McCumber on favor aye opposed yeah passes great this is gonna come a little bit further into the committee updates but I did also want to talk a little bit about the way that we structure the committee the subcommittee meetings I know that there's been some confusion as far as doodle polls and when everyone gets the the kind of doodle pulls back to us and timing as far as when the subcommittee's actually meet so one thing that I was thinking about doing was having set schedules for the subcommittee's probably on so every other every Tuesday there would be a different subcommittee that would meet so for example the second Tuesday that would be when Energy Commission meets the third Tuesday we might have an Eevee meeting fourth so on and so forth so that way it's just easy to kind of remember it's easy for people to come to if they're interested in it and with a set schedule we can also post that so that way it's known for the rest of the year so those be at six o'clock as well or yeah I'm thinking somewhere between 5:30 and six o'clock just to give enough people time to get to City Hall but also that it doesn't run so late but you know we're going and burning the midnight oil so it was kind of my my preference as long as everyone on the Commission thinks it's a good idea okay I have a question related to meetings sure commissioner hokum and I met on Sunday and one of the things that we talked about and actually the environmental commission is going through this process right now is sort of identifying not only the meeting schedule but what might be specific topics for those and input was requested from commissioner not necessarily what topic would be a bit one particular meeting but what are the topics that should be covered and then laying those out in the calendar year and I think maybe that's something that we should consider doing I don't know that we want to do that through the whole year but at least X months out and I think one of the things that Chuck mentioned at the time that the environmental Commission hasn't done but it seems to me makes sense for both Commission's or frankly for any Commission is not only what commissioners would like to cover in that but what in particular the city and staff want of the Commission and where can we help where can we advise where can we advance a topic so that we're not necessarily pushing the agenda at least from our side but also that there's a real balance back and forth between the city and its goals and the work plan for the new office of sustainability and innovation and what can we do to advance those topics so maybe we think about that maybe you sent an email out saying what would we like to cover but also what would you like from us yeah no I think that's a that's a great idea I did see in some ways the subcommittee's that we're putting together is kind of embodying some of us so some of the major pushes that we have break down into smaller groups would that said it would be interesting to see how we can may feed that back into the larger group with the Energy Commission so maybe in December we can have this as part of the discussion as well but along with this that were charged with with all or part of the smart framework within our recommendation no one's you know we're asked to come up with the idea or we're asked to come up with metrics or were asked to come up something but we use the discipline of the smart framework in this committee structure and that the challenge or that when the committee is given a task to do it's broken out here is that we want you to this part of this smart framework so we get some specificity so we know when we had passed this on what still has to be done I think thanks for bringing that up actually that was my recommendation or part of my recommendation for the environmental Commission and that was that we take all of the metrics that are related to the environmental Commission and break them up into let's say four and cover one quarter of them in one meeting where the next two meetings could then deal with ad hoc topics or whatever is coming up and then the next quarter we deal with the next set of four and the next source to me next set of goals and the next set of goals or metrics I should say and what are the related action plans to your point to make progress against those and what are what's the progress on those actions what are obstacles what could the Commission do to advance achieving the targets that are assets associated with each one of those sustainability framework dashboard metrics that we have and we could potentially do the same thing with the Energy Commission I don't think we have that many we might have something like six or eight six metrics maybe so we could do that you know in three meetings where we take two metrics and then look at those in particular and then talk about action plans associated with those we could have reports from outside groups that relate to those particular metrics for example I'll use one from the environmental Commission one of the metrics is the health of the watershed we developed a new metric that's now on a 1 to 100 scale it's very easy to trend the urine River watershed council has a big role to play they might have a report associated with that in that meeting so the the metric the action plans and reports would all align in that one meeting and I think that's sort of what you're getting at Marc so Jack I wonder if you could weigh in on this you've been pointed in your advice to us that we need to tighten up our recommendations apply metrics to them I wonder if you think the discussion we're having here is that going in the direction you think we need to go and if not what would you suggest we do differently I think this is the right direction if you turn on my microphone first I think this is the right direction I think we need to set a goal we have to have a baseline we have to have measurable goal lines along the way and and then we have to have a budget for accomplishing that so yeah we we often express good intentions which go to council and they ratify those good intentions and then nothing comes of those good intentions and so to the extent that we can identify what we believe should be done and how it should be done and how much it will cost to do it and what the outcome of that is I think that that helps push our agenda so you know back in the day when this Energy Commission started it was a City Council that sparked it and there was almost the whole the whole Energy Commission was City Council's so they basically embodied some issues topics critical topics of interest to the city to push forward on and if you read those back in the 80s you'd say wow these guys are pretty forward-thinking great stuff let's move on with these things let's make them happen so in some instances they did take place there's a lot of movement and energy efficiency back in the eighties forward-thinking not a good things happen what I've noticed and maybe again my history buffs I to me I see a lot of effort from our Commission to promote espouse ideas we we pass a lot of resolutions other than maybe some feedback we get from commissioner Eaton I don't think we get any feedback from Council on whether we're off-base are we going the right direction I think that I'm on a I'm on a national energy journal I'm one of the associate editors if we're not accountable and we're not doing the right thing we get feedback directly from our readers from our editor from everybody that says hey you guys need to be focused on something else and so we get that feedback very quickly and that keeps us on point it keeps us productive it keeps us moving the bar for the public forward I'm I'm sensing we need some of that and that's maybe my own opinion but I think we would really benefit as a body to make the next step with our council telling us hey this makes sense or doesn't that feedback is incredibly valuable because we only have so much you know volunteer time and I think if we had better alignment that way it would be great Josh same thing with staff I mean you know you've got a lot of people here who have a lot of skill sets have been in the marketplace for in some cases forty years I don't know about Wayne but I'm I'm 40-plus been doing this a long time we now have a little bit more time on our hands a lot of times to help you guys and help staff and help Commission and help the sustainability group that's now out there John's done a wonderful job promoting that and I think his he's a exemplary of some of the things we can do to work better as a team and move the city along and we don't we see evidence of like climate change you know starting to impact us quite a bit we there's may be disagreements scientifically about what's going on but the main message is we don't have a lot of time here on our hands so some of us are getting older and want to make a difference we got a we got to start making some stepwise definite changes here well we're not going to get anywhere so the message is how do we better work together Commission to staff Commission to Council are we right go into the right direction or aren't we and just tell us point-blank you're maybe maybe one of the messages is you're too big or maybe the message is focus on climate change or climate action plan only forget about solar or forget about this or forget about that focus only your about your efforts on this topic and then our group can have a better critical mass fragment wise our subcommittees probably don't get as much done as maybe we could if we had that direction so I'm just pointing this out my opinion only I didn't canvass anyone else I just throw it out there for free talk it is a problem and I can remember I don't remember the year but it was probably 2006 or 2008 we gave the 40-minute presentation slide has a whole lot of energy is only one very small portion and they rely on us I mean it's it's sort of chicken an egg on some respects because they rely on us we're the experts supposedly or at least I hope they think we are and so they're relying on us to suggest things and but certainly more input from Council would be very welcome and because of our limited the limited amount of time that we can spend on projects we want to work on stuff that has some possibility of actually happening so if we're not gonna get support from councils and it'd be better if we knew it early on so now one of the things maybe we should do is I think in our bylaws were supposed to have some kind of a report annually and I'm not one that likes to spend a whole lot of time doing reports or changing bylaws or any of that stuff I'd rather do something that's meaningful but one of the things that we could do is send something up to Council saying these are the things that we expect to work on and we'd love your feedback on whether or not these are things that you want us to work pretty easy we might not get much back but we might get some good information if we propose something that proposes a tangible result and how to do it little good support so at the meeting on November 19th which is next Monday I'm bringing forward a budget amendment that will pare down Missy's dr.
Bo's and we shall in at the discussion table yeah motion passes for yes chosen one absent um moving out to 15.2 contract between community matters and Azusa Unified School District where the wishes of the board first I'm sure you'll notice any questions yes but I'm just going to be it's great that it's freaking is going to be doing the who's who the target off who's going to be trained you this okay it's like to call Gary create the comeuppance questions the target audience is going to be well first of all it's not totally free slots and it's also open so in addition to the response that we get what is this so the the contract doesn't have any dollar attached to it so that they're providing their number people that they're gonna provide it to it's just it's not specify who that is that's gonna be who are registers yes but it's not clear in there that we're getting for free registrations in this contract to district staff members at no cost [Music] then the other sites gonna paper out of their own but their budgets are gonna be district okay um and okay anything else now going to go to add a quick question for him okay the first time we have a second motion passes 40s isn't one absent and this actually may not be a question for you Gary mimicry garzillo you Linda so in in the Alcock we put in a position for very expensive so then we're looking at the possibility of bringing someone here in training like a lot of our people at the same time which is also very expensive so what we were looking at doing instead of that is tightening some trainers where we be able to train our own people eventually so this would be part of so when you say this is part of what she does you're saying it's PJ as soon as sort of practices or is there other other other things that she's working on primarily PBIS over only we're sort of adjusted those restorative practices and as part of PBIS just for a safer thank you very much super it's your own policies and I loathe 16.1 you know these are first readings we've got an opportunity to review all of these work tossings we have any you have any questions regarding any of these no I just have a comment because this is a first reading and we'll be voting on it and the next board meeting I think you should be prepared if the two new incoming board members have any questions that we that would probably have to table it so probably so it's just be aware that yeah want to table these no no I'm going so there's no actions I'm just saying we just we just need to be aware that if if the tuna burger boys have any questioning in December we open up the table learn to genuine to vote on them there's 62.1 you not have any questions comments or changes to say point to the interest range we've had an opportunity I knew you weren't passing do we have any questions comments but any one of these policies from their 16.3 again frustrating and we have any questions there 16 point form again first reading we're pulsing do we have anything of you wish to discuss 105 yes not not change I just appreciate the fact that we have a student voter registration and that we're teaching our children civics classes and having citizenship day constitution day I think that's a really great idea or one day I'd like to eventually have my students vote would matches up at the presidential election my kids didn't when they were in high and elementary school and it was great they had plenty voting machines this big and they did the kids homework was to take me to go vote and slowly turned out my kids are avid boaters and I think that's a really good program I'm glad we have this start okay okay so we know we're doing this meeting tonight everyone we're going into close touched and I thought like I was done thank you very much everyone we will be went back into procession is how the staying tonight home safe just close it [Music]
Stoltz proposal to the two items that actually will have an impact on energy consumption that'll be the net-zero housing project which is not a small ticket item that was the vast majority of her abs and the the other thing is the electric vehicle charging stations because those meet both of our criteria for a budget amendment which is that they're time-sensitive you know to start the net-zero housing project we have to approve it now so that they're ready to go at the beginning of the next building season they can't wait for the you know the next fiscal year you know the electric vehicle chargers are time sensitive because in fact we've purchased those beautiful so you know there were a variety of things in there that don't quite likely come up in the next budget year and are really topics for your normal budget deliberations because we have to weigh a lot of things against each other you know so it's not that I don't want energy staff or I mean sustainability staff to be well paid but it has to be part of our broader non-union salary study and part of our normal budget process there were a variety of other things in there like travel to other cities for conferences and things that I don't think are really good steps for people who are trying to address sustainability jumping on a jet is not energy efficient sending a soon to retire employee to a conference doesn't make sense in a variety of different levels so um I don't want you to believe that you don't have the support of counsel when you get to counsel most often the resolutions that you send are unanimously passed have support but I'm here to warn you when when we send stuff difficulty you know and I think there was a fair amount of forewarning on the budget amendment issue it's not a lack of support for taking tangible action it's there was a lot of money that some of it was debatable you know so I want you to be adventuresome I want you to identify the building that you want to do the audit do the whole process on and how much that would cost so that we can take that forward but to generally state that we want to be Net Zero by X year doesn't do that yeah you know so again I really do want you to understand that I'm here because I want this process to work and I think that it doesn't hurt us to be pushy here as long as you understand the parameters of the process that when I get to have council table you know we have a hundred and eight million dollar general fund budget and and we have to balance that between a variety of needs you know we have ten million dollars worth of needs in our fire department I can't tell you what our sewer and our water infrastructure needs it's just off the charts there are so many needs in so many different ways that when we go we need to be able to compete by showing what it's going to accomplish and especially if we are going to reduce our carbon output or reduce our energy consumption because energy consumption has a built in savings over the long haul that's an argument that we can make and that's that's an argument that we can succeed in well it's important for us to be specific about what we want to do on the other end of things one of the things that I neglected to put forth in the energy report is that Portland just passed a clean-energy ordinance and what they're doing is they are taxing any corporation that does business within their community that has a gross annual budget of a billion dollars and they're going to have 30 million dollars a year to do climate work and that's what they think they need now there's six times bigger than Ann Arbor so that works out to five million dollars a year is what we probably should be spending if we could figure out a way of generating that money the I mean that's the report that John read earlier from the New York Times just shows how big the issue is and how much money we really need to be putting at it and it's it's not throwing money away it's investing in in future of people who are a lot younger than we are so so two items in there first Michigan restricts oh I know that our ability to raise new revenues in secondly I'm not sure how many billion dollar corporations we have well and that's another discussion just briefly I think we've had several meetings I think Jack some of them may have been before you joined the Energy Commission where the environmental Commission and Energy Commission looked at the sustainability framework and the goals and the dashboard indicators with the metrics and in line with what Mark mentioned earlier having smart goals specific measurable attainable realistic and time-bound each one of we've we've identified goals and metrics for both energy and environmental metrics and I think what Mark and Chuck and what you are saying is that our responsibility as let's say the city and Commission these are the residents is that we should be delivering positive outcomes for the residents of Ann Arbor you know there should be an improvement in water quality there should be improvement in greenhouse gas reductions and everything that we do should be focused around that either where it delivers directly a positive outcome and we see an improvement in a metric or it's a it's an enabler and I agree with everything that you said jack especially when it relates to things that the city does for municipal operations but we have to remember that municipal operations are 1.3 percent of Ann Arbor's total greenhouse gas reductions so if we do a project for the city then yes we can say if we put solar on the wheeler Center it's gonna cost this amount of money and it's gonna deliver this many metric tons and there's a good payback on it and there's a real clear line between doing this and getting a positive outcome that we can see in our metric but the cap is addressed to all of Ann Arbor's greenhouse gas reductions all 100% from the whole community from transportation from residential industrial and commercial in the only way we're going to really help drive that is through enabling programs well we won't be able to necessarily necessarily say if we have this energy efficiency program then we know for sure 100 people will do X and they will save so many metric tons of co2 and that will impact our goal so that's gonna be I think the difficulty that we're going to have visa vie council and also for the residents of Ann Arbor spending their money is to be able to come up with programs that address what is going on in the community in reducing those greenhouse gas reductions and having a clear line which we all want to have in terms of accountability if we do X it will deliver Y that's that's going to be more difficult innovations plan if you guys have looked at the cap there are a lot of suggestions in there as to how best to reach our goals and our targets some of them are less or more feasible some of them you know you have to throw invest more money into others and so I think when creating the sustainability and innovation plan in our office we are really looking for programs that could in some ways go further than than any other one individual action could do so when we looked at for example time of marketing we're looking at how the market could really pick up the economic forces of the market could pick up incentivizing energy audits in ways that if the city were to incentivize rebates there just wouldn't be enough funding to be able to reach all the houses so I think in some ways you know the sustainability innovation plan the one that we presented really is in a way cohesive and tries to get at all of these different sectors by looking at the best way to do it for the less the the for not as much money time and effort that it would take if we were actually to go through and look at all of the the different recommendations for the cap so that was something that went into our planning as well if not let's move along to update City Council has a policy committee and we had made recommendations if you see a city council of page labeled City Council has Energy Commission a very mental commission these are basically some recommendations that we gave to City Council in the previous year as far as things to look at and kind of focus on I just wanted to go through these and see if we if we want to add to them if there's anything we want to change again just kind of with house housekeeping and making sure that we're ready for for 2019 since this is the last meeting that we'll be having outside of a work session in December so that the first bullet point here pursue remedies that incent the installation of sustainable and renewable energy resources including but not limited to residential and community solar and wind systems yeah I'm not sure where that came from next one pursue legislative remedies that remove disincentives yes space the city's reserve there's no property to put something in that way okay so it's incredibly used because we're not disrupting the rest of the land so what's not strike okay high school was was going to deploy we had a professor from the University of Michigan come to us and say you shouldn't waste your time cuz Ann Arbor is is not a good spot for attempting to capture the wind you know the it's just not consistent or you know can you have a high quality wind however you say it in that terminology this is not the place to seek it's not the best place for sure using to the higher you can put something the better the winds gonna be so putting a small wind system out next to the bleachers in Pioneer high school really didn't make much sense and small wind systems are notorious for ripping themselves apart actually first-hand knowledge what killed it eventually was that it was too tall for its proximity to the airport and that's certainly another so consideration I I went out to the wheeler Center one day with with mr.
bricks and helium balloon and and took pictures showing how far up we could actually put one and not have it be in the airspace so ya know or we do have to be concerned about that purely better I mean there's a ridge line out there that's great yeah but there are some viability zit doesn't have to be a massive wind turbine that we build on the utility scale it could be something vertical or unique but it's probably not a focus let's just leave it there yeah it'll probably screen itself out there there was also a period of time when they were redoing the line from the water treatment plant up to the liming lime pit next as a school where we tried to get them to put a piece of conduit in to put a fairly good-sized wind system up there but no they didn't want to spend the money on the conduit so but that's another story but it's yeah it's it's a minor thing it's yeah we'll leave it you know and it doesn't preclude the city buying into and wind farm someplace else in the in the state high school down in paulding oh hi oh I'd love to show you pictures it's a 90 meter hub height winter and this is not unfeasible 300 and some feet tall the kids that play football love to see it you know it's part of the school environment now I think they may have renamed their football team but there's part of it that's it's there's always potential let's not screen out something yeah yeah and it's all depends on what you're what you're trying to do you know if you get 30% instead of 40% it may be fine if you're not looking for a profit you know which is what most wind farms are set up for the next one pursue legislative remedies remove disincentives for installation of sustainable and renewable energy resources including but not limited to seeking statewide property tax exemptions for residential solar systems indeed we could do I still think pursue legislative remedies or move disincentives make sense yeah yeah maybe we can get rid of that second after the comma so that way it's not as specific to but we can continue to because there's a number of issues and one of the things yeah one of the things that I was thinking about even looking at for example purple law I mean it really does go wide yeah the things that we okay let's see a pursue legislative remedies to support appropriate local government access to household utility data on gas and electricity used to support the upcoming city investment and community facing energy programs so this is mostly about data access and suit legislature enemies probably just say raise an army and support and advocate for the incorporation of high performance building efficiency systems into the Uniform Building Code I need to replace it with Michigan and then we can leave building there but we also need to add residential and energy codes all three of them work together yeah and the barrier frankly is energy code the others are kind of paralleling but there's advocacy going on this one already from a lot of fronts to move our energy code out of prehistoric times to the next level you know another another exercise that might be worthwhile is going through these and thinking about what kind of recommendations to our earlier conversation we could give to it to City Council as to how best to pursue some of these things so if we know certain avenues that could overcome some of these things well certainly on this one I don't do but short of getting a lot of reports but perhaps asking them to work on this specific thing that's the function of the policy Commission I guess for pulling a committee and City Council as is they are directing our lobbyists as to what is important to us and they report back to them and it really depends on the opportunities in Lansing you know we saw some legislation moving on on the alternative energy taxation and and they were active on that we just have the wrong but it's not that they're not working on our behalf it's that you know they're yelling into a deep well yes we're changing it slowly I I would suggest that this this election cycle has made some positive changes in this Indiana's fashion that our new governor may in fact be more impressed with this subject than our previous one sometimes there is something we said for term limits some of the people yeah are leaving not that I'm an advocate for that and then this last one here advocate for a carbon fee and dividend plan consistent with a resolution r17 314 appendix B so that's again about the carbon fee and dividend plan the other the other kind of sector that I identified that we might want to add to this list are Evy related especially since we do have an Eevee ordinance so so I think there is currently a lot happening on the state level there's a Volkswagen settlement that's going through right now I'm trying to find out how that's going to be spent at the state level that's that's one way that we can get involved so if they get the legislative in general legislative level making sure that we have a finger on the pulse and that we're making recommendations is best to kind of promote v's that's language that we could craft now or I could put something together and share with you guys to edit either way for expediency sake another potential topic and I'm not frankly qualified to talk about it but your boss would be in that is is there anything that should be done from a climate adaptation perspective yeah I think Missy's got a lot of experience in that area it's this is all sort of mitigation sort of focused right but I think from the adaptation side there may be legislation or things that we should be pushing at the state level and I think miss Eve would be able to craft a statement or doctors Stolz would be able to craft a statement to that effect and include that on the list so maybe you could you have her do that so there are there's an environmental Commission portion as well and I think some of the things she had made some recommendations out at the bottom here but if we can think of anything that's more kind of energy related that we would be doing on a daily basis you know I kind of went through and thought about her subcommittees and it kind of covers I think what we have now outside of the Evy component but okay well if you guys can think of anything else email me and when we're looking at new development in town we can't push them to you know incorporate energy efficiency or green roofs or variety of those things unless they're in certain very narrow zoning districts and certainly to the extent that I think this comes up in your first one but um we really want the building codes to to really recognize that some of some communities want to be more adventuresome you know we really want to push on these issues and we're in a boom cycle right now building wise and we can't you can't require six inch studs in new houses we can't require more insulation than you know the state code does we can't we can't encourage solar all right anything else in a house and certainly to the extent that we can get the legislature in Lansing done give us more discretion that would be it exists in other places mm-hm need to get closer sorry Massachusetts is one there's for several states that have pushed this to the local jurisdictions so what did it also provide some and set it to builders that they could do higher floors and buildings if they met certain energy standards I know it wasn't successful but there was yes we have some credence news certainly in certain zoning districts so like the downtown area is either d1 or d2 and there are limits on height and if you want to exceed that you have to provide some benefit like affordable housing or energy efficiency or something yeah and they've almost always chosen something other than energy efficiency mm-hmm but that's that's something that were quite likely to revisit this year because at one point in time just including any kind of residential space in your Downtown Development got you a greater height it didn't even have to be affordable housing and so we're trying to narrow the the benefits that they can another zoning district before we get to exercise some discretion is with the Planned Unit development or PUD is fed and they have to provide us public benefits and affordability to use one of those and so is energy efficiency and so we can push harder on those if we if we use those zoning districts more more effectively than we have so for instance the Lowertown development where Kroger's used to be at the base of Broadway Hill we released them from that zoning district and gave them a very permissive zoning of c1 AR and so they don't have to provide us anything we have to be less permissive in our in our exercise of rezoning and more demanding and our desire for public benefits like energy efficiency towards that and is there anything that the Energy Commission could do that would make it easier for you to be stronger on those issues [Music] towards that end is there anything the Energy Commission can do that make it easier for your to strengthen your hands so you could do those kinds of things going forward I mean you're saying we think this is a good idea you should do more of it or already know that so yeah so let me ponder that and I'll come back with a ask if I can think of an answer if you want to do something to help us that council you can recognize that one of the easiest things we can do to address climate change plant trees and we are reckless with our current trees and one of the things that we are doing to address our tree population is our deer call which is wildly controversial and and if if we were to express the opinion that this is a good outlet you know by by reducing deer over brazing we're encouraging reforestation in our natural areas you may turn the public against you but it's one of the easiest things that we can do is just the not have deer eat all the oak sapling or seedlings you know and it it has a real immeasurable impact over time December is a work session but besides that I think our purview is more energy focus I wrote it down for them okay because the environmental Commission does have you're right it's exactly in in our will in that wheelhouse and one of the sustainability dashboard metrics is the tree canopy as Josh knows and so I think that doesn't mean that we couldn't have that resolution also endorsed by Energy Commission but a price probably starts best in environmental commitment and I made an oh yeah okay so that being said okay so I'll go ahead and craft the evie related one we'll go ahead and I'll pass that around finalize the list so yeah I just realized that what we printed probably went back to the template because it's an old one so I'm just going to read off the committees that we have and we can go and do updates one by one so 100% clean municipal operations we met we discussed proposition we've decided to move beyond Honeywell and our next meeting we'll be talking about next steps we did have a little bit of a conversation as far as what's next steps with v but I think that'll really be the focus of our next meeting in general I've created templates for all of these meetings I put them up on ledges star there's also reading material on those templates so if people want to join you can go ahead and actually read it just download it there are links that are right into the agenda that they're basically built into the agenda you could take a reading and join us the next one is dark skies ordinance John did you want to do very briefly we haven't met I don't think since the last committee meeting but we meet next week we have a draft ordinance that's been it's sort of like a straw man I guess you'd say everybody is in the process of putting comments into a Google Docs framework and we're gonna meet and review all those comments and then hopefully come up with the next iteration our target date for having essentially a fine semi final draft that we could then show to the Energy Commission as well as the Planning Commission I believe is in the beginning of February so we we still have a chance for an iteration or two between this meeting next week and then when we would then present a final draft but we're making good progress I know that you've told me this before so I apologize but have we included the City Attorney's Office and in the drafting of this yeah so one of the steps in the timeline that we have is going to not only the city attorney but with the Planning Commission and others we identified all the key stakeholder groups and are also going to meet with all stakeholder groups as well so yeah and it's we also fortunately the Planning Commission at the same time was looking at a sign ordinance and we looked at that sign ordinance because there's a lot of signs that are lit and so we provide in put in that that'll be separate that'll be a part of the sign ordinance but we were able to address the lighting aspects of that at the same time all right next we have time of marketing ordinance and I can also lump in a little bit of the Evie Reddy ordinance as well so for both of our red notes already ordinance subcommittees we went ahead and took a look at a timeline so with John's help we took a look at what dark skies was doing we I've begun to basically put a timeline together for each of those committees for our next meeting we also identified some of the stakeholders that we want to bring to the table in the process I shared with everyone some kind of overview material so that way we can all look at the same stuff and be be on the same page so both of those again will be meeting this month and will be looking at some of those the timeline stakeholders things of that nature Josh before you go into the next one I think yes for um clarity sake for not so much necessarily as committee because we keep on talking about it but for residents why don't we rename the dark skies ordinance it's really going to be a lighting ordinance and I think that is more meaningful to anybody looking from the outside in or listening on TV or whatever we're looking at minutes or genders and maybe for time of marketing we could do something along the lines of energy audit disclosure so that way it's a bit more at time of market really clear okay solar access check did you myrrh to add to the Commission sometimes we need this so I my son happens to live in this little town and in Colorado that thinks it's more advanced than we are called Boulder so I I reached out to him a little bit to find out work I just helped them build a new house and new houses in Boulder there's a pretty strong solar access easement ordinance requirement there and actually the it's it's batted about as being the revolution of solar access easements so I've adopted the boulder concept a little bit and I've actually written something so this one-man ordinance activities has moved to the next step I need to piggyback on some of the other ordinance work that's going on to get the stakeholders planning commission and director planning involved in the city but I think we're at a state where before I do that I want to make sure this body is comfortable with what we're proposing there are already you know too much going on in the city that needs to have this move forward because I have a at least one solar system when you may have others that are now shaded because we allowed construction to go beyond where that should have so I'll bring that to the body and I think we have a work session next next time I'll have that for the for the body mix next so a little Ricky one it is tricky and it's it's trickier here there doesn't folder because Boulder has a height limitation because they want you to be able to see the mountains that is correct and so they're limited to I think six storeys it's something like that so interestingly Boulder because of settlements with the utility in Colorado give the solar panels to the residents so my son has a free array on his house you didn't have to pay a cent for the the array really wasn't that wonderful sure so wonder if we could pass the rest you know something in there any new residents never gets free solar panels will taxi Thanks Oh keep it moving yeah great thank you for working on that okay I reach to schools not here I do have a little bit of an update I reached out to Jason Bing about Power Purchase Agreements we're looking at National Housing Trust as well as Michigan saves as possible P P a power purchase agreement a model and we are interested to see if the schools we're looking into it thankfully so those conversations will be ongoing um U of M is also working on a PPA with DTE are you in touch at all with the office of campus inability or I don't know is this as the wind yeah yeah yeah we okay community outreach there wasn't much on this front I do know that there's an idea kind of put forth as far as getting out into the community and and having some conversations I don't know where things live with that mark would you know anyway this new tour the listening tour is aware yep oh yes yeah there's a discussion about that dr.
sells is looking at the information that was collected but from from various people on inputs and December well hopefully that will change John I report from the environmental Commission so you guys had the joint meeting everybody knows about that and since then the main focus has been still on solid waste and maybe just to elaborate on that a little bit we're in the process the city is with heavy involvement from environmental Commission in the solid waste resource management plan update together with the city's consultants Acton and tomorrow afternoon will be the first meeting with the so called advisory group which in foods people that are sort of experts in the field as well as key stakeholder groups downtown businesses residents that are involved and I'll be attending that as a substitute for Allison Skinner but that process is a multi-step process that goes through July so there's still many many steps beyond that but that's been basically the focus of the environmental Commission in addition to the other topic that I mentioned earlier was the future meetings and what we're gonna be handling in those meetings so that's main thing for I think you're okay we still have some public out there would anybody like to say or say anything about energy three minutes come on up state your name and let's hear it looking for specific projects and they can kind of latch on to I just quickly googled to find the most recent info about the Veridian that counting farms which is from M live in September 24th of 2018 so it seems like it's getting getting quite close it's the I know it's the county's land but it's inside the city so it seems like it should be a really good opportunity for the Energy Commission the environmental Commission the whole city you to really make sure we're partnering with this whole project and we can offer input on lighting or EBU readiness or whatever and I'm sure even if they've thought of everything already that we could learn a lot from it and hopefully now go towards some future projects but it seems like it'd be a shame if the whole thing got done and we couldn't say we as a city we're partnering strongly with this thing a major showcase for clean energy in the future and it did say they should have given their final vote on October 3rd for the purchase and that the next steps continue advocacy through the city's approval process so it sounds like it's maybe in the city's Court right now and hopefully we as a Energy Commission and the rest of the Commission's and the council and everything can think that the project we could jump on board with and partner with numerous times with metro talk about this budget and it kind of it couldn't really move until it got through the county one of the things we've discussed is getting that area designated as the solar micro grid and so carving it out as a micro grid that requires DTES participation we've had some preliminary meetings with DTE on this subject and and the boss is kind of in Matt's Court right now just to decide whether or not you know there's various ways to pursue that but I mean one way is having there's nothing that precludes every individual home in that area putting solar on the house and doing in that meter with the with the utilities assuming they don't all that by the time this gets done but doing it as a solar micro grid adds a lot of benefits to the community as a whole and it provides the city with some emergency response benefits and some other things so we won't get a solar micro grid unless the city is actively engaged with DTE and Matt knows that and and preliminary discussions have happened we've offered to have him come to the Energy Commission and request our endorsement of the solar micro girl idea and we're waiting for him okay for example resolution we shouldn't initiate until we get a signal from that till we get some that I've given that a draft resolution several months ago and we're just we're literally waiting I sent him an email here when the county did the thing and said you know when do you want him he wants to do this now and he said get back with yourself we're waiting but I think it would I agree with you it would be an outstanding project and as of solo micro-grid it would really be a good project and Chuck knows a lot about solar micro grid and they're actually consumers is testing micro grid battery hybrids which would be ideal for this as well I'm trying to encourage consumers to buy DTE and make it easier but then the short one will probably have to deal with DTE on this just the feet planning process is going to be less of an obstacle than the micro-grid process yeah but when it enters the planning process there are opportunities for public hearing and the planning commission and so if you or anybody in the committee in the community has ideas as to what they'd like to see it be part of that community yeah I think that's good they've got exciting ideas but nobody can think of everything they would certainly entertain those I don't there's plenty of public opportunity to discuss this before it gets to City Council I don't there's any way we can have the Energy Commission can have some kind of formal partnership with Matt's gotta it's in his court he's gonna come forward to us maddis met with me too on several occasions so I think he knows where to come to Matt Schmitt with everybody thank you thank you thanks we're spending a lot of money and the best technology that we have available which is some kind of activated charcoal filters and it's proven to be somewhat effective you know you don't get to zero you just don't I mean one of the reasons why he passes is just an emerging issue is because over the last 10 years they've just been developing the technology to measure down to parts per billion and Piazza's is dangerous at parts per billion whereas like dioxane is parts per million and so when you're down at parts per million if you can cut it from 37 down to 10 or something like that that's that's a dramatic decrease but you know it's I think it's pretty hard to keep all of them we've authorized the expenditure to install the filter maybe we should be working on facilitating individual households to use rainwater catchment systems posed to me that we should be encouraging the collection of water to use for you know Gardens parks trees enough water runs off from your yard to take care of a considerable portion of the greenery around you that you want which matt has done with his home his personal no matter if everybody knows that yeah everything except for portable water from Green rain water certainly from an environmental standpoint and this is not energy related just our fundamental infrastructure is so important to our role as environmentalist you know because just periodically you're reading my of about us is dumping 100,000 gallons of raw sewage into the river yeah which is not a good thing you'll read about keifa's foam in the river that you shouldn't touch or eat you know the dioxin is is headed towards the river it's just a matter of whether it hits the river not far enough north to tank our water supply so again and again our our infrastructure issues are really environmental issues and and so when I talk about the competing interests in our in our city budget when we're you know deciding how to spend that hundred eight million dollars these are you know some of the more pressing issues that we have you know tens of millions of dollars worth of needs since that you're talking about water out pass up the gun maybe we can get an answer at some point because I gave it to Matt a while back and never got any answer back from the water department there was a study that came out to Matt naught yes okay about a year ago now where they looked at 40 or 50 cities worldwide their water supply and they tested for microplastics and they discovered that most of them had some in it and so I asked a question do we have that in our water system in Ann Arbor so I think the important question is do we test for that you know but now we're dealing with micro biological issues and and you know there's lots of stuff in the water from decades and centuries of irresponsibility you know the micro plastic ones it's an interesting one because it's we use so much plastics and we we let so much of it go out into the environment and then they added micro plastics to facial creams and everything and it's just everywhere and it's coming off of our synthetic clothes and everything else and yet they don't know what the safe levels of ingestion are you know you eat fish and you eat that because it's definitely in fish send me an email to remind me to ask you I will because I'm going from this meeting to another meeting and don't forget before I came hoping alright I will do that I appreciate it but doesn't microplastics the other problems carryover drugs and some of these things hyperlapse some of them just go away because they react with other things in our some of the carryover drugs are not and so there's some elements of that that we have to rely on so the Jax point there's more than what you think in the water yeah lots of pharmaceuticals yeah okay that's why I drink okay okay after a slight digression here items for the next agenda it's a working session ongoing conversation about commission relationship I also have update energy fund so I would be yes yeah so I have met with Dave Conkel and we're thinking about how best to kind of reboot energy fund and then finally mark for January's meeting we have your resolution so I can bring for at least a report on the listening tour stuff because I'll have a chance to talked about that that's great so I can report on that okay so I have a quick question sure last council meeting we passed bylaws for a commission that's yet to be formed and I'm wondering what's the status of our bylaws did we passed those all right they got tabled when there was a move afoot to combine us with the environmental Commission which now seems to be dead so it is something yeah so we should bring that forward in the near future please oversight to to other to other possibilities in the rest a solar faithful update I think would be interesting and then potentially especially in light of what Dave talked about because I know chart house was also a possibility and what's the carryover from that to the city or a noir public schools etc eventually that sort of carries over into community solar kinds of things but right now we don't have I haven't had a subcommittee meeting on that because there's really nothing to do especially also with the freedom package going through the house and waiting on solar faithful so an update at some point Josh you can maybe tell us when I mean it could be December it could be in January or past then and the other one is something that I would present we had a contingent from our sister city Tubingen that was here we hosted a couple of my wife and I did and attended several of events and one of them was an event with Mayor Taylor and council members from both Tubingen and Ann Arbor talking about three sort of common issues between the cities and one was energy and climate action and there was a presentation that was given by a tubing in a member of their City Council and I have a copy of that that I had him leave with me and I could go over that briefly I'm not gonna be able to get into real detail but it'd be interesting for us to see what they're tracking what metrics they're using some of the strategies that they've employed some of which are know to low cost kinds of things some of which actually tie in with what Dave's doing about job programs so I could present that at whatever meeting is appropriate tubing in Germany - Germany yeah it's a university town I can Arbor about the same size in one of our sister cities we also send a few recommendations as far as topics for you next that's something that I'll I'll be working with her to see when the best timing would be okay great wonderful well if there's nothing else we'll call this meeting adjourned at 8:10 environmental regulations hurt income so is there any like incentives short-term for people working looking for like solar panels and other environmental friendly stuff yeah but like short term because a lot of the things for talking about it everybody yeah that's an excellent question I think equity our office is really good taking equity ones and the things we've been doing one of the things that I know we've been looking at as far as rental housing and energy efficiency audits one of the problems that we often find is when we require energy efficiency upgrades to be done in rental units it can just fortunately affect those that have the most burden so that's something that I know we've been working with Boulder and others to try to see if there are market forces that we can use to help on that front the other side affordable housing so everything we've been doing I recently completed a Net Zero analysis of some affordable housing where the idea would be the energy costs are usually a large burden for those that obviously are hard pressed economically and so we've been finding ways to possibly bring down their energy burden through energy efficiency upgrades a lot of energy efficiency your upgrades specifically things like LED lights can bring down the cost of electrical use and the upfront cost can be much less than for example major upgrades on top of that were so helping to I guess proposing to help subsidize some of those energy efficiency upgrades as well as renewables so I think those are a few things we're looking at maybe you could exchange contact information we can we'll continue yeah I don't know if you picked up earlier one of the things that councilman Eaton mentioned earlier is that there is a resolution in front of Council to provide funding and as he mentioned a major portion of that is for two hundred thousand dollars that would essentially make affordable housing units that are on Broadway Net Zero and so the idea is that both energy efficiency as well as solar measures would be taken so that people that are living in those would essentially not have utility costs anymore other than water and gas from the electrical side would be it's the gas side is not being addressed in the NetZero right so my recommendations were to turn all the natural gas appliances to hide to electric okay okay so it would be truly Net Zero yes other than the water and then more generally our housing director is looking at our affordable housing units as we retrofit them to be more durable and more energy efficient so not necessarily Net Zero but just changing out the appliances so that they don't consume as much electricity or just adequately insulating a housing unit saves on heating and cooling costs so we're trying to address people of modest incomes at one of those levels that that pounds them harder than the rest of us you know I mean air conditioning isn't a luxury to me but you know heating and cooling costs are a major expense for someone who is on a limited income and so just making our housing units for subsidized house housing more affordable and in all respects have you any contact with Habitat for Humanity so um you know they obviously they're sort of low income people and you should talk to them they have all of their homes are built energy or other or the retrofits as well our Energy Star related which is a threshold from the Department of Energy and they also provide incentive programs for things like replacing old refrigerators and things like that that's sort of linked in with DTE but you should contact there's habitat of humanity of Washington County and you should contact them some of that the things that they do might be of interest for your report yeah that's true that's a good point I think library is available on the web and you can look at it where we had somebody from DTE and somebody from the county and somebody from Habitat all talking about different things that we're assistance programs for energy efficiency that was recorded just like this meeting I think yeah you should be able to access it I think maybe through the city or the district line yeah I'll give you my contact information we can talk it's hard to find on the library's website but I want to applaud your attention to that issue because certainly energy and environmental issues are minorities and people of low income more than the rest it's true they're living through it in ways that we don't all the power plants are in their neighborhoods and everything else okay well with that we're adjourned you
their meetings building board of fields for a city of Ann Arbor Thursday November 15th 2018 yes and we'll start with staff Lynn Dempsey Ryan Miller here Kathleen summers go yeah Krystal Markham yeah Deborah Williams yeah and Zach was Smith I am here board members Paul darling Robert Hart here Ken winters Gordon Barry you're David iron store here and Hugh flack absolutely we have if we can have motion have did everybody receive the agenda any questions on that no have a motion for approval I move to approve approval was David yep Paul second emotion and approval all those a favor I approved approval of minutes for what was the last meeting in May of 2018 everybody received that in the email and staff yes any questions or comments on that if not we could have a motion for approval move to proof minutes it's a second motion by Bob Hart and approval motion and approval motion and second is there vote for approval all those in favor opposed the minutes for me have been approved and next we go on to appeals actions and show-cause here first on the agenda is BBA 1800 six and one six two five welcome in Ann Arbor if staff so about ten years ago I had a minor system installed and my how a personal residence by Rueter MD but I don't have any financial interest in this particular appeal or knowledge about this appeal besides that and weren't I suppose that okay just disclosure alright thank you Paul and if staff can give us a summary of this appeal yes Glen Dempsey the peel was submitted to the building department from the applicant Oscar Rodriguez to asking for desired relief in regards to the address of 1625 walton drive and the relief they're asking that a finding that the SOP 501 applies to this permit that they're a finding that there is no violation of the MRC p300 5.3 and they have various attachments involved this was to find an appeal basis that the violation from Ryan Miller on an inspection based on a video that was provided that it was not sufficient and adequate for the intention of the code the basis of appeal is the proper SOP has no evidence that there is in fact non-compliance with p300 5.3 which is the Michigan plum or the residential plumbing code and there's various attachments and discussion that takes place in the submit all that's been provided in fact the I guess as the building officials final response in conclusion is that we would we would ask that the board deny this approval based on the intent of the code not being met and that again was three zero zero five point three this is a CI PP liner it is a liner that is put in place to help the drainage of a sewer line from the house to the main sewer thank you is there someone here in the audience to address this let us know about the appeal yes Rodriguez and I represent mr.
good evening one a Victorville SD superintendent schools is thank you for responding to our invitation to parent University tonight and this is actually the first parent University this year but we have a very important topic to share with you in a very energetic presenter to deliver it so I'd like to introduce mr. George Scott who is a licensed family and marriage counselor but also a former administrator of special education department for a school district and George have been actively involved throughout the state on traumatic loss and suicide prevention and he formally presented to our administrators this summer and our staff at the beginning of the school year and his message was so well received that we wanted to bring it to the community so our community members and families could hear the powerful message he has to share us so with that I introduce mr.
good morning McAuliffe today is November 16th it is a 59th day of school this is w vh e news I'm Sophia I'm Katharine today for lunch there will be chicken nuggets big fries green beans fruit jell-o cookie and more tomorrow for breakfast there will be maple graham crackers orange hats apple juice and milk we have some friends operating birthdays as Meg Jean this weekend Dakota book the barely see Hannah page Randy I'd Philip Brown and Miss Lancaster please go to the office to pick out your birthday book yesterday's fun that question was stratus serious cumulus and Nimbus are all types of what the answer is clouds the winner and will tell you later today today's that question is who did the walk around try share Thanksgiving dinner with remember to write your handsome neatly and include your name in class we have a special announcement this week we have been celebrating no boy angry you will be getting a new bag tag for your backpack today remember bullying hurts be a part of the solution not the problem now we will observe a great period of silence to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a fun Friday and remember discuss every day everywhere thanks for watching bye
[Music] oh okay hey I've been I've been havin a good evening everyone this is Wednesday November 14 2018 I called this meeting of the Board of Finance to order if everyone could please rise and join thank you everyone who is here on the board we have a full complement vice-chair Rooney is on the phone he had some some things to take care of out of town but he is with us so if anyone does have any questions for Glenn tonight and Glenn if you would like to participate in any discussion just holler out and be sure for that and I'll be calling on you to you know to give any commentary obviously in turn but if there's anything you want to call out just please do okay so yes thank you for everyone first order of business do we have any members of the public that would like to give comment seeing and hearing none second order of business communication and correspondence this month we received correspondence from Ron Jaffe Christina Zimmerman Howard Lassard great and next I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes from October 9th at a regular Board of Finance meeting minutes do them separately I don't think everybody it doesn't matter Oh people can people can still vote on it see if they want their okay then I make a motion to approve the minutes from OC's overnights regular meeting and the October 16th special meeting discussion on the minutes okay all those in favor of approving the minutes as distributed indicate by saying aye okay so now that we have minutes approved we can move on to our report of the First Selectman okay I won't be too long tonight because I know you've got a project um we have changed some of our processing in Town Hall particularly in a tax collector's office we have a number of delinquent tax payers who haven't paid us for 10 15 20 years so for the largest of our delinquents who are like 3 years and over we've decided to use the services of a marshal and we've been doing that for about six weeks and we've collected about $50,000 so that's good and our thinking on that is pretty simple everyone who loves taxes should pay them we understand people get into difficult situations and we work with people but if you continually ignore your tax bills for ten years we're gonna come after you we're gonna come after you so that's good that's one extra $50,000 that we have what's the what's the what's the cut for the marshal we just pay him a fee we're delivering the documentation from us but I believe he gets that percentage from them yes I don't know the number of top my head I think yeah it's $50,000 we never had before um second you know three years ago we had the issue with the high school right we had Steve Harding was kind enough to put a filter we met with Melanie carry the Commissioner of das and she agreed that there was an error in denying our claim for the emergency repair we received notice yesterday we're going that money $264,000 which is good we're making some changes to the minutes in the town clerk's office minutes of all the board's we're upgrading them to make sure to make them searchable so you can go into the minutes of the Board of Finance and search Sean and if there's a comment in the minutes by Sean it will show them or you complete the project huckleberry and we'll be able to search so we're gonna start doing that going forward and we're also gonna go back and while the minutes will be scanned and put up on the town website and that will save us some space in our wallets too because in the past a lot of board meetings we simply were taking them piling them in town clerk's office and put it in five so that should help people be able to look at what they're doing we have our Fela meeting our first real face-to-face meeting on Friday to kick off our FEMA claim that's about a two-hour meeting we're hoping it will work well we had an initial conference call with them with our department heads and FEMA to go over what's required what's not required it's gonna be a process it's gonna be a process female is an incredibly convoluted organization and many times we've heard then say one thing in for three months and then they say something else they changed their minds so we're documenting it very very carefully we've already started our application to FEMA we are on their website that's how you have to submit your documentation and we're doing that they told us at the first meeting the whole process is for six months I think that's aggressive on their part given the speed at which they're moving right now we're already two and a half months in and we're having our first real face-to-face meeting so we have hopes that that will move forward they've also told us now that you know there were categories a through G and they originally told us only a and B will reimburse about now categories a through G they're telling us are reimbursable so that will add 150 to 200 thousand so our claim so I think we're very very good shape from the documentation standpoint it's just going through the the process with FEMA so Steve after after that meeting will you have better clarity on whether the 12-month clock will be met in order to oh one is that yes and yes you know they have a clock but they can move it back right nothing on this has been held up by the town right so if they're moving slower than we are there's no doubt in my mind I'm just gonna have to extend the clock because we signed up the day they opened we've already started to put documentation and so I don't see that as a problem I was referring to the accounting standard what we're gonna we're gonna ask and use our best estimate from the answer that we get yeah cuz it makes a big difference you know we have little cabinet Kerma on insurance claims we're in the final meeting tomorrow to wrap that up so we'll know exactly they always stand on that once we have that we're gonna put together another update for the storm damage to give you guys we're still under the 1.7 million there are some things we would like to do but we've held off doing them until we get a full accounting and so we're pretty good shape there you know we signed up and we're using the system crisis track to track any future storm that we have it keeps track of every single person that works for town every outside agency that works with the town utilities and we'll track by location GPS location where the work was done when it was done who did it all those sorts of things that's a huge help when you're filing with FEMA because you can take that's their preferred system to track a crisis so you can take all the informations from crisis track and download it into female originally this time what we did we filled out what's called a PDA preliminary damage assessment then we have to take all that data and re-enter it manually so crisis track will do two things one it will help us a lot if we ever get even aid again but it'll also help us manage the overall big their interactive map show which streets are closed which streets are being worked on which streets have real danger situations and it's live and it's interactive so we can see streets get cleared as we go along so it'll help a lot in managing over water so we're very happy with that and that's at no expense to us satisfied its contracted for us and we get that system for free we have a couple projects that are in tonight's discussion for the high school project the huckleberry achievement sentencing in my brain the huckleberry project there are two more you know we have two projects that are moving forward more comfortable than before and we'll talk about a little bit later but I just want to give you an update unto others a supermarket that we had discussed a few months ago that right now is in a in a hold situation they haven't been able to come through agreement between the partners so we didn't put it in art or ask the minimum future tax revenue and we also have something that's moving along rather quickly these guys are already talking to our fire marshal man juice and building facilities assisted living facility that will go on federal road and we don't have hard numbers somewhere between 50 and 30 30 million dollar building again that's not in our estimates for tonight because we don't have any contracts signed or anything that really solid so we didn't include that just see where Marsha is gonna share with you our financials one thing we had we had meetings last week with every single one of our departments we went through their budgets in very great detail to understand where they were what they're doing do they see any problems that they see any issues adversely everybody's right on target except where they need to be with the exception of our fire marshal's office due to the new development in town and what's going on we are going to be over budget on Fire Marshal we have two people that working almost we have a fire marshal whose full time and our assistant Fire Marshal who's a part-timer who's actually working pretty much full-time to do all of the inspections remember we also have all of the buildings that damage all of that sort of stuff so we're just giving you a heads up now we're gonna be over budget on that we're already working on where we can find that money in the budget because our goal is in Silius our commitment is to say under budget for the year and I'm very comfortable we're gonna be able to do that also our legal budget remember we cut it last year we may go over that to our tax litigations are up but we got the fifteen thousand so that's covering a little bit of it but these things do happen every time you have these three Vallieres and they keep going and a couple of the bigger commercial entities have decided to fight their tax bills and we think we're right and they think they're right so we'll go through them that's it for me hey the UM the reimbursement or the roof project yep 264,000 what's the accounting for that so it has not been on our financial statements with you again there's no good it has not been on our financial statements before that so the question is we could either do a prior period adjustment for it to add it or include it last year's revenue that and I haven't seen the actual paperwork on should it have been there if everyone you know was clairvoyant then it would be a prior period adjustment if it was just something that was new because of the lawsuit or of the legislation and the date of the legislation then would probably pick it up as revenue but so at June 30th either way it'll be a receivable and in the fund balance of 18 correct um another topic no no if it's appropriate for a Vanessa anyway and your meeting last week or selectmen talked about and approved extension to the building starting the building for Horner's yeah and I had total five I wanted it I I downloaded listen to my commute so I that's good that's a very good question I probably should about that up a book the villagers come to us and asked us to give them a one-year extension on the time period maybe I should back up a little bit the tax abatement agreement we have with Brookfield village says that within receiving the certificate of occupancy and set at least 75 percent of their commercial space being occupied released out whichever date comes first right they have one year to start the next two buildings they asked us for a year's extension on that overriding this is they have three year period at most to start regardless of anything else so they asked for a one-year extension the Board of Selectmen discussed that and we gave them a six month extension to start those two buildings as part of that agreement Brookville village has agreed to knock down subway and mother earth buildings and put grass there when we look at it if they start six months later they still have to get into that three year window so they're really gonna have to move we're not really getting about much but we're getting some blighted properties taken down so it seemed to win-win cause that makes sense okay they take care of the cost of where they already was that already part of the yes yes they're already gonna be doing that no we're not we're not okay okay so they let it sit for a while I said you want an extension this is what I want I want those buildings down and they've already started yeah you notice they cleaned up all the overgrowth so there there and they've been a very good partner with Brookfield so I've no doubt they will do what they say okay all right so the revenue and expense report that revenue is on target with a budget that we are working on catching up the revenue and we've reallocated the jobs in the office so that we have someone that's that it's actually her dropped to post the revenue and collect it every day so once we get it caught up it should stay caught up but it's on that it's on target with respect to the expenses we met with each of the department heads to review it in the past that they believe that you've only done budget adjustments other than big things at the end of the year and what we'd like to do is do it on a quarterly basis at ten one four and seven or month numbers so October January April and July just so that it's pretty clear what it is that we we want to do so that I in the past not here but other places I've dealt with people that have said well we've had an underage here so we're going to use it there and at the next meeting they said we're going to use it there and at the next meeting this way it solidifies where we are you can decide to adjust it or not we'd like to bring you adjustments quarterly we set up a formal request form that you have a copy in there so that it can they can put their justification it can come to the boards and if there's an additional appropriation there's nothing on the state statutes that talked about having to do adjustments to the revenue but there's nothing that says you can't do adjustments to the revenue I like adjustments to the revenue because it kind of gives the reader and idea of what you were thinking for example we had I had a client one time a town that had a windfall and they did an additional appropriation to spend all the money that and if you're reading them after you'd say oh thank goodness they collected so much in taxes so they could have afforded that well they knew about that in advance and so it kind of just shows a little bit more of your thinking that we can add this to the budget let's say if there's an appropriation which we don't think there's going to be but for for an additional appropriation for a fire marshal and they're going to bring in the same amount of money it could you could see the correlation so that will go to the Board of Selectmen first and then come to you again we'd like to propose the adjustments quarterly you can decide how can you how can you assert that let's say you're three months into your tier fiscal year how can you assert that you need to transfer three months in so if you look at something I think it's in the Assessor that there's money in her budget for a part-time person and it really is supposed to be in an overtime position and she'd like to take it out of one and put it into the other because they're not planning on having a part-time person they're planning on having an overtime working overtime so that would be the type of of change or if we know something that it's you know we don't have to spend you know X Y or Z then we could say well we have confidence that we're going to be under budget here and we can move it over there but there are cases like your tax appeals we're already over so we know we're going to need to make an adjustment and we think quarterly is a better way to go and we could do it monthly that but we thought that was too much that and if you say oh I really love this quarterly stuff we can always would go at monthly this that as Steve mentioned that we do have concerns in some areas that I also have the the lawsuits I forgot to put in here the fire marshal and what he didn't mention was my department that we had some part-time help we don't have any more part-time help so that's done we do have some we have five people three salaried all three salaried people are working overtime and we have overtime of one of the hourly people and so I will come back to you with a justification and the transfer of where we'd like to get the money from for that capital projects we did our bonding we we have the quotes that closes tomorrow that we did tax exempt bonds that we thought we were going out for 18 million 6:15 we got the results back and we were offered a 10% premium that 10% premium there's no certain things you can do with that and one is not save it that so we were unable to use the full 10% premium because we can only pay taxes on it we didn't have that but interest on it we didn't have that much interest so it was a 10% premium there's coupon rates of 5% and 4% the true rate of interest was three point two nine percent so we resized it to reduce the principal instead so instead of bonding for eighteen point six million we bonded for seventeen point eight million that that we have taxable bonds the taxable bonds are for four million there's no premium on the taxable bonds their true interest rate was four point one six percent and we have bond anticipation notes of for one year of 1.9 there was a very small premium on those if you want any documentation on any of these bonds you can go to the mo website that I guess for there's one for public throughout the name is Oscar or something for public companies some mails name but Edgar Edgar thank you that Oscar that that I never did any public but the municipal was Emma that and you can see it's got our offering statements our um our bond actual bond documents budgets all the continuing disclosure information that is for the current year projects that we talked about if we should roll them into the tax-exempt bonds but they advised us that we should not be doing that that we wouldn't have as much flexibility that we wouldn't be spending them fast enough that it would be best to take them out in anticipation notes and go forward let's say for some reason you decided not to do a project you already borrow for it long term cause this huge problem there was some there was an email about some concerns about the timing of our bonding that that in our budget that how much were we paying off of it and the timeliness of our paying off well we have four categories of debt that in the budgets one is greater than 10-year bonding and 91% of our of our bond package was for that the total that we financed this is the total projects was 19 million 817 that that was the approved amount some has been paid down some has been wasn't fully spent we had pay downs that we had to do of 1.9 million so we've already paid that down of the total as principal but that because we had taken out bond anticipation notes for so long and the life of the assets for these this bonds which were bonded for 20 years the life of the assets were 20 to 50 years the some of the sewer projects have a 50-year life we have a second set of bonding that in the in two of the years 1781 19 women bonded for that yet that you devote we divided the category into less than 10-year bonding that was 9% of our total bond package that the average payoff on that that the total financed is 2.3 million and we asked to have the debt accelerated so that we're paying off we had done a calculation of how much was in that 10-year category and we asked could we take that amount and financed it over ten years instead of over 20 to try and meet the spirit of the budget that if we so when we take the two million that we finance that way and the payments it's being paid off of SEP over seven point eight four years that the stuff that's less than ten years that there was a concern that some of this was so seven point eight years from today but some of it was purchased in advance so we did the calculation that if we had purchased everything on the first day that we could July first of the fiscal year it would be seven point eight four years that and we haven't spent everything so there we just give the breakdown of what was spent for fiscal year 17 we still have a half million that's not spent fiscal year 18 we have fifty five thousand that's not stronger than ninety-nine point eight years yeah thank you so so that's nine point eight four is for the last dollar pencil or not correct so if you were to calculate that if we said well so we were calculating trying to get at less than ten years based on tomorrow the date we bonded that two million we bonded we're gonna pay that two million off on seven point eight years from tomorrow that and then the concern was well some of this was bought a few years ago and so that nine point eight four is if all of what we authorized in year in seventeen was bought on July first sixteen and if everything we're authorized for year-end eighteen was bought on July first seventeen and what would be the length of the bond well that wasn't the case it wasn't tallboy but that would be the length of the bond that and then we have a third category short-term debt that we're not bonding at all that there's some police cars and and I thought what else was in short-term debt but that we're taking out loans with first I think it was Chase Bank for the first year second year was Union savings and we have one loan out still for Union savings which is a three year loan for the short-term debt then the final category is just cash that we're paying 1.2 million dollars in cash the going forward that we this whole bonding experience we've had to reconcile every number that we've that we authorized with what we've paid we're pulling it into the balance sheet we're pulling in we have a steep ramp that's a receivable we have a school construction that would be receivable at June 30th of last year we have some retain it out there just trying to pull it all in so we can compare here's the fund balance here's the projects that are open and then we're setting up each of these projects in munis so that they can just be calculated very easy going forward and the audit update that that we've done a lot of special projects and spent a lot of time on projections and bonding and things like that it would be really great if we if I just focused on accounting for June 30th before we get into a budget season I'd like to have a draft of the financial statements for the auditor to give them in advance so the goal is for December 31st that with financial statements and and notes of the statement so that they are completely done for them that I'd like it to be available for your review for the January meeting they're tentative water dates they'll be here between January 7th and the 25th they want to do their internal review self review the week of January 28th have drafts of the audit reports to us the week of February it'll be a little less exciting if you already have the numbers and these are just the audit reports and available for your to review at the edge of February meeting the critical date to me is we want them up on Emma by February 28th and we have we'd like you to consider an extension that for my understanding is that you approve the extensions yeah in the last two years we've approved extensions on a month by month basis we have to do that by law we have to apply for an extension with the state what we're suggesting is that the board of Phineas approved the town to extend at twice January February remove once and we can just send it in with because we know where we're gonna be OPM only allows a 30-day extension so every month at the board didn't need to approve the extensions that your office had already to go ahead and do so I would rather not I have no problems all support is comfortable with that and we'll double-check it but yes but we wanted you to be aware if you approve it it's a Brookfield thing because I don't necessary formality in the past okay I had to have special meetings to gather the everyone together just for five minutes which is oh that's what we were saying if you could do a time I have your blessing then we will just file there's two months but that's okay if you're comfortable with us doing it we just want to keep you informed I know they'll be informed I'm sorry I'd rather be invoking you know as we go okay the blanket blessing right now all right we're talking to the sisters all right yeah and a bad month I might wear that outfit here any any questions on any of that or anything else I have just as we discussed it's a little bit of a delay from what was previously reported ever really it was gonna be wrapped up in January and just kind of that that was really just talking to the law partner that I didn't pressure him I could pressure him and ask him to have it for December for February January 31st I didn't I know that they have two other partners in that firm and one just left to be a finance director someplace else not me there's everyone that so I was feeling his pain but I can I could push to see I just wanted to report to the board last May they came to us and said listen guys we're not going to be able to get to you in July or August and we agreed then in May okay come in December now we finalized yet because I have good days this time okay yeah no it's important to understand why that's it's really not us exactly but in the look we have a budget versus actual did I miss it here did we get a chance to prepare the full balance sheet or the balance sheet that you had wanted to prepare we have said that we are still catching up on so you just have the budget of the budget versus actually no revenue that so the goal is to get you revenue get you the balance sheet with that aside from the couple items mentioned in the report are there any notable the only notable one is at the very end the the treatment of the FEMA expenditures that when we give you the final draft and we ask you to make any transfers or other things that need to be made I think we're going to ask you to approve carrying over that carrying over that budget line item that was the sensitive thing on how are we going to do that and we had talked last time but that might be the best you to do it so that's the most notable is is those expenses and I had forwarded you because I don't want too much time to go on without us bringing to light and the Board of Education hasn't brought to us a formal request just yet but I want to be prepared just in case if there is a request from the Board of Ed for to establish an on lapsing fund right I'm bringing this up because there are preliminary results that there was going to be an underage right this year course for the year that just closed and I had forwarded youth of Correspondence and and whatnot from the last time the board had discussed it with a previous finance director have you had a chance to look into that and see what the process what the staffs a B and C would be to get that done so we don't close the audit and want to do this and it's too late because we've closed the audience we should have correct that it's gone it's not gonna be before we closed the audit and I have to say that I had it on my on my file for the next education finance committee meeting I didn't realize we were closed on Monday but they were not that so they had a meeting but but we can get it done in the December meeting if they see where they stand and the other notable thing is that Board of Education number that you have in the budget to actual is balanced as I think I told you Kevin and Jones spent the whole month of August balancing last year and it is balanced so within fifty eight dollars for around 11 million for this year but I don't know the number Saturday more than all that money and I would think but whatever the Board of Ed expenditure is so that's that's a huge thing well you're a $400,000 credit on the pension we received it from the Board of Ed we haven't paid it in yet yeah usually they give it to us and then we pay it into the Wells Fargo but we're switching from Wells Fargo to MassMutual it was supposed to have happened on the 22nd of last month and it didn't that were where we stopped giving the payments to one and so we were hoping to just give it any other questions [Music] okay we have no items of old business to go over this is the first order of new business I'll make a motion so we can discuss this one I make a motion that the Board of Finance appropriates a sum not to exceed 1 million three hundred thousand from the general fund for the purpose of funding the cost of the planning design acquisition construction and installation streetscape improvements beginning on federal road and running down old route 7 to and including a portion of Road and related improvements including but not limited to sidewalks lighting signage and relocation of utility lines if necessary and authorizing the town to issue general obligation bonds or notes this project would be called phase three of the streetscape if I may we have applied and I think if you watch the Board of Selectmen meeting or lots of grant in the amount of 1 million forty thousand dollars with a 20% town match obviously when we do this we have to approve the full amount so the town would be sending two hundred and sixty thousand dollars and the Lots that would cover the 1 million forty thousand dollars this is very similar to what we've done my phase one and phase two we anticipate this project will be the summer after next we'll actually do the construction we have high hopes they have no lot set this year they just didn't have a program so we have high hopes that we can get the money and will be approved on the grant it fits perfectly with what Lots it wants to do so we have a good possibility of getting the money but we have to prove the entire amount so we're really asking a ten-cent 260 thousand which is about 22 percent of the total see what's your location the the it was this week but the Board of Selectmen already approved that announcement submitted right now we need to approve the spending of the money this 1 million 3 includes the town portion of 260 thousand so if you can reminds me yeah the guarantee that's if the grant doesn't come through this house not to be been standing that bullet point 3 no no we can't do that we can't do that it's anticipated upon them and Board of Selectmen motion that it includes the 1 million 40 if we can't do it then we're gonna have to come back and say alright where we're gonna find that 1 million 40 and do the project almost fully funded perfect it's just a bench here and a bench there no you're right yeah that's a good point to clarify do any of the future construction projects in decreasing Gianna's doing this link was there an agreement that we would extend sidewalks down to Laurel Hill not no no there is not with any of the developers this is just the town is building the infrastructure to bring in good development and so far it's working so they're slower than we thought that it's worth glad there's a motion on the floor right now for the 1.3 million dollar streetscape which the town portion would be 260,000 the materials were sent out ahead of time on that request did you have any questions or comments or concerns for the first selectman okay see you thing else no that's it if I've explained it well enough all right hearing no further discussion I call a motion to a vote all those in favor has the motion as put forth indicate by saying aye aye motion carries six thank you sir the next order of business is a discussion only on the school project it's worded specifically by this because I don't have any intention of bringing a motion to the floor this evening on this particular item I feel that it's it's too great of a task to do in one night so at the end of discussion on this going over the data that questions I mean we have you know many people who have a great stake in this project not only residents but so there's some consultants back there and folks that do work for the town in the school everybody's got a big stake in this project and it's a big one so there will be no motion put forth today not on my part as well we have some agreement on that so this is a discussion only of the recommendation by the Board of Selectmen and a review nice thorough as long as it takes please don't abridge anything you know any questions that are asked please answer in as much detail as possible so we have information to go on when we leave here and we reconvene either for special meetings or okay so if I can start Marcia's out of prison we've got a presentation that we've been spending many many many hours on Marshall cabinets are fantastic job putting all the numbers together just to remind the public that this project has been going on for two and a half years now the board of that is work tirelessly to hire a consultant at that time they've come up and come into the town looked at every single building looked at our Ruhlman figures looked at what we're doing where we're gonna be in five and ten years and they've come up with a plan and the original plan had ten options and the strategic Committee of the Board of Ed narrowed that down to three and then to one option the option we're talking about now is about a sixty seventy eight million dollar total project with twenty one and a half percent reimbursed by the state is our current guess the total cost in a town of just over sixty three million dollars then I want everybody to realize and some people have said to me in the bullet why where's this coming from I never heard about this this has been we've been working on this for two and a half years and actually if you look back at a lot of the meetings of the boards this is something we should have been looking at 15 and 20 years ago we have Center School which is 80 some odd years old we have huckleberry which is 57 years old and what I say to people and I got this from Colette and Ike and I ain't collect for this right now not doing anything is not an option it's just not we have to educate our children we have that safe secure buildings that they can learn it and now is the time we've gone too far we've we've retread this tire so many times the steel bands are no longer good I think it's time to move on and having made that sales pitch I'm gonna let Marsha go through our presentation all right and I will say that I apologize in advance those of you there at the Board of Selectmen meeting because this is just the same talking points and it is not a sales pitch it is a projection of the best numbers that we think are possible to to come up with that so that we talked at the October meeting that we had given some numbers about the increased costs and the increased costs are very traditional of what you look at in a presentation for a government of what will this add to my time so the taxes but that's just part of a presentation that really to do this you need the whole picture of where you're going to be and so one of the best budget best practices is to look at the long term planning with a forecast when you add a big if then that's turns it into a projection just a pimple one thing you know in talking to a lot of first elected mayors about these big projects most of them do not do what we're doing here show the total revenue picture showed a total of spends picture and show the bottom line including capital projects and doing all those things they usually just show here's what the costs this is what they're doing in Bethel they do a great job so be fifty million dollar project this is what it's gonna cost you per year and that's what and they give them some more detail nobody goes to the level of detail up we've gone here and I think it's important to recognize that because you make better decisions if you have that information and Dan had asked how many other governments do this and in my experience as an auditor in Connecticut and a technical reviewers some new jersey in new york governments i have never seen a government do it the way this came about was what commercial entities do when they're trying to get a loan from a bank if i were you i wouldn't approve something where I just saw the increment how does that fit into the whole I think you just have to know that it also puts gives it a downside is that some of these other towns that don't get the whole picture might just be sitting in ignorant bliss that that oh you know we do nothing and their taxes aren't going up that so so there's two sides to this but and the third the third one is that as important as the finances are that that's not the whole picture there's other things that you have to consider as part of the finances that so the first thing we looked at I don't know if I can make it lighter from my side here we turn lights off yes fine I can't make it lighter ah we just need to watch so the first thing that we looked at was were the expenses that for the expenses for payroll for the town for payroll that generally what the union contracts tried to do is keep up with a cost of living and so we had to figure out what do we think the cost of living is going to be and luckily we didn't figure that out we went to the Congressional Budget Office for the United States and they estimated that for the next ten years the cost of living increase is going to be average 2.4 percent per year we compared that to what our contracts say because if if our contracts say that we're going to give 5% increases who cares what the cost of living is that but the they were lower so we went with a higher amount of the 2.4 percent we did the same exercise with the Board of Education we had 2.4 percent but their contracts gave a higher percentage than that for the next 3 years so the average when we do a weighted average of the salaries at the different rates it was two point seven three percent so that's what we used was a two point seven three percent and you have that in your packages the the actual calculation can I also jump in there our average increase in the last three contracts was about two point one six percent each year it's outside yeah for all of our union employees for payroll taxes that it's an easy calculation on the town sides seven point six five percent we pay unlike a commercial enterprise we pay reimburse the state for whatever actual unemployment that we have so I put in $10,000 for on potential unemployment costs that we haven't had them but they could be there for the board of education whereas estimating the same percent increase we couldn't do the same calculation just because teachers don't pay Social Security so it wouldn't multiply out properly for the payroll ensuring the health insurance that we divided that out because it usually adjusts at a much higher rate we have a consultant that we use for that and the consultant was unable to give us estimate so they don't they don't share estimates of what they think the increase is going to be that I come from a commercial side where the increase is always in the double digits the consultants said that we're on the state plan so the same we get an economy of scale there it's never been in the double digits and so five point one percent is the estimate based on the two years we've been on it's just the average of what it's increased over the last two years and I say one of those years it was a decrease that I have never seen that on the commercial side and then we had to look at everything oh that we have to look at the pension that we have it increasing the same as the payroll we've been funding the OPEC for $200,000 a year that education has got some revenues that office offset their expenses that in this we're estimating and again you have the option to change any of these estimates on the Excel version we're estimating that it's not going to increase at all even if the expenses increase that the big the bulk of this is the special education excess cost reimbursement and years ago it was a straight you know you got a hundred percent of the calculation now you get four and a half percent or four point five times and then it's prorated for how much money the state has and so it's it's not going to go up that but that's the bulk of what is in here I think that's almost 800,000 of this and then everything else everything else we assumed would increase by the by the cost-of-living adjustment after that we have the annual capital expenditures that every year we have expenditures that are for replacing trucks and replacing equipment that it does not this does not include big purchases over a million dollars such as radios for the police and a police station in a library and four corners that and in working with this that we have funded this year we funded 1.2 million dollars of expenditures there over the last five years we've averaged 3.9 million of these expenditures the balance we have funded with debt it's it just it seems that we are always struggling with the capital expenditures and we don't think that we've been we've been funding enough of them two things the total isn't enough and the amount that we're paying in cash isn't enough and so as part of this whole process we want to resolve those two issues that so what we have said is that we have set a target of funding five million dollars a year that there was a question that a statement that that seems high that it does seem high but if we're honest of compared to where we've been but we're honest with ourselves it's not high that that we've got the board of it has hired Tecton to come in and give them a real assessment of where they stand and what it would cost and that's going up significantly that I had a the last capital plan is February of and in that budget the we had a ten-year plan for the schools when we subtract out a new school the thought was that there were going to be capital expenditures there of approximately eleven million dollars when we have it professionally done the expenditures are going would be estimated closer to 50 million dollars that they went through each school they went through each system the board of it can talk more to this to try and find out what is a real number that we could think of so we don't think the five million is too high that we have asked each of the department heads to update their budgets at their their ten-year plans yes I just don't think he walks here you know Marsha hasn't been here about four months and we've talked about this at some length but I don't think there's anyone on this board or on previous boards or residents who would disagree with the fact that Brook Hill has consistently underfunded our capital budget for maintenance for maintaining buildings for doing things and this is an attempt to recognize that problem and we kind of have a backlog you know you guys get a capital budget request every year that we just have to slash well we're trying to address that with this it's not gonna be perfect but it's gonna get a long way there and our goal is to pay cash for everything except for huge huge projects so we're not constantly adding debt so what we've done in the past is we've taken that we've paid and this the 19 we're paying 1.2 million in cash and took out debt for the rest so we need to increase what we're paying in cash and so in this projection we're trying to increase it by five hundred thousand dollars a year and again that's just a number that we came up with in the Excel version you can play with you can make that number any number that you want that that we're also trying to how do we get there faster we've got some new development specific projects that will be adding a lot of money to the grand list and we'd like to dedicate that money to funding capital projects the the recurring capital projects that we have three companies that we were watching as we went along and paperwork has been signed for company a and Company B Company C there has not been paperwork science so we took it out that so you can see that the the debt if we were to do this we would have had to fund we would have to fund 3.2 million next year in debt but that just keeps decreasing year after year until we get to year 2025 and in that year that we're not taking out any debt that and that's really what our goal is is to take out debt for the major capital projects and not all the small ones it would be similar to company 20 21 through 23 have a tax abatement on company a agreement in place that we finalized today and for Company B there is no tax incentive okay so that's just partial completion and a focal patient thank you and then so we have to look at the debt service without the new schools on this page that we have current obligations for debt and that's just taking each of our obligations adding up what we're what we need to spend an interest in principal we did subtract out the water debt because that's paid out by the users that we have bond anticipation notes that are turning into a permanent financing tomorrow that and so we'll have debt service there that we have this these capital projects that we just talked about that we generally have been doing bond anticipation notes for three years and then moving it into permanent financing so that's the the interest in principle the negative amounts our premiums that I believe we're using a 3% premium we just received a 10% premium but but municipal bonds generally do have premiums on them how does the 2019 forecast a debt that four point zero two zero million how does that correspond to what we have in the budget four point 1 1 3 million for debt service I'm just over budget based on that that does tie out to the budget I think I took one of the expenses and moved it someplace else but the whole 19 ties out in total that I'm trying to remember where I if I move to the financing expense why it's a little bit different but the 19 ties out to the bottom line to the 5 is the then we have specific projects that that police radios police buildings library building and screen streetscape that would generally be accounted for separately that with a separate bond package and not part of the the recurring debt so those are in here and again the model you can change it so that you can have it say yes to it no to it have it start whatever your year you want we tried to put in our best guess of when we would do that that we do have an advantage that the current debt that we have drops that the debt service for the current debt is 3.2 million in the year 2020 and it drops to just eight hundred thousand and 2027 so it's a that's a huge benefit in trying to fit other debt in when we looked at this we we look at the debt service compared to the budget and we had about 6% we know right now without a new school compared to the energy senator house 20 pounds it's 66% is their current and for all understand just as an average that the new school that we will save on their recurring of announce that we have for repairs that that when we talked in October we used the tech on numbers and we said 10 years so that service of spreading that out for 15 years the feedback we received was so assuming that we're gonna spend a year to do that what we would have saved that we have got the energy saves we talked about last time that and there as we started that and we added and then here as a goal was to have it tended as 12 percent in February PowerPoint that that is no war that intended to go out first and we do have is we we we worry about that we never really adjusted to the [Applause] is the state there's anything I just did a decrease in the city money there's a tax revenue that the same way and we have a variable here is the brand listen grow without those new developments in the past 1.5 percent how much we've grown in the last five years in a year the average is 29 percent that and not having anything that sways using we're about us so the impact on the taxpayers without them that we've got in the middle rates that you can see an increase in here that it is very you can see that how much they the one the line increases and increases each year in dollars to give you everything that to help you understand the impact that we the session is house of taxes increase every year we can't compare five years down the road to what we're paying today so we assumed it's done an increase like possible living and then we did a cumulative impact of how much increase would it be over and then we can compare it to the DRC but right now we're 148,000 and lower than the average tasks for that group we can continue even with the news tool to be lower every year when you understand I was hired today oh wow that that this list of the bounces of the dead at the end be needed in the years and an economy parents total debt with the general fund budget and then what percentage of the budget would need to pay off the debt at the end of 2019 is 60% it does fighting I used to do I'm here because I think five years is over [Music] getting rid of that person for three years and then that and we just see the energy the energy group and how we came up with the the averages and and there were some outliers that it's tough to for example Greenwich and one of them their mo rate is 11 that maybe we shouldn't use that in our averages that and then this is again that the bottom line is the summary of the taxes that it would be for a new school that this is isolating the school just isolate the school's not including 2.4 percent everything else and correct - what have you for salary and whatever correct so this is just a comparison of the new school and these are per year and then that so we can talk about the finances and just want to recognize that finances aren't aren't the be-all and end-all that there's a lot of other things that you have to consider the market value of of the homes in Brookfield that the impact on if we can use this to get better commercial and residential development that the education of the students and hiring and retaining quality teachers administrators and staff I know that coming from public accounting I never had a client come to the office but we had really nice offices because we wanted to get good staff that does it does make a difference any questions on any of that hey Glen did you have do you have anything on the phone I know it's kind of tough from there good oh yeah I was just wondering we talked about the the economies in terms of the energy and that the older buildings are grossly energy inefficient Steve you mentioned that yes so I just wanted to maybe I just wondered are we going to the layin natural gas lines for the school or what source of our I don't think that's in the budget and just naming position if you don't mind Derrick Brad with consulting and hearing services working with Tecton on the study for their school we've been in contact with the gas utility there is a natural gas line approximately a mile away that's gonna have to be assessed as you get closer to the actual construction or the design of the project but it's it's a possibility to bring natural gas that would have a tremendous energy savings to the school we're trying to get that at them right now they have not given us any good estimates you need to do they need to do their economic analysis in order to give that cost to the town of what it's going to be I'm sorry could you speak up a little bit does the town bear the full cost of laying those gas lines no typically I think when they do that that put the gas line in if we want to bring it in just our building where I understand we'd have to pay for it but then anyone who hooked up along the line would then pay us back that's a way to do it so you might get some sup revenue back on it oh absolutely if people would I think people would very much like to hook up the natural gas because I think you guys would agree that to be reliant on oil delivery and and everything else cuz we just had a very severe storm I'm thinking the delivery of a power source that is not as vulnerable to weather crisis no you are correct natural gas a very reliable source so great I just wanted to see what that might cost and if that weighs it thank you thank you uh you should know Marsha just said to me the the $250,000 that's in this budget as savings does not include natural gas so if we brought that line up we'd have the cost of the line but then we would achieve some significant savings on the price of the gas so yeah for sure that it's cheaper than the oil mr.
wood and his company what quick thing have you signed in no I have not but I will sign in now thank you before we get started you know I don't do these types of Appeals very often and so if I if you need to correct me on the procedure or the timing please just let me know my intention here is to present our appeal and the issues as we see them and have ourselves or I'm not sure if there's a time limit and I'm not suggesting that I'm going to be here for hours or anything like that but it would be good to know if there if there is a one ahead of time there is no time limit but I will ask that you limit your discussion to the three items that are being asked for the appeal certainly with respect to the three items however we we frame the issues a little bit differently in our appeal and I trust that everyone has read had an opportunity to look at the appeal package that we submitted and I want to repeat for Batum but I think that it's important there are some videos that I alluded to in the in the appeal that we obviously can't just show on the printed appeal so let me let me just get started the issue for us is simply my client who's been doing these CI PP liners for many years almost since 2002 at least with this kind of product bit a master plumber for many years and been in the plumbing business for forty five years comes in to Ann Arbor and installs I think by our count is about 50 of these liners and as mr.
George Scott [Applause] sometimes you wind up either personally or professionally having an experience that changes you well that happened to me five-and-a-half years ago at the time one of the things that I was involved in or part of my professional life was something called the traumatic loss coalition and fortunately throughout New Jersey every county has a coalition and we have a responsibility for training on suicide awareness and suicide prevention really good thing to do but secondly we also respond to youth organizations and schools if something terrible happens because when there is a big emotional event in the lives of kids or adults who care for kids it has a ripple effect and it can be very hurtful well five and a half years ago I was the coordinator for the Monmouth County traumatic loss coalition and one Sunday evening I got a call my cell phone from the superintendent who I knew who we had worked together before and he called to say hey listen can you come to our district tomorrow morning because one of our thirteen year olds took his own life it was a horrible experience for that community and part of what we do is we go and we have protocol that we follow and we we help people get through it for the next three days three weeks three months well that was an event that changed me and I still can't figure out why I mean it wasn't my first response it wasn't my first suicide response I'd been part of the coalition for a very long time but here was the event that happened in my head and I want to kind of propose it to you as a question because it's going to talk about this this evening as I was driving home now I live in Mercer County so I was coming across 195 West going from Haslett small mommoth community to where I live in Ewing normally there's radio on music playing something this effort to decompress not that day and that's what felt different in Act it was so quiet that I was just in my head asking myself this question George how is it even possible that between a child's birth and thirteen years they can't do tomorrow how's that even possible and who we are and what we have and where we live and how we live how do any of our babies get to the point where they can't do tomorrow well it was a haunting question so I spent the second X several days several weeks several months really doing a lot of research because what I wanted to find out is not just the answer to that question but why does it seem like so many of our kids struggle and we got to talk about what those struggles are I want to talk about what kids need because you can make a decision whether or not you're providing it for your children or your grandchildren or your nieces or nephews whatever motivates you to be here what is it that kids need what what can go wrong and then what can we do about it if it goes wrong because if you can't walk out of here tonight with the better understanding of how to keep your kid healthy then I had missed my mark usually I say to parents hey listen how many of you as a goal for your children want your kids to be happy how many raise your hand if you want your kids to be happy yeah that's pretty universal right no matter where I go parents want their kids to be happy and what I say is are you willing to trust me enough to take that to number two see I don't think that should be number one I think that should be number two because number one I think should be let's see what we can do to help our kids be healthy see happy kids can't sustain the happiness but healthy kids will always get resilient enough they will always bounce back enough to be able to kind of find the joys in life so remember we got in three places tonight what do kids need what could go wrong and what we can do about it I had the real pleasure last week of being in this auditorium with half of the staff and then in the morning I was over at the high school just packed with teachers and it was really thrilling for me to see them want to know what could they do better and different for the kids that you send them for your babies that you sent to school and it was really just a thrilling opportunity for me to take a look at this topic so let's see where this goes so here's a here's a statement that has always kind of intrigued me and I want to explain it to you in the way that I explained it to your teachers and your support staff the way that you understand your child's behavior determines what you do about it interpretation of it drives your intervention your reaction your response and if it's a missing but interpretation if you get the interpretation wrong then the what you do misses the mark so what we want to be sure of let's be patient and try to understand what our kids are telling us see I'm not quite sure what's going on in that that little one's mine I'm going to interpret he doesn't look happy I'm not so sure why I don't know about this young man is that a bad report card it's girlfriend break up with them same here and same here it doesn't matter their age it doesn't matter your culture because kids are universal in the way that they respond to life the emotional needs of kids so so how do our kids tell us what they need well they have two ways they can tell us with their words that looks like that or that one of the things that we always look for is tell me tell me let's talk even that is telling me with your words it doesn't look like a very young man but I kind of like the fact that that that the teacher is just kind of there waiting for him to get reconnected so they can tell us with our words or they show us with their behavior no words needed I'm gonna come back and address that picture a little bit later because it has to do with maybe a burning question that you have about the issue of social media and video games there's a lot out there in the press there's a lot out there on the airwaves about that but I want you to take a look at a little guy let's say third grade maybe fourth grade that he is so dysregulated that whatever it is that he's supposed to achieve in that in that game has him over the top and we see that with our kids and we just have to be careful about that so impatient of those faces drives what we do about it however we don't always understand his moms and dads we like to tell them we know everything we always have the answers but we don't we don't always understand and portion for us in the absence of understanding sometimes human beings suffer and sometimes they die now that's pretty dramatic right like who came out on a cold night just to hear somebody talk about bad stuff that could happen but that's true in the absence of understanding let me give you an example there are two conditions that if we don't understand them if we don't understand the negative effect of lead in the water if we don't understand the the negative effects of of nicotine in our lungs of smoking products of vaping which is not just vapor it's on nicotine based if we don't understand the negative effect and our kids will suffer and maybe in your family there has been someone who died there's a couple of more asbestos same thing and then there's the effects of toxic stress it's the stressors that build up and build up and build up and build up and they're in your house and they're in my house and they're in our schools manage that we have to understand it if we don't understand the effects of toxic stress sometimes our babies suffer and sometimes they die so what about the effects not only on your kids also going to personalize this and we're going to talk about you right there where you're sitting bringing your toxic stressors with you but who kind of live stress-free lives that's universal as well I want my kid to be happy and oh my god my stress is terrible universal truths so in the absence of adult understanding the lives of some of our kids they change dramatically now that mom and dad have no idea that the toxic stress in that household lays rate on that kid take a look at that little girl's face you will notice in these pictures and I didn't notice this until after I had crafted this when your highly stressed one of the things you do is try to hold your head on like it's gonna pop off you can see that right my head's going to fall off if I don't hold it on see there's another one because when they're they reach a tipping point and they're dysregulated and they can't manage the feelings and manage the emotions that's another example of that there's another one for that little girl and it doesn't matter what age because what we know is our middle school kids and our high school kids or absorbing a lot of pressure s and let me tell you a secret sometimes were the cause of it I know nobody was expecting me to lay that out there yeah sometimes unexpectedly inadvertently not on purpose we're not mean people but sometimes we keep up toxic stressors on our babies and we just need to carefully look at that because your interpretation of what's going on drives your intervention so for some people talk begins very early in life even that little woman's holding this head on because he's just overwhelmed by the stressors wait there's a there's a store here that I want to tell you one of the researchers I found after I did that work down there in Monmouth County mission by the name of dr.
Ramos yeah what have you next you next alright so I have several first I want to say you know I spend all day every day looking at projections and business models that the works you put together your schedules just absolutely fabulous it compares I compared to any Harvard Business School CFO report that I that I say so thank you that was the open education it was this is important yeah I also spend all day underwriting and challenging these business plan itself ready the first question I have and I laid these out the premium to the bang for the dance and the nine hundred twenty two thousand dollar positive impact to the upcoming budget year can you explain how that's calculated and whatever business don't wait we tried to use the exact same numbers that we used originally which were from our bond Advisors hilltop advisors they had estimated because we didn't want to think that we knew more than they did and the change there's that they we had estimated what if we did half of it in year one which is approximately thirty million and a three percent premium so that's where we get the 9:22 that was the premium estimated nine three percent of the of the debt that we would be financing that and that was we would do thirty million in the year one and sixty million and year the full sixty million in years premium is typically calculated and it's part of their offer to us and what they what what the bond the people who buy the bonds the eastern banks etc they want to be able to sell to their clients at a four and five percent interest rate right so in this bond issue we're putting out tomorrow the interest rate is five or four percent but our true cost is three point two nine percent because they give us a premium back so what it does is it lowers our actual costs but it allows them to sell those bonds saying you're gonna get a 5% return for the next 20 years that's why they do it and they make that decision as to how much of a premium a ten percent premium which we received this time it's almost unheard err but it can happen it did happen and in looking at what we did with this bonding for tomorrow that we might challenge them a little bit to say okay you said three percent and but that was on bond anticipation notes we got very little on bond anticipation notes so maybe we should reduce it in year one and year two and increase it in year three however in just talking all of this out that 10% was hugely unexpected appearance as well because we didn't quite know what to do with it and talking it out will be putting something in future bonding packages so that the premium is less and and the we would just reduce resize it like we did this time I questioned the modeling impact of that one-year huge benefit and how short it is I mean it's coming out if it's real we're gonna be talking about it in detail in March right because it's for this coming budget so is that something that we should rely upon we've never put the premiums in the budget that because we can only use them really on interest that I would think we would be better off taking our experience now and and seeing if we can go back we can don't ask if we can and going back to hilltop and saying hey this is what happened here on for these premiums we would like to see these estimates similar that what if we limited the premium and we didn't have much of a premium on the bond anticipation no should we rework those and see what their what they call their desk which is apparently the people that that do the estimates what their desk thinks now you don't have enough lies well please do my next question was the assumption that we're going to be going 30 years on a level payment schedule do other are there any other towns in Connecticut that have that type of borrowing no no and the reason is that 30 years is brand-new that it was a public act in 2017 so there's possibly some that with their financial statements at June 30th so this is the the first time it's available to Connecticut to do 30 years that we did talk to SNP in our rating call to say that we're thinking of maybe doing this for 30 years what would that how would that affect us and it was like why are you asking me this that apparently he didn't know that in Connecticut we had a cap on 20 years that and you've got does yeah you know if you look at the output the analysis that they did in their very final statement on outlook for the future SP said you know we've discussed with the town the possibility of building a new school we called 20 years 30 years right they said it's not necessarily true that we would lower our bond rating because unless three things happen one you have poor fiscal management to your debt mix changed drastically and three you're eating into your reserves to pay for the debt well two of those three we're not going to do I think we've got pretty strong management Washington is a perfect example of that we're not going to eat into our reserves we'd never have in Brookfield except in emergencies so two of those three things are not going to happen so that would lead me to believe that SP you say listen Brookfield you're strong enough you as year in 2018 we're gonna have unaudited ten point five four percent general fund balances which we plan to grow so if we don't do two of those three things they would look at it as okay we know you're getting a big jump in your total debt and your debt load but you're managing it and you've got a plan to manage it and that's what's critical that it does that your question there's a few more pieces to your question as far as the the flat debt service that that is not common in Connecticut that it does happen but then this was me again asking hilltop advisors that it's common in Rhode Island I don't know why but in Connecticut it's not common and the reason it's not common is it it's costs more money because you're not paying the principal as fast so there's a greater cost we used it in here because we don't think we can afford the paying the principal faster under a flat principal payment that but that would be a decision that would still be open that would happen to be made with respect to the bond rating I have to elaborate a little bit of what I said at the selectmen meeting because again I you had given us the questions and I talked to hilltop advisors today to say okay tell me some of these answers because he's asking me about this January presentation and could you send me that presentation that in September they had said that this would not affect our bond rating however we after we what I should have remembered in September we had a Moody's bond rating that and they don't see in their forecasting that it would have affected the Moody's to bring it down we would be really close to the next level down but but we would not be down so it wouldn't affect the Moody's bond rating since we met with them in September we hired SP to give us a bond rating because they were cheaper that and S&P they didn't didn't expect it affect that bond rating but they didn't expect us to get triple-a is what we got so she said that because what they would have expected was the next level down they wouldn't wouldn't have affected it but now that we went up it probably would affect it with the quest next follow-up question is how much would that have cost us in the bond rate the bonds that we just did and in the bonds that we just did they went back and looked on the same day and what the difference was between the r rating and the next level down and it was 3.9 basis points it would have affected us by $54,000 usually when you borrow money you don't want it to be for the so that's a borrowing to last longer than the lifespan of the building and I know we don't want to end up in 25 or 30 years in the position that we're kind of funding ourselves and now where we have unrenovated skilled schools that we want to do stuff and I believe in one of the meetings that we had with the strategic steering that kind of the expected lifespan before it is more around 25 years sorry we did look for that eight year borrowing capacities to match our lifespan belly did Jeff was in ski principle of Tecton architects yes we didn't speak to that and by state we have to certify a 2025 year building systems this building proposed will last 30 30 35 for 50 years and then between the 30 and 50 year range the expected useful life of the complete building is in 40 to 50 year range but you will have to replace systems in the 25 to 30 year right click buying a car it gives a certain point you say it's not worth putting any more money in it but we anticipate this building would it's just that last 40 or 50 years it's interesting that a 30th at 30 years is common on a three one thousand dollar house but it was until recently I'm not allowed on a 50 million oh that doesn't mean yes it's kind of hard Yeah right and I think the state has recognized that these buildings last a long time because we are maintaining them every year by law we have to maintain for a lot of the system's emergency so I think using a 30-year balling is reasonable that's what necessarily against that it's just the big first is never never find for a tiny little town people and we appreciate the questions up front so no this is this is not meant this is meant to information-gathering so yeah absolutely I think the next one was the detail on the new development projects I think we cover that next set of questions is in the category of trust to verify and there's been some statements of fact or assumptions in terms of what cost savings would be realized in some of this so I'm looking for as much detail or documentation to verify the assumptions on the energy on the operations well I think you got the Excel spreadsheet that showed the energy savings right from the Board of Ed and Colette would you like to come up and speak to the administrative savings I know that's an issue that operation cities let's turn for chair you're looking for the operational savings I was looking for as much yeah I know that we yeah there's anything you fellas yeah it's estimated an approximately two hundred thousand each year and that is a combination of consolidation of staff and then a redundancy of operations and maintenance that you would have we can't at this point have a breakdown in the consolidation of staff there's there's unions and contracts that we're dealing with and we're talking about something that would happen four years down the road if it passes through record if you know if it's approved by the Board of Finance and passes referendum so it's not really appropriate for us to exactly put someone on notice for years in advance but we are confident in estimating that to me about 135 145,000 that's including on the salary and benefits with it the other savings is achieved through furniture savings that we have and less maintenance we're not we're not having to maintain older buildings so we have definite consolidation with that as well we're not looking at this point at a savings and busing because I know there was a question asked that why you know is busing included in there we figure there's too many variables at this point to put that in there we are going to have fifth graders in that school so there might be more bus runs because there is an extra grade going to the school at the same time they're all going to one school so we will have one additional school off line so that may be offset but there are just too many variables that that is not included in there if we do have for cost savings that would be on top of the 200,000 in estimate I understand both the sensitivities of of what we're talking about as well as the difficulty of mains assumptions and estimates for years out so I'm just curious how examples not even examples up at you but I just want to what I want and in your work in at the board and then your executive sessions are there specific more specifics that you have that you okay that's all it's not just an estimate that we did there there's actual specifics with staffing that's very helpful thank you anything else for the chair so some of them will be one-time savings Colet and then some will be ongoing savings no no the 200,000 is in the annual savings soaping so as is the energy that you had thousand energy savings is annual and then the operational staffing would gain additional two hundred thousand okay and and Marsha did build that into the to the objection thank you I just had thought John maybe John can answer this if we do go out 30 years John for the long-term debt portion of this a change in ratings during that time period doesn't have it effect on existing debt right it would just mean that we might pay more for our newer financings right right so what Marsha was saying so the difference between a triple a municipality versus a double a or even a single a doesn't really seem to be that many basis points so additional interest expense yes but the only thing that like 54 basis points you mentioned 50 not $55,000 difference and the a traditional interest expense is relatively minimal I was there for Mason's difference right thing for 30 years versus let's say 20 right so you are gonna pay you are going to be interest over a longer period I said we go with fixed-rate we don't take variable rate so once we said in the mock in that's it that was as of the day we locked in these rates that they gave us that those differences that back in that January presentation from hilltop they did have a graph that that changes day by day that what the fluctuation between the ratings would be okay so if you could just clarify for me than the $54,000 debt service difference from one rating to another is on what balance it's on 17 million dollars over 20 years that the the one for some reason they don't we tried to get an estimate and they only like to estimate based on very specific well they could only give it to us as of the day the that we closed last week okay and what was outstanding as of that day 17 million okay gotcha triple 8 the double a would have cost us $54,000 more on that over 20 years on that day got it thank you John so I was just just point out to me that you've already answered so the next one is maybe my first controversial one and that is assumptions for what's gonna happen to Center School and I I feel that not including any expense for that in a 10-year projection is understanding the expenses that we expect to incur on a material basis I think you make a very fair point in this presentation we did put in the full amount of the library as was proposed in the last referendum ten years out it's it's back ended it's at ten years out there's no doubt in my mind that we're probably here's what I would like to do if center school is closed we can immediately use it for a lot of activities you know for sports activities so Parks and Rec the gyms are great they work just fine or you turn to eat up on the weekends whenever you need it some of the rooms can be used as is just fine groups and presentations but we really need to as a town center it's very very important to a lot of people in town see all this wouldn't school still in use in Connecticut that is a lot of history and a lot of tradition that we want to maintain and put our arms around so I would say we would form an ad hoc committee to look at the possible uses of center elementary school right including the library because that's in a lot of people's minds and if we've got a partial building for a library I think it would be something less a lot less than fourteen point seven million dollars come up with those uses those four or five main uses and I think sports community activities would be one of them and then we'd have to hire someone who say okay hire Tecton or another architect to say what would it cost to do this in this building so we don't want center school to sit empty for ten years that's a total waste of time and I don't think from day one we'll be using part of that building but in order to get the most effective use out of the building we really have to do some so you raise a fair point then that we would have possibly spending before the end of ten years let's say five years from now we want a new library well we'll have a much better idea exactly where we are in this projection and know whether we can do it or not you know it's very hard you can throw numbers around and play with them you know you can you've got the spreadsheets you can play with it but that would be our answer I agree with you leaving a building empty for ten years it's not a viable solution and I don't think we should do that no expense on center school you're you have in there we have fifty thousand dollars you know just you know eat it do basic maintenance for relic now now if we started using it for other purposes yeah those those expenses were going yeah that's I mean that's incremental that you can finish yeah it's the big you know we're ready that you're already in 2022 to spend three million dollars right that and that I I know I struggle with how to model something like that without stating you know tie your hands cuz he put it the model but without putting the model then then how much is the model really worth if there's a major expense that's gonna drive taxes up two percent in given year and close this out yeah it's a tough one but I think what we should do is we I mean you guys can look at this and play with the numbers play the interest rates and do that and do various scenarios but go ahead and pick where you would want to say spend five million dollars on enhancements at Center school and see what it does to the numbers right but as we get closer to that we'll have much better actual numbers what has been our rate of increase in taxes what has been rate of growth in the Grand list what are we actually paying in interest rates right on these borrowings so does that answer your question as best as I think it's possible very much the superintendence points out was there a text here that that the school does charge people for the use of the school that they used to go in that pay-to-play fund that that for custodial fees when they use that so they're so it's not a hundred percent of the costs that we would have to pay but obviously you know like yeah if you had a sports group come in and using the gym for eight hours on a Saturday I think the schools would charge them for that it would cover the custodial costs the eating and then something towards maintenance and improvement of the building I think that's a very reasonable thing to do it I think there are groups who would jump on that especially in the winter where they need practice space I think we'd have that place rented out every night of the week and the weekends I can see that covering at least the incremental yeah at least I think that's fair yeah keep fun you going sure all right the next one about the five million dollar annual capital expense in the increases I think you covered that pretty well other presentations of anybody else's aim just start thinking that we have to get away from borrowing every year for capital yeah we just do or we're gonna eat up our entire borrowing capacity and who knows in 15 years we may need another school it might we just can't do it my biggest point there is the discipline is going to take to to dedicate the incremental taxes to this purpose and not throw to it there's a risk of spending incremental taxes three or four times yep it is saying to Marsha's point earlier where the town spent the same money three times right I don't want to do that I think you raise a very good point there dude is that as policy if we're going to do that we set it as policy at both the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance and it cannot be changed without changing the policy so what is this project in addition to the bonding that's still going on for several years what does that do to our capacity my borrowing capacity is it eat it up for a couple of years all right I would not want to take on any debt if we could possibly avoid it but we can't avoid it though I know it was a few thing so over the next three or four years that's like was it seven eight or ten million in small projects so I think we could absorb that if you look at what the state allows you to borrow ours is some like I'm talking about no we're gonna we gonna price people out of town because we still have to do small things plus a school right plus 2.4 percent other you know increases and whatnot so we we want to be very careful than very smart about what we do and get away from the borrower use more cash and one of the things that we looked at and when we're talking about what we can do and what we can't do it's all self-imposed we did go through and the state has a debt limitations that of what you can spend and we were going to incorporate them into our projection until we saw that we still could borrow two hundred million dollars more that those limitations are not very limiting so I think when when hilltop did their study that January presentation I think it capped at around at ninety million right and that was for all the projects and everything and we had to pull out of them you know hey what what does this number mean and that was really it was that was it wasn't just the project that was it you know it was a bit of an appeasement to say sure if there's everything there you know you can do it sure you could do it you could do it but is it a smart thing is this 63 million on the books for debt going to make it so we can't do anything reasonably yeah I would make two comments in that and one I've already said earlier we can't afford to do nothing here and the question becomes do we do the right thing the absolute right thing or the other is renovate and you know if we renovate us new for fifty three million dollars it's not gonna end up at fifty three million dollars they never do and you're only gonna get about John eighty percent of what we would get with the new school right Jeff so for an incremental twenty percent more and you're not gonna have your kids in construction for three years a whole grade if we renovate his new will spend their entire Elementary School in construction and if you find asbestos all bets are off all bets are off so and in the second point there is there have been towns and you can go around look at it Bethel's doing it now richfield's done it where they have when they build a new school project they go well over 100% I told you the Richfield was one hundred and forty five millions in debt on about an 80 million dollar budget that's about a hundred and sixty percent so it does happen and the rating agencies understand this and our discussions with standard inverts and Poor's they understood it that you occasionally have a huge blip and it's always a school because that's the only way you can do it you can't build part of a school can't build half the school and then five years later build the other half of the school rating agencies are important but not they're not weight this I equate radiating season and put them in financial plan for the radiating diseases and teaching to the test in that you you know you're solving a particular problem you're not taking okay I get your so but towns have done this many many times and unfortunately is just some way we are you know if we were really really well to put ten million dollars a year away for a new school and build a new one every year to your question will it affect us on other things absolutely we're not we don't have an unlimited supply of money that so if there are other things we need to do we need to know about them now so that that the school was asked can we wait to build a new middle schooler or do huge improvements to the middle school for tenth the next ten years can we wait and to do big improvements other than what's in there that to the high school for the next ten years and and yes that both of those are further than ten years out an emergency which case unless you need to need financial flexibility or a 10 year capital plan we've looked at that before we have our you know we get the capital budgets and we can see how one that's the main reason we are proposing to get up to five million dollars a year in capital spending to to start taking care of all those things so we're not an emergency situation well a sudden I got a two million dollar hit or a three million dollar hit and we believe you know I'd prefer if I had my druthers I'd like six or seven million dollars a year for capital we don't think that's reasonable at this point in time but to build it up to five million dollars a year is really gonna take a lot of the pressure off of the backlog of capital projects that we haven't done and turned down I mean come on it's kind of crazy to have a 22 year old truck who the frame is rusting out and we have to put that off for a year include the roads issues and you had asked about the 89 or 98 million dollar in the january presentation when I asked cuz I talked to hilltop today with Dan's questions most of them they put off and someone else has to answer for the that she had forward them them on but I would like to understand that a little bit more because from what I can see that they took our debt at that time our bonded debt plus these projects that were in there and added it together to get 89 or 98 million whatever that was super Mo's but it didn't include the 20 million that we're bonding tomorrow that I know that so it but the conclusion then was that the night was was a decent calf and now were blowing through that so my question my question is what metrics should I have my own my ideas but but I'd like to hear from others what metrics should we look at to say these dead numbers are now even though they're thirty million dollars more than what we were looking at in January why are these now appropriate and what number would not be appropriate if what related this model we're saying to if you're telling us and we're agreeing is a good number and we're gonna tell the public it's a good number what number wouldn't be appropriate why I think if you started getting up to a debt load you know that is a percentage of your total and this is all subject to opinion sometimes have a fifteen to eighteen percent debt load these give you start service debt service if you start pushing up that high we every time you're tightening a little tighter as a handcuffs around your hands on projects you can do if you're fiscally prudent so 10 to 12 percent which is where we are with this seems reasonable we'd have a couple years here where we would not want to take on any other big projects but then it starts to come down you can see it comes down pretty significantly and gives us a little more room at the same time we're going to try to be very very careful to manage to our budgets so that we're able to come in under budget every single year like we have for the last three years and put money in the general fund and I'd love to have a 15% general fund because then you have a cushion for a big project for a big problem that's where I'd like to see us get so I theory two key numbers are general fund percent and debt service and it sounds like that maybe what we should do is for your next meeting bringing draft policies for for a fund balance policy and a debt the debt policy theater look at yeah III I'd started somewhere in a debt policy the fact in the spring I'd be happy to I think that's a good idea don't buy me a damn hand the day you guys have to look at the P no yep yeah don't don't worry about that now is she really great well I think so I really if you're trying to determine affordability you got to look at impact so what number is too high that's when we start going beyond that 12 percent cap on the debt service so I think that part of the problem is that that we're thinking like a business would think that and I shared this with you before the meeting that I was on the committee we would have we had this big new reporting framework for governments where we have a full accrual balance sheet and a full of pearl income statement that came in with gatsby 64 in 2004 so it's been 14 15 years and as auditors we spent a lot of time making those statements up not making them up but but so we would we had twice now sent in the last 14 years as earlier latest three years ago when we had panels of rating agencies and we said what is it that you use on those the full of cruel financial statements how do they you incorporate those into your bond ratings and the answer is scary they don't look at them that and that is exactly opposite of what should happen that they should look at those from a corporate standpoint yeah and which is where I company you know the the debt service is the annual that's you that's your annual number but the leverage on the balance sheet is pointing to your is overall long-term health and are you squeezing too much out of your assets you have to show someone exactly exactly and so the the the debt to budget and the debt per capita is a bit there's a pretty interesting metric that is fun comes into play though if that all helps with our liquidity that would tie our hands with other projects were you thinking about the police station when you mentioned that all right police station there's all sorts of fire apparatus air land sea and that stuff is not factored in their years in their radios are in their potential there have this new school you're absolutely right I have a question for Tecna if the conclusion of the Board of Finance was yeah we we absolutely needed to build a new school but the number that is presented at least 15% too high when you do that 15% I'm just throwing a number out there and just asking hypothetically how would that impact the design what would be removed if you had to take ten million dollars 15 whatever whatever the number what what's the order of program elements would have to be cut the square footage of the building would have to be reduced you could also discuss elimination or reduction of site amenities right now the current conceptual plan showed basically the replacement of two new fields and a potential kind of soccer field overlay so you could talk about reductions on the site and reduction to the building which would mean a reduction of the square footage which would mean a reduction and program elements and most likely that those would come from specialized teaching areas because you need general classrooms to house the number of students so things like specialized labs and innovation labs or maker spaces and art studios those kinds of spaces would have to be looked at in addition to there's probably some efficiencies that you could find within the building itself but you wouldn't find all of it and just inefficient buildings so and dance at that point I think two considers that there are maximum allowable square footages veteran state mandated so it's not like they're building something that's overgrown it's it's too a there's a limit what the state will allow to be built without having additional costs sued by the town yes yeah I think this grandiose building it's really meant for a based on the number of students in grades and any things in even in doing that I think Collette said at the presentation we're not building a Cadillac here we're building a nice middle-of-the-road school that is gonna meet all of our needs right but there's I don't think there's any extra frills here nothing so I would be very concerned based on what we did with a high school project of cutting and cutting and cutting because you're not going to get what you want you're gonna regret it for the next 20 years and then you're gonna fix it by spending another ten million dollars that's my opinion what measures are gonna be taken to deal with potential budget overruns there's something you know well what are we gonna have in place to make sure that does everything is kind of kept on track um these guys get I've been discussing this and here's my opinion we're gonna hire an architect we're gonna hire a general contractor we're gonna hire an owner's agent who will only look for our interests and manages under the auspices of the municipal building committee um the municipal building committee you know we have two architects on it it's just too much work this is a full-time job and we didn't do that in high school we had six chefs and no regular workers so we've been very very careful and I think Colette and Jeff and guys can talk about this a little bit more but we have to be very disciplined about how we do this and watch this like a hawk day today today and hiring an odorous agent really does protect us because they're gonna be overseeing our interest that's only do they work for us general contractor is there to make a profit the owners agent is there to make sure we get everything we pay for at a reasonable price and then we're also gonna have I think somebody internal just to keep track of all the records so we don't have the tenure fight with the state on the reimbursement to your point Steve I just wanted to ask the architects then so built into your cost scenario do you have a percentage for overruns yes yes there's in the total project costs there's about an 18 and a quarter percent of that number that you see the total numbers associated with soft cussin in that our contingencies for our construction contingencies typically it's in about a five percent range of the overall for unforeseen conditions if you run into unexpected conditions on the site so there are the budget that's proposed has allocations for not only contingencies but for owners project managers representation pre-construction from cm to be involved early on so the best way to have predictability is to have a team oriented approach early on so that every every meeting every discussion is based on scope budget and schedule and that would be the approach that we would recommend and have built into this this project and that's what you have built into the 18% in soft cost yes okay thank you for clarifying thank you thank you thanks a lot Steve do you remember what the New Milford High School cost when they yes New Milford High School cost forty five million dollars including the land they built that about the same time we redid the high school for 34 million and they got a whole new building so that was like 10 years ago 15 2 times 6 2001 we did the high school okay I think the next thing that we want to move to the last page the accountability section [Music] so alright so we're three boards lots of found employee has different departments all signing on to to a plane right and it shouldn't just be on the Board of Finance to make sure that the budgets are being dealt with in the parameters that are being set forth here I hope that there's buy-in from all departments all boards to attempt as this.what as strongly as possible to live within the numbers that are here I understand that you know five six seven eight nine ten years out is tough to predict but one two years out shouldn't be hard to predict so so I would hope that there was an agreement among the three boards and the various departments that the numbers presenting presented here in four generally in the three percent total increase than expected in an expense range for the next three years three let's all buy this card budget for a first I mean 60 days for now we'll be getting a budget is it gonna be in these ranges or is he gonna be blowing out of water we're gonna have you forced to cut it back to this I don't see anything that would blow this out of the water unless the state cut their grants to us under spite of time you know those are outliers I think I am comfortable that the budgets we put together are real and can be achieved I'm very confident of that I know sue Slater is also confident of that I haven't discussed it with Harry Slater but I think he would be also the Board of Finance has to look at these numbers and look at these proposals and projections and say do you believe these numbers are real right we think we've been very conservative we're using high interest rates we're using you know across the living a 2.4 percent all these things that you see none of them are you know trying to skin the banana and to get it down to three percent by using on crazy numbers so I'm comfortable with what we put together and I would commit as a First Selectman to stay within these numbers personally unless there's an outline because things sometimes change I think you have to talk to board Eric if we could have a similar conversation with we can't I don't think as a town or community or three boards I don't think we can run the same exercise that we did earlier this year it's just I don't I as in our the the chair of this board will not entertain such a such an increase like that and I wouldn't advocate for it either on any really on any stage or platform so like Dan just mentioned we need some sort of buying or commitment that there's got to be a damn good reason and he'll have frozen over to entertain the same rigmarole that we did before because with this coming up that just can't happen I understand that and and as I had responded down to your question and this was actually I haven't wasn't able to consult with the whole board of course because I you just had about but I did consult with our Finance Committee before I did it and I had taken your question to be ridden commitment to you all and to the public and that would be disingenuous for us because as much as as painful as this last year was there was no way we could have controlled the increase in the special education cost and if four years down the road we get an unfunded mandate to start universal pre-k there's no way we can do that within the 3% either so that was one part of it that it's like it I I can't control any of the contingencies that will come you know will we try yes the second part of your question was your you had asked that for a commitment for the superintendent to propose budgets that are under that and that's not the superintendent's job the superintendent's job is to relay to the Board of Education the needs you know not the once but the needs of the district in order to achieve excellence and promote achievement and then it's the Board of Education responsibility to weigh that with with what can actually happen so I can't I I can't give you a blanket statement on that aspect either I agree that's a blue the second part absolutely absolutely did you want to education increases by two million dollars a year I don't think it's an either/or I mean cleansing that every single amount that that is you know we have an increase that we're going to be passionate about and that's not exactly what I'm saying at all I'm just saying that I cannot give you a written commitment that we will stay within that you know what if the state decides to take away it isn't a blanket statement something crops up like a million dollars that we can't control we have 42 million other dollars on the backside that we may have control over and is the board of and willing to make some hard decisions to control that number it or is it just going to get passed on as special education as an extra million we got to deal with it did I jump in here absolutely the total cost of special labs was 12 students was 1.8 million dollars the Board of Ed didn't come and ask the town for 1.8 million dollars they dug deep and found seven hundred eighty five thousand is that right how much did the Board of Ed save on your own significant amount yes exhibit amount is the number but then only has to town for four hundred eighty five thousand which we did approved so I think there is a commitment on the part of the Board of Ed and its members to recognize that you know you just can't to the town and when they can they will try to absorb it within there thank you asking I think it's yeah he's it's a rhetorical statement I think come in such uncertain times in terms of what the state is going to be able to continue to do to afford to do and what types of things may fall on the individual towns in this environment I can see why it's a concern because we can't count on too much when the state is staring down a historical deficit yeah so that's that's what I guess I'm assuming that's what Shaun was thinking in and Dan and and Glen in terms of if our backs are to the wall and we're looking at that type of an increase on the school budget because of the lack of state funds how do we how do we deal with that how do we address it do we make those hard choices when they become necessary as opposed to putting the burden back on the taxpayers I understand the statement and I think it's being made in a rhetorical way and not looking for an immediate answer but just how do we deal with it and do we understand that we have to be very cautious especially after putting this expense on the taxpayers and I recognize and if that weighs your I do because you had said does the board acknowledge we do acknowledge it we very much acknowledge the fact that this isn't you know this don't go through no expense to the town and we do need to be very careful with the budgets with the board yes we do know what is seriously I have other questions yeah any guidance on what we can expect to see from you in January if it were for this first year budget I don't even know yet okay so I can't tell you okay any guides on your goal is Board of Ed chairman what you would expect to to see and um in again as I will tell you we do not we do not give guidelines to the superintendent we want to know the needs and then from there it's our responsibility to go forward with it Thanks I'm sorry I think I just I I can't tell you what I don't know thank you thanks appreciate it I'm done I peppered in my questions anything else Glen oh I did have one other sorry I pointed it out to Marsha earlier that the debt service numbers in the model are hard-coded so we can't play with the size of the school and see the impact on the expenses so I would like that to be updated every cent down possible so I have follow-up items of a draft at policy a fund balance policy the projection make that service on the new school flexible and may cost of the new school flexible to reduce it by a percentage in a random percentage on the making the debt service flexible do all four models flexible 20-year 30-year fixed principal fixed payment I could do that wouldn't you do want the rest it's just work okay thank you and there's an on lapsing to discuss that with the Finance Committee at the Board of Education I think this was good anything else [Music] we're running perfect world scenarios [Music] the model with it and on the town side I think I actually think the five million dollar growing annual capital budget is its provide some you know we're looking at think we did this for a 6% rate 6% rate which even a hilltop set is 100 basis points higher than they expect now if you think about a 6% rate tax-free is the equivalent in the highest tax bracket of a ten and a half percent return on an investment dan would you buy a bond that pays ten and a half percent guaranteed for the next 20 years my stock dividend yield is how eleven zone okay all right right but that's a fantastic yield that shows you we are being very very concerned they're in the half a percent on sixty three million dollars is about three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in savings per year okay model the reason we built it Glenn you can put different numbers in and play with it yourself and pick numbers that you think are reasonable or unreasonable stress test [Music] okay how's everyone feel about a meeting that's it the last week of the month is that enough time to digest Marsha for you let's say to turn some of those things around I'm not talking about the debt policy or that of a non-life thing but specifically there was a handful of follow-ups for this particular discussion you have time let's say in the next seven days well Marsha is gonna be out of the office in Hong Kong for she knows I'm sorry but the first week that December would be fine that I I'm going next week but I'll be back Tuesday after Thanksgiving which is the last week of November so but the first week of December yeah we just want to be cognizant if we want to get to you know we have that June 30th cutoff to get this to the state and for that we have got the full plans and designs and things so we really need that referendum done in March and we need 45 days before that to have the town meeting so just if we keep that in mind for your meetings that's why yes that's exactly what we're so first week of December is awful first we have any month is awful so can we just include it in the regular twosome so do you want me to just get you the new projection yeah yeah but I should be able if I'm not trying to get something we can advance of the meeting or anything if I'm just trying to get you a new projection for the last week of November so like that Wednesday or Thursday that Marsh will be back here for a couple days so then Thursday [Music] does anyone walk to if they need to is 20 check their calendar how's the 29th November 29th should be good Oh okay Glenn how can you - you okay the 28th looks good will you be on the phone you need to keep came to the 28th can you do the 28th on the phone okay then we will reconvene for this matter if we go the first week of March too late because they have to do the entire design of the buildings and there's a lot of documentation and supporting materials that have to go to the state that we have to be able to hire an architect to do that before and I thought you can't do it in four weeks June 30 is the hard deadline to have it all to the say yes otherwise you gotta wait a whole year a specific agenda her special agenda and time would be determined okay this was a fantastic discussion does everyone have I was right now the answers they were looking for there's some follow-ups and whatnot if there's any more questions send up to us we want to get them down and we're gonna get them in writing feel the motion to the next discussion to be had so I want to make sure that the public okay great all those in favor of moving public comment to the next item I hi all right perfect okay members of the public that like to give comments okay [Music] so other items to come before the board I understand that this might not look completely transparent that's because these documents were ready seconds before the meeting and preparing another agenda would have been against the law so we do have two meeting calendars that were prepared and presented the first meeting calendar that we have in front of us is the and Glen I can read these off to you I apologize you won't have this in front of you the 2019 meeting calendar and if we need to push this to a special meeting item that's perfectly fine if we need to coordinate schedules we have in front of us Wednesday January 9th Wednesday February 13th March 13th April 10th May 8th June 12th July 10th again this is the second Tuesday the second Wednesday of every month August 14 September 11 is in the forecast define October 9 November 13 December 11 are there any immediate conflicts that we know of with these dates and the time are we okay with the regular meetings at 7:00 are you for the regular meetings I can do seven [Music] oh all right ah yes I would I propose that we keep the meetings here at the high school Media Center I'm all except for the telephony I think this meeting space works well to entertain you know but I do like this set up a lot better I think it's it's it's better it's more professional so I move that the Board of Finance adopt a 2019 meeting calendar as presented for regular meetings at the high school media center to take place at 7:00 p.m.
Dempsey pointed out essentially you line an old sewer line that's in disrepair Orangeburg is very popular in this area and so it's a very common thing to see this type of liner the reason is different from we normally think of open trench replacement of a line is because the idea is that it's trenchless so you go in without digging up a yard and you line that's what the product is that's what the technology it's not that complicated it's a liner kind of cures like this and this is not exactly what was at issue at waffle but the idea is that it just cures molds inside the line that is broken that's what he does he's been doing this for a long time this particular case was 2014 and this was that watham in your report you saw and I think it's important anecdotally you saw a affidavit from Miss Brooks the owner of the home that explained to us in this affidavit is recent that she's since the completion of the work and 2014 know for their work has been required and there have been no problems she also writes I am 100% satisfied with the work completed by Rueter MD I'm just trying to set up that this is it practically speaking this is what we're dealing with a satisfied homeowner that is still covered by the ten year now 12-year warranty that was offered by Rueter MD so this is one of eight cases it used to be one of 32 cases because prior to October of 2017 the issue before what the city was whether or not this product was even acceptable okay and this was the MLK product the MLK product and I think you heard from mr.
Nadine Burke Harris see she's a pediatrician in the San Diego area and she was beginning to be stumped by all of the illnesses that the kids in the community of an impoverished community were bringing to her and she knew that it was more than just write prescription after prescription and she tells this story it's a story about a bear well not that bear that bear and this goes like this imagine you on a very nice somewhat cool autumn day decide you're going to go for a walk in the woods now I'm gonna make this a fantasy by saying you don't have your phone with you fantasy because you always have your phone with you but if you really want to enjoy this walk in the woods you'll leave your phone at home and as you're walking down this trail across the trail comes that bear immediately there's a part of your brain that's going to kick into survival mode and here's what happens you don't have to think about this immediately you see that bear and you stop and your heart starts to pump your heart rate is up your blood pressure is up because you want blood in two big muscles of your legs because you may have to run it may make you stronger because you may have to fight the other thing that happens is your respiration is up you need oxygen in the blood your body's getting ready to to survive this your pupils they dilate they get very small so you can keep keep your eye on the danger and then you start scanning and you start looking for exits in case you need it running all within parts of a second you didn't have to think about it you know we're gonna talk about this part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex this is the problem-solving thinking smart part of the brain thank goodness we weren't using that here's what it would look like oh my I think that's a bear I've seen videos of bears I don't know whether that's a brown bear or a black bear well the time you go through all of that that bear comes over and gobbles you up done we don't want to use that we want to use this automatic stress response to survival system now let's imagine that that bear keeps on going because it doesn't smell you and it doesn't see you within seconds your whole system recalibrates you're taking deep breath heart rate down blood pressure down respiration down you may be a little shaky because you got cortisol flowing through your body now you haven't burned it all up but within seconds your stress response system your survival system recalibrates pretty amazing pretty amazing so if you come across a bear in the woods but what if the bear actually lives in the kids home what if that's the bear so let's go back and see there's that automatic survival system still kick in yep does it operate the same way yep but here's the difference for that little one her system never clicks off it never recalibrates it never shuts down because she lives with the bear I say to the teachers what if you're the bear what if the Bears in school or in the classroom what it means is for some of our children who always feel threatened and at high danger their system never ever shuts down remember that it can begin very early in a baby's life well what about this how early in a baby's life is that so let me tell you about that situation so what we know is this any one of those moms and they live in a highly charged dangerous situation for just for the sake of description let's just call it a domestic violence situation and that mom stress response system is always on she's always pumping cortisone adrenaline because she needs to be on guard for danger well what it means for that baby is that baby's system gets highly charged and when that baby is born here's some of the things that we can expect from infants born under those circumstances irritable they don't soothe hard to get them to sleep sometimes they don't nurse well sometimes they get into projectile vomiting because their whole system is triggered because even as an infant their stress response system is kicked in because of moms environment so one of the things to tell you one of the things that we'll be talking about is environment we're going to be talking about your environment where you grew up we're gonna be talking about the environment that you're in charge of in your home and we're gonna be talking about the environment that the East Brunswick School District creates for its babies from preschool through high school toxic Dennis so what are they well here's some now I do have to say I'm not a resident of East Brunswick so let me conclude that none of this stuff happens in East Brunswick it happens everywhere else but in this community we just know that life can be really complicated and really difficult there are lots of stressors and here are some of the things that we're going to break down and we're going to talk about so for a 13 year old who died and I said hey listen if we if we come back down here there's lots of other stuff that are red flags that we should worry about to see whether or not our kids are healthy or not I'm not even at sea like for instance why is it that there's priests in a number of kids drinking and drugging to numb the pain why are they in so much pain emotionally that they need to numb it at such a young age why is it creasing our alcohol use and marijuana use why is that it's just a question and how about this but this cutting and burning to relieve the hurt most moms and dads when they see this they get freaked out they get scared they get angry and they begin to yell at their kid and what the kids are looking for if it's not going to be a marijuana or alcohol they need to create some kind of relief in their system a charged stress and believe it or not cutting yourself does that releases endorphins kids will tell me in the office they will say you know I'd rather feel the physical pain to feel the emotional pain you know what they will say they would say you know what but when I'm bleeding at least I know I'm alive because I feel empty most of the time why why are our kids there now it's not just Cuddy and that's typically female but it can be male males can cut too but it's also head-banging moms and dads will report that they'll hear this boom boom boom as their kids are really anxious and really upset and they're sitting in the room on the floor back against the wall just banging the back of their head to calm their body down recently past few years they've added another one to the list and that's mostly males and moms and dads will say you should see his bedroom because when he gets really angry at us he punches the wall in there holes in the wall another one of these efforts to calm oneself how about these guys failing of immense potential I love this picture for a couple really significant reasons remember interpretation drives intervention you know as a director student sir through hundreds and hundreds of IEP meetings and meetings with moms and dads they're there they're just begging and fighting for everything they can get for their kid because their kid it's really smart they're not doing well and the teachers are really trying to apply their own magic still not doing well because some of our kids systems are so overwhelmed I know you want to go right on to the learning disabled I'm not there I'd been there for 30 years I'm not there what I'm at is those words that halo that kids head because I got to tell you this that child did not pick those words for himself I had a 15 year old in my office I'll call him Bobby Bobby was there as mom and dad mom and dad were worried about him because his grades started to fall apart he started they found marijuana in his room so he did a little bit of work just finding out what's going on and then I asked say would it be okay if mom and dad left I'll be asleep you question it's just the two of us here what's your theory about yourself you gotta be thinking about yourself a lot I don't think you're happy with the way the grades are you don't like being in trouble with your folks you don't like feeling like you're a disappointment so what's your theory what's your thinking so there was this pause and he had his head down he shrugged his shoulders you ever see that behavior and then he said this I guess it's just that I'm lazy I said Wow lazy did you like go through a dictionary or a thesaurus looking for that word how'd you go why that word why did you find that word to call yourself he said I didn't so when you just told me he said yeah but that's that's what my dad always always calls me when I don't do well in school here's the heard about that word it's not gonna leave him when he's a young adult or an adult it becomes this thing called a negative narrative it's how he describes himself we got to stay away from those words we can be we can be curious we can be upset we can be bothered but if we're gonna lay these heavy words these negative words these ugly words on our kids they're gonna carry it and actually it's going to contribute to more to their unhappiness let's just be careful with that and then there's this this guy you can't regulate the emotion one little thing happens and he melts down but see that can be at any age because that could be also be that young lady unable to regulate emotion they get a b-minus they get an a-minus and and and they they go over the top they just explode and the teachers can't figure it out unable to regulate that emotion isolation one of the absolute requirements for human beings to survive is called attachment be connected to significant trusted healthy adults that baby lays on mom that's when attachment begins and that creates a wonderful brain safety moms and dads who who just keep that harsh negative everything away from their baby creates attachment but that happens throughout our whole lives we need attachment come on think about it think about the first person you fell in love with it couldn't wait to be attached what that looked like face nobody ever used a yucky face when you're out on your first date oh that's a real word you know in the research it's called having a yuck face it's kind of the face that some of you still have and on 20 minutes and you still got a young face on that was a joke just lighten up a little bit but it's the face that you have when you disapprove of what your kids are doing and they look at your face and they say what what what the day what did I do because it's here now in school it matters because what we say the teachers is kids that have been living with the bear are highly sensitive to what you're telling them about them right here and therefore we got to be careful because attachment is critical and isolation is a red flag that says something's wrong something's going on kids will say I don't know I don't know where George is really doesn't hang out with us anymore we don't ever see them not a good sign doesn't come to the dinner table oh by the way one of the things that you can do the positive things is have dinner together with everybody around the same table at the same time I know it's impossible well do something impossible and create that environment for your babies that's how you get reconnected that's how the family reattaches that's how you have conversation because that is not a good outcome for kids also this flick ting harm on others a researcher that I found that I loved her name is Sondra bloom bloom has written these books around sanctuary right don't you love that the sanctuary the safe place to be and what she says is this hurt people hurt people healthy people don't hurt people they don't need to whether that's a online bullying whether that's a parent bullying whether that's a kid bullying or whether that's a school shooter hurt people hurt people that's another thing that we have to be careful of this level of anger and animosity that our kids are showing bonnie in trying to end their lives we get closer to that young boy down there it becomes hopeless nobody intervenes we just think it's kids being kids and then kids as young as ten in New Jersey dying by suicide that's just heavy stuff but we know what it looks like and we know what the contributing factors are and we about it that's the good news we know what to do about it so in the absence of understanding remember yes human beings suffer and die so let's look here's something else I found this is where you get a little opportunity to kind of go in your head and do an evaluation of yourself back in the 90s there was a research team both from CDC and also from permanent a a huge hospital organization at West and they were doing some research study and they wanted to find out an answer to this question does a toxic environment that's what we're talking about tonight right toxic environment does a toxic environment can it result in obesity so because they were connected to the hospital system with permission they interviewed 17,500 people they found the answer to the question was yes it is a contributing factor to obesity when you're constantly under stress errs and your cortisol is constantly pumping and number two oh my goodness so much more so let's find out what it is here's what you need to do they're gonna be ten questions yes or no answer them for you birth to your 18th birthday keep a score you get a point for all the yeses you get no points for the nose here's the first one did a parent or adult in the household often or very often swear at you insult you put you down humiliate you or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt did you grow up in your own nest where there was chronic humiliation and put-downs a if that was your experience you get a one but here's the payoff if that's the experience you're having now in your own nest you know it's interesting ten questions right think about it 17,500 people ten questions when the researchers looked at the data they were equally distributed among all ten with one exception one of the questions had a higher yes response that's it chronic humiliation number two data peridot in the household often or perhaps even very often push you grab you slap you throw something at you or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured did it migrate from to go you would get a one if that was your experience here's number three that an adult or any person at least five years older than you were ever touch fondle you have you touched their body in a sexual way attempt or actually have oral anal or vaginal intercourse with you if that happens the one but if that was your experience now you either have a 0 a 1 a 2 or 3 here's number 4 did you very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or even thought you were special or your family didn't look out for each other didn't feel close to each other didn't support each other you kind of felt like it raised yourself just detached number 5 did you often or very often feel that perhaps you didn't have enough to eat or you had to wear dirty clothes clothes or you had no one to protect you your parents were too drunk or too high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it did you live in an environment as a child as a baby in the nest in which the adults because of their own stuff couldn't pay attention to you now the first five who may have experienced yourself directly the second five is what we call you bear witness to it you weren't the target but it was the environment in which you lived anyway question number six where your power ever separated or divorced now I'm going to put a pause I'm going to push the pause button I'm gonna make a point with you folks and I make this very heavy with teachers as a marriage and family therapist I understand what divorce is all about I sit with plenty of couples who either going to divorce wondering if they should divorce they're trying to work out their stuff I get that I also know the data that 50 to 53 percent of married couples in this country will divorce I get that I know that but don't ever normalize it don't don't ever make it like what's the big deal because we do that sometimes as moms and dads we do that I'm not suggesting that shouldn't be some some marriages that come apart because it's healthier for everybody I'm not suggesting that I'm not so uninformed to believe that but I don't think that we should ever dismiss the negative impact on kids give me an example let's suppose hypothetically there's a mom and dad and they haven't been doing well for for a very long time and they argue a lot and all the stuff that you would expect in a family where there's high toxic stress and they got a little one he's 10 years old his name is George and mom and dad finally say you know what we just can't do this we we need to tell George that we're gonna get a separation of we're going for divorce dad said I know but it's just so hard to talk about they said hey we got to do it hey listen Georgie come here pal mom mom and I need to talk to you now George is already a little on edge because this is weird they never do this have a seat pal mom and dad sit and dad says um hey listen Georgie you know that mom and I have been struggling a lot right I mean it's not your fault either George we keep telling you that this is about mom and I and it's been really hard for us and for you so one of the things that a mom and I want to tell you is I got in this apartment no dad no no don't tell me that no I'm not gonna listen to that Georgie wait calm down pal we it's gonna be all right I promise you mom and I love you very much it's going to be okay no daddy please please George we think about Joey Joey's mom and dad they're divorced and what about Sarah her mom and dad are not together Georgie when you think about it aren't there a lot of a lot of your friends and you know what's going on in George's head yeah but it's not my family what about my family what about the fact that you blew up my family there again I'm not suggesting that it unhealthy couple should stay together but what I'm suggesting is don't normalize that fact because it can be terribly hurtful to our babies number seven was your mother maybe your grandmother maybe your stepmother the maternal figure in your home did you ever bear witness to the fact that she was often pushed grabbed slap had something thrown at her sometimes often she was kicked or bitten her hit with the fist or hit with something hard every bit Pete Earley hit for at least a few minutes threatened with a gun or a knife verbally berated physically berated did you bear witness to that number eight lived with anyone who was a problem drinker or an alcoholic or somebody who used street drugs an adult in the house create an environment that as a child it was difficult for you to manage number nine was a household member depressed or perhaps mentally ill that a household member attempt suicide was there a suicide in the family I know and our culture is so shameful which we were really in denial about the about the effects of mental health but we can we can deal with that in that environment you get a one number ten that a household member go to prison 17,500 people respond to to those 10 questions now you have an ASA score it's your ASA score it's either a zero anywhere up to a ten well let's see what it means to have an ASA score the tipping point is four and if you have a zero one two or three yeah there's still some stuff that could happen to you as an adult but if you got a four or more here's what we have to be careful of and here's where I want you to think about you but I also want you to think about your babies in this school district because there's a likely going to be an increased risk of poor academic performance violations of classroom rules increases in discipline disruptive classroom behavior detentions and suspensions a four or more it spikes that negative behavior just can either tell you what's going on or they can show you that they had a four coming out of that nest and we know any one of those four that's possibly what we can see how about this their lifetime there's twice as likely at developing cancer let me explain that anybody with a score of four or more in their lifetime their body is going to develop a cancer somewhere twice as likely as if you had a score of zero remember that shaking tremor here because if you live in a high toxic environment where that system never clicks off your organs marinate in cortisol and adrenaline and over time god bless you cancer develops there are three places folks where your body holds your attention think about this I think about your children only three places in this whole body where you hold your toxic stress there's a number one in your head and your neck and your shoulders your headache people this always hurts number two and what I like to do when I'm with teachers to say hey ask the nurse what are the two most frequent complaints the kids get out of class to go see the nurse number one they got a headache and number two they had a bellyache and what you'll see at home is not just a bellyache you'll see your kids complaining about diarrhea and constipation their gut is just squeezed with toxic stress now I do need to tell you that in the research that I've done I've come to the conclusion it's a problem across the country what's my research i watch TV and i watch commercials I'm not gonna ask you if you're on Linds s or a probiotic or antibiotic or any other biotic but what I know is pharmaceuticals only sell products that they could move and gut products are really big oh there's a third place head gut and when you get older in your 40s and 50s it's right here you'll develop pulmonary problems or you would develop heart disease so what we know is those kinds of conditions that we live in bathe our body in these hormones that are supposed to be on and off to save us and instead they're toxic to us there's the pulmonary illnesses we see it in kids asthmatic kids we take a look at the stress factors because it sits right here we can also see immune system illnesses psoriasis because the skin is an organ increase in acne for kids that are highly stressed whether it's school or whether it's the nest you can see the body responding to the stressors and an increased struggle with personal and work-related relationships people with a four or more don't do other people well yeah he said I know I'm on my fifth marriage what's wrong with those women yeah probably isn't the women because you don't do relationships what else does it look like well what else it looks like is kids don't hold jobs very well because they don't like the rules then like the boss that only coming in on time they don't like seven o'clock and they don't they don't like the fact that they can't be on their phone they don't do rules well with kids with a four or more childhood developing depression is 46 times greater with a four than it is with a zero we see an uptick you may see it in your own family among your own kids nieces and nephews just deep overlong sadness Wow and a risk of suicide just twelve hundred percent with a score of four more see now that piece of data pulled me back to my response down in monmouth county as this this has been replicated over and over and over again for the person for the past twenty five years and the outcomes are always the same that when these things are a part of our nest the human beings in that nest don't do well here are some other aces factors and when i say other they were the first 10 of the original and now different communities based upon factors in the community have slipped in other instance the death of a parent or the death of a sibling hi ASA score poverty huge kids in poverty don't have the internal infrastructure to tolerate a lot the other is community violence I follow Philadelphia because they've got a great public hell program on aces so it's not a school program it's an everybody program and what they know is some of the communities are high violets and high poverty and what we know is those kids have high aces scores and the outcome is not gonna be good unless we do something we recognize it and we do something peer rejection not the not the lack of friends your kid will tell you I got lots of friends the research tells us in our lifetime we have about a hundred and fifty friends your kids will say I got 800 friends on Facebook now friends connections voices tags and peer victimization when the bear lives in the school or the bear lives in the house because that can also be sibling can be a bear kid with those with those behaviors that kid will be referred by the teacher to the parent who will refer to the pediatrician who will declare them to be ADHD and will give a medication because we medicate everything you get Lenz s for your belly and you get concerta if you have those behaviors and I'm not suggesting there's no such thing as ADHD what I'm suggesting is if the nest has a high ASA score you're gonna see that anyway if we can adjust the nest behavior we can bring that back down here's what need this is what you need there's the attachment safe connection now we can't do a lot of hugging anymore in schools because of all the creepy stuff that has gone on but we try to make some connection with fist bumps and hands on shoulders you can still hug your kids six last January note this January past I was doing a presentation back up in my community and one of the pieces of data I had that came out was that in order for a hug to be significant it's got to last for 20 seconds that's what the researchers say so you guys that do bro hugs bro hugs don't work it's gotta last for 20 seconds so in the audience that I was a superintendent that I happened to like a lot I saw him two weeks later he said hey hey come here I said yeah he said you know that 20 second hug thing I said uh-huh he said well that night I went home he said now I got a fourteen-year-old daughter she's always up in a room said yo Kelly could you come down here please dad I'm doing homework I know baby but just come down I just want to see you just for a minute Kelly comes down the steps and the dad grabs her and hugs her what does she do stop this is creepy leave me alone he says wait 17 18 19 20 okay you can go back upstairs and I said and he said two nights later she wanted another hug kids want to be connected when they know it's out of safety and love and caring they want to be touched in a safe way think about it in your adult relationships don't you like to be hugged isn't it nice when somebody hold your hand when you're going through tough times and somebody says can I sit with you attachment it's critically important they need emotional safety if you're the bear stop if you have a high ASA score yourself it's gonna be really hard for you to stop being the bear if you've got a high ASA score you think back to your mom and dad's house that's where that nest created see the book is called it didn't start with you that's the stuff that passes down generation to generation to generation and parenting emotionally safe soothing and calming adult behavior soothing and calming so that when the great isn't good it's still soothing and calming when they break her for you you can discipline but it's soothing and calming and my guess is that maybe that is not the way it always is science now tells us that it's the reliable presence of a one supportive adult relationship that really matters and it may not be you I hope it is you I hope in the life of your children that you're the significant consistent soothing adult behavior and if you're not then pray that somebody else will be who might that be grandparent pastor Imam coach counselor teacher and if you think about it and maybe even in your life maybe your maybe your hiatus score you did well because some somebody was there to have your back wasn't it - about a few years ago that I realized now my mom and dad were really cool people but they had their own stuff they grew up with their own stuff but I grew up in a house with my grandfather and he always had my back let me give you an example I'd be at the dinner table because we always dinner together as soon as my dad was done dinner he'd be gone he'd be in front of the TV mom would go next and I'm there my grandfather's there but I'm there because I don't like lima beans and my mom said you ain't leaving the room until you eat your lima beans I said mom I don't like lima beans she said George you gotta like them they're good for you I knew what you just can't get up until they're gone she believed my grandfather would say give me your lima beans he would eat them mom would come back in she would say see that wasn't so bad was it I say nope that wasn't bad at all she never knew that he was had my back in my lima beans one significant trusted adult it sounds silly but it matters they're always glad to see you they always smile at you they're always giving you a hug one significant trust that adult safety means this it means safe classrooms physically and emotionally safe homes physically an emotion it means nurturing those attachments having dinner together enjoying being there company I know they resist you guys are up against a whole lot with these devices and and social media I know I know I dunno I dunno but you're powerful your parents Superman and superwoman if you go about it the right way you can pull your babies closer with your compassion and your heart and your consistency in your persistency in ways that you may even surprise yourself avoid shame and embarrassment that's the worst that goes back to that number one of aces chronic humiliation no human being likes to be shamed someone let me test it out anybody here like to be shamed because I'll I'll kind of lay one on you here for a second anybody of course not who wants to be shamed let's do it a different way anybody willing to tell us about the worst thing they've ever been a part of in your life who's gonna do that shame and embarrassment shuts us down so therefore the more you added on remember those words that halo around that kid you're stupid you'll never amount to anything I should never have had you anyway you've been a burden ever since you were born kids tell me that parents say that shame embarrassment hurtful avoiding those negative judgments the harsh language being predictable if you're all over the place it's not good for the nest never never giving up ever ever ever and always believing that it's possible to change always always no matter what the circumstance the first value stablished is safety how do you make your nest safe let me click through this what's an adult to do number one manage your own crap sorry baggage crap kind of says it out there it says baggage manage your own stuff it's not your kids fault because of what you live through how can you and your partner you and your spouse work that out and protect your kids from it put on down break the cycle understand that kids chronic challenges let me point this out challenges are different than stressors we've been talking about negative stressors now the offset of stressors is resiliency right you're powerful it's like a shield it's like I can bounce back no matter what happens I've got somebody on my side I'll do better I'll persist but kids don't develop resiliency unless we give them opportunities to do that so don't please don't raise your hand I'm not asking you to divulge anything there used to be something called helicopter parents right parents are always hovering over their kid but now they've kind of changed their tactic and now they're kind of like snowplow parents they don't want there to be anything in their child's way no bumps no potholes no nothing they only what their kid to be happy but it's being able to navigate life and feeling disappointment that develops resiliency it's you being allowing your children to let me tell you what goes on in my neighborhood in Mercer County we have families where there's the bus stop and they live two doors away and every morning they get in the family car and they drive to houses to the bus stop and then mom waits with them and then she videotapes every interaction in case her kid gets bullied so she can tell it to the principal if we don't give our kids the skills the social skills to survive and if they don't have an opportunity to practice it we've actually made it more difficult for them several years ago when my girl when my daughter was young there was a knock on the door and I opened the door and there was this guy standing there and and he said are you George Scott I said I am I said who are you he said well my name is Don I'm from the Soccer League I said oh he said I understand you just signed your daughter Megan up for soccer so we did we're really excited about that he said great I'm really excited about that too I listen I'm just stopping by to welcome you to the Soccer League oh and to ask if you'd be a coach well I'd laughed and said Don you don't understand I don't know anything about being a coach he said yeah yeah don't worry about that see these videotapes that I have if you if you watch these videotapes you'll be fine so I go back in the kitchen and my wife at the time says hey who was that said well that was Don what did he want just to welcome us to the soccer league because we signed Megan how nice she said I said oh and he wants me to be a coach and she said you don't know anything about being a coach and I said yeah but I got these videotapes I will be a coach three years later I was the president of the girls soccer league I'm not quite sure how that happened but I know that it was easier than being a coach and here was my job at the end of the season those of you that have your kids in sports at the end of the season there's a pizza banquet we would go to the firehouse my board said to me hey you have a job your job is at the end of the pizza banquet be in the back of the firehouse and as the families come out say two things George just say two things great season be sure to sign up next year I said I can do that so I did that for several years then one year I'm standing back there and up the center aisle comes that little girl she had to be seven she had a dad over here and a mom over here and she was sobbing and I'm saying in my head those two statements are not gonna work with this family have a good season or sign up next year what am I going to say I don't have to worry about that as they got closer to me that dad with the biggest heart in the world leaned over his daughter and said it's okay sweetheart I'll buy you a trophy not being able to manage the disappointment we'll practice together we'll get better next year we'll buy you a trophy that's the snowplow parent that takes away every opportunity to develop resiliency without resiliency our kids suffer they suffer if you lose your temper apologize right away I know that's a big deal for some of you but the way it works let me define apology Paul Jay has three things I'm sorry for what I did number two it was my fault that's on me number three is there anything I can do to make sure we're gonna be okay going forward three pieces that's what an apology is this is this example with the teachers you can extrapolate it out to to your own kids but I said hey listen I imagine this teacher says like on a Friday morning said hey listen Stevie can I see you outside in the hallway before class starts he said listen Steve he said I'm yesterday before we left I don't like what I said to you I think it was insulting I didn't mean it to be insulting I think it was insulting and I think it was embarrassing because I heard kids laugh Steve listen I just want to know before we start class she's number one I am really sorry for what I did and number two that was all about me I just want to make sure you and I are okay that's the apology that's how it works let me tell you how it usually goes Stevie can I see in the hallway please hey listen remember yesterday at the end of the class I think I was really rude toward you and and you know Stevie actually I wouldn't have been rude if you had been in your seat doing what you were supposed to do it wasn't for you I probably wouldn't lost my temper that wasn't an apology own it when you screw up on it when you get it wrong when you yell when you're inappropriate apologize make it okay with your babies validate normalize emotions you don't have to condone their behavior but you gotta honor the fact that they're angry upset hey listen I get it you're really upset because I took your phone you're really upset because you can't go to the party I'm not gonna put out that kind of money for a new for a new whatever I get that you can be upset but you can't kick the door down I don't condone the behavior but I can dome the emotions that makes for a very healthy interaction strengthen attachments secure the bonds make your connection with your babies powerful always safe and open always think about calming and if you can do some mindfulness or yoga you can do moments of just calming sitting in the park quietly put them in your schedule so when you're concerned how about this tell your kids say I'm really worried about you and and if I have a role in this Georgie let me know but gosh you know you when you were in eighth grade you were doing really well in ninth grade you're not off to a good start can we have a conversation about that tell them you're concerned number two call the school counselor say listen it's probably about me but I'm really worried about my kid I'm not quite sure what to do next can I can I come in and sit down and talk with you your school counselors would love that you would they would love that they want to partner with you so that the kids get the best number three ask for the names of private counselors if your kid is really doing some dangerous stuff if your kid has some of those higher ASA scores don't let it go won't heal itself he'll all wounds time does not heal it conceals time conceals it stuffs it down deeper it will come out later in their lives speak with their kids physician if you need to and if you as a mom or dad have a gut feeling that there's something more there than stay in it with your school folks stay in it so who's your support team you can't do this alone parenting is too darn hard who's your support team here's some folks they're both in the school and they're in the community if your kid is so absorbed in their gaming what we know now there's enough research coming out now that it's probably likely not healthy well it's just a game that's what it's called but it's different let me give you an example let me pick call of duty let me pick for tonight sound familiar so here's what happens when your kids are in a game the game designers are geniuses they create these game scenarios that actually pull your kids in and here's what happens Noro biologically remember the bear if your kid is inside of a game because that's where they are it's a virtual but they're in it and it's a life-and-death game in other words if they don't kill they're gonna be killed their brain doesn't know it's a game their brain is all charged up on adrenalin and cortisol they got to survive and then if your kid loses and gets killed they go off the rocker in their room they throw things kick things they yell and scream they curse at you they say leave me the F alone you know it's true you don't have to acknowledge it because I hear the stories from other moms and dads those games I'm not suggesting should be banned oh my goodness I'm not going to get into the politics of that but what I'm saying is when your kid isolates when you see your kids behavior that way there needs to be some methods and measures to be able to begin to limit their exposure to it you'd limit their exposure to asbestos you limit their exposure to vaping you can limit their exposure to that too because it's not good for the brain or for the body call your school folks and talk about it we can't longer ignore it we can't the research is just clear it's not junk science we know how the brain works what is it that our kids need they need soothing and calming attention delivered by adults who are healthy and calm if you're not there yet you can be there I would love it in fact there's a book group I know going on about some of this stuff because I should I think I have a couple slides of resources for you but we could also do stuff around adults and being able to manage your own stopping creating a nest that is healthier for your children so who do you think is going to begin well dr.
okay any further discussion and now in a much better way than I've ever done this is fantastic thank you Eileen has assembled the the budget meeting calendar for the 1920 budget now I would like to pitch this over to our first selectmen as I think the department's need to be notified and the schedules need to be coordinated [Music] however perhaps we can settle on right I think I think we'd settle on these dates and then different do you want 15-20 minutes we're changing we're changing the budget process on our side we're gonna use some units much more we're gonna give that a try and we're also going to streamline you know you saw last year we have one person give us age ages for $4,500 budget so we're going to streamline that and put a little more thought into it so that when we come to the board selectmen board finance here you guys need everybody saying okay I'm sorry we already decided we're less deep we're done so that we can come to the board and you guys have been through this already you know you know our standard budget things like that you know we've parsed this back and forth 600 times I'm not sure you're gonna need as much time to get into that detail but if the department's especially the capital crushed things like that we want them to give those good descriptions well keep in mind at any changes that a number of the board members you know save to this will only do their second budgets he's going through it yeah yeah we'll have we'll have full information like last yeah I just wanted a little better format little cleaner similar more similar PowerPoint template to use that just has more specific on our agenda [Music] oops worse if you don't have enough time for wonderful Department so the calendar we have presented before us some of the dates got a little reject right compared to last year we had some weekend days so guidance per council was to move them up so you'll notice that some things might be a little pushed up as opposed to have I think I see on here that I would like to chat about more would be the deliberation days I think three plus one is consistent with what we had before does anyone feel that we need not certainly not less on the calendar but more deliberation days or three plus one should be okay last year one was sidetracked by that's a snowstorm others right so yeah yes tillage I'm gonna build it we still got it done back then and I think if we start off like we did last year we have the the round table with or define and support instruction and a Board of Education I think that was a really good starting up point for the biggest part again I move that the Board of Finance adopt the 2019 2020 budget calendar for the dates as set forth here not only in the summary but also the detail for meetings to start at 7:30 here at the high school Media Center get a second always second thank you any further discussion on the calendar couldn't we just condense sorry and March the board of the regular Board of Finance meeting with one of the presentations or is it just inappropriate to just prefer that you come separating we can I mean we don't know exactly that these particular departments are gonna be on those days so we can shuffle those around sure so we just leave it for wiggle room but if we leave them okay we date it's just you know support let's see let's see a couple maybe early March how the business of the March meeting I don't have to talk about audit you know that will be a different story or stuff like that but yeah okay further discussion okay hearing none all those in favor of approving the calendar as set forth at 7:30 at the high school on these dates indicate by saying aye aye perfect motion carries six oh great - any other board members have anything else they would like to bring before the board so yes I am I wanted to regretfully say that I'm going to be resigning my position on the board I have had a change in commitments recently and due to time constraints I feel that it won't be you know I won't be able to keep up with the meetings the volume of meetings that you guys are going to need with all these major projects on the horizon so I've been in discussion with Sean and I absolutely want to support the school vote and if if I'm needed for that meeting or if you guys already have a quorum for that meeting I absolutely want to vote to support bringing the school project to referendum so I'm in discussions with Sean and the exact date for my resignation he and I will determine but I just want to say that it has been a privilege and an honor to represent the good people in this town it's a wonderful town and I think you guys are working on some tremendous advancements thank you to Steve and everyone else on the Board of Finance it's just been like incredible what you guys have done in such a short amount of time to you know develop the town and to increase our participation in the community it's just a great thing so I'm very pleased to have been a part of it this past year and regretful that I will have to to let go of the seat but I have every confidence that you guys will find a person of Merit to step in and and I hope that you do find someone in good time in good order but I'm prepared to serve for as many days or for whatever timing you need thank you thank you for your service thank you thank you yeah we'll chat about that okay great as soon as determined what the what the date is then shortly after that we will post the that there's a position open and applicants may apply and will go through that process and full transparency so we'll do that thank you thank you yeah so I did mention that there were some other things that did come up and Haley before the min so I would like to move the board into executive session to discuss the legal matter okay I would like to invite our finance director and a treasure and Colette's term sheriff before jet into this executive session gonna be hi son the man [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] second both proud of itself [Music]
wood last year on an appeal on that product as it turns out the Board found that the products not specifically named there was no certificate acceptability at the time so tonight we're not here on anything like that the certificate of acceptability was approved October 11th of 20 17 October 30th of 2017 mr. Ryan Miller went to eight homes that mr. wood had installed these liners on and inspected videos related to including watham and said that there's a violation of this p3000 v 3p 3005 3 is a slope is a slope requirement and it says that four lines of diameters of three or more inches there needs to be a slope of one percent that is what the March letter that is attached to the packet provides the basis for this violation violation of P three thousand five three so that's what we're here about we have filed this appeal on three bases okay the appeal is is based on that the city in the past has approved other trenchless processes with this and I'm going to use an air quotes similar water issue without issue okay they've approved them so to us now we're not applying the true intent of the code the true intent of the code from the city's perspective was that this was okay and now it's not okay that's one one basis okay the second basis for it is that three thousand five three does not apply and where we get support for that is that there's an SOP from 2016 that we'll get into that clearly provides what the rules are going to be for CI PP installations okay and the rules are that certain humps Bellies intrusions are acceptable that SOP has been used by the city not provided to us we found it by happenstance over the summer on each racket that was not produced three thousand five doesn't apply according to the city's own policy okay because it was not applied in that particular case and presumably it applied to other cases as well and then the last component of why there's no violation of p3000 5/3 is that there is no evidence there's actually violation of the 1% in order to get a conclusion that 1 percent slope wasn't met there needs to be by definition a calculation what happened here I don't think there's any dispute is that mr.
Seuss said this unless someone there's a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better it's just not it's just not when I went to Monmouth that day and myself coming home is that can't happen I don't know what to do about it but I know this my background in education my background in mental health I got to be able to sit with moms and dads and teachers I got to be able to sit with kids and say hey let me just explain me how this works because then you got some reason to make some good changes in your life because if nothing changes nothing changes yeah made it just come out tonight for some reason you read the blurb and said hmm you got a call from your teacher and said well maybe this is really important information make the investment of your heartbeats tonight your time tonight make the investment worthwhile he's in your nest because I believe that you can do that I just believe it here's his sources that's one of the books I are we going to can they have access to this PowerPoint is going to be a will put on the website or something that way you'll have access to the slides Donna Jackson's book on aces called childhood disrupted here's the other one this is the one with the bear story the deepest well this is the pediatricians book this is only a beginning and we must help the kids find their way they're looking for us to provide leadership to do that I think for me and then I'll take any question either publicly or I'll wait behind and you can ask it privately one of the things that we know is is that the Masters in martial arts the Japanese no matter how many black belts they have have this concept and I have the symbol and the symbol is called show chin and show chin means fresh mind and if you were to talk to the Masters what they say is it doesn't matter what we've done right or what we've done wrong every morning we begin with show chin it's a new day it's a fresh way I want to have a fresh mind to do that that's one of the things I wish for you I am so impressed by the number of you that have come out tonight to hear maybe something that can make a difference in the lives of your babies that may make a difference in your own life I am so impressed by that and what I just want to do is to wish you show shin thank you very much for being here if there are any public questions I'd be happy to entertain them they just can't be too difficult don't make it too difficult yeah thank you yes well you know the question was if in fact you're looking for a counsellor for your children how young can your children be um you know we do not we because I'm far away but you can do family work right so that's how you strengthen the relationship between kids and parents and we do play therapy work so even little kids can get at their expression of their frustration upset anger whatever they're feeling through their play and the therapist guides that play and then guides mom and dad to understand it so I wouldn't suggest that certainly at - it might not work but three four or five is not too young for kids to begin play therapy I because I have a bias here I'm a family therapist that is that absolutely the best for me to have a mom and dad and the kids in the same room at the same time I love it because that's where healing happens keep this in mind we get hurt in relationships but we heal in relationships they don't have to be the same relationships but that is how it works other comments or questions ma'am should we limit it how many minutes well yes is the answer I think limits are good right because that's a moderation thing I think that if you're already at X then you have to kind of Ratchet it back slowly because your kids will have an insurrection and they'll they'll blow up about that if you change it too dramatically and I think that it can bury family the family depending upon the outcome of the kid how much can they manage can they still do responsibilities at home do they still put out the trash and then recycling and and put their laundry laundry basket and all that stuff right and do they still do well enough according to the teacher in school and they still have time to do video games that's the balance for some kids they can not manage more than 20 minutes for some kids they could do 2 hours I think when you start to get 2 hours kids will hate me and I always say this to kids I'm ruining your gig I know I am but when you get 2 kids locked in 4 hours and let me make it an aside here I'm looking around the room and we know that 72% of males between the ages of 19 and 38 72 percent of males are gamers which means that some of you are gamers yourselves but it's always about balance and it's always about the the topic what are they gaming on are they building skills or are they trying to survive sorry yes cellphones would go out of date they're not gonna they're not gonna last long I said that once in a conference about Facebook I said Facebook who ever heard of that I can't last that sounds stupid well here it is so social media and phones there again it's balance and it's your judgment and it's what you've seen your kids use your kids it's kind of the outcome because there are some really nice things about social media and some horrible things about social media there are some really okay things about phones although I think that we overplay phones let me go back to the healthy and happy I think that we believe that if our kid has a cell phone there they're safer out there maybe not it's whether they can manage it whether or not it gets in the way of their own life right if you need to get to them because somebody's sick or whatever I understand that there are some families that say my kids not getting a cell phone to middle school I'm okay with that too if they can work it out in the family so there's not the research doesn't say yes or no and it doesn't say 15 minutes versus 15 hours it doesn't say that what it says that how can the kid manage it how does the family manage it if that becomes your child's only friend that's a problem it's really got to be this issue of balance between real people and social media if they're upset after social media back it off I don't have any problem with parents monitoring their kids social media or text messages I don't I I think it can be really dangerous for kids so I think it's okay if you if the kids understand what your intent is you're not looking to spy you're looking to make sure that they stay safe yeah let me um the question was there's apologizing still a good idea when you're disciplining them first of all let's talk about discipline discipline does not equal punishment I'm just waiting for somebody to get up and leave like I've had enough had enough of this guy discipline comes from the word to make a disciple of what it means is to use a moment to teach a skill to practice a skill to get better at the skill so therefore if it's only ever yell scream yell scream then that goes to one of those aces things right that's number one chronic humiliation I can't believe you do this you're such a disappointment oh my god I hate you that's just wrong so if you do something wrong apologize for you can't apologize for them doing something wrong but if you do something wrong if you're inappropriate if you say things out of anger and then you go cool down and you say my god what am i doing it's my kid you go back and say hey listen I still feel the same way about what you did but I don't like the way I said it I really apologize for that I apologize for how the message was delivered but it was a good message there's a difference we apologize for when we violate it's called a rupture repair if you rupture a relationship you repair the relationship Oh yes right but but that's not hard to stand over your kid's shoulder and what you can say is hey listen your room is a really nice place to do homework and that's what you tell me you're doing right you're using the Chromebook to do homework cool the doors closed but I just want you to know I'm gonna knock at times I'm just gonna come in just to make sure you're okay no you can't do that you don't trust me well I just want you to prove to me that it's you're doing all the homework you said you were doing and then if not we'll figure that out I don't have a problem with that at all not at all yes yes because I don't trust them I don't trust those little buggers because they don't make good social choices now if you've got a kid who's like afraid of social media they're not gonna be out there but I would say hey listen I love you I just got to make sure you're making really good decisions daddy you don't trust me all right I love you and I just got to check in on that don't be afraid of your children don't be afraid of your kids don't be afraid of them even when they're five years old don't be afraid of them ma'am get a divorce she wanted to know what if you have a lenient parent and the other one that's pretty strict you guys got to get your crap together because the kids will use that against you they'll play that all the time where are they gonna go they're not gonna go to the rule follower they're gonna go to the parent that says okay one more time just one more time don't tell your dad don't tell your mom you got to have at least consistency you don't have to be the same but you got to have because I always tell parents this say look I it would be really nice if most times your philosophy is the same what you're willing to agree to is the same but I allow your individual differences if dad is not home and mom's home mom can make the decision she's the adult in the house by subversive for the dad but if you wind up saying here's what happens sometimes daddy can we go ask your mother well what's wrong with you you're one of the adults in the household Kennan can I go to the sleepover night ask your mother now maybe he's afraid to answer that question because he'll get in trouble with the mother now that's a possibility but you have this consistency between you and adults should be able to operate as independent individual adults and if you don't have a conversation go to dinner and get the kids babysitter you go and go to dinner and say hey listen we just need to have this conversation because it's not working for me and it's not working for our kids and I love you but I think that's important that conversation and then if he doesn't listen call me I'll leave you my number I will talk to him see in this a lot of this think about this if you listen to the questions they're all about I'm uncertain what to do what's the right thing to do there isn't a right thing but there's a feeling of reasonableness there's a feeling of I'm gonna use my kids as a barometer we say that all the time the kids in the family are the barometer for the weather that goes on in the family so I can kind of tell what's going on based upon my interactions with the kids so therefore don't be afraid of making your decision don't be afraid of calling your school counselor say look I'm stumped what do you think I should do can you get you have any advice who can I talk to the other thing I'm going to do - I'm gonna send the district there's I can't remember what it is right now across my desk comes this um this guy has this website on how parents can assure themselves around issues of social media so if I send it to you somehow you can post it or whatever grab that because it'll be research guidance on how you as parents can make decisions about social media that might be helpful ma'am for twins for tweens god bless you why would it be any different for tweens than it is for younger or older teller say hey listen one of the things we noticed this used to work but now I get the feeling you're kind of sneaking I don't want that can we work this out differently what when mom is really upset by what you're doing what is it that I could do with you because I don't like sneaky and I don't like being a but like being the bear I'll tell you a lot of times you can ask the kids what will work for them sometimes kids are more honest than you believe yes bring that up and you can say that say listen I'm beginning to lose this trust between us right and here's the reason why this and this and this and this as a mom I'm starting to make what you can do very tight now I'm gonna shorten your leash I don't want to do that how can we work it out so you have kind of the freedom to do the kinds of things you want to do but I'm assured that you're fulfilling your promises to me keep it up don't don't get frustrated by it that works best and you know which also you're doing is you're teaching her how to problem-solve then and negotiate and that that can be a good thing but don't give in persevere don't give in these little buggers I tell you they they can just go on forever comments or questions ma'am I'm glad I don't live in your house good that's good thing good but that's a good thing that is a good thing so I don't want to lose that right because many many kids don't play outside or have friends anymore in the neighborhood so that's a good thing so you know the first thing that I thought was is that you can't motivate him because that means bribe him that's not motivation so it really is how can you connect with him in a way that he tells you what's going on remember kids are either gonna tell you or show you so he can kind of give you a clue to what what makes him tick how do you have that conversation in a way or how does somebody perhaps the school counselor have that conversation hey listen I was talking to mom and let's see we can figure some things out then we'll have mom come in and we'll figure some things out because motivation comes it's natural when a kid is challenged or it feels competent if he doesn't feel competent it's not gonna do it so motivation really is an intrinsic thing that comes from perhaps some restructuring of the environment is he also when he's in school not motivated does he yeah well yes but that's only half the answer because the other half of the answer is how are you and the teacher on the same page so it's not it's not telling tales it's not complaining feel free to go to the school principal or the assistant principal and say listen I'm just trying to problem-solve this and and the teacher sounds like she's over really overwhelmed and overworked what is it that we can do because I I need some help and the teacher seems that she needs some help yeah yeah and it is a process that you go through of having these open conversations well you can share that with the principal as well right in fact the administrators staff here it began tonight by saying I was invited in August 28th to make a presentation similar to this the administration I was so impressed by the willingness of the administrators to take in this information and to figure out how then to implement it in their schools I know that the principal would welcome that conversation don't feel bad it don't feel bad at all and it's not complaining you're worried good night good good luck good other comments sir oh you're only allowed one sorry get ready like for bed yeah yeah in the morning okay yeah yeah sugar is a big deal let me just comment about the first one the first comment was is there something that you can do in terms of kind of offering incentives to your kids to get ready for school on time by having privileges at the end of the day for instance um all of that is fine as long as long as you're comfortable with it and it's managed what it would occurred to me when you were asking that is number one this is a really big deal depending upon the age of your kid goodnight drive safely you don't have to be responsible for getting them up in the morning they have a phone with an alarm clock on it depending upon their age upper Elementary's even third grade fourth grade fifth grade they should start assuming responsibility for self because if not you get into a tangle with them in the morning get up get up you're gonna you're late for the bus oh my god are you gonna get to school and then you wind up taking them to school so the next morning they're not getting out of bed because you're gonna take them to school we net into the fact that they could be responsible for getting themselves up so that that's part of it right there was something else you said that reminded me of this sleep three things that human beings need sleep number one nutrition number two exercise number three now let me tell you about sleep we now know that if you've got a blue screen in front of you it shuts down serotonin in your brain and you won't go to sleep it needs 90 minutes at least sometimes 60 minutes at least sometimes 90 to be off of a screen so that the brain recovers and then you can get the natural sleep benefit of it at night so what that means is no the kids are gonna hate me for this no you can't have your phone in your room they got to be in the cradle in the kitchen plugged in because my worry is is that your friends are texting you and you're not gonna sleep number two if I want you in bed by 10:00 you got to be off of a screen by 8:30 9 let's try that let's try for a day or two or three or four or five let's see what happens and you'll see this natural cycle it'll help them get to sleep okay I don't mind incentive stuff at all I don't I I do mind bribes bribes are not healthy that's that's how usually parents get their kids to my office the first time we're gonna go see the therapist I'm not going I'll take you out to dinner okay and I always call him on it because I know that's what gets him there you have a question he's on the phone all the time is that embarrassing you is he embarrassing you right now let me see your phone yeah I know just let me see I'll give it back now he's not on his phone you're going to get it back I'm not I'm not keeping it and I'm not giving it to dad that wouldn't be fair that's coming right back to you but I hear dad being worried that he doesn't get enough talk time with you cuz you're here now I'm gonna point out something else here because kids tell me this all the time he can't be on his phone all the time either a lot of kids say I go to my mom or dad to talk to them and ask them a question my mom or dad are on their phone that's not fair dad will say yeah but that's work doesn't matter when you're home with me if we need to attach and connect thank you for giving me this by the way I wasn't trying to trick you but the reality is yes I know that there'll be a fight but you work toward this issue of being able to negotiate or say here's why I'm doing it I'll even give you some lead time this won't start until Monday but on Monday this is the way we got to do this in between we can talk about your you don't like it but that's what we're going to do kids will be on their phone all the time yes take a hammer to his phone don't buy him a replacement there's a remedy he can't be on something he doesn't have but we're not willing to do that as moms and dads it's hard it's really hard stuff but the reality is no there's no pill to take there's no elixir there's no special program there's none of that those things are addictive sometimes in an okay way somebody meant that meant they mentioned the laptops over here but yes they can be addictive and if you think if your gut says too much then it's how do we get that away from him and we'll build the amount of time if you were embarrassed I apologize for that that's not good shame is not good ma'am yes yes okay yes kids are social beings you know and usually kids don't make friends be either because they don't have the social skills to do that they really have a kind of a kind of a bad view of themselves nobody would want to be my friend who'd want to be my friend or maybe your kid is a really good kid and everybody else there is kind of a kid that is always in trouble that'll keep her kid away but you can ask him that it's not healthy it's not healthy to be a loner he doesn't have to have 30 friends but a good friend two three they said change from elementary school is that a change from when he was like six seven eight nine ten or is that the same he always had friends yeah less but he had friends yeah friends are important the social connection is really important ma'am yeah yes yes they don't talk anymore yeah oh it's everywhere I mean I don't know countrywide but it is everywhere when I send that link to you guys so you can grab down on the issue of social media and phones because there are some things I think one of the things that we don't do is we don't know how to have conversations with our kids about it that's good I understand I I get that I have two comments it's number one you better hope he goes to college close by so you can do these playdates when he's a freshman in college but here's the real serious comment did that make a difference in their social connection in other words that were they able to sustain that it's just Halloween it was just two weeks ago my question is they probably can't sustain it so then the question is well if that won't work what will work and what you might find is is that I've noticed this and I've talked to kids all the time they're always on texting and they're never on voice it's a real it's a real dilemma in a real puzzle I don't think we yet on we the adults understand all the implications of that yes yep and what the date when you say to them hey what's that all about I just made that observation what do they say so the scheduled activity of marching band gave them an opportunity to connect but they won't initiate it on their own you want me actually come up with an answer for that did somebody tell you to ask that question just a stump of me before the evening was over maybe your kids don't like you maybe you got this you got this damn high profile in the community and they're just trying to like oh my god there goes my mother again I don't I I really don't know that but what I do know is this I I think that our ability to have honest sincere not heavy-duty conversations with our kids where they might be able to give us some insight can be helpful where we can express to them from our point of view that may not be healthy from their point of view they may be able to point out some fear issue that was the comment over there there's a discomfort so I think the only way to go about is have the conversation I don't think you can motivate them unless you bribe them right I don't think you can motivate kids like what motivates you is this your wife does she motivate you by telling you what to do when you obey careful of course not you pick and choose you do the things you like because it's an inter motivation that's internal and that's what we have to find with our kids it could be it could be more and more and more but snow pile parents snow pile parents they created that kids never had to persevere and do the uncomfortable stuff that's a great example I'm not suggesting you are but that's a great example throw yourself under the bus if you want but I'm not going to call thank you very much for your time it was wonderful thank you George as he mentioned we are going to be posting his PowerPoint on our website the links he'll send to us as well as the video that was produced tonight so if anybody could not make it tonight you can point them to the website and they can see the entire presentation thank you very much for coming out on such a cold night [Applause] you
Miller eyes the video and says slope not met 1% I met a problem with that is that that's not how it was done with other videos and I think that from a due process standpoint it's it's strictly it's purely unfair to mr. wood I mentioned some videos in the appeal with respect to the first component of our argument and that is what the city has done before I have those videos today and again I don't did these videos aren't very long but I would like to show what the city has done in other trenchless meaning well you know what the concept is here what the city has done in other particular cases the first video we're looking at here which hopefully pulls up is by one of mr. brooder mr. woods competitors Rover and it's a excuse me I don't think it's relevant what is been done before on a different project by a different contractor can I explain to you why may be an analogy if law enforcement takes a certain position over and over and over again with respect to something the people start relying on then law enforcement says for this particular case we're gonna look at it differently that's why can you show us the video that was done by mr.
Miller on this case yeah I'm not playing that's the now you are four videos this video does not so you I will not I'm not here to argue with anyone if you would if you're telling me that I should not show these videos I will not show the videos there's there's a procedure I'm just saying that the whole point of the code is to apply the intent of the code is to make sure that we don't have danger to human life okay and the building official is charged with that responsibility I'm I'm looking at what the building officials have done in this very city for years to show what they think the true intent of the code is if you're telling me not to show it I don't have to just a moment anyone on the board want to see the video that is not relevant to this case it seems to me that the only real question here is is the one percent is clearer in the code that you want us there are other percentages in the code I think it varies depending on the pipe size yeah but I mean you basically want a little bit of slope and not too much slope this the basic rule in sewer pipes so the only question here is is there clear evidence that there is some slope in this one if so why what is it and how how good is that evidence I don't know what else to say about so that says I don't the only video that we need to see would be this yeah I don't see how this I mean we can't really rule on due process law anyway so we have no I agree I mean I take it a step further then hmm I mean I just happened to see the video of the house in question so I don't want a short-circuit your presentation but to me this is strictly a chronology issue the permit was pulled in 2014 it was a particular code in effect which was 305 for whatever reason so the city then issued this SOP which may or may not be relevant but in the inspection didn't occur until three years later but it it should still be based on the 300 five point three because that was the code that was in effect at the time of the permit was pulled has nothing to do with precedent or anything sure the trainee Lutheran Church that had the code a CI PP case that case the SOP came after that work was done so they created an SOP for purposes of approving this church product there's a church installation so on your kind of chronology issue that that's that's my problem with it is you're saying it happened before so the code applied the the p3000 five applied an SOP 501 doesn't well then that should have been the case with the church but I get what you're saying but but we're not here to judge on the inconsistencies of application that the city may or may not have I mean I have plenty of questions about about the SOP and and and chronologies on other projects this has just to do with this particular project and the the inspection that was made and the challenge or the that was made as to whether proper slope was applied certainly and it's based and I think correctly so on the fact that the 305 was in effect at the time that the permit was pulled the SOP 501 notwithstanding is actually irrelevant to this again in my opinion but and is there basis for that or just your opinion it's my opinion that the 305 is the one that's in effect was it was the code provision that was in effect at the time the permit was pulled I mean I'll tell you I'm an architect we pull we have had plenty of projects that have transpired over a change in code if we get our project permitted and approved under you know an older code that's the code that's in effect it's not what happens two years later when the project is finished and inspected you don't you don't apply the inspections of the criteria the code to the times you it's retroactive to when the permit was pulled and that's what you just from another part of the world and the way things work to explain that's exactly what I'm trying to do with this but it isn't it's not it's it's not no no I'm then maybe I didn't make myself clear so let me just go back to what it's my my take on this from a chronological point of view the permit was pulled in 2004 p300 5.3 was the code that was in effect at the time so that when the inspection was done three years later the code that was still in effect at the time should be the 300 5.3 that applied to Trinity it's him that's what what the city did on another project is not material to this that's not the issue you can't go back and rewrite or look at all the wrongs or rights that might have been done over the last you know dozen years because that's not what the case is about about what this is about again in my opinion but I don't want to hang up these points I mean you know that the SOP is permitted by the code itself it says that the building official shall have the authority to enter interpretations of this code and to adopt policies and procedures in order to clarify the application of its provisions this is our 104.1 that's exactly what mr.
strong did and I asked mr. strong to participate in this process he initially did and now for whatever reason he's not participating in this process and I think it's fully relevant and I will move on I understand that you disagree with me that the city can decide how to apply the true intent of the code by their interpretation and that's what they did they were doing it both officially through SOP 501 and unofficially by the way in which they approve videos that I'm not going to show but that are certainly within the record so going I guess to your and with respect to the three-year delay on on the inspection the videos of the process of the approved for were given to the city right away by DVD they were given to the care of mr. rap okay miss Ratliff is not here today and we're not allowed to subpoena folks and ask them questions etc I understand for whatever reason and partially at my clients fault he doesn't follow up on those videos but mr.