becomes a, a permanent bill right now. It’s been what? Year to year? And it was approved for another year. So, um, So, so the revenue coming in Eric has gone up compared to when we reviewed this two or three years ago. Of course. Thank you. But yeah, that as another example. Yeah. The other thing that I understand, and maybe Mary can speak to this, but I know Michelle Cresta before she left, spoke to us as well, that, you know, traditionally the food service budget always had pressure on it. And quite often in my recollection in the past, the operating budget had to offset some of the costs, um,

25:19 outta the revolving fund. Hence one was the director, um, with this change in basically the either federal or state government covering, um, the cost of all breakfast and lunch for students. Um, we along with other school districts have been accumulating funds in that revolving fund. However, they are quite limited from what I understand and what we can spend it, we can buy new equipment Yeah. Kitchens and all that. But it is, so apparently there’s some discussion going on at levels above us in state and federal government, um, on I guess relaxing that a bit perhaps. Um, so that may be, you know, we could be looking at that in the coming fiscal year if anything changes in terms of what we could use those funds to offset. Yeah, certainly. I just think for all departments monitoring available revenues,

26:08 all available revenues, what they can legally be spent on, and then what is the appropriate financial way to spend the money too. Um, by, Well the other thing to know too that we hear, not that that the fin income needs to get into the nitty gritty on this, but what we do hear from the administrator is that it’s been very difficult to hire people in these positions. Um, and one thing is ‘cause our pay scale has been low, so we are going to, we’re working through with the union contract and I’m gonna re try to re-look at that and you know, Also be, yeah. So that could be causing some what I’ll call margin in that account because it’s limited in what you can spend it on. And if you can’t hire the people in what it’s limited to, that could be some of what we’re seeing is what you’re saying. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, and again, it’s, it’s a collective effort from my perspective.

26:53 It’s it’s individual effort of every department to make the most of their available revenues while being fiscally conservative. Um, and not bankrupting yourself in your, in terms of your reserves. Um, but at the same time when, when you’re only being allocated a certain portion of available revenues on one side, um, we appreciate you guys kinda figuring out a way to make it work this year. Um, acknowledging that we are really pushing for this longer term plan on both sides, both independently and then ideally as one as, as my research has has, has shown me that, um, the most successful longer term plans that I’ve seen for other towns have been when everybody’s kind of in it together, um, and asks are reasonable. Um, certainly in a town of Marblehead where a few overrides have failed the last few years,

27:40 we have to keep that in mind as, as the longer term plan has developed. One thing I really wanna point out preemptively for next year is, um, we talked about that we, we we’re using one time funding this year to balance reoccurring costs, which we all know is never preferable, but town and school together are both making these decisions to make this work. And, and I think we’re all in agreement that that was the right decision for this year. I wanna make sure that when we’re looking ahead to next year, where you’ll, when we keep looking at this, um, percentage jump, part of the percentage jump next year will be somewhat artificially inflated because we’ll be bringing these one-time funds. That, or the, the reoccurring cost of recovering

28:27 with one-time funds will need to flow back into our budget. They won’t be a new cost or growth, they’ll have been there, but just put somewhere else. So I just, you know, for next year we’re having this conversation, if you see that our, our, uh, percentage may have grown it is that that 1.2 million of reoccurring costs, ‘cause those are salaries we’ll need to flow back into our operating budget. So which of your funds, which of your recurring funds are you that are not continuingly continuously being replenished? Are you dipping into for, to do this? You’re saying you’re taking, you’re, you’re saying you’re funding specific, um,

29:15 one ti you’re, you’re using one time funds to, um, so which, which accounts are you, are, is that coming from? Because that’s clearly not a For practice. So the, the kindergarten tuition that that’s not just money that came in this year. We’ve been growing a balance from previous years, Which you haven’t used to fund the work of. Well, you have to remember, pat, we didn’t have kindergarten for a year and a half and a half day because of covid. These, These are, yeah, there’s, there’s slowly growing down, there’s some, there’s some amounts that built up over the years. When I say a margin, that would be based on prior practice, the revenue over the expenses, that’s the annual build. That’s all that really will be available to fund recurring stuff.

30:02 The, the, the amounts that built up over the years that’s being tapped into. But I think it’s, but it’s, it’s not a it’s not a i I would a straight science. It’s not a one for One. Right, right. No, and I would also say Pat, um, and I’ll maybe Sarah, and I won’t necessarily a hundred percent agree on this, that, and I’m not an accountant so maybe I’m wrong, but a revolving fund is not necessarily one-time funding, I think of one time funding as ARPA funds. No, no, no. That’s why I keep calling them revolving funds. Right. There are reserves within revolving funds, but just ‘cause it’s called revolving fund, it’s not a reserve, It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily, Which is why I made the point about taking, calling this funding for, for recurring positions out of, Of a surplus 600,000 of a surplus would

30:49 certainly be a one time Right. Revenue That’s so, so I, but The expectation is that this, that the fiscal 25 budget will, in similar way to 24 will have, will, will have you end up at the end of fiscal 25 being closer to the 1% expected average than you, than you are today too. So I mean, Well, so I think, and also it’s best practice what you’ve been doing pre-paying out of district tuition every year. So hopefully that is continuing this year and will continue next year. So I don’t see that as, as one time. But in terms of the, the kindergarten account though, so, uh, Mary, this is a question for you. You know, you have been building that up to have a year’s worth of, you know, on unbalance,

31:36 which is best practice and we’re asking you to step back from that. So that is a one-time use of funds. What would you say in the long term, given looking at that operating history is reasonable, um, a reasonable minimum balance to maintain it, it’s, do you think it needs to be back at a year, you know, next year or can it be running at 75% given the long and the long history? I can’t, I can’t figure out just a weigh in, like from my perspective why you’d need a big balance in the kindergarten of both. So, so if I, I just as the only person with historical knowledge and why we have that, I just would like to speak to this, we’re one of two towns in the Commonwealth that have paid that you pay for public school kindergarten part of the building. The balance was that we can wean, we could use

32:22 that when we finally go to get rid of the paid kindergarten. And it’s not just one year all of a sudden no more tuition. Right. And it’s 100% brought into the general fund. We wanted to use it as a ween. So maybe this year you pay this much in next year you, we reduce the fees and increase our reliance on it. We wanted to do it so it was a slow lean and therefore more palatable for the taxpayers because we really, from, from a strategic standpoint of, of equity, we really do need to get to a point where kindergarten is free. Well, the other thing I would say on top of that, just to think thinking about for next year, which actually will be like, you know, June 1st, um,

33:07 when we start talking about next year’s budget is there’s also discussion on the set federal and state level of mandatory pre-K um, and that would not surprise me if that comes particularly in Massachusetts in the next, you know, couple of years. Yeah, No, these, these are all things to navigate. And I know that I think The things that we’re gonna have to build in to any kind of funding source we’re talking about. Yeah. I just, you know, the, the reality, the reality of the financial condition of the town right now on the general fund is one to 2% on both sides increasing. Um, to me, flipping from this funding of kindergarten right now is not reality. Um, and that’s something I know that was part of the override two years ago that didn’t pass. And maybe that can be re revisited in the future,

33:54 but until then, um, there’s certain things that have to be reasonable, right? And, and it’s, it’s weighing those things because when I talk about these growth rates, right, ideally, you know, from a school committee perspective, you might want a very high growth rate, six or 7%, but you know, what’s the likelihood of that actually being accepted by taxpayers? Um, and just, you know, in this seat I’ve been watching the overrides that we’ve supported the last few years and then not past town meeting even with fin comm support, right? So, um, it’s weighing, you know, do you want 1% or do you want somewhere in between that one and six and 7%? And, um, all of these things need to be considered. We’re saying the same thing to the townside. Um, we’d really like to see a really deep dive at least three years out on a, on a full expense side budget, both funds

34:42 to be funded from the general fund at a, at a reasonable rate that allows the schools to deliver the services it needs to, while considering the likelihood of being accepted by town taxpayers. Um, but also, um, the, the amount of expenses to be funded from these other revenue sources. And, um, all of these things we’re talking about is good because, um, it’s something that needs to be addressed by everybody.

35:06 Um, but you know, this has been a very helpful year, again, working with you all. Um, I know it’s been challenging, um, even, even where you landed with the 2.2% with a little bit extra at the end. Um, it, it schools are generally growing at higher paces than that based on our research. Um, and, and we appreciate you as, as Jen said, early getting creative. Um, certainly this year you had to get pretty creative to, to fund the budget that, that you put forth and voted. Um, but you know, that’s it for me with respect to questions at this point. I think we’ve covered everything. Anybody Else? I had a quick one on just the capital budget. So I saw the, um, article eight has 350 or so of the 400 initial request,

35:51 so I think there was 50,000 leftover, was just the high school paging system. Is that something you think might be able to be covered with the surplus funds or with the budget? I mean the building revolving fund? Yeah, At this point what I would be speaking with direct facilities is a list of the priorities. And if there are, uh, year end funds at the same time, there are other departments as well that may have some things. So this would be the time we collect, you know, what are the things that we would want to fund, uh, year end monies, those are available, the legal, um, and if that’s makes the cut in terms of the priorities that team to be a priority, then um, we would tackle those end priority.

36:43 Can I just ask, at some point we’re gonna have a line by line summary, um, uploaded into clear gov for the school’s budget. Is that, do you have A, I mean, at a new, at least moving forward into next year, we want to get the data and everything in there because, so The court that rolls up to the 46 7 59 1 10, The, the work we’re trying to do, as I understand it being new here, uh, is just a crosswalk between our accounts and the way that information appears in clear gov. And I know that myself working with Isha to make sure that Happens. Yeah, yeah. No, I’m fine with, I know this was a transition year and the schools have their own kind of accounts and whatnot, but um, we’re huge fans of clear gov. It, it makes our lives as vidcom a lot easier

37:29 to just download live data and whatnot. Um, and I think it’s even more important for, for you all to be able to use these tools to be able to run projections and things like that in multiple scenarios. So I think it’s a tool that you could use to, to benefit the forecasting too. Can you and we’ll talk to Yep. Yeah, Yeah, no, that’s, that’s the other piece of it. That’s the, the forecasting I think will be uplifted even more from how, how clear gov is right now. I think the longer term plan that the way it talks to Munis from what has been represented to me will, will be even more of a game changer. So Alec, I know. Yep. Uh, currently I believe the schools have two buildings

38:14 that are not being utilized as school buildings at this time. Is the school department still maintaining those buildings or has that been shifted to the town for building maintenance? Uh, we, no cost to that is, is on the townside. Okay. So, um, Uffington, so, um, we’ll wait to see what the outcome of the zone bylaw is. Um, if we’re gonna add 900 units in town, the concern of the school department is we may need somewhere educate those children. And, um, the library right now is, is taking care of the costs up. Thank you. I, yeah.

38:59 Okay. So we do have a limited amount of time ‘cause we actually have to revote one other budget too. So if there’s any more question on the schools, feel free to ask now. Can I just make a quick comment? Sure. I just, a quick comment on the data this year, Theresa was fantastic and the budget, everything, the disclosure, and I wanted to thank, you know Michelle spent a lot of time extra, you know, putting stuff together for us, um, and talking with me going through the revolving funds, Emma as well. So I just wanted to thank all of you for your hard work. This really was, every year the disclosure gets better and better. And so thank you so much for everything you’ve done. We Appreciate it. And thank you for jumping in, Mary last minute and we were really,

39:44 And for listening to our suggestions for how to Yes. Um, I do. It feels like it was a very collaborative process. Absolute all the way through. There were sound Okay with that? I’d like to make a motion to approve or to recommend I should say the school fiscal year 25 budget of $46,759,110. Second. Mr. Approved. Mr. Ko. Approve. Yeah, approve. Don’t you? Last name? Samuels. Samuels. Yeah. Mr. Franklin. Approve. Ms. Approve Mr. Knight. Approve. Mr. Wolf? Yes. Thank you.

40:29 Oh wait one, mark

40:34 and Mike and Mike’s here too. Approve. He didn’t listen to the whole thing though. Oh Yeah, it’s fine. We’ve got a quorum. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Alright, so we have

40:45 Sarah just adjourn school committee, Jen. All right, so with that we have one quick thing to do before the warrant hearing.

40:58 All right. So FinCon, I don’t know if this came across through the school liaison notes or Pat’s notes, um, but effectively as we just heard this past week or so, the town was able to, uh, provide the schools with an additional 250,000. So, um, the amount of free cash used to balance the budget remained at five and a half million. We haven’t shifted from that. Um, so the town had to bring back, um, the townside budgets by 250,000. Um, and what Alicia came up with was we’re, we’re not funding oped this year. So other, uh, post-employment benefits. Um, and I confirmed with her, and I’ll, and I’ll communicate at the warrant hearing tonight, although that’s not best financial practice,

41:44 it’s not gonna be a, a significant financial hardship in the short term. So, um, we shouldn’t be worried about any short term really significant impacts of this. Um, and that was, you know, a way for the town, um, to help the schools balance their budget. Um, this year, given, given the challenges and, and, um, hopefully we’ll, we’ll create an environment and, and continue to create an environment where we move forward, um, as a town wide to be able to collaborate and, and finish this long-term plan off, um, altogether, if that makes sense. So what that means is we voted last week, the other general government fund, um, we need to re-vote that other general government at 250,000 less. Does anybody have any questions? All right. With that, I’d like to make a motion, um,

42:30 to recommend other general government, uh, fiscal year 25 budget of $21,198,507. Second, Mr. Meyer approved Mr. Jenko approved, Ms. Samuels approved Mr. Franklin approve. Ms. Heats approved Mr. Knight approved Ms. Duby approved. Mr. Oio approved. Great. All right. That concludes our school. Oh, sorry, uh, budget hearing. Um, I’m not, am I sharing right now? No. If there’s any public comment on this, feel free to speak now, although you, you will have another four hours or so tonight to speak,

43:18 but by all means, I can’t see the hands. Please. Now, if anyone,

43:25 Did you get a chance to go down? We can do the transfer to The police. I think this was, they couldn’t hear us at the beginning, so I can’t see where is this? I don’t wanna share. If you stop sharing the documents, you’ll see everybody. Okay. I didn’t realize I was still sharing. All right. So I don’t see any, alright, so I’m gonna gonna log out of this for a minute and regroup. Um, so Thank you. So adjourn. Yeah, you can, you can end the meeting. We’ll restart What you need to formally adjourn the meeting. Motion adjourned. Motion to adjourn. All In favor. 50. Thanks so much you.