Tolland Town Council Special Meeting - May 7, 2025

001I'll call this special meeting of the town council to order at May 7 at 7:08 p.m. Uh let's all please rise for the pledge of 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. Consideration of the town council's proposed FY25 26 budget is the first item of our agenda. Um I understand that our town manager has a proposal for the council. So I'll turn it over to him first. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you're aware, yesterday, May 6, uh we the town voted down our proposed budget through our referendum process. uh we had a record well not a record uh but the most we've had since 2008 I believe the first resp school so we

002had great turnout and I'll pause for a second I want to thank our registars who are both new uh and their staff for doing a great job at DBW uh for assisting through that smooth referendum processing I thank them all uh as a result of the failure our next referendum is going to be on May 20th uh this this is all codified in how the process goes uh it's two weeks after. And so May 20th is the next referendum. Same place program room from 6:00 a.m. uh to 8:00 p.m. As a part of this process, I am proposing a budget on uh my side of things. Uh the total adjustment will result will result in another reduction of $450,000. Uh those reductions that I'm proposing uh were to cut some reclassification in reclassifications in positions

003from DPW. uh $60,000 for potential public safety initiative savings, $16,000 in staff hours. I asked our staff, does anyone want to voluntarily uh surrender hours before um I have to make cuts? Mike Wilkinson offered uh to lower his hours and pay. Uh so I thank him for uh stepping forward to do that. Uh we're we're looking at our engineering um numbers that we can spend. Uh we we will we will cut back $10,000 off of that budget. Uh we're at $15,000 to hopefully save in fuel costs hopefully. Um $36,000 in road salt. Um and then the board of ed reduction of $293,888 for a total reduction of $450,335 uh the town's operating expenditures have been reduced by $156,000 uh bringing the budget down from 3.12% to a flat two on the town side uh compared

004to the the fiscal year 2025. Uh, additionally, the board of ed operating budget has been reduced again on my proposal $293,888, a decrease from 2.99 to 2.32 in comparison to last year's budget. Uh, the overall increase in proposed fiscal year 2026 budget that I'm recommending is now a 2.3% budget or 1.4 million, almost just under $ 1.5 million. the proposed mill rate would come down from 3 point uh the 3 37.77 down to 27.55. So a a very large drop um in mill rate. That is my proposed budget uh I give it to you Mr. Chair. Thank you uh town manager Foley um for preparing this proposal. Um now open it up for discussion by counselors. Um, do any counselors have input upon either the proposal in front of us or different budget proposals they'd

005like to put forward. Question from council check. I was expecting some of the answers that I sent earlier that were copied to Chris and Jacob Brian have more on this on this and we ran all of those uh scenarios and Sarah Casey can print out a bunch of those spreadsheets um if we're going to need them. She's a co-host. Oh, okay. All right. Um Yolita, can you print out some of those spreadsheets that the ones you gave us that we were working on this afternoon? Absolutely. I'll bring it down. Yeah, it would be definitely beneficial to see the numbers. Y as we discuss this Sure. Yeah. While we're waiting, you could have um so I'm not sure Jacob you shared it with others and I think I might have for question this one. please. But

006basically, I I hear a lot that people want 0%. So, I really want to understand what 0% would actually mean for the town, how big that would affect the town, and what services we would actually lose. Average house goes up about $300 at a 0%. Right? So, my question is, what does the town lose? We must lose a lot because how many millions of dollars would be budget, I guess, is my question. 1.9 million. It's got to be equals to two. Yep. 1.9 million. But that was four. So point of clarification, 4 million is what approximately what you have to cut to get a 0% tax increase or is this is a spending increase is what Brian is referring to. Yep. We need to cut how much to get a 0% spending increase. One.9 from

007the original budget. think that we're really that would be dead. Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to. Yep. I like playing those games. Sentence finisher. Actually, really So, I just wanted to put that out there because I did also say in the email, I think part of can't speak for all of you, but I can certainly speak for myself and maybe some will agree. Again, this is all in the email. I want to make that clear. Maybe part of our my job maybe I didn't make it clear on what we could lose if we went down so low and whatever we agree on. I think that's part of the message. It's not just tools. It's this this this and this and I'm sure whatever it together maybe together we can work on some sort of better

008messaging to get out there. Um that make sense. Um, and then I guess my other question to that was what would it look like if we took another $200 $250,000 on out of the unassigned fund balance to not affect some of these reductions that I'm seeing in front of us what that number was. So hopefully we have what that number and what that number would come down to because it's a to me personally that four bed deduction is huge. um the pitch study. I mean, we know how much they're saying that we need in this community. $60,000 over a great scheme of things is not a lot, especially when you start kind of the January next year time frame. We've talked about how much money um we're seeing investments coming back. I just in probably

009$80,000 it sounds from like from um the most recent appeals coming back. So, there's other funds out there. I know there are risks taken, but I think it's a good conversation to talk about and that's all I have to go. Thank you. Um, so I think councelor BB, did you have a I had a question. I just wanted to clarify because we talked about two things. So you talked about percent spending. I'm not for any I know that. I know that. So just so preface that, right? So this is I understand that you were not advocating but you were you were asking the scenario what it looked like for a 0% spending increase which would be basically we don't we would keep our budget the same as it was last year. Correct. All right. So

010that's where the n plus million comes from. Yes. Okay. And that's not the same as a 0% tax increase because even without that 2.99% or whatever we did as a spending increase, the revaluation shifted an enormous amount of cost um from commercial and corporate properties to homeowners. So that was many millions of dollars, right? Where because we're talking multiple percentage points there. So, um, so there's a differential there. There is, I think, and Jacob clarified that earlier, but regardless, I guess the point really is 2 million, four million, it doesn't matter. That's a Yeah, it's one's one's one one's really bad, one's a lot a lot more bad. Um, and and I think to your point that where you were going with that is that I concur. I think that we need to do more

011education so that people understand the impact of risk like why this happened and where how the the cost um burden is being shifted. Yeah. All right. Thank you. It was just hope that gave you enough time to get Thank you. Is it is it okay vice chair if I I want to ask you to touch upon a couple of the topics because I think they're going to be of general interest to you. um regarding use of the fund balance and also the latest status upon uh money that might have been bought back for lack of a better term through uh assessment appeals. Um I just think it would be good context for the council to have. Okay, so let's let's start with the fund balance. Um some of the things I'm seeing out there are

012that we have $500,000 of found money that we had talked about in the last quarterly review. Let's go ahead and knock 350,000 right off that. We have a a debt settlement coming in executive we talked about in executive session. It'll be on the agenda on Tuesday. So 500,000 is is uh 350 of it is already accounted for. We have already put in roughly 827,000 out of our savings into this budget. And it's not a one-time expense. This is a reoccurring expense. These are for reoccurring expenses that we're going to have to face uh in every year after this. We are putting ourselves in financial peril and as I've said to council in private uh myself and our fiscal staff when the town is in fiscal peril, we are the ones who have the light shined

013on us. And I want to go on record saying I do not think it makes fiscal sense to spend another penny. This is this is likely the most we've spent out of the max of the tax stabilization fund. The tax stabilization fund we're spending $300,000 out of this year. That leaves our remaining tax stabiliz tax stabilization fund at $189,000. That money is funded through state unexpected state income coming in. I don't anticipate that growing. So now our remaining tax stabilization fund will be down to $189,000 for the coming years. Uh we're taking another 527 out of the fund balance as it is and we're going to have to re recover that next year. We are losing $1 million in state aid based on our mill rate dropping so low here. So we are $1.8 million

014behind before we even start for next year. Uh assuming you know there's no inflation or anything moving up. We're already $1.8 8 million behind. Assuming insurance doesn't go up, assuming uh cost of uh the payroll doesn't go up, assuming fuel doesn't go up, electricity doesn't go up. We're assuming all of these things and we're already $1.8 million behind on next year's budget. So, I'm saying to you, taking money out of that fund balance, saying we found $500,000, that money came from our investments. We invest money that we have in our funds. That money was was 500,000 more than we anticipated. That is a good thing to happen. However, 350,000 of that is already gobbled up for a a a death benefit claim that the town is going to have to pay. So, that's where I

015stand on that. Jacob, I warn you that that neither Yolita nor I, and I'm sure um our council are the um the advisers that we we pay to give us advice, would not want another penny um spent out of those funds. Uh that being said, I work at your pleasure and if you tell me to uh do that, I will uh I will do. Thank you, Brian. And just one last thing, um what is this the latest status up on the assessment? Yes, my image there is not 80,000. We're down to 63,000. Um and that is you know if somebody appeals their taxes um and they win, we have that money set aside in case they win. We set aside 80,000. We're down to 62, I believe, thousand based on the board of assessment appeals

016has already awarded 20 something,000 out of that. We have three properties that the board of assessments would not um hear their appeal. One of those properties has filed in superior court every single reevaluation. I don't have it off the top of my head. I'd ask Jason. He might know her. Yolita, did you end up finding out what property that was that always um files or has always filed? Yes, Jason uh said and I think Jason is on a call. I am Yeah. Wood Lakehead Wood Lake Nursing Home and um Star Hill uh for the last two revals have piled with Super. They have 60 days to do that. um each of those are roughly a million dollars. Uh which any of them would would gobble up that remaining 60 or so uh that we have

017there. So so there's there is not potential. I would not recommend um doing that if if they do file. Um and you know typically as as some in this room know the jud the jud the jud judge tends to split the baby in those scenarios. Um we would have to um come out of pocket in there. So um there is there is not that 80,000 Thank you, uh, Brian. Um, we'll go to Council Ran. Yeah. So, I just think that we need to take step back for a second. Um, I'm all for rolling up our sleeves and getting down to figuring out what to do going forward. Um, but I just want to back up for a second um, and say that I'm proud of the bipartisan work that we did up to this point.

018Um, six of us engaged in sort of a back and forth. I don't think any one of the six of us was completely happy with the budget that went out. But I think that's what compromise is. Um but all that work was undermined um by councelor Sheay and at least some members of the RTC and it's their right to oppose the budget. Um but they chose to strategically do that in the 11th hour um before the referendum. Um, and if if they truly believe that that was what the will of the town was, I just don't understand why they didn't just allow the budget to fail on its own merit rather than whipping that up. Um, and so the reason I bring that up is because nothing we do here tonight is going to matter

019if we don't leave the room and all seven of us um either support the budget or at a bare minimum don't stir up uh a campaign to tank that budget. It does not matter if we leave this room. all the work that we've done up till now, it was it was undermined and and and so it doesn't matter how long we spend in here tonight trying to develop a budget. If we don't try to work together, all of us, um we're not going to be we're not going to get anywhere and we'll be here again for another referendum. And so I just want to say um I also recognize uh you know in my effort to continue to work with who you know whoever regardless of political affiliation. Thanks to the second question on the

020uh ballot, uh we know that the vast majority of people who voted no voted no because the mill rate was too high. And so we know that we have to lower the mill rate. We have to look at using responsibly using unassigned fund balance if we can. uh given that we are in hopefully a once in a generation um reval where property value skyrocketed for residents but did not increase nearly as much for commercial property. So a huge amount of tax burden is shifted to residents and we also have to look at responsible ways that we can cut spending of the town. So I acknowledge that like I I know that that's that's why there's a no vote. All I ask is that um all of us councelor Sheay I I think well hopefully he's

021online but is that we at least you know there's a willingness to actually you know work together meet halfway compromise and then um at least not undermine the hard work that goes in from this council um or else we'll be back again. So, like I said, I just want to say, you know, to the five of you, I appreciate the the work that we did up till now and I appreciate, you know, your willingness to to work collaboratively and so, um, thank you and and I'll be I'm hopeful that we can continue to try to do that. Thank you, Council. Um, I don't know if someone had council. Yeah. So, I kind of just want to piggyback off of councelor Moran. I'm extremely extremely frustrated with how this past budget went um and to see

022it from my own party how quick how quick it can change um for versions to be cast in our direction for working together and trying to put together a budget uh that would give the most money to the town and most money to the school. Um, you know, it's I don't like to be put into a party. Um, I've if anybody's talked to me, I've said I'd rather be categorized as a patriot before Republican. So, for all the Democrats that are like, you know, I don't know about that councelor Newman guy, well, I think if I were to decide to do this again, I might be pretty popular with the Democrats being able to swing and want to give our town and our school more money. I'm always here to vote and be invested in

023the morality of the cost. Someone some people might ask questions, what's different from this budget cycle from last year? I think last year's jumping off point was a little too high. Um I think how our past chair um maneuvered through that budget was not my favorite. And I think this year our town manager, who I think is fantastic, was able to do his job and bring us to a historic a more um historic bill rate for my party to expect me to total line and come in with the absolute lowest budget I I can bring. It's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. I'm going to vote how I see fit. But more importantly, I I'm none of us Republicans are are shy to the fact that this year is especially tough

024for homeowners. That that was never not part of the conversation. Not once. We were all here in support of I mean, let me tell you, I am not in the 1% of the most affluent of town. So, this year was not this workup. this um to cause head scratching at the question number two the reading comprehension of that pollot it's very clear if you voted yes stop writing if you however if you voted no we wanted an indication to bring more clear substantive understanding of how we could uh and again I'm not I I'm not going to sit here and pretend and I don't know where this might go. To quote Joe, Mr. Shay, be like Joe. His quote is, "I'm not sure the town has an appetite for this size of an increase." I've

025heard that before from Joe, which I agree with. I refuse to try to understand the appetite of this town without bringing food to the table first. Personally, I refuse. So, I am here to again as a uh someone who works 60 hours a week and as like everyone else with kids and as a volunteer for this town to do what is best for this town for all and we had heard testimony from students uh hours past what we had last year from parents hours past what we had last year. We were thrown two carrots by um Dr. Willlet that being the um the 188,000 for the seats for the tech tech initiative 300,000 for the ECS I think it was n 99.1 for the tax collection rate I could be wrong on that grand list

026for the motor vehicles we had some things that we were able to to work with this budget which was so different than last year in my opinion. So to sharpen the pencils, the work needs to be done. That was never not the case. But now we are going to see the effect of taking more money from the town and the board of ed. And like councelor man said, I'd like to work as a group. I don't think it's fair for the one single dissenting viewpoint to undermine the totality of the group. And again, you guys have heard me on my soap box preach of First Amendment speech. I am not saying that Joe Sha is not allowed to voice his opinion. I'm not saying the RTC is allowed to voice their opinion, but I'll be

027damned if you think that you're going to affect how I voice my opinion and how we all work together. That's all I got. Thank you, councelor. Uh, councelor Sherry. Sure. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay. My video. Ah, shoot. Okay. You still there? Yep. You can see you interior. Yeah. Sorry. Or my phone has died. So, um, a couple things. Um, we can go back to we can go back to the uh our original vote here and just talk about that. And I I saw the writing on the wall way back when we were talking about the budget. And um it seemed like version 2.0 only things were so so much worse this year than they were last year. Well, you know, we went down the same path. Half half the town council, you

028know, 100% for board of ed, give them everything they want. We've got to we've got to put together a spending package as high as we can get. And of course failed. This town doesn't have the appetite or the affordability. There's a lot of people in this town that are really struggling. A lot of people forget that because you don't hear a lot of those people as much as you hear the people that are, you know, bored of that or death. So, why didn't you let it fail on its own? It's my turn. It's my turn a second. Hold on. So, so when everybody said, "Okay, let's let's have this vote for three because, you know, we we feel confident." I knew there was a zero chance that this budget was going to pass. Zero. This

029town does not have the appetite for that kind of an increase layered on top of $4 million getting shifted over to them. But, you know, everybody has wishful thinking on this. So, I said, "Okay, go ahead. Go for it." And and it's incredibly naive to think that anything that I stated in the past couple days undermines this process. That I don't have that kind of influence in this town. The people of this town, if if you have any experience at all with the people of this town and how they have voted historically, you know damn well that budget wasn't going to pass. Had nothing to do with anything me saying, uh, I disagree with, you know, this budget proposal. And you know, everyone, you know, the Democrat party like broadcasted non-stop about, you know, this

030budget's got to pass. Vote yes, yes, yes, yes, constantly. But, you know, I didn't say the Democrat party uh is uh is forcing people uh to spend more money than they can afford to do. Never said anything like that. So, um, you know, don't don't believe that just because stuff put out by me that says I think this budget's too high influenced this town 1,700 people to run out and vote. No, that's not the case. It's historically the way this town is voted. So, let's not be so naive that something I said or was quoted by the TRTC uh influenced or changed the voting process. Just didn't happen. In case you're calling me naive, councelor Shay, if you were 100% sure that the budget would have failed, then you should have let it fail on

031its own right. And I would stand here just like I'm going to stand here tonight and recognize that people voted no, told us that they voted no because it was too high. Fine. I'll move forward in that direction. But if you were 100% sure there was no reason to undermine the work that the six of us did, you've never come to the table willing to compromise. I respect that you have a very firm position on the budget. That is your right. I respect that the RTC has the right to voice their position on the budget. I'm asking you to not undermine the process of the work we're doing if you're not willing to work with us. At least don't undermine us. It's simple, Chris. There were a lot of people that called in and it's

032the Democrats obviously wouldn't hear these conversations, but a lot of people called in the Republican party said, "What are you guys doing? You're not representing us. You guys are trying to push this huge increase down our throats. Does anybody represent us?" And that was their concern that they weren't getting a voice because it sure wasn't coming from you and it sure wasn't coming from any of the other Democrat parties or Chris Jimenez. It was being it was being pushed that this is a great budget. Spend spend spend. And they were frustrated. They're like, "How come we don't have a voice?" So I was the one voice that said, "I agree with you. It's too high." Great. So I'll just reiterate again. We're gonna spend a lot of time in here going forward then because we're

033going to be exactly back into the spot. Yeah, you are. If you haven't learned anything in the last two years, you are. I do. Um, council, you have a question. Yeah. So, Joe, just a quick question since you're the tip of the spear here. It seems like and we we've certainly had our disagreements before um monetarily. You're good finance guy, right? How am I going to get my trooper for our kids in our schools without spending money? Well, it's it's a question of priorities, right? I mean, just at just as at home, you have a certain amount of money that you can spend and you have to decide what's the most important thing to spend it on. So, we have to establish priorities. The board of ed, you know, we can't tell the board of

034ed how to establish their priorities. We can make recommendations, but the board of ed has to make a decision. I've got this much money. Do I spend it on a on a on a on a state trooper, an SRO, or do I spend it on, you know, whatund uh new seats in the auditorium? What what's it going to be? That's the way budgets work. Obviously, you and I agree to disagree with a little bit here, but I'm just asking you if we're all in the boat here. Um, not to create mutiny and to work toward I mean, we we know what if like to to your quote the town appetite. We know where this should be for our residents to not feel pressure of tax burden. We should try to get I I really do

035think that if this wasn't a reevaluation year, this budget might have had a chance. I really do. I really do. And you can disagree with that all you want. I'm not I wouldn't dis I wouldn't fully disagree with that because last year we passed the 3% increase to the correct. So what I'm asking is that you work with us um since you're clairvoyant here as to what the number should exactly be. Otherwise, I think like Chris Moran's saying, we're wasting our time. I'd ask that the council is it begin having a discussion about the town manager's proposal um that focuses upon what we are going to put out for voters in the next two weeks. Um, so with that, uh, do we have any counselors that have either amendments to this proposal, general feedback on

036it? Sorry, councelor check, please. Again, just a starting um starting point. I don't think we all know what we really um I know what's important to you, Alex. We know what we all know what's important to each other because that's what we ran on, right? So, and then we try to encourage it all with a residents in mind, of course. Um I mean, I've told you, Jacob, multiple times, I cannot cut any more from the board. I've repeatedly said that. And I've repeatedly said that $60,000 public safety initiatives is not a lot of money. That's something that this town needs. We're way behind on public safety according the pitch study that we're going to hear about in a couple weeks. Um all these other things that we've talked that Brian has in here, you know,

037um I still would like to see if we can just use another hund thousand see what that looks like. It might not be best and we talked about no super bad. Again, I also do want to make sure Brian, I'm just gonna go right to you. I'm sorry. Um, can you just tell me just so people know what a 0% spending increase would be? What would affect the town? What would affect the board of education? just a generalized thing so people clearly understand what losses would impact us impacted the town at a 0% increase we would have to reduce $1.9 million dollars um and depending on how you split that up uh you were looking at a mass decrease in town services you know and it's it's where do we want to cut and at

038that number it's everywhere right it's it's DPW W, you know, we're already have a hard time with the fields keeping up with with everything. It's the senior center, it's the library, it's the police, it's the fire, it's it is that at that 0% across the board, um that would be massive cuts in services. Uh and and the average, you know, an average house at 0% increase, their taxes would still go up $290 based on the rebell process. And that will defin um Jacob about several times. Um no matter what, unfortunately, it is a really bad year. And I would agree with other counselors that we didn't have a reval, it probably would have had a really good chance um of passing, but no matter what, unfortunately, no one's going to get down to a really

039low taxes. So, my concern is we've already all the way down down, people still going to have a tax increase. It doesn't mean I don't care or anything like that. Um it just means unfortunately that's reality. And what is the town really willing to give up? have services out of town, trash pickup. I mean, I'm just putting it out there so people really understand that. Um, that's it. Soap box. I'll get off my soap box. What? But I'm just I want to know what $100,000 um is. Maybe reduce the board of education a little bit, but I'm really not good with I don't even know. I I Can I ask one question? I was going to say to your point um I had asked Chris earlier and Jacob maybe you can answer this um we

040had swapped like a capital project for board of education tax project that kind of needed to be done now and wasn't that kind of like around the 100 it was like 180 what we did was I believe it was a onetoone technology and Brian correct me if I'm wrong which is an operating budget so basically we said Um we do for the middle school auditorium seats. Yeah, we swapped that out and hopefully some monies will come in later in the year to postpone the uh replacement of the seats till later on in the year. Yeah. So essentially, we just kind of took advantage of the necessity and the timing of those things and the ERF. And I don't mean to cut for you to check off, but since you were saying 100, I was thinking

041what do we have in the budget that's not a a reoccurring expense and that would be a tech that tech initiative would be one example. And I think 188,000 kind of falls within the range that we may be able to feel comfortable with using with these additional inesign funds. Um, so I was going to throw that out there kind of to piggy back that might be an idea. I was no continue. I I'll I'll comment afterwards. Oh, okay. Um, do you um just find if Dr. Dr. Wlette can answer a question about 293 close to 294,000 what or as a board of education member here what that could look like what would be reduced. Um Dr. Willlet or if you'd like to comment you may board of education will be meeting next Wednesday to determine

042what specific reductions ultimately will be made. Um, I would say that given the conversations that occurred in the last couple of meetings, going through the minutes of those would help best identify what some of those items could be. They could be sports, clubs, um, club advisorships and so on. Um, and activities, they could be staff and the board will have to decide. But, um, that's the kind of thing we're talking about be the clubs and activities, the staff, sports, and things like that. Thank you. That's all I have for now. So, I don't know. I guess again I don't know if you'll let unless other people want to add things to what I said, but the hund curious and if there's another capital thing that can be moved around. I don't know you about that.

043Um, so just to clarify, do you want at some point to run another scenario with what you suggested 100 additional 100,000 from balance? I can't remember if there was anything else there that changed the I don't really um well I wanted to keep that public if possible. I just would like to see what could keep the public safety. Like I said, we have a study that says we need a lot of stuff. Um, so you'd like to see a scenario that has Yeah. And if anybody else has anything that I mean, you don't. Yeah. Well, I think I'd like to kind of handle this similar to we've done in years past where we can go around the room and ask for several scenarios and then probably take a recess and then work done. Um, so

044I I think we should kind of handle it that way. Sure. I'm just flying off the day after a referendum, you really can't talk about everything. Yeah. So, sorry if I'm all over the place. Second thing, just a clarifying question. I'm not operating on sleep here, but before the um you had asked about have we had Chris and I talked about capital. Yeah. I don't know if you had a chance. I thought maybe there would specific to the laptops I guess where sleep appropriation might come into this but like I think we we put that in the capital budget and I believe that it's all being paid for out of the general fund. So I don't know if that would be added but I don't think that's right. No the the IT about the IT

045thing at the board of ed with the seats. Yes. Yeah. But the IT was being paid for with a different fund. Correct. Wasn't it? Weren't you going to Didn't you have a grant or something for the IT stuff? The use of or am I wrong? Well, it depends on which stain we're talking about. But if we're talking about the the swap that was 188,000 instead of as as Mr. Thompson said um it's the uh the TMS auditorium seating because that you know that's something that possibly could be done with the RF funds but the RF funds have to clear first in the third quarter the auditors have to clear them that end of year funds that we'd have from this year would then be moved to the ERF clear in the third quarter and then

046to pay for the auditing seeds but because we you know need the text stuff now that that money instead could be used as capital to pay for the ed tech. So now that could be reduced from the budget which got us to 2.99. Does that make sense? Yes, that answer your question. Yes. I was just didn't know if there was anything else that we could reduce the number. Well, it's a all that's left that that we can reduce out of the general fund to capital profit to capital. I'm assume we're talking about the capital plan, right? Capital project. Thank you. Is the 100 and change for the fire doors. I'm I'm not going to be the one to say let's skip the the fire door safety thing. The fire marshall has in the budget. That's

047the only other Well, there's there's smaller things like um town vehicles, board of ed vehicles through the the depreciation. There's the the paying for our sewer um loan that we that we the sewer system the each year that we have that 134. Um I don't again I don't recommend taking any of those out. Those are reoccurring things that we have every single year. Uh the new things added in are the the last thing left. Remember we took the tractor from DPW out took out the seats. The only thing left is the fire doors out of general fund. To clarify, you're saying we're already basically anything that's in that budget, we're already paying. Yes. Unassigned. So, an option would be to kick it out a year to save money. That would be if you wanted to

048go down that route. That's what you would have to do. Don't do the fire doors this year. Do it for some other year. Is that not your words, not mine, but yes, we could do that. That's like how it would work as a concept. We're not talking about paying cash for something we're going to borrow. We were going to borrow. Yep. Just to clarify, these are the fireworks in the schools, right? Yes, sir. Okay. Not mandated or something. Mandated by our fire marshal. Um Dr. Bullet, if you want to ex expand on that. Yeah, we have an excellent fire marshal in town and we're very lucky to have him. Um he he had seen some of the things in the schools with respect to the doors. They're safe, but there were upgrades that were needed.

049He conveyed that. Um we have an excellent facilities director as you know Petava. Um so Robin Vikava talked about it. He got um experts to come out and check the doors. They created a quote for what we need to spend to upgrade the doors to make sure they're fully capable in every way they need to be to code. And that's how this evolved into account something. Right. That's my Okay. I just have Yeah. Quick. This is just for to save time for tonight. I'm sure everyone knows this, but I I love our chief and he knows that. My opinion is at least comparing apples to apples that the fire department's good. That's that's really my opinion. Have you seen the pitch study? I understand. But my position will remain. I would rather have someone behind

050on fireproof doors protecting the school. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying to get rid of the fire doors. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's where I'm at with it. I mean, I I understand your fervor for the fire department. I appreciate it. I'm sure chief does as well. But in terms of uh the town fire and our state troop need a lot more help on that side in my opinion. all over town. So, yeah. Um, is can I ask a clarifying question? Uh, for for whom? Trying to make sure I keep track of the conversation. Probably for Brian. Okay. Is the is the fish study public now for the general public to look at? No, I don't think I I have the final copy yet. I I can tell you this. He

051will be in here on May 27th. You can ask him, "Do we need to do anything right now for public safety in our town? Is anything critical that we need to do right now? The answer will be no. When you say who, who's he? Fitch. Thank you. Sorry. I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because I get what Colleen saying about have you seen the Fitch study and like the things that we we've seen as a council. Y, but my concern is is that um the general public hasn't seen that yet. And if we're discussing spending the town's money on something that's not available to the public, it doesn't feel fair. Um because it's kind of like, well, we've seen this study, but we can't talk about it because it's

052not open. Um I asked him, we have a budget coming up. Is there anything we need to do right now? He said point blank, no. You guys are in great shape. Okay. I I just I know you're laughing, counselor. I'm not making that up. I'm ask I met with them too, Brian, but we must have had a different conversation. I've been asking for that pitch stud public. You've had it since March. Yep. It's May and to me it's extremely frustrating. Like Jen brought up. I haven't had it since March. He he he I Well, you just I've seen drafts. We've um met in March and then Jacob a couple weeks of or beginning of April. That was a draft. Yes. But still, what's the hold up? They're coming on May 27th. I I think that's

053um I know what you're saying, J. That's what's super frustrated. I can see being I can see it being a point that someone might make that like, well, how can the town counselor town council, you know, earmark this money when we can't even see this study? So, it's like, yeah, I don't I don't want that to become a thing. Like I So, that's I'm not trying to make a specific point, but I'm I have concerns just generally. I just feel like this is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type scenario. I'm just asking you that back to the the boat analogy, we're bailing water and we're too heavy. I You have to have one item that you refuse to throw off board. We know what my one item is. We can't keep

054nine of your firefighter bags on board. I'm not asking for nine. I'm asking anyways we literally Anyways, my point I get what you're saying, Jen, and that's why I'm really frustrated because we start we hired Fitch over well over a year ago and we still don't have the report. And to me, that's unacceptable. We spent a lot of money. We're always two firefighters behind. If we had done what we were going to do two years ago, you guys weren't on the council, but but that's just I don't know what that is. The safer grant. If we had one safer grant, we would have hired the firefighters. We would have been responsible um to pay like you can't just get the grant, win it, and then say, "See you later. You have to continue on." Um

055I've mentioned that several several times to meet. I provided documents on it to Jacob and others. It's out there. I can pull it up again. So, to my point, this is just I get what you're saying, Jen, 100%, but that's my frustration. Jacob knows that and it's ridiculous, unacceptable, and yeah. Any other questions, comments? Right. Um, that's council man. Um, just with respect to the spreadsheet we got. Yeah. Um, as I'm trying to read it, I got to tell you feeling older. Um, as as somebody as somebody who is technically a senior citizen, that's like near possible. Is it possible? I mean obviously but depending on what you think to just get like a macro overview from you'll lead to just about the various scenarios that I think these are in part based off what

056comes into further questions just to get sort of like a high level overview of like what we're talking about spending wise and you know what we're talking about just with the big picture. Uh I'm happy to have you walk us through that. Um, Elita, can you please provide an overview of the spreadsheet? Maybe start with just how to read it and then we can go column by column. Absolutely. Um, let me share my screen. Please let me know when you can see it. Uh, yes, you can see it. Sorry. Perfect. All right. So, what I did on my spreadsheet, I hidden some rows right there. Uh, just for, you know, better v visual because I understand it's very small, but I wanted to keep all scenarios in one spreadsheet. They're just for the comparison. So,

057I will start from the beginning and kind of walk through across the right. Um, so I'm going to highlight the areas and kind of describe what those mean. So the first um the first columns that I just highlighted, this is the console budget that failed last night. And what I've been doing, I have comparing each scenario and primarily the bottom table what that means to the citizens and tax bills. So that's I think that's a key information and this is what we trying to look how these increases or reductions make the difference in the tax bills. So if we look at the column T through W, this is the scenario that town manager presented today and it does gives all the breakdown that we had in the note described the proposed budget adjustments total of

058$450,335. Any questions here? Okay. The next columns are presenting scenario with the 2% increase total to the to the budget. And maybe just a point of clarification. Um these are other scenarios that counselors have asked um to run today. Not the official manager's proposal, but I think excellent discussion points. So please continue. Thank you. And you will notice that what town manager presented I kept the town portion reduction and those are in the gray color. So, it's $156,455 that town manager presented. The rest of the reductions to reach the goal of 2% of increase, we need to close a gap of $485,774. I do not adding or describing is it town budget or is this a BOE operating budget? I'm just leaving this as a whole to close the gap to reach 2%. Any questions?

059Uh you'll need to just one. So like in this scenario, the 2% that you're talking about. Um so when it says 642,229, that's what we'd have to reduce from what the the budget that failed. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. So in in the bottom table where we calculating um what that means to the tax bill again we are comparing to the values that were presented to the the this scenario particularly the next scenario is 1% and it has the same information of uh the budget adjustments that town manager presented $156,455 and here we have to close gap of 1.2 million22,434 to reach 1% increase. The next scenario is 1.5 and my apologies that it's not in the order. Um it wasn't inserted last minute. The same the same um the same data for the town

060proposed adjustments and the close of HAP of $84,14. And the last scenario is the zero increase. That means we keep the same budget as FY2025 adopted budget and what basically that means and in this scenario I did include BOE because that's what was proposed in the budget 1.3 million reduction and the rest of it uh what we proposing 156,455 plus reduction in cap projects and additional 280,000 771 that we need to close the gap. Any questions? Yeah, council. Um, just to clarify, you on that last the 0% sp uh spending increase. Um, this I think goes to council's question earlier about like, you know, what is the town really looking at if we were to do this? So you the reason why you have a $1.3 million reduction from the board of ed is because

061that is what is was currently in the budget to increase right. So if you cut the $ 1.3 million that gets them to the fiscal year 25 budget that they have. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And then sorry if I I missed it. I probably did. Can you just explain one more time? Um so it's 280,000 to close the gap. What's the um 166,000? It's a C project cut because we are leaving the same budget that was in FI25. Okay, got it. This is for which one? The 0% the far all the way to the Okay, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for your listen question? Go. So, Brian, just to be sure, um, this is true, and I think you've said this before, anything in the capital plan that's projected out

062for the next 3 to 5 years, uh, building at Crandles, the animal shelter rebuild, these are all things that really won't push that needle to where would want it to go. Correct. Like taking those kinds of things. No, the two you just mentioned. No, the only thing we the only thing that would that would affect the increase in capital would be the fire doors. It's all that's left. What's that? Why? Because we've pulled everything else out the first year out of out of for the first year. Correct. So we've pulled everything out of that's coming out of unassigned fund balance. You know, everything else is managed in there and either paid for from other funds. Correct. Correct. So those other funds aren't affecting this budget. the money's accounted for and in there. This is unassigned

063fund balance things we're pulling out of the out of our bank, which by the way was our goal and how to spend things, not put it to debt. Um, this is taking money out to pay for something right now. And the only thing that's left is those fire doors. That is an increase. Got it. I think I think what you're saying though is like if you're talking about bonded work, right? because this was one of the things I think I brought up when we were met at the high school that we talked about like the like the um half a million dollars for the basketball courts and the purchase of the equipment things like that. So which was which is items that were that we are bonding correct? I'm sorry. That's okay. So, so it

064sounds like when you were talking about additional capital improvements or additional capital items that it will you were also looking at possibly items um like repairing the basketball courts, right? We had half a million dollars in there for that or a little bit more like the $300,000 for the mower, right? That that those are items that we would bond borrow. Yes. So, plan debt not affecting an increase in the budget, right? So that so and as we talked about you know we would if we if we defer that right if we didn't issue the bonds or we you know canceled the debt we might make something a little a little bit back in the first year but it's it's more long-term debt right yes we're talking about five 10 more the years I wish it

065were five or 10 you know probably 10 15 yeah okay so what we would get back in the first or even the second year is this much of the risk is not yeah it's kind of when I was driving, right? Which is which is what I asked in the high school and that's what was explained where it's not it's not an expenditure for like next year it's an expenditure over 15 years. So if the total is a million we might save what's a million divided by 15, right? And I think that's important for u residents to understand is that like the majority of these projects that Brian has mentioned are covered by that COVID recreation fund. I can't remember um the name of it, Brian. ARPA. Thank you. Yeah, some of them, right? Some of

066these ARPA's ARPA's gone. Well, I know those are gone, but these are like for example the squash or the the pickle ball courts, Stephen. So, a lot of people are thinking that you're just wastefully spending money on the town side. I'm just trying to drive it. Really, a lot lots of these things have been covered by state grants. You bet. Therefore, not spent taxpayer money. Correct. That's a I think that's an important thing to put in there. That is fact. There's a lot of misunderstanding on the capital plan. Yeah, I had the same questions asked for me about certain things and I was like that is money that was allocated to us specifically for that type of project is we can't take that money and use it for the budget. Well, we we could but

067you what what you're saying is the risk is not worth well depends right. So if it's being funded by a grant that's earmarked for the pickle ball part, right? If it's in capital, right? Like we hypothetically could, but like when people say, "Okay, don't spend $300,000 or whatever on the truck, that doesn't mean we say $300,000 next year, right? That doesn't get us to this gap that you'll leave us talking about, right? It gets us a little bit of that, right?" That's what I was trying. So yeah, I think that is a great point. I do think it's important that people understand if we could, we would. And that's and that's I said that too. I was like, "Okay, well, if we could do this, will it all be next year?" And it was no.

068That cost spread out over 10 or 15 years. So that's $80,000 instead of $800,000. Um, you Sorry, were you going to say anything? No, I think that's really important. I think that's really important. And in some cases when we've been given grant monies that grant where that grant money is like it's encumbered. It's like we can't just disregard the terms of the grant and use it for something else. Yeah, I agree. There's a lot of misconceptions. Um okay. Do you have a question? Sure. Then I went to No, go ahead. Is that clarifying or Yeah, I guess I don't I know I've done that a couple times. Um, so Brian, you're putting forth a 2.30. Is that my reading? Right. You are. Thank you. So then sorry this is so that what is it the

069is it two that's just town 2% is that additional do I have the math right? $35,439 more to get to a 2%. Is that correct? No, to get down to a 2% um from where you are now from where we were yesterday. Um we took out roughly, just looking at the math here, $150ish,000. I think I have it here on the outside. It says in total adjustment, he's out in a reduction of 450,000. Yep. That includes the board of eds 298 and then my 150 or so. Okay. I was just trying to figure out how much. So really it would be okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Um so I'll just just put my thoughts up on there. Um for the budget I think will be popular, but I want to give my my two

070thoughts on where we need to be for numbers. Um, I was looking through how much this referendum passed or failed by this time comparing it to last year. Failed by about the same amount as the May 2024 referendum. Um, as you may know, it took four referendums to get that budget to pass. Um, and uh, we ultimately closed the gap and got it to pass after reducing $896,000 from that budget. Um, I think that that is where I think we got to go, which give out a 1.5% increase from previous year. Um, I feel that this is important for a couple reasons. Um, one, the results of question two were pretty unambiguous. Um, we've got a lot of residents this year who seeing their utility bills skyrocket, grocery bills are really high, everything's really high.

071And now we've also have impending tariffs and potential recession because of that. I think a lot of people saw that number. And even though I don't think the increase we put out was very big. Um, you know, I wrote a letter with Vice Chair Ran and um, a bunch of other counselors supported a number like I think a lot of people saw that and said I just can't get behind that. Um, and so I think we need to come out with something credible. Um, that voters will will appreciate that we are trying to put it to work. We're in a really tough spot. I won't argue it and I don't like the fact that that number is as large as it is, but I think if we don't come out with something that says I

072hear you, we're going all the way to the bottom. That's that's my concern. I saw it last last time when we had referendums. I think it was the third. You know, we thought we were going to get there. We just made a small cut though. It was like $50,000 and ended up failing. So, I think people were like, "How can you not hear me at this point?" that this is that this is um unacceptable and I want it lower. Um I think I think we have to come out strong to prevent further reductions because as you might notice upon this chart 0% scenario is a 0% spending increase. It's not the floor. the floor. Well, even then that's technically not the floor, but I'll just say this for sake of argument is the floor is

073a 0% tax increase and that is you please keep me honest, but 4 million plus in the whole um which can I interrupt just for a moment? Yes, when the last time we spoke uh we did not have included 15 million increase in motor vehicle um number and I think the collection rate. So when I ran the numbers it's like 3.2 million still. Yeah. Still yes. Um so that's where I sit today. I understand uh that's people don't like that answer I'm sure um but I'm going to throw it out there and I would suggest that we spend the bulk of our conversation here at least the initial conversation um instead of talking about specifics that we would introduce that we try to talk about what the numbers we would like this budget to be

074like um the end of the day you We're not going to go through every line item of council budget. Certainly not going to go through every line item of board of education's budget. We can have discussions about particular things here and there that we might want to protect. But um before we get to any of that, we need to just talk about what number the council is willing to put forward to voters this time. So that'll yield the floor to speak. Total number of dollars. Total number of dollars. Can I just ask one clarifying question? Yes. Uh you'll need to when it comes to u I just I'm asking this for two reasons. One because I don't know for sure. Two I think this will help this is important for the public to know. Right.

075So when we're talking about like sort of our doomsday scenario of here it's a 0% spending increase. Um and we've also talked about like if you were trying to get to a 0% tax increase $3.2 million or you know they're trying to come out. Is there any sort of are we constrained by any state law that doesn't allow us to dip below like spending levels or there's is there any constraints on us from that perspective? Um I believe there is um I have to look it up to get the clear um answer but if you need a second that's fine. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just want to make clear what you know what we can and cannot do so people so residents understand you know what whatever whatever happens

076for this like what what are even like realistic options that we could even consider. So that's that's the reason I ask. So basically we can't cut board event budget by law. So we can't lower it. Know that coming out of the gate, right? Our mill rate's going to drop. We know we're going to lose a million dollars from the state already as well. So those are two things that are affecting us, right? We can't we cannot cut the board budget lower. Y So can I just follow from that? So to make clear if hypothetically because because we have received correspondents asking this question and I think it's it's a it's a valid question given the time we're in, right? I want a 0% tax increase. That would mean that a large portion of that $3.2

077$2 million would have to come from tax because we can't by law go you know whatever what however it breaks out right we can get as low as we can go with the board but there's a law that prevents us from dipping below that. So if you try to get to a 0% tax increase or 0% spending increase at some point you're starting to tip like the town which has a smaller fraction is going to have to bear an unbelievably high burden of reduced reduced spending. Correct. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I clarify question. Sure. That being the scenario, because I what I'm here to do tonight is try to earmark things that should be there. One of them was the question I just asked that Mary Lee helped me maneuver through. The other one was

078question two on the ballot. What does that look like? Question that. What do you mean question two? No, I'm saying things that I'm trying to clarify tonight. Question two on the B this past voting ballot. I try to bring shed some light too. Yep. The question that Chris just asked. What does that look like to the town? Oh, based on what the scenario and to be clear, I'm not like advocating for it. I'm saying like what what happens to the town if we're like I want a 0% even if it's wholesale elimination of services at that point. Wholesale. It's not you know losing a few jobs here and there. It's, you know, I'll start with the no no troopers or no s no senior center and no library. No, you know, it's it's wholesale. Where

079do you want which what one do you want to get rid of? You know, and I hate to say the senior center, but that wouldn't even cover. Nope. It wouldn't even get in the neighborhood. Can you clarify? Even I'm fuzzy with it. You're talking about having those services not exist anymore. Correct. We'd have to discontinue. Okay. Eliminate the jobs. discontinue um a lot it's you know it's it's doomsday scenario uh for the town but I can again I act at your direction if that's if that's the way that it unfolds manage but I mean it's we would I would look at you know closing the library you know it's that drastic and to just sort of you know off of Alex that's part of the reason I'm asking the question right is to clarify so

080that the town understands right people who are voting understands Yeah, you know what consequences of the decisions that we have to make, right? It's it's um so certainly I'm not saying that we should do a 0% spending increase or 0% tax increase. As much as that would be great, it's just we're looking at like decimating the town. That so that's all I'm saying is to put into perspective so people understand what we're trying to do. It should be known that if you're going to come on social media or even in public and v and vocally advocate 0% which is your opinion, it comes with the affformentioned closing the library, closing down um we're not talking just trash. It sounds like trash pickup. We're talking there there's yes at that point because you had to stop

081eliminating from the board of ed based on the law and now you have to start picking it up on the town end. What do you want to get rid of? Right. Um we could we exist without resident troopers? Sure. Could we exist without a fire department? Sure. Could we exist without a library? Sure. Could we exist without a senior center? Absolutely. Could we exist with, you know, half a DBW? I don't know if we can provide that safe roads. Those are those are what nobody wants in this town. And and let me you know say to all of you I have tried every year um and until this moment and this is only speaking in doomsday scenario to not talk about where I would cut because I have to manage a staff and the staff

082has to get through this budget and I'm already hearing is my job getting cut and I already have people in a panic. I met with certain departments today and said I'm going to say things tonight at the budget that are going to make you upset. I am going to do everything not to. Those discussions were had uh today. It pains me to make those threats. Pains me to make those threats to the staff. I I come here I came into this job to cut spending to a fault. I'm sure some of you would would agree I'm cutting too much in some places. Um I hate spending on capital. I hate doing anything that costs money. I'm a taxpayer. My I won't say her age. Mom in town hates when the taxes go up. Uh it

083is so difficult to predict where those will come from. I can't until you give me a number. I've warned my staff about this conversation tonight. I hope they're not watching. Um and and and that's where I stand. With a 0% we are getting rid of. Care for what you wish for. With a 0% we are getting rid of. I can guarantee everything will have an impact if we do the no 0% everything. I just have something to say. Yes. Um I think you can't it it's hard to compare last year to this year. I understand if you're looking at the numbers of the first referendum versus the numbers of this referendum, you see the percentage wise that there's some kind of correlation there. But there's no correlation between the number of yes votes, number of

084no votes in a specific dollar amount or specific percentage that you're going to decrease. This is a different type of year than we were dealing with last year. Um, and I think we saw there, you know, some some flaws and and sure, did it take us a bunch of referendums? Yes. But you look historically back, you get some of the same kind of first referendums and sometimes it passes a second time and sometimes it passes a third and I think we've made it up to like six or seven written at one point like way back in the day. Um, but I think there's a flaw in the reasoning when you say, "Hey, I look at the percentage of yes versus no votes, and I think that means we need to land at this number." Um,

085I think there's there's a lot that goes into how a person votes and just kind of hearing some of the frustration tonight. Um, it would it would be really uh blind of us to say that us as politicians don't have an influence on the vote in the town. It's absolutely true. Um, we saw, you know, it would be a lie if I said that. how myself and Chris in their own how we put forward information to our own party that they don't just blindly go with what we tell them to do. And there's people out there who go, "No, thank you for the information, but I'm going to make a my own mind." But there is uh there's really a correlation between our support and whether or not a referendum passes. And I think if

086you look at last year for instance, it wasn't until you really had the support of both parties that you saw the referendum pass. Um the the one thing that uh is specifically completely in uh um influential is is people look to our state for um she's a big big voice in town. She was on the town council. Um, she has long history here and I think a lot of people are looking to her to decide whether or not to vote yes or vote no. She's not going to explicitly tell the town to do one thing or another, but silence kind of talks too. Um, and I think with this referendum in general, what is causing a lot of frustration is that, um, as Chris said in the 11th hour, there was this text message sent

087out to a subset of residents and, you know, lo and behold, it was paid for by uh, the state Republican party. And there was just this assumption that the state rep must have had a hand in this because this is state funding. Um, I I don't I don't love that. I don't love that because it feels manipulative. Um, I think in general if you, as Joe said, if you see the writing on the wall, I say then let it just happen naturally. Um, I think it's really a bad look that no matter what, as us as town counselors, we're not coming out of this just supporting the budget because that's what we should be doing. Um, I think the majority of us were on the right on the same page. Um, but I think it

088needs to have everyone's support for this to pass. I don't think it, you know, I think it's only part of this. It has to do with numbers. I really do. Um, you know, I'm not going to make any assumptions about, you know, people who bl vote blindly, but it the reality is they do. Um, with that being said, we have this is a this is a business, okay? This isn't a household budget. It's it's a business. We have an obligation to run the town, to make sure the lights stand, to make sure we have employees, to make sure we have services. Did the rebell stink? Absolutely. Are we all feeling this? Absolutely. But we also us sitting here listening to everything and we've we've done board of ed meetings. We've done subcommittee and we've done

089we've been through the we've done so many meetings and we've got so much information. It's our job to take that information and realize we have to be responsible for this town for what's important for this town, you know? I don't, you know, I I I got I have kids. A lot of us do. A lot of us has have a household to run. A lot of us are really feeling the strain here. Um and we understand that the town does, too. But our our job right now is to make sure that the town keeps running and we're not just saying, well, I know it's going to I know it's going to pass and it's it's extremely low number because that's what we're seeing on Facebook. That's that's not the case. We can, and it's been

090said before, we can pass whatever we put out there if all of us are on the same page trying to pass this. And I know again this has been said a million times tonight, but we really do have an influence on the town. So, whatever we talk about tonight, it it's not going to matter one iota if you know Joe's going to contact Connecticut GOP again, they're going to send out a mass text message to everyone. So, we really need to all kind of get on the same page. I think we can we can compromise. I think there's some good ideas coming out of um the town manager suggestions. I think there's things that can be tweaked. Um but I really would love to see us kind of work together and not just jump to

091this kind of anywhere near this doomsday. I don't think that's necessary. I think we know that that's not in the best interest of this town. Just respond. give council a chance and then I'd love to maybe transition the conversation and maybe talk a little bit about where counselors are in terms of the spending increase. Um so you know I I'll I'll just say councelor Butler you know you got a point I don't I am using this uh repetive from last year as a heristic to kind of figure out where things might land. Um, but I'll just counter and I don't want to uh make this a a run out discussion that um looking at the numbers again from 2024. The low tax increase in 2024 and this is a budget that failed by almost 60%

092last time was $183 increase. The high level was $443. Um for the low, medium, low and high up on the uh proposed budget that we just sent out, the low increase was $370 and the high was $1,119. Um you know, and I think that after several years of inflation, potential recession up on the horizon, um just bills piling up and things, you know, I won't argue that. I think our voices matter. I think they do. And I'm really hoping that they do. Um we can come out of here united. Um but I also feel like we gota we got to do something to to to you know recognize that. Um we did go forward. Was it was impactful. Um but I'll leave it at that. And I guess at that councelor Nun if you want

093to ask your question just really quick. Um I I I agree with with you Jen and I I do agree with you Jacob. I think if if everyone except for if you guys remember the launch bill I went on about last budget, our last budget cycle last year, I brought up the uh statistics for 2007. Those are important because in the fourth and fifth vote, I think it was third and fourth. uh the same number was promulgated to the town uh which erupted in fury a fifth failed and then a 0% that needs to be kept in mind. That's kind of where I'm in more in agreement of like people looking at this like well that was substantive although shedding light into your world J you don't really know where every single person's voting for.

094The more important question I have though is for Joe before we even vote on what Jacob's proposed or what Brian's proposed is where is do you think Joe Jacob's uh lower end here is feas or do you think it needs to be lower because I need I really need to understand where you are at with this. So counselor Shay if you'd like to start if he wants to. Yeah if you'd like. Um, I suspect that we may be very different from each other upon our opinions as we go around the room. I would just ask that we have a respectful conversation. We do have to get a budget passed tonight. So, can I interrupt for a second? Can we make sure that Drew has a copy of what he does? He does. Did he open

095it? I know he sent it. I I can you just see make sure he that he has the scenarios in front of him? Yeah. I I mean I'm going off of memory here because uh I don't have a hard cop I mean OBS don't have a hard copy in front of me and I'm having difficulty with my my phone switching back and forth between the conference and emails coming in and and other things. It's just uh it's just not very efficient. But I I saw the scenarios and I I I I get the big picture there. Um Alex, good question. So, first of all, um I agree we can't go to a 0% tax increase, right? Because we wipe out we'd have to reduce our budget by the 3.2 million that I heard. And that's

096just unrealistic. And I I I think um the rule is um as far as as far as uh the board of ed goes, I think you you have to maintain a per pupil uh spending amount year-over-year. So, if we lost like 300 students, you can technically reduce the school's budget as long as you keep your per pupil spending the same. Um, but obviously Dr. Will can verify that or or that can be looked into from a legal perspective, but I don't think we should even go there, right? I mean, 3.2 million is is devastating. We we our town just cannot do that. Um, but I I wouldn't say when we talk about last year's budget, Jacob, and you know, you're comparing that one. I I'd say things are far worse this year. They're they're way

097worse this year than they were last year. And look how hard we struggled to get that increase. And it was a net increase of 1%, right? Because we had some revenue offsets to offset the 3% spending increase um that helped us to reduce the net tax increase to 1%. So here I believe we're talking about originally the budget that failed was a 3% increase net expense increase, right? Right? So that was taking into account our revenue as well as our expenses and it was resulting in a 3% increase. So here we're talking now on a revised budget of 2.3%. Um which is not going to pass either. So I hate to be the bearer of bad news but and I don't have the kind of influence that you know you think I I do and

098I can say okay put 2.3 out and it's not going to pass. But it just you know the voters aren't going to pass that. They're getting hit so hard with this reallocation. it just can't happen. So, I think realistically, if we want something to pass, we're it's going to be tough. It's going to be really, really tough. No one's going to be happy about it, but we I think we have to get down to 1%. Okay. Just And secondly, just a point of clarification, I believe what Jacob had briefly proposed was at 1.5, right? Yeah, I still think that's okay. So, you're um the second point Oops. Sorry, councelor. I just couldn't hear what you said about the 1.5. Sorry. Too high. Yeah, I still think it's too high. Okay. Thank you. Um the the

099second um the second point I know um I'm a little concerned with Dr. Willlet's comment about well we'd have to cut you know the board of ed still has to meet but you know we're most likely looking to cut um after school activities and social programs. and we listen to five hours at least five solid hours of of parents and students telling us how incredibly important that is. So when you talk about priorities I'd say you should move staff people before you cut after school programs based on based on the amount of discussions that we heard over the past budget cycle. So I I think that's a scare tactic um and it should not be it shouldn't be considered after the amount of amount of people that we heard about when it comes to that.

100And then um the other thing too um and I this is maybe a procedural thing is is when we talk about okay you know what's that going to do to the budget. I don't I don't know if it's a great idea to to make conclusions tonight about what this would result in. You know oh we're going to cut the fire department. We're going to cut the police department. You know we still have a solid month uh before we have to make these decisions before the new budget kicks in. And then we can, you know, we can have discussions over the next month once a budget passes that where do we really want to see the cuts, you know, what what are our priorities rather than making this, you know, sort of off-the- cuff decision that

101we we would do tonight. So, I think it's more important to lock in a dollar amount uh and and what we can present to the town and then we we've got more time to discuss where we expect to see those cuts. And then my third point and then I'll shut up. Um because I I I disagree with councelor Buckler in regard to you know we have a tremendous influence over the town's decision. I think it's really the opposite. We're here to represent the voters. So the voters should have a greater influence on us than we think we do on them. We've got to listen to the voters. And you know the voters have spoken quite loudly in this goound that the budget's too high. So, it's our job to listen to the voters, not for

102the voters to listen to us. Well, that wasn't my point, Joe. I mean, just to clarify, I wasn't saying that we shouldn't be listening to our voters. What I was saying is if you claim that the writing is on the wall, instead of saying, I don't know, maybe getting the state to get involved and and do a vote no campaign, why don't you just let things happen naturally? Because if you're so sure the vote is going to fail, just let it fail. And then why do you want to try to help it along if she's going to fail anyway? Well, again, my my point was that we had many many frustrated members of the party. And I had no I had no idea that that funding was coming from the state or where it was

103coming from, but we had many frustrated voters from our party that said, you know, how come nobody's representing us? All we do is kind of see, you know, the Democrats and Republicans have have sort of joined forces to promote this budget and, you know, we've talked about we the voters have talked about how this is too high and no one's representing us. So that's kind of how that people in council chambers and the decisions and the way we vote here is how we represent the town. But when it comes to the budget referendum, that is up to the people to vote how they'd like to vote and their power lies in their own vote. Mhm. So to get out and then to run a campaign sponsored by the state GOP to say vote no, not

104just to promote the referendum. You're trying to influence people's votes. The Democrats did the same thing. Want to blow smoke up people's high knees and say that you don't know where the funding came from. Your image and the hashtagbe like Joe was you. So if people in the RTC are using your image without your knowledge, well then I think that's a problem you need to take up with your with your town committee. I can only assume that you were aware where the funding came from. Councelor Buckler and Councelor Shay, I understand this is a controversial issue. The agenda item is the proposed budget. I would please ask that we focus on the substitute aspects of this conversation. Yep. Agreed. Happen on this topic. It can happen outside of this meeting. Agreed. Thank you. Um I'm

105going to go around the room. Is that okay? Unless Council Muckler, um do you have a number or spending proposal um that you'd like to share with the council at this time? Sure. Um, I would propose uh I need to just kind of take my wording for however you want to or correct me. I'd like to run any proposals that counselors have. So, okay. I'd like to put forward the proposal as set by uh the town manager. That's as a starting point. Yeah. And in addition to that, I'd like to use the additional $200 $200,000 of unassigned fund balance that we are seeing from the surplus from the interest. Um, and however we need to break this down. I'd like to see now this town manager's proposal. Does it does that include the 50,000 from

106the F study that we had proposed last time? It doesn't include that. that are reduced. They're reduced in here. So, I'd like to see the unex fund balance to um be able to include the 60,000 again that we had previously ear earmarked in the last budget and the remaining 140 to add back to the board of ed budget. Wait a minute. Yeah, but I'm just What was the remaining 140,000 towards that offset whatever decrease we were going to spend on board event? So minus the so 100us the 293. Is that what you're saying that? Yeah. Add add back in 140 to that. add 293 adding. Yes. But I'd like to go around the room. Oh, no. I know. Not just Yeah. I hope it makes sense. So, what's the bottom line? What's the final? I

107think the final one. Do it in your head. What's the average tax? No, no, I'm just So you're you're taking what we were presented. So, so assume what town manager Foley just presented to us that scenario. Yep. We're going to add 200,000 of unassigned fund balance. I want to make sure that we include the 60,000 that we previously had included in the last referendum and then the remaining 140 would go to offset the board of ed. So instead of reducing board of ed by 293 293 it would be 293 minus the 140 153 880 something like that. I don't think you were for it. Oh minus I thought you added to it. I'm not adding to the decrease of border beds. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm saying like I think I I know

108what you're saying as he's proposing. You want it you want the border to have instead of being 293, you want it to be reduced by 153. Correct. So the overall reduction remains the same. It just depends on where we're getting where we're allocating the funds from. I think I think what that would do is the bottom line would be the same as the town manager presenting it. However, it would add back in funds to border bed and it would add back in the 60,000 to the town for the fish study. Yes. Recommendations of the fish study. Okay. Thank you. It's about council. I believe that council, do you have a proposal you'd like to share? I think I'm in alignment with where where you're at. Okay. Based on principle, um I think Jets sounds really

109really good. Um even maneuvering around and covering tracks of, you know, the 200,000 I think it sounds really good. I just don't I just don't think it'll be enough. I don't think the the residents will see that as enough. Um like what I was driving at before, the bottom line here is this reevaluation in taxes. Um I don't know if we could keep the trooper at 1.5. That would be my main contention with that. Mhm. Um yeah, I think if we were to further that discussion, you and I or whoever else landed in that 1.5, it would be kind of in similar fashion to Jen, you utilize uh monies to alleviate board of ed first and include public safety second. I'm not uh in favor of allocating money for fish push k unfortunately. So So

110you sorry councelor Newton I'm trying to understand where you where you are at. Are you align with councelor Buckler's position or mine? I mean, I think it would have to come to vote, but I think fundamentally I'm at 1.5 as far as uh not having to come here and make even more cuts. You would have to find an additional $400,000 cut that number $400,000. Where would you cut that from? I guess like you just have to remember that that's a lot. Y um counselor you check. Um I hope after we do this we can break into Yeah, that's the plan. I don't know. I hear what J I hear what Jacob and Alex saying. Um, that's too low. I I know I'm always the outcast all the time, but I guess missed my last term.

111So, anyways, but I do think um that's too low. I that's an additional $400,000. I don't even know where you would take that from. I've shared a truck with you guys. You take one person out of a department, any department, it's like demolish the department. You know what I mean? So, and then how do you I don't know. I just have a or lemonade. I don't know like trash. Who knows? But I don't I don't know. I like a lot of Jen's um proposal, but I think Definitely think we can use more unassigned fund balance. Um Brian or Yola is there or Jason's on call too. I mean a lot of our stuff we've done this budget we've taken risk. I mean we don't know what those three businesses are going to do. What is

112the likely that you know one's going to court but what about the other two and what happens when they go to court and say if they lose is the town get money back risk factor on that. So we set aside x amount of assessed property was 3 million. Yeah. 3 million when based against what we know the mill rate's going to be in the neighborhood of came out to about $83,000 assuming we could lose three million in assessment through all these appeals which is a conservative start to begin with. We go through the appeals process with the houses we've lost about 22,000 or 21,000. So now we're down to 60 or so. However, the appeals folks did not hear three cases. the three biggest ones, Woodlake, um the the Fieldstone Commons, and again, I forget

113the other one. Star Hill. Star Hill. Yeah. No, Mnt Bank. MC. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. The the the Woodlake has appealed every time, every single time, knowing the judge is just going to, you know, it's it's worth it for them to do that. One of those hits in one of those scenarios will likely lose that 60,000. So you wouldn't get any more than 60,000 I guess when we go to right now the best we can get back is 62,000 even if we if no one appeals anything. Okay. When when we go to court um it's how much do we lose not how much do we gain back or increase. It's always how much are we going to come off of our original number. So, um, even if you split it down the middle, uh, with

114three of those appeals, um, we're over that 3 million easily. Okay. I just want the clarification. Thank you, Jason and Brian. Yep. I know there was there's a lot of confusion. I actually can I go last? I like to hear everybody else's because Yeah, we can go around. I like to go around. I don't want to be pinpoint to something and I think what's going to happen is there's going to be obviously disagreement um already. So let's go around and then I I would motion to take. Okay. Um councelor Moran, do you have a proposal or anything you'd like to share at this time? So, I'm, you know, I mean, I'm genuinely um torn about what to do. Um I think I'm and it's our obligation to do, you know, whatever we can for the

115town to ensure that we can keep services. Um but it is also a fact that the vast majority of people who voted on the budget who voted no did it because the the the it was too high. Um I I don't think I could, you know, agree to a whole at least at this point. Um that's all that's all I have at this point. I'm thinking through a couple of things. That's the only thing I have to add at this point. Um I think I'm I wouldn't I don't I think 1.5 is too low. I think it requires us to cut too much. Um, but I'm saying Jacob, if you don't mind clarification for Brian, it's just clarification. Do we have a um a number amount for this is just quick uh for getting rid

116of B pickup? What that would equate to Mike? Oh, bulk pickup for the trash. 20 22 Mike Wilkinson's on your I think it's 22 23,000 I think it was this year. Mike, what was it? Yeah, it's about that. Again, that's not in the operating budget. That's in the capital account for the coming year. But yeah, it's about 20 to 25,000. Thanks, Jacob. Uh CB, so you're right up my alley. Um because I happen to I'm open to page 188 on our budget which talks about waste disposal. Um and one of the things that people have talked to me about or emailed me about has been um what happens and and I got to tell you this is fraught. This is really fraught because copu tried to do this a number of years ago and it

117backfired spectacularly. But what happens if instead of paying for all the trash, it just becomes it becomes a fee that somebody pays instead of we're doing it's $1.33 million. It's a lot of money. What we throw away and the cost of disposing of it for lots of reasons is very, very, very expensive. Landfills are full. Um, we ship things out to incredibly crazy places right now. We don't ship it to Massachusetts anymore. I'm working on or about to work on a project where we're looking at possibly shipping at least to Iowa, right? So, you can imagine how expensive that that gets. So, our our front election for single-use products and for lots of, you know, lots of stuff to throw away is very very costly to us. Um, one of the things that we had

118where where the baseline I think we need to establish um is that there's a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation that I'm seeing that's concerning to me about where the public is starting from. Um, and I understand the issues um that people are they're looking at their tax bills. my tax bill um prior to this was going up almost 19%. So, just so you know, I got a ton of skin in this game. Um the but but we when we talk about or when I've seen comments like we haven't even gotten to um reduce or to eliminate the impact of the revaluation. That's a that's an either that that's coming from a place of complete misunderstanding or somebody's being disingenuous. And I think that one of the things that we need to do um that we

119do need to talk about what would be cut, what we would be facing if we if we got if we tried to do that. I think to not do that is to not be honest with the public about what would happen because anytime we do not fund our budget at at least the the cost of inflation, right? The the 2% 3% whatever inflation is, the oil companies are getting their money, the insurance companies are getting their money, all of the other, you know, the transportation companies are getting their money. We're not we're not taking away from them. Eversource is getting its money. What we're doing is we're deciding we are not going to have the following services anymore because if we don't meet the cost of inflation, then we have to take something out of

120we have to take some meat off of the body to be able to pay all of those other people. So, we have to really talk about what that would mean to go to a 0% spending increase would be you start closing things wholesale, right? And as somebody who's seen some of this happen in the 70s and early 80s in periods of dire financial crisis that makes what we're looking at now pale in comparison. Um you're talking about closing our parks. You're talking about closing the rec center. You're talking about closing the senior center. You're talking about massive, you know, closing the library. You're talking about massive, massive cuts. And if that's what the public thinks they want, then I think we need to have them tell us that, right? There's this perception that somehow there's

121this secret there's a secret amount of money that's going to bail everybody out. Um, and that is unfortunately there is there is there are contributions to that misinformation that happen um from people who should otherwise know better online. Um, with respect to what is happening with the reval, we need to understand and make the public understand. So, please everybody that's online, talk to 10 or 20 of your friends. There is an enormous transfer of tax liability, a transfer of wealth from from corporate and business properties in this town in excess of 3 million, $3.2 $2 million to homeowners. So, the homeowners are transferring their wealth to corporate and business properties and assuming $3.2 million of the tax burden instead of them. So, just so that we talked about two or three properties here tonight, even

122though the property valuations for places like Star Hill and the nursing home increased, they did so at such a low rate that th those two properties combined next year get a tax cut of almost $70,000. Let me let me make sure I'm right here. Yeah, 70K. Eversource is getting a tax cut of almost $21,000. Eversource is getting a tax cut next year at the proposed mill rate of almost $21,000. And it's a d loop. So, as you can see in Yolita's spreadsheet, as we lower the mill rate, these interests get bigger and bigger and bigger tax cuts, and the rest of us pay pay for that. We assume more and more of that and so we can make our mill rate go down and it does help us too but we are still assuming that

123portion of the revenue that would ordinarily have been on them. There's I still have some questions about why some of the some of the properties are evaluated the way they are, but Jason's done a really good job of of walking us through that. But I think we need to understand what's going on here. So even if we have a 0% spending increase, we are still seeing people will be paying hundreds of dollars more because corporate and business entities are paying hundreds and or frankly tens of thousands of dollars less. And I promised you guys a spreadsheet. I've completed a lot of it. I can rework it based on this. and just looking at the top 10 to 15, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax cuts for them next year. So, that's a huge

124transfer. Huge transfer. Um, where I stand on on some of this is to try to mitigate the impacts as much as possible. I do understand what people are facing. I I get it. Um, I think we have revalued oursel into a perfect storm of financial crisis. I'm I'm praying this is not a bubble like it was in 2008. It feels dangerously like that to me. Um, and I I am hoping we're not the architects of our own demise here. Um, I think that the I would favor um pretty much doing what starting where um Commissioner uh Buckler started with the town manager's budget. I would um actually be in favor of using additional unassigned fund balance and let's I really that's a I know we have to use that. It's an accounting term but what

125that is is that is our rainy day fund. It belongs to all of us. It is our money. It doesn't belong to a bonding company. It doesn't belong to some group of consultants. It is our rainy day fund. It is necessary for us to keep that and to make sure it's healthy. But we have historically been increasing that year over year over year, which is a great thing. We've been lucky to do so. We are historically or were at historically high levels. And so we have some flexibility there. We are not I understand that we need to be careful about how we use it, but I would favor actually using even more of that to help ameliorate the burden or mitigate the burden. on the taxpayers. Um because I know that this is affecting this

126is affecting people. Um things like I got to say things like paying for the for the fire doors. I work in the construction industry. I work in construction management. The costs that we are seeing right now are for due to the tariff environment are is is crazy. It's crazy. The last time I saw this destabilized this rapidly was um either right before 2008 or there was a a period in time in the in the uh 80s and 90s where pricing was just completely unstable. And what I'm hearing from my contractors and what I'm seeing when I'm trying to get price quotes is that people are will no longer lock in 30-day prices. You're lucky if you can get two weeks, maybe you'll get a week. Some commodities are completely unstable. This is where we're going.

127Um, just to give you an example, I had to try to price out a propane tank. Nothing big, 500 gallons. Its price has more than doubled in six months. And even if the people have a hundred of them in their yard, if they can get double the price, they're going to charge double the price. It doesn't matter what they pay for them. I would keep in mind that all of these things, the whole tariff situation, all of this is a manufactured crisis. It doesn't have to be this way. So that's on us as voters to try to get it to not be this way. Um so my proposal after all of that would be to um I would support uh Commissioner or Councelor uh Buckler's proposal. I would actually move farther than that to try

128to get additional reductions by using an additional um either say 150 to 200k of our rainy day fund to achieve a a further reduction in the percentage um increase. And I would have to really look at where else I would I would try to um if we're going to go round two of this then I would have to really look at it further. So I'll stop right there. Thank you councelor. And can I just make a second? Yeah. And so first I think you described the evaluation situation quite well. I just want to clarify for the record, you know, it's not the council's will that we charge tax cut to businesses 100%. We we this is this I just want people to understand where it comes from. We didn't we didn't have a hand in

129this. It's not we were asking the same questions like we all were asking the same questions but there's a lot of misinformation that I'm seeing that where people are not understanding what has happened and they think that somehow we have been responsible for spending level that is now causing their you know their increase in taxes to be 6% 8% 10% uh whatever and I get it because when I first looked at mine before we knew what the mill rate was it was a 19% increase. It's crazy. So So I was And then I was like, "Wait, what are we doing?" So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I No. Yeah. And there'd be nothing I'd like better if we could just split the mill rate. And unfortunately, it does not seem that that is a legal option

130in the state of Connecticut. It is not. So something certainly to talk to your legislators about um especially in a year like this. I can see how that could be abused, but this is this is rough. So, yep. Um, anyway, just want to clarify. No, I 100% thank you. I agree with you. Um, councelor Mar speaking. Just two quick things. Um, one, I was actually going to mention what uh, Chairman Mari mentioned because I think councelor V is 100% correct with how she described the rebal where we're at. It's just also important, right? We didn't make the decision. It wasn't that like the assessor who decided, right? It was this is a function of like the market. This is where we're at. I'll also say that like we I did ask the question, right? can

131be can commercial be taxed at a different mill rate than residential and no it's not we can't legally do that so again agree with all that the one question I just wanted to ask councelor BB on your proposal using the additional 150 to 200,000 from fund balance that would go to um further reducing the mill rate right it's not okay thank you that's correct it would go to taxpayer relief it would go to restoring some other something else okay thank you question yes okay so this is more of a clarifying question for Dr. Willlet. Just based on councelor BB's statements, we can't touch Eversource oil transportation utility. I agree with that. Um, first things to be caught at my house, I think along with a lot of other residents, if things are really really tight

132for me, lights go out. Uh, I travel less. I buy less groceries, add a wood stove, right? Things like that. Um, you having done this for a long time, you must have seen some writing on the wall here as to being able to cut from those types of environments, utilities, transportation. There's no other way that we can save money um in terms of board of ed education. um in those avenues. I know that that's a loaded question, but um you know, it's it's something that I ask myself every day at my own homestead, never mind or the envir the value of a school. Yeah, we dedicate a lot of time to trying to find cost avoidance programming, which we have over the years, and we have many examples of that. Um, now I won't list

133them all here because you don't really have time for that. We have decisions to make tonight, but we do invest a lot of time in trying to figure out how to make it run as efficiently as possible and serve the children in the community. You know, we've talked about the 10 and 12 year averages before. It's it's simply that the 10 and 12 year averages of the budgets have left this situation such that there's really not a lot of places to go unless it hits things that are very valuable to people. Um, you know, I know that the common rhetoric is to suggest that, you know, that certain things are thrown out there just for shock value. That nothing could be further from the truth. If someone listens to the minutes and looks at the

134meetings, there's deliberations. I think they're doing the very best they can to figure it out. You're, you know, you're struggling with many things today and there's many requirements of school districts that make sense to require, you know, dyslexia services, things that they didn't even know about years ago. And if the choices come down to not being able to, you know, have certain children be able to read the way they need to read, um, things like that that will affect them throughout their entire lives, then games club doesn't match up against whether a child can read or not. You need interventions. You know, that child will be affected forever. Um, so these are hard decisions, you know, but it's good to go on the record and it's good to know if somebody thinks that the Talon

135public school staff should be reduced and is going on the record for that, that should be considered heavily by everyone. Um, I think the board of ed will be trying to figure out what to do without doing such a thing. Um, but I think the answer to his question is we do do a lot of things to try to avoid cost. Um, with an average of you know 1.67 67 1.7 over the 10 12 years. There's not a lot more and we're doing everything we can and we will be looking to expand programs like open choice that would also provide additional options but that's going to happen over a span of time. So So short answer is really for utilities transportation not not really a whole lot. They already reduced four four buses for routes

136from transportation two before and another two this year. Okay. um they're back in a transportation situation that the previous board really didn't want to be in. Um we're going to do our best with that. Um I think we have a board member here. You know, I think they have worked in due diligence to try to find every single way that they could uh do it. I I compliment the council. I think it was great. There was a bipartisan effort. You you did do your best and I I deeply appreciate that. We're left with some hard decisions. Um, but I do think that, you know, when the town manager aptly says that there's going to be, you know, significant impacts for something like a zero, um, and it's not claimed to be rhetoric, but then when

137the board claim, you know, talks about the hard stuff, it's claimed to be rhetoric. I think you have to look at the the contradiction there. Thank you. Yeah, I just more so was driving at uh what you've done over the years for and I think people ask that question, well, can he cut buses? And that's a that's a topic that comes up. So, I appreciate you going on record for saying what you've already done and um answering my question with that. So, thank you. Thank you, Jacob. Um All right. I think everybody's gone around. No, he's been he went first. Did he? Yeah. Yeah. He came said he wanted% remember started us off. Yeah. It's been a long hour. He did say he said the 1.5 was high. Yeah, I know. He said 1.5 was

138high, but I don't know if he landed a specific Yeah. rounded proposal question. I would like to ask just we are pursuing things like solar to to answer something directly about steps. The board did just engage to pursue additional solar resources, things like that. So drastic. Thank you. All right. I'll entertain a motion to recess um so that our finance director can run scenarios that have been proposed. Um I've got them written down if councelor if you want to come just make sure that we're requiring the or recollecting everything properly fine. But anyway, I'll motion I'll entertain a motion to recess. Is there a second? Second. Right. Any discussion? Uh sorry. Yeah. Um councelor. Yes. Council. Hi. Councelor. Hi. Councelor Moran. Hi. Councelor B. Hi. Councelor Shay. Hi. And I'm not as well. So we

139are recessed today. So, I'll call the council back up into session um at 9:50 p.m. Um first, I'll just have Yolleta walk us through these scenarios. Um and just make sure that we're all properly identifying which ones are which. Um so, whenever you're ready, let me know if you can see my screen. Yes, it's a little small though. Let me just Okay, so I'm going to focus on the two scenarios. Um, one from council Jen and one from council uh Merlin. Um so the first one uh the request was to prepare the scenario with additional use of an assigned fund balance of $200,000 and allocate $60,000 for the Fitch and also uh $140,000 um for um for the uh BOE. So, let me just double check something. I just um I just want to look

140at the scenario again. If I can just walk through the other scenario. Um I think I didn't plug in the number on the first one, but I'm just going to walk the second scenario. Uh cancel Merlin. Um the request was to increase uh an assigned fund balance by $400,000 and this is shown in this line item row uh line 85. What it did uh there was no request to reallocate um any expenditures or add any um any changes what it was proposed by town manager. So technically what it did it reduced mill rate by 0.22 mls. So the proposed mill rate would be 27.33 and it did change um on a tax bill um it did reduce the tax bill um on the those um residential low, median and high and commercial low, median and

141high. So it made the impact on that. And if you don't mind, I'm just going to look back on the um the first scenario just a second and I'll be back in a minute. But you can't. So what was the rate you just choose? 27 for Jen or for you for your proposal? 27. I think that's what she 27.33. Yeah. for your proposal. Yes. 27.33. So, I'm back. Um, and actually everything looks fine. Um, just too many colors and too many numbers. So, um, going back to council Jen proposed and asked to run the scenario, $200,000 increase uh of use on assigned fund balance which is reflected here. 827,000 before which is including um stabilization fund including 527,000 of unsigned fund balance plus $200,000 here and it taking back the reduction of $60,000 that means

142putting back in in the town budget um and also reducing the BOE reduction by $140,000. So it didn't make change it did not make change on the mill rate. It um but increased the budget and then increase the spending percentage from the town manager's proposed budget today. Any questions? Point of clarification. Merrily's budget didn't touch the norate. No, no, Marlene did. Jen didn't Jen's did not because Merlene um the council Marlene asked to use a fund an assigned fund balance. Don't make any changes. So what happened? The impact of $400,000 it was on the amount to be raised by taxation. Make sense? Yeah. Does does that and can you and I apologize if if so the correlation in increase in spending percentage it would be so the town manager um the town manager scenario was

1432.3%. So with my scenario what would be the spending percentage? The same thing. It didn't change any spending percentage. What it did, it just reduced the amount that we need to raise by taxation. Okay, I see. That's how there. Okay, so it would decrease the mill rate. Correct. Got it. Got it. Got it. Any other questions? Other questions on the scenarios for you, Lita? What would happen if you added 200 to Jen's just said 200 400 that that's what I did. That's exactly what my proposed. Oh, that was that is what you That is one of those. It was your scenario plus 200,000 which which decreases the mill rate which decreases the mill rate further. Right. Okay. So, it's the exact same thing. You just add the twoact and I wasn't I was just using

144your general numbers as a starting point. So, as far as you know what actually gets allocated to where you know I'm open to some discussion. would propose 60,000 for Fitch and you had proposed 140 for the BOE and I was just kind of accepting that as the starting place. So, I'm so sorry. Um, so Merily uses 400 clear 400 additional even the town of budget as is 200. It takes it takes my proposal and then adds an additional $200 200,000 of unassigned to it. So, if I can clarify that is not the case. What? No, that is not the case. What I have here for uh Council Merlin, it's only adding additional $400,000 of an assigned fund balance to lower the mill rate. No changes on expenses. If you want me to run the proposed

145expenditure part by consult Jen and then additional $200,000 of use on unassigned balance you'll so under Mayor Lee's proposal you use the full 400,000 from the unassigned fund balance to reduce the bill rate correct only. Oh okay. No that's not what I was Okay. Okay. I'm happy to run the other one. It shouldn't be It shouldn't be too big. It may have been that I mis I know what her intention was. So, Yollet, is it okay if you run a new scenario um reflecting Maril or Council Py's request? Okay. Give me like 10 15 minutes and I'll Sorry. That's all. That's all good. Go ahead. Clarify my question. Is this going to get better merily or worse? Say what? Is this going to get better or worse? Yeah. Question. I think it will stay the

146same from the mill rate perspective, right? It'll bring it. Wait, I don't know. I don't wait. Can I ask some questions? Yes. My int just so that you know my intention my intention was to to to take this reduction right of 450 that we started with over here and then council Barker said okay yes let's go there but use the 200 from the rainy day fund to mitigate those re to you know put 16 back here 140 back here and I was like okay I'll accept that premise But but my premise for them was to take another 200 and use it directly, you know, to to use it as additional income, right? So we had this huge insurance charge this year, put another 200,000 toward the incredibly high insurance bill that we had, which is

147hopefully a, you know, not a not an every year occurrence, and use that to reduce the mill rate. And and I'm not I I can't really tell you if that's it doesn't sound like that's exactly what happened, but it we should be close. I'm not the numbers. I'm not what I think. I don't know number questions or statements. So yes. Um so I was just um I don't know Brian if you know you let something know what is the policy again on the unassigned fund balance the drop like the lowest you can go as far as 10 15 is the range but it really according to policy but really the the the number we like to stay is well above that fora we are not a AAA town because of our conservative fiscal policies and

148our strong undeigned fund balance. It's the only reason we are barely crossing that AAA threshold. Uh the more we we pluck away at that, you know, are we going to be the council that loses the AAA bond rating? That's that's um where we're at. Did I answer it? Yes. Thank you. So I guess another question. Sorry. So if we use this amount where we know where estimate where would you go to curiosity I have to we have to okay you'll have to figure that out so it would be really useful for us if we could get the uh criteria from the bonding company that indicates that I'm happy to have um recommendation from the bonding you mean from our yeah the bonding company so they they the bonding company So the on the federal website

149and with the bonding companies there's and I'm not going to bore everybody tonight but I pulled that all of that information. So it's 10 to 15%. And that's what's published and so if it we're saying yes but then there's our policy is 10% our policy and so is the national recommendation that the bonding companies put out that is what they publish nationally. So if we are above that, you know, okay, as we have been, that's been wonderful. It's still our rainy day fund. And if the bonding company is telling us, well, we're giving you the AAA rating because you're above the 10 to 15% that we rec that we recommend for everybody else, but we but you are up here, so therefore, you get a AAA rating. There must be some communication where they're telling

150us that. I would like us to see I would like us to be able to see. They have all seen and I'm assuming you have. We've had the bond attorney in and explain that the long and short of it is we are above the number on our at the at the 17% 16 to 17% range. We are well below in other categories, you know, in a commercial business and and the things that they look at. Okay, we're below, but because we're above and we're so cons we're so so there's written communication to us from the from them on that our bond attorney. I can find out if if we have the written communication, but because I want to see something in writing that says yes, this is what the criteria is. I can find out

151what I can find out what that is. I I know that I don't think it's like a they make a decision like a check like a credit rating place is going to make a decision. I don't know if it's a basic checklist and they don't deviate from that. We can have Barry the bond attorney come in again and give us that. Yeah. Or he can just send a paper in or send something in. Right. Because the other thing that is written that this is a national standard that's published is they do not arbitrarily or all of a sudden reduce your bond rating in one year. That's not how that happens. What happens is they see they see a trend and they they'll issue a correspondence and then they will evaluate you the next year and

152say what's happening with you. Do we reduce the AAA bond rating or do we not? Yep. So I want to just clarify like it's not a sudden catastrophic we make a decision tonight and tomorrow morning the bonding company's on the phone and it's like that's it listening right you're done and then I have one whatever we vote I don't know some what similarly does it maybe we should take a little note for it. I know you don't want to talk about staff reductions, which I totally understand, Brian, but maybe we can do like a someformational because it's been touched upon a couple times as far as some of the projects going on in town where those funds are actually coming from. They're not we're just not building these things because we have we're spending in

153the money. You know what I mean? Like the specifically the parks garage, right? uh pickle ball courts, things like that because that is a lot of money and maybe people think we're just wastefully spending the money. Tennis courts, pickle ball courts at low. Yeah, maybe just like have that code like as a budget message. I know the town can't promote it, but it I think we can be informative factual. Um factual. Yeah. So maybe something like that. council sireers or whatever something like that for information. You let me know what you want. Yeah, I'm just putting it out there. That was just as we were talking something like that. I'm happy to work with you, Vice Chair Moran, and on potential budget communications. I think we do have to walk a fine line between, you

154know, actively swaying town, which could backfire right. Um, but I do understand the concern. that meeting and said there is misunderstanding how capital especially works um so I understand that a lot of the funding was due to opera so I mean other grants grants that kind of um I'll I'll get to you in a second councelor Shay I just gonna ask um our account manager as far as a fund balance goes do we have I feel like we have um a yearby-year look of that in terms of what percentage we're at. Is that something that the council could see tonight? Um oh, tonight I can ask. Um I I think it would also just be good to have an understanding because there's some headwinds next year in terms of parks. Yep. What that would do

155to um due to the fund balance. I think awareness wise that would be helpful. Um, councelor Shay, um, just a quick point of clarification or really question. Um, so if we use the additional 400,000, does that put next year's council in the hole for over $2 million? Yes. Million what? one million for the the money we're not getting from the state on the for sure on the mill rate going dropping below um the certain rate that it has to be and it's wasn't below far off from where we were. We're going to be well below the the minimum that the state requires in order them to give us a million dollars to give us a so to in order for us they they then they give that to us to help fund the budget. Yes.

156Okay. 827 in regards to um fund balance and tax stabilization before yours and add another 400 on it. That puts us over um 2 million that we're going to have to make up for next year. But that's not million. But that's not So just to be clear, that's not income. Fund balance isn't income. Fund balance is a rainy day fund that's earning that's invested. So yes, we're taking from it, but it will there will be some interest still acrruing to it and if we're still up at 16%ish or 15 and a.5% then we're still over the recommendation. So I think we need to understand to your point where we are right where we stand with that. One of clarification on that comment and this why I think it would be helpful if we can get

157that um Excel file which I know I've seen already exists. Um I think was meant by that doesn't the uh me is okay counselor shave I just just finished my thought and then I'll let you go. I just want to make sure I understood the Brian Yeah I Yeah I was interrupted in my my time but go ahead I'll wait. Go ahead Brian. Go ahead Jacob. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. I'm just Anyway, million dollars from the car tax we don't get. And what you're saying is that's something we're going to have to make up in property taxes because basically we don't get that grant. So that's something we got to factor in. And then the additional million is we're using unassigned funds this year to help offset this year's that goes into our budget. So your

158options for next year would be either to use an assigned fund balance again or to basically cut back. Correct. Unless there's, you know, an increase in the grand list and and our revenue and Yeah. Um along, but we don't anticipate that again. We don't Seni is not coming this year. Um you know, a small amount maybe and it's not going to be a million dollars. Correct. Yeah. And are we anticipating our health insurance costs be as high as they are this year? We are unsure of what it's going to going to do. We pay a health insurance consultant locked in to advise us. Um and we've we've deviated somewhat from his conservative uh suggestions and and we're gambling we're gambling on so much. So, um, the collection rate a bad year. So, it's going to

159be Yeah. No, I get it. It's a It's a It's a Can't use the word in in council chambers, but it's a that situation all the way around. It's Yeah, I think that's it's Peter over here and Paul over here. I think that's like at least for us to bear in mind the town to bear in mind, right? I don't think any of us would say that we're talking about like good options like what are what are what is like a good option. It's just what's the least what's the most responsible way we can go forward within the circumstances that we're in. So yeah, it's it's a what's the most bad option. Yeah. So my other Yeah. I'll let counselor Shay go because I found that chart for the on the side fund balance you're

160looking for. Can you send it to I'm try I'm trying to send it to everyone's email. Um let me know. Okay. Thank you. Uh go ahead councelor Shay. Yeah. So also um a comment about the the 400,000 is so we would also need to modify the projected interest income that we scheduled to get because we'll no longer have that 400,000 sitting earning money. I would like to understand the health if there are any opportunities there. I know I've poked you um Brian many times about the health insurance if it is a spike versus a oneyear thing. Um how would I know that? I know that's a tough thing. The only thing I'm going on is that that number unlike some other numbers like salaries where it's locked in contractually can vary and it is steep

161this year. And that's why again I don't I don't like the idea of using 400,000 but I would ask if there's a council's will to go forward if there is a way to apply that number to a line that is volatile um in the budget and you might have a chance of being lower then it it it goes that way. Um but again I I don't love the idea. I um I don't know uh I I'm not asking to project forward. Historically um if we have it obviously this health insurance year was a much was much higher this year. I'm just wondering like how I guess how anomalous was this year, right? um because I agree or I you know if if we're going to use more assigned fund balance if you know this could

162be a way to sort of um justify using it uh for something that isn't hopefully going to be recurring when we're you know talking about bad options right do we know like how is this year how is this year now in the last hand well remember we had a really bad year two years ago Mhm. And we've had hoped that that was an anomaly. Mhm. Now we're in another bad year this year and, you know, as far as health insurance goes, I'm not counting on those costs going down. I can we cannot I I I hate to be contrary to to the council. My job is to advise the f the best fiscal path forward for the town to run business here. I don't assume that our health care costs are going to go down

163and you're irresponsible to do that. You have to plan that they're going to not be great. Nothing. The cost of nothing is going down. This is a really bad year. Last year was a really bad year. The year before was a really bad year. Next year will be a really bad year. This is the same pattern. And to to think like all of a sudden we're going to hit the jack or hit any sort of savings on health insurance. I can't say that. I I know that Dr. Willlet is the chair of EHIP and I also have Mike Wilkinson on who who manages our health care on the town side. I'll ask Dr. Willlet first. Do you have any opinion on it? Well, I think that that year to year there can be, you know,

164really bad years. You know, I think that some your involvement in Egypt has allowed you to offset um certain thing your budgets and so it's been a very successful thing for you to be involved with Egypt and um you know I think you've mitigated some of your fluctuations because of your involvement with Egypt more than you would have been able to otherwise. So I think you know claims experience can fluctuate and you can have some years that are worse than others. Um but it's good to always as Mr. always saying put a pragmatic eye to how much exactly you can take from something like a reserve that we have in Egypt. You know, I think where we're at right now is about the max we could probably do in any year. Mike Wilkinson, anything? Yeah,

165I would agree with uh Dr. Willlet. I mean, we're we're kind of at the maximum level, comfort level as far as what we could do this year. Um, uh, we've had more flexibility in prior years, but we have been eating into our balance because we've been using funds. So, I think we're really at the max of what we could do this year. That's my opinion. Thank you. I see what you sent me and it's sorry if you download it um are you using if you download you can you probably just zoom in but um it looks like in the last 10 years like fiscal year 15 for unsigned funds we're at 6.8 8 million. Um, and then last year we ended at fiscal year 24 we ended at 12.3. So we're just a little under

166doubling what we had 10 years ago. It's been kind of been like a steady increase. So I think does it have the percentage though for unassigned? Yeah, because the key is the percentage of of that to the budget. Yeah. So the for the fiscal year budget the percentage of the of the rainy day fund and assigned fund balance is what is the criteria to look at the the budget for each year too is back we can ask her um two things um I think we should look at councelor BB's scenario and then the other question was is do we have pretty sure you do um a view of the unassigned fund balance um that goes through the several past several years and shows what the um what the percent is of uh of our total

167expenditures. I think that would be um a useful data point for our conversations. So we do have a um I'll just answer the second question. Um we do have a the in a percentage of the assign an assigned plan balance in the book in the budget book. Um, so I don't know if you need additional information that the expenditures and revenues. Um, I guess we're sorry to cut you off. I think what would be probably most useful in this context would be to understand what would be the impact of this budget and also any headwinds that we know about you know be it the settlement that we have to make potential issues with car you know losing the subsidy from the state for car tax what does that picture look like I think we need

168to just be aware have a forwardlooking view over the next couple if possible. Yeah, that's going to take some work. I'll just be honest because we do have a um the estimated um unassigned fund balance and the percentage I think I provided um back in April when we met. Uh but if we are talking about FI27, that's going to take some work. So it could be hours to put all together looking at every single element because there's multiple uh things that going into the calculation. Okay. Well, we don't have time for that at the moment. So I think it would be good to have at some point, but obviously absolutely run that. Um all right, I think we're ready to have you walk us through this one. All right. So the scenario two um council

169merly request uh to look at the scenario uh by increasing $400,000 in an assigned fund balance including what the council Jennifer already proposed 200 plus additional 200 and I know it was uh 150 to 200 but I think I went to the highest point and they said 200 um and also I kept the scenario consult Jennifer um by putting back in 60K and putting back $140,000 for the BOE oper uh operational budget. So what it did by increasing use on of an assigned fund balance $200,000 it decrease mill rate by 0.11 mills and it did make a change in the increases of the tax bill. It brought the the mill rate to what number? So the mill rate 27.44. It was 27.3 before. No, she it was 27.3 in uh the scenario that she misheard

170which was you using $400,000 to decrease the next rate. Yeah. So doing it this way would mean it's um it still like lowers the mill rate from where Jen was, but not as much as the misunderstood 400,000. Right. Because instead of using 400,000 to lower the mill rate, you're using 200,000 or correct. 200,000. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm sorry. I was looking at a different number. I I get it. Thank you. I think part of that is the addition of the 60,000 back into the town side of the budget, which is why there's a difference in the mill rate slightly. You scroll down just a little. They just want to see the tax increase numbers. Yolita, just for sight, would you mind highlighting the median? Thank you. Sorry, what was that? Be the same as council

171bumper scenario, right? Which is 615. Just nice. thoughts on the proposal. You got to take time. That's fine. I was I was able to get it up on my computer. I know we talked about this before. Um, but what's the Can you What is there is the $60,000 in aggregate that it's all or nothing? 60,000. What? The $60,000 for Fitch. Is there is there is that an all or nothing? That's Can I I can answer that question. Thank you. So, when we've had an opportunity to look at the draft report, which I believe, if you don't have a copy, I do. I I just don't recall. I'm sorry. There are potential suggestions that you might need to add some positions. And the idea behind the 60,000 admittedly, there's not a ton of science that goes

172into it, is that it would allow you to potentially add some add a staff member middle middle of the fiscal year. Okay. So, that's where that number that's where that number came from. Got it. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. Right. Sorry. Go ahead. One quick question. And so the mill rate that went to referendum was 28 uh sorry 27.85. Yes. Okay. Thank you. What is the number to get to 2.5? Well, that would just be I'm just just trying to answer your question and talking to myself. Um 2.5 said I don't know if we ran it was on one of these other sheets. I didn't know. I was looking and it does not look like we run a 2.5. Actually, it feels like we I feel like uh So, sorry, just make sure

173I understand. So, you're saying um a 2.5 uh increase. Is that what you're saying? Sorry. As opposed to Yeah. 2.5 just Yeah. No, no. I That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to This is so difficult. I I mean I know we I I just know I can't go below a certain number and I So that so 2 so that's.1155 based on what we have on the what's what's that additional 64,000 per one so it's so it's a little so say 70 grand probably 70 so It's 1155 * 70 3. Oops. Sorry. You said 64 64 thou. It's No, it's 64,000 per.1%. All right. Hold on one second. So, if you want to go from 2.3 to 2.5. Wait, I thought we were the city. I thought we were at 2.6. So, the 2.3 is

174Brian's proposal, but it bumps up to 2.61 in Jen's proposal because you're putting some,000. you're making revenue essentially revenue adjustments but you're I see what you're asking for it would be like approximately if it's if it's 64,000 for.1 it would be close to maybe a little over 70,000 60 yeah of additional of of additional cuts that we would have to take out so somewhere between 60 and 70,000 would be the 2.5 I don't know how we just did that but we did that yeah So, if we So, if we did that, we would probably and I'm assuming that we would either, you know, not do the do the Fitch uh, you know, do the Fitch recommendation or remove that from the um the give back to the board of education. So, we would have to

175add that 64 say $70,000 to get to where you want to be, Colleen. I'll just say, you know, far away from where I wanted, we understand stand understand that. Um, I think it would be interest to get at a 2.5. So that's a probably a better number to get to if this is where the consensus of the council is as far as how you get there and you split 70 grand basically between two challenge board. I think it's $35,000. It's almost like that's not saying that I think that'd be pretty minimal impact. So those doors the doors are in there. The doors are still in there. Yeah. Those are not touched. Yeah. So that's not on the table. You want the Yeah. So we could push that out a year, but it's a safety item.

176Um that is a pretty important upgrade and you will have to do it next year. And I think if this proposal does pass again a lot of unassigned fund balance would not recommend continuing to push capital that also will need to be purchased into future years. Who so who makes the stipulation for the the mustave for the doors fire marshall based on code state code changes the state code and I asked him Alex trust me I didn't want it. I asked him do we need this do we need this? I just wish there could still there could be the same effort to encapsulate safety for a trooper. That's all. So there is the number. I don't know where else um people want us to cut from or go to or anything that I don't. I

177think we can I think it'll and maybe Yolita can run the numbers after, but I think if you cut an additional 70,000 from somewhere to what's already then you'll end up at the 2.5, that might be the easiest way to to do it. If we just say, "Hey, we're going to cut an additional 70,000, however you want to split it, and then that should get us there. So, so is the question to Yolita take the scenario that she just recently did where she has 2.6155 and cut another $70,000 out of that and see if we can get to like 2.5, right? So, is there a request to rebrand numbers or can you do that or no? Absolutely. I can do it. 15 minutes. Okay. Thank god we have modern technology. right person. So, recess. Yeah,

178I guess I'll entertain a mo. Sorry. I'll entertain a motion to recess. Uh, I move. Second. Second. First, second, and then we're on favor. Hopefully. All right. We're just letting you lead to run the numbers. Yeah. Okay. Um, are you We had to do a roll call technically. Uh, yes. Yes. Council Shay. So, we're we're making a motion to have a $70,000 adjustment on a $65 million to recess. We're motioness. Sure. Yes. I'm a yes for recess. Thank you. I'll call uh the meeting back to order um to continue our discussion with budget. Um, as for counselor's input, any motions to be made? Sure. I start off the conversation first. So, here I go. So, I'm going to make a motion for two 2% spending increase split proportionally between the town and board of education

179with a $400,000 contrib contribution with $200,000 allocated to board of ad in the town as outlined by council Buckler and $200,000 used to offset the mill rate increase provided set increases used to offset health insurance increases. Thank you, councelor. You need to check. Is there a second for that motion? Can and I'm really sorry to do this to you, but can you just do the first part again? I'm sorry. All right. The motion was 2% spending increase split proportionally between the town and the board of education. Okay. Did you want to go on? And then and then you talked about with a $400,000 contribution with 200 day allocated to BOE board of education the town as outlined by council Buckler and $200,000 used to offset the mill rate increase provides said increase is used to

180offset health insurance increases. So yeah taking some money. Right. I get I get what you're doing there. and and we don't when we would figure out what happens to the mill rate afterwards anyone after we vote on it you're welcome to ask but I do you know it is legal so yeah no no I I totally get it um actually I do think there is a we have to set the question to the right as a question correct yes then we would have to do that um but there is a motion on the floor is there a second for that motion I'll second the motion Okay. So, motion's been made and seconded. Um, I'll just ask a clarification for councelor Buckler's suggestions. That would be $140,000 towards the board of education and 60,000 towards the

181town for recommendations. Correct. That was councelor like six charts there. That was that's what that's what was proposed. Yeah. Okay. I think that's right. And I am sorry everybody. I do not also have a mill race. No, that's I think she I think that um so does a second. Yes, council seconded that motion. Um All right, I'll open it up for discussion. Yes, council. Um so, thank you, Council Udek. Uh you know, I think we all said this earlier on, right? We're we're it we're in a tough spot, right? There aren't we're not choosing an option that any of us like particularly want to be choosing. Um, yep. I do think that uh your proposal is um I think it's responsive to the to the people who voted to know and thought that the mill

182rate was too high. Um it's my hope that that strikes the right balance right between not overcorrecting um but showing that we are responsive. We hear you know what what the town said. Um, and it also obviously doesn't include as much as I would want for, you know, for town spending and things, but this this is the reality that we're in. So, um, I thank you for that. Um, and as far as the $200,000 to offset the Egypt increase, um, I think that's a good idea. um because you know hope again rough you're hoping that that's sort of a one time uh or you know not always going to be that high. I'll just add a little bit. You know, obviously I've been vocal about fun balance. You know, I think for my own ownification

183because I've talked about this a lot. You know, I support it as a compromise. I don't love the idea. I appreciate um council's willingness to work with me at least to apply it to a line that's been volatile. So maybe there's a chance we get lucky there. Um but I also do want to appreciate um my colleagues here for being willing to look at a lower increase. Um you know as you mentioned we had almost unanimous people said it was too high. So, I think that was important that we get that spin level down. And I think in the long run, it's good for the council um or for the for the town in general to come out with a strong referendum number two number um competitive for lack of a better term. So, appreciate

184the work there. Um anybody else? Councelor Shay. Yeah, just the my I share your sentiments, Jacob, on the uh the fund balance that to me is financial suicide for next year. It's going to really kill next year. You councelor Shay, any other comments? All right. Um we'll go around the room on a roll call vote. Councelor Buckler or sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt before. Do we need the mill rate? Oh, now I think where is usually break? Yeah. So, we can approve what was just laid out and then we will have a separate motion on the budget resolution where we will need the actual bill rate. Um, councelor Buckler. I, Councelor Nun, I. Councelor Nichek, hi. Councelor Moran I. Councelor Bi. Councelor Shay. Nay. And I'm an I. So this does pass. And we will

185now move to item six, approval of a resolution. Um believe we need to have the actual moving numbers. Apologies for um all the churn we did tonight, but we appreciate your help. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. Where is the 273 2733 bottom right? Y Oh, got it. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Brian, do we need any other materials to move on to the next? We do not agenda. Thank you, Brian. Okay. I don't think we've reached this, so we'll just continue going. Yes. um to our next item which is approval of a resolution authorizing the form of the ballot for the May 20th uh budget referendum and you can read the rest. So I think you sent us an email with a couple Chris and I at least a couple of different budget u suggestions

186or suggestions. Yes. Yeah. I think I sent it to the entire council. Yeah. There had for clarity there had if I may Mr. Chair for clarity there have been some um innuendo about v the question being vague and confusing um online and some you know strategy involved in that. Uh that's not the case. Um over the years the question that goes on the ballot has been tinkered with and um in order to change the ballot I would recommend or change the question on the ballot to be simpler or clearer I would recommend that it goes to our town attorney for review with that. Our town attorney has preapproved four questions. one very simple um and then three others that are that that build in in um explanation. Uh council, you all have those in front

187of you. Yes. And so um you can come to some sort of agreement on which question uh to put on and to be clear and I'm making implication here. Please please confirm. But I assume that we want our attorney to verify it because a question that's potentially ambiguous that is not approved by our legal council could land us in more trouble. Yes. The intentions of the council are good. Correct. And and just to follow that the the question that we used in the last referendum that is obviously was approved by our attorney, you know, like that was appropriate. I I we didn't change it. So it would have been prior to us that it got changed. But these are the four questions that I have approved for our attorney now. Yep. and he was obviously

188CC in the same email to get those to every single one of these is focusing on the mill levy rather than the spending increase. Um which I don't know if that addresses concerns of residents, but we don't have time for an attorney for you. You can go with the same question you had. Yeah. Which one was that? I honestly can't. Is it on the agenda? on the back of agenda, I think. Okay. Yeah. All right. This is probably the most detailed out of all of them, honestly. I think it's probably Yeah, everything not show something. Yeah. I get what Brian is saying is can be overly complicated and misunderstood, too. I just, you know what I mean? So, it's a catch 22. I just I actually can't believe that there was an issue the last

189time. I mean, it really it really is like a first grade. What are you talking about? The question we're talking about. We're just talking about Well, just in general, any questions? I I don't say it in in a side way, but it's just like first grade reading comprehension level and people work with you. So, I just really I just don't know. It's it's people frequently get tripped up on the financials of it, but I don't know if there's a way to make it simpler than it is without removing important information. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no preference other than to get, you know, as much information out as we can, right? Like there's no strategy behind what the question is. It's just so I have it doesn't matter to me. I'm fine with what

190we've used by. Yeah. If if you know if there's an argument she made that one of the other proof questions is better, but like Jacob said, it just looks like there's less information. Yeah. From the set. Um, okay. I guess I'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution. See if there's consensus that's being read out. Just specify which one you're talking about. Oh, for the ballot question. Yeah, for the ballot question. Um, I'll I'll make a motion to go with our original ballot question. Okay. The one in the packet. The one in the packet. Correct. Is there a second for that motion? Second. All right. Any discussion? Hearing none. Um, do a roll call vote. Councelor Butler. I. Councelor Nunan. Hi. Okay, councelor. Hi. Uh, council ran. Hi, councelor. Uh, this is the This is

191what? Yes. Yes. I Yeah. Councelor Shay, I'll Okay. Um, I'll vote I as well. So, that resolution passes. And that brings us to the final item. Um, is there any objection to adjournment at at 11:51 p.m. hearing? Not here. Thank you.