Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting (Budget Workshop) - April 15, 2026 7pm

001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Good evening. Today is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. I'd like to call the special meeting budget workshop to order. Troy Lemire Kevin Bishop Paul Marino Paul Harrington Todd Arulshashi Lauren Dombrowski William Hester Sheryl Heppner and McGlinn William Bozo Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Item three, consider and possibly act on the town manager's the Board of Selectmen's proposed budget. Mr. Cap Uh thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um so to uh set the stage just a few quick uh items housekeeping items. First, our town clerk is absent tonight. He's at a Town Clerk's conference and our Finance Director

002for the well-being of all is really not feeling well, so I kept her completely away from the building, but we do have Tom here tonight. So, thank you, Tom, and thank you, Lauren, for filling in this evening. I thought it was important if the board so pleases we have the mill rate calculation sheet. We've added the motor vehicle cap formula into it. Kind of recap where we left Monday night before we go forward. So, with all of the changes that were voted on on Monday night, some of them being reductions, some of them being increases, the biggest increase is roughly $821,000 in roads. Currently, we stand at a 3.39 mill rate, which is an 11.61% increase in the mill rate. That is factoring in everything that we took care of on Monday night. You will

003note that when you left here Monday night the mill rate was actually 32.55. We had a factor in that mill rate the the motor vehicle cap, which we slipped to this slide, which actually then you ended up talking a little bit more about the motor vehicle cap. The state of Connecticut only allows you to tax motor vehicles at 32.46. We were proposing a mill rate of 32.55, so I pulled all the vehicles out at 32.46 and then see what we needed to raise and and then ended up being the new mill rate of 32. 55. So, that's how or 32.56. It was 32.55. So, we went up, you know, 0.1/10 of a mill, not a whole heck of a lot, but we had we had set that. One of the questions that were out there

004that I did email the the Board of Selectmen and I'll open it up to the public and it was for informational purposes is the proposed roads, the five or six roads that totaled about $821,000. Those were full roads that were being paved except for old New Hartford Road. I'm going to mess up the number, but roughly 2,100 ft of that road would be paved out of the $821,000 that's being proposed in the in the draft budget that we ended on Monday night at around 9:30 at night. Are there any questions? Um I have one question. Just we should get this put into the spreadsheet somewhere, but what is the actual tax increase percentage? I see it's 11 of the mill rate, but what's the actual tax increase? Um dollars. Dollars. Or is that 11.6 to

005dollars? Well, it's it it's 11.61%. I think maybe what you're asking is then when we go to the I think the board really likes this sheet. The what is it per each property? No, again and maybe that's one in the same, but I just want to make sure I understand. You have the increase in mill rate is 11.61%. Is that the same thing as calling it the actual tax increase? So if you paid $1,000 last year, you're going to pay 11.61% more this year? That would be correct, sir. So if you looked at that's actually the tax increase. Correct. So the the the overall when you look at the expenditure side of the budget, I don't know if we break it down into the percentage down here. I do not. But roughly the the the

006percentage of the expenses went up about 8 and 1/2% um you say, "Well, they're not cuz remember the grand list changed, so you have more revenue coming in." But if the mill rate stayed the same the tax increase would be zero. So, I think your your your answer your question is the tax increase that's proposed on this working draft is 11.61%. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions keeping in mind that tonight we did say we were reserving it for the Board of Education. Thank you, Dr. Luby, for attending tonight. I I know I did send the email out. We did invite Gilbert School. Um they declined. I know the board had asked me to re-ask again or had asked the chairwoman if she could attend. They were declined for both tonight's meeting and also

007Monday night's meeting. They have two meetings this week and um Monday night that's why they're not here. Um Mr. Engleton, is there any I know things move quickly. Is there any change as far as revenue or any new recommendations or anything that we can do there? Um there's always changes in revenue. So, one of the items um there's a few things we can talk about. I'm going to pull levers. They they're unconventional. Um but, here are two levers that we you you you all should debate. First one being is town owned property. Um currently uh we did not account for any town owned property being sold in this current year's budget. Um it I can tell you that we have uh closed in on almost $400,000 of town owned property. Big portion of that is

008the Bachelor School. Right? When we put together the current budget that we're in, I don't think anyone predicted where that would potentially go. So, it was a little bit of a risk, you know, should we include that big a number? Are we going to continue down the road? I know we're waiting back for my letter for planning and planning and zoning to list some of these town owned properties. I know we're in a revenue crunch. I know we're looking at an 11.61% tax increase. If the board was looking to soften it, maybe the debate should be centered around what should we do with town-owned property. What did we What was the total dollars last year or this current year that we're in? This current year, like I said, it will be probably close to $400,000.

009And where are those funds being held? They're just being held in the general fund. So, we're going to When we get the audit at the end of this year at the end of the fiscal year, we're going to show a surplus in revenue collection, and it'll just end up in our savings account. We can't spend those dollars in this current year budget because although in our own budgets at home when we have extra money, we can spend it, we can only spend what's on the expense side of things. We can't overspend on the revenue side. >> could spend it on the upcoming budget. We could. Yeah. And it's hard to do that in a way you're kind of our cuz we're suggesting for capitals, we're going to take some money out of the savings account.

010We won't have that answer how much money's in the savings account based on this year's budget cuz it closes on June 30th, and we would have already had our budget, you know, out to at least the town meeting. >> could estimate a certain amount, manager. Say there's $400,000 there now. We're talking about taking some out for capital. We could say maybe there's going to be about We can estimate there's going to be 200,000 at least available. Correct? Yeah, easily. Yeah. I I Yeah. So, that could actually go into reduce the the burden on the taxpayer by that 200,000. Correct? Certainly can. A different way of looking at it is I believe, you know, because we had those four or five properties, I believe those will sell in the next fiscal year beginning in July 1st.

011I wouldn't necessarily worry about what's going in there, what we didn't account for, but what we're going to bring in in next year's receipts. And I truly feel confident that we will at least collect $200,000 in new town-owned property that will sell beginning July 1st. >> could put 200,000 from our fund, and then 200,000 from future sales for a total $400,000 to offset the ask to the taxpayers, correct? You could definitely do that, yes. Would that be creating a cliff? Be fiscally irresponsible? Tell me what your thoughts are on it. So, I think if you go that scenario 400, I think you potentially are creating a cliff. I think looking at how much town-owned property we own, I think we're going to have a few years of being able to inject town-owned property sales into

012our budget. I think when you go up into that personal opinion, that 400,000 mark, I think that might be a little too high. Um unless you say, you know, this is for one-time capital purchases, right? And you can look at capital purchases many different ways. Capital purchases can be looked at, well, every year you're going to have capital purchase. I I would agree with that statement. But, it's not a guarantee. So, we could put it into the roads. That 800,000 to the roads, which is a one-time for those particular roads. And if we're going to add funds into the subsequent budget for roads, that would be another one-time. It's not something not part of our operating expenses, so to speak, correct? That yes, yep. So, that would be fiscally responsible. Yes, in my eyes. Somebody

013may view it differently, but in my eyes as the town manager, I would say that's fiscally responsible. >> And I don't think any of us here, at least I know I'm not a complete financial I I balance budgets and do all sorts of things for my business and my clients, but you know, I would we rely a lot on your perspective on this. And if you're looking at one-time capital expenditure, which the roads would constitute, then you know, we're we still we could at least put that 400,000 towards the roads and offset that ask, which would reduce the ask to the taxpayers and the impact on the taxpayers without it being a fiscal cliff. I I want to and it's when I was looking at things, so we don't change many line items in a

014budget, right? Because you never know if you're going to reuse them again. But low and behold you and I know it's hard to see, but within this revenue sheet, at one time the town actually created a line item that said sale of town owned {slash} foreclosed property. So at one time we actually probably placed a number in that and you can see back in 2004, we collected $208,000 in that line item. Um and >> Collected it for me in the budget for We didn't budget for it. So again, that and I think I want to just stress this point, that money didn't disappear. It just went into our savings account. You know, it didn't go anywhere. I don't want anyone to think that, you know, anything bad happened with the money. It just It just

015went into our savings account. Similar where we put in a collection rate for people's property taxes and sometimes, you know, we have more people paying the property tax. It still goes into, you know, the general fund or you know, the savings account even though we said we were only going to collect $30 million. Then we had a great year and everybody paid their their taxes and nobody was delinquent, we may have collected 31 We had counted 31 million. Our budget just showed that it was 30 million. So that's the So we could put into the budget as a revenue source this 400,000 that we just talked about as a way to offset tax increase, correct? >> I think he said I think he said 200,000 would be what you're comfortable with. Well, we're taking Well,

016he said we're going to He said 200 from the account we already have then 200 anticipated income coming in from next year. Revenues are always anticipated because there's no guarantee they're actually going to be received. >> Right, but I think I thought you wanted to use the 400,000 from the sale of Bachelor towards the street project to offset that $800,000. >> 200 from the fund and 200 for future in future sales sale of town-owned property to offset. That's what I was saying. And that's what we talked about and you said that would be fiscally responsible. I think you I I I think you're both saying the same thing. I think what we're saying is and and let's and and we can pause and we can correct if we need to. So, let's go first on

017the revenue side of the uh budget. We have that line item that says sale of town-owned {slash} foreclosed property. It's my recommendation that we put $200,000 in that line item of the revenue of the budget. Would be my recommendation. And and before you vote on it, the cool part about Excel is it's real-time. So, that number is in there the second we switch over to the sheet that I have Uh wait a minute. I can I I don't have to use the mill rate uh the motor vehicle cap one because we've now dropped below. We took that 11. I don't even remember it was 11. 11.61 61 $200,000 now has dropped it to 10.9. So, if we took 200,000 from our account or savings account, what would happen to the mill rate? So, this one

018we're going to do a little bit different cuz it's going to be a transfer into capital. So, bear with me. Actually, can I follow up on Cheryl's question, which is there is a certain percentage we try not to go below in the savings account for our platinum status. In addition to the 200 that we know is potentially available from the bachelor school sale, is there additional money that we could take from, and we've done this I think we did it 2 years ago or last year, I can't remember which, but we did we have transferred money from the savings account to the general fund in years where we have budgets that have been very difficult. So, in addition to the 200, is there more that would keep us still below that percentage or above that

019percentage that we want to stay at? Good answer that in many different many different parts because I think it's important to to to show you all where we've come and and so you have a more informed decision. So, if you look at the proposed budget right now, we're suggesting 1.6 You know what? That's actually This is an old presentation. Tom's shaking his head because we added So, we're suggesting Thomas, is it 821 was the the roads? Yes, for the seven that were added, 821 plus 55,000. Oh, plus 55 for the for the police accountability. now $2,480,333 in capitals. The only thing that we've really talked about was that we were going to fund the 821 and the 55. This was on Monday, and it was an assumption that we're going to fund it with tax

020levy mill rate uh taxes to pay for that, right? Town manager was proposing $875 be pulled out of our savings account to help offset at the time 1.6 million dollars in capital purchases. We haven't talked about it, but I guess what I'm saying is we're still suggesting, subject to what's about to discuss, that to fund the Don't you love it when the phone shuts off? Um, to fund the 2.5 million dollars, I'm rounding, in capitals. I think what you all are suggesting is we take 875 and go to 1 million 75,000 dollars. And how I know it's 16.something percent we have to stay We're sticking at 18%. >> 18%? Um, and how close how close are we? We're which Do you have it right off the top of your head? I do not. You got

021the audit. Pull the audit cuz that's going to it it's online. We're not quickly, but let's get the the the exact answer. We're not going to be there with 200,000 dollars. We We're We're We're good. We're good. I think we're going to be good, but let's get let's We're talking money, we're talking credit rating, all that. Let's get the the audit pulled up real quick. >> looking that up, if you're taking 200 out, is the balance of 400 already been put in there from the sale? No, because Yes, it has because the check came to us and we walked it to the bank and we put it in. Because that happened this year, that is not being accounted for because the audit starts after the fiscal year ends. What's in there right now, when when

022Tom pulls up that audit report, it was the books as of June 30th, 2024. 2025, excuse me. I think Check page 21. That's sad that I know where it's going to be in the audit book, but check page 21. Usually I'm good with that, but there's been so many numbers swirling in my head lately, so sorry. But I'd rather be right than guess on this one. But while Tom's looking that up, I I I think what a fun exercise potentially would be is I'm going to And then for illustration purposes only. Because when you inject more money into the revenue side, I'm going to change that 200 to 400 just to show you what it does, okay? Um and then if if there's agreement, we can we can walk down the paths of different things,

023so that now brings it down to under 3 mils, 10.23%. It's slowly coming down. Now, how much So I know that we you know, we put in the roads. I know that you know, may or may not stay there. If we were to take that out, how much um in capital expenditure is there? Are we like how much You had 26 hard projects that we were going to get done. >> Yeah, so um And those are funded before we did the 800 and the 400. Yeah, you're correct. So um just like when Bishop asked question, 1.6 million, um you're looking at the exact number was 1 million 604,333 without the roads of 821. All right, so 7 So 729,333 was being uh levied by taxes. $875,000 was being taken out of the savings account. So

024we're at 10.23 increase right now. And what we've done quickly is we've basically injected $400,000 of revenue into the budget. And And just to recap, 200 of it is um general fund from next fiscal year, and 200 of 200 of it is from savings. No, I'm sorry, it's all from savings. Nope. No. Nope. I was on the right track. One's from 200's from savings, 200's from future sales of town owned Right, which we which we're putting into the general fund. Well, yeah, so anytime we send out a tax bill, somebody comes in with a check, that money goes in the general fund. No, wait. What about the tax sales? Those delinquent taxes, I think we had How much was that that was anticipated is outstanding that we're going to go to tax sales this year,

025this upcoming fiscal year? Well, those might might not even make it into next fiscal year, right? >> trying to get the figures right. Um our goal is to get the tax sales sometime in the fall, then you have the 6-month redemption. So, that might be the following year. Yeah. I mean, it's a you know, we're engaging obviously uh Attorney Cohen right now. Let's say worst case scenario, you do the sale in November. Then you have December, January, February, March, April, May. Mhm. Uh either they've paid it or you know, or or the or the attorney has released you know, the sale the proceeds of it to us. So, that would hit So, how much was that total amount? The total amount to do try to recoup through the tax sales or by just prodding people

026to pay their taxes? Maybe again, I'll follow up on your question. Your experience in having done that before, you know what's outstanding, what would you think we might collect in the upcoming fiscal year? >> my follow-up question. Well, the good news is is um the good news is is everything that goes to tax sale I I we would collect because well, I would be a little maybe something may not sell, right? So, I may come As we discussed, someone may just pay enough to get them under the $5,000 threshold. So, you know, I would look at it in that kind of way, but you know, but what was the total? You've asked me a question, I forgot the number. And I'm going to go look for it right now, but I'm going to I'm I'm

027going to unplug real quick. Mine is $1.2 million dollars like in my head or something. I again So, my Because this is real, I don't want to guess on Okay, so so that's fine. So, my thought process on that is to take a small percentage of what we anticipate getting for the next fiscal year. So, maybe 10 or 20% of that and apply it to this budget. So, going back to the principle of what you all just said, I think that may be a way of funding roads cuz that's creating a hole. Yeah. No, not but looking to go back into that $800,000 >> go try and fund that $800,000. Okay. The priorities in this town are education and roads. Okay. Okay. And so, we look we can put things in the road though that

028$800,000 road that that it's not creating a hole. And that's what I'm trying to talk about. And that gets us down and down and down and still satisfies the priorities of our town citizenry. >> We can we can follow up on this on Monday. Good news is I got the sheet pulled up. >> Okay. Um Pleased to be organized. Hey, hey, it's uh $810,000. 810206. Okay, so and 20% of that then would be 100 No, 200 like 200. >> 200. So, now we put 200 which is a reasonable amount to anticipate that we will get and not the put 200 in from that into the capital expense. Again, the roads. Now we've got 600,000 of that 884 or whatever it was dollar 821. uh line item covered. How does that change the numbers? By that

029logic, couldn't we also anticipate income from the speed cameras if we're conservative? I wouldn't touch Yeah, it's kind of Well, I think we can talk about that cuz there's going to be something. There'll be something. All right, so um I mean, you guys can't You guys came ready to to to to do work tonight. Yeah, I like it. Um so, just for example purposes only, right? Um right now we have property tax past due. Um this is a line item that's always been in our budget. You can see that um you know, 247. I'm just going to for demonstration purposes only change that to 550 okay just so From what number? From 350. I'm just trying to illustrate the 200,000. That's all I want to do for you guys right now. Um Well, before you

030do that, how did you come up with that 350? Um we looked at the historical values of of where we've been ending. Um a little bit conservative, you know, you can look at without a tax Yeah, with Well, and you can Yeah, you can't see Okay, good. Um We put a tax sale could reduce this amount. Um But if you're at you $250,000 or or we're not playing too much because we think we probably made you more in the tax sale. So, um but to reiterate, we were at 350 in that. I just put an additional $200,000 uh into that under the revenue side going back into the mill rate. You've now brought it down to 9.55%. So, you've gotten 200 200 You've gotten $600,000. And that's with fully funding the education budget as is

031and adding in those number of roads, extra money for road repair, correct? That is correct. And meanwhile, inflation rate is what? 3 4% maybe? I think it's up to four now, but you know, creeping towards five is what I remember from the news last week, but it's, you know, so costs how much our our health insurance has gone up how much? We We got a little bit of advantage on our health insurance. Our health insurance Went down? It went It went only went up 35,000. Okay. So. And our utilities went up. Yeah, every one of those line items went up. Okay. Other insurance that we have went up. Vehicle insurance, other insurance. We switched our insurance last year after we had a budget, um which was our workers comp insurance. So, in the budget, we

032had a higher number. So, in this budget, we brought in the lower number. So, although workers comp went up, it went up on the lower number that we didn't account for last year, if that makes sense. But our lab, our buildings, it did go up. I will tell you that that our buildings once did go up. >> At least 10 to 15%? I think it was 10%. Excuse me, I think it was 10%. What about liability insurance or were we Are you on that? We're not self-insured. That was what I was with the li- That's where I was going with that percent. Yeah. Okay. So Now let's talk speed cameras. >> Yeah. And and And then we have we have but we also went up with our employee-related expenses. Our contractual increases went up. Um

033I mean, you guys see the line items. You You saw all of them, you know, there was very little reduction. We just tried to you know, combine where we could. We picked up savings obviously on the insurance. We picked up savings on the IT services. So we picked up savings along the way that to help, you know, mitigate the increases in the other line items, but >> an increase in the town budget and the mill rate because of inflation and those type of increases, correct? That's nearly impossible to achieve. >> the status quo, not adding anything, you're still going to get a significant increase, correct? >> Correct. Okay. Now, yeah, speed cameras, let's look at that. So as you know, speed cameras were approved I know the days are starting to roll together. I think

034it was end of last week. We should have them up and running within 90 days. That 90 days also includes the 30-day only warnings can be issued. We are at the state's mercy because we are putting them on state roads. We do need to pull the right-of-way permit. Sometimes the state of Connecticut moves very quickly. Sometimes they do not. But we'll pressure them any which way we can. This is approved by the state of Connecticut, so I think they're going to be a little bit more cooperative in working with us to get that permit pulled. So the state stream can come out and put the cameras up. But I truly believe those cameras will be up very very in in running very early in the 2027 fiscal year, meaning July or August. And just to

035be very clear because there was some bizarre posts on Facebook today about the speed I try to stay off Facebook. >> about the speed cameras, about how this is that our increase for our budget is because we're buying those speed cameras. We're not paying any money for the speed cameras. Uh not $1 of taxpayer money went towards speed cameras. I I don't know all your friends. I don't think you guys are giving yourselves enough credit. We are one of very few towns that actually went out to an RFP process. We vetted and and I I I know we have two newer select people, but the the former board, we vetted seven or eight different companies, all pitched different proposals. I believe it was this board that decided to go with Site Street because it was

036zero out of pocket, zero yearly costs. Here's the whole math. >> do the collection. >> They do the collection. 55% goes to them, 45% goes to us. They don't get paid unless we get paid. >> And and even bigger than that, no future obligation with Site Street that they could come looking for us for the money afterwards. That is correct. Oh, yeah, yeah, 100% correct. Yes. So, very conservatively, what would you use for a number from that? So, all I have is is what other towns you're have the high of Middletown, which made 600,000 in you know, 30 days, and then you have the little town of Marboro that made 15,000. You want to go real conservative? I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign. Cuz we can't look at Middletown.

037They have a lot more traffic. More more traffic, agreed. 200,000 in the first year? 210. And of The town share or the total collected? >> Oh, no, town share, meaning that's what's going to be deposited into like our general fund. >> So, now if we put that in, we are covering the roads that we put in on Monday. Almost 100%. Well, we could make the speed cameras 210,000 and as Bill pointed out, we hit the number. >> Sorry. I'm sorry, it would have to be 221. All right. Something like that. >> Was it 821? It was 821. It was 821. I actually wrote that one down, so. Uh now, here's a line item that nobody before has ever talked about cuz speed cameras didn't exist, so I'm going to I just for illustration purposes only

038You know, a miscellaneous fund? Or do we have a uh traffic fine account? Tom, any suggestions where to just for illustrate uh you know what? Parking fines. >> There we go. There we go. I mean, we got a whole whopping $1,150 in there, so I didn't know you did parking fines. We account for every dollar we can. 221 is the number? 221 would be the number. So, I'm going to change this number to 222150. Going back to the mill rate, you're now at 2.57, 8.80%. Is that motor vehicle cap? The Oh, yeah. Um we're not So, I would click to this sheet, but be and I'm not even bothering looking at that sheet because we don't need to look at that sheet cuz the formula's on here just work because at 31.74, we're below the

039motor vehicle cap. So, that would be the mill rate uh 31.74 with everything that was done Monday and tonight. So, just to recap, we've tapped potential sale of town-owned properties this next year. And I list the amounts that we all are in agreement, right? So, you get 200,000 there. Right? We took 400,000 out of the savings account. 200,000? 200,000. Okay, sorry. 200,000 out of the savings account. Increased Cuz you took more. So, you increased Increased what we were taking by 200,000. We have tax sales of 200,000. And we have speed cameras of 221,000. And today at at that number we're doing the roads. No other adjustments to the budget, we would be at an 8.8% tax increase and a mill rate of 31.74. That is correct. Now, these roads, are we looking to have those

040done right away or could we save some towards the second half of the year in case we're not getting the funds in that we need for that line item? We don't actually get the funding. It's definitely a a Jim Rollins question, but I I would We did that with Enrads, which was a $400,000 solar project that we ended up that check's literally coming in in June, but good story and good good ending to the story. We could instruct Jim or I could instruct Jim, release $400,000, get that stuff paid as soon as we have a budget. The remaining $421,000, you're going to have to wait until the spring. Get a bid, get it ready, get it going. We could do that. Yeah. I It's a It's It's definitely a a right conservative way to do

041it because if we projected wildly wrong, we just tell Jim, "Don't pay for those roads. We don't have the money." And that's my biggest fear. Is everything you guys are saying is proposed, might come in. I I I like the actual stuff a little bit better here. Granted, I was actually just on uh the road this morning right where the radar comes up. I'm doing 35, the guy goes through the light, he's doing 45 cuz I saw his speed limit his speed. So, again, it's all proposed and that's what makes me a little nervous cuz I I'd like to be a little bit more conservative. And if we were going to pave any roads, I wouldn't pave any of the roads that's on that list because some of those roads should just be a dirt

042road because there's only like one or two houses on it. Cuz I got a phone call after the last meeting from somebody that used to work here and said, "There's like one house on Winchester uh road, which is you know, almost out of nowhere. Like the road that's in between these buildings. There's There's nothing there." So, that that should just be a dirt road. I think that's just a waste of of resources which could go to another road that really needs it. Cuz I've been on some of the roads, damn Berry Quarter Road is horrible. So, that's my thinking. I'd be a little I'm a little leery of all the projecting. >> more than it These were the only mill and pavers. That's how they got that way. >> but I'm just a little worried

043that we're just projecting what could possibly come. Could you just remind me and everyone what what Baxter actually sold for? $300,000. >> $300,000. And have they received their funding yet? They have not received their funding yet. So, Paul, >> I thought there was a deadline on that funding. Um not that I'm aware of. I I I I I I I You know, whether they get their funding or not, I mean, we had a contract with them to to to to sell the property. They own it. They They've met their obligation and to the town in terms of they had to get us a check, you know, by October 30th. Um the only pending uh uh item that we have with them um is as we were going through electric bills, we realized that we were

044still paying the electricity for bachelor. Went back to the agreement. Realized that they should have been paying the electricity and we sent them $18,000 invoice. They said we don't have the money right now, but when we get our funding we'll pay you. I said, "Okay." You charging interest? I was I'm being nice now. So, Paul, now let's take these numbers. Just so we can see what it does. And take the 821 road repair out. Well, we have to use to avoid the fiscal cliff. We need to use those funds for one-time expenses. Not necessarily, cuz the revenue is from town-owned properties. We believe that's a real number. The tax sales we think is a real number and the speed cameras. And it's not it's not unprecedented to take a few hundred thousand dollars out of

045the savings account in a difficult year like we're in. And stay way above our 18%. But you And there's two $729,000 of additional new tax revenue funded capital so that we could cover. So. Just one small correction. It's already being proposed that we take $875,000 out of the savings account. So, you're going to bring that up. By 200,000. By 200,000. Correct. So, take the road project out. Since the roads are not roads that seem to get a lot of fanfare, people are excited about and they're out in the middle of nowhere. Tom, where did you bury the road projects? Uh, next Uh, sorry. Got it. Yep. Yep. I got it. Are you keeping an eye on him, Tom? No. 33. So, we start with the 100. I want to make sure I delete all the

046right ones. 400,000, right? >> out those values you have in the 10 column, that should all be Oops. All right. That now brings it down to 1.75 6.01%. I I know that we're we're doing demonstrations. I I just caution the board a little bit and I think we can get there. Speed camera money, it's unique in what we can spend it on, police and our roadway infrastructure. I think I can make a good argument that the $400,000 that if we don't go with the 821, this is only for discussion purposes. If we don't go with the 821, the 400,000 we have in the budget for road repair, I can make a pretty good argument that the speed camera money is justified in in in what we do with that $400,000 line item. Um I I

047don't believe we're settling on a budget tonight. I think we're going to do that Monday. I'm glad I have a weekend to just come back on Monday, but I just wanted to didn't want any surprises if I come in and say >> wanted to play with that a little, not making any motion at this point. Yep. To see what other sources of revenue we I mean, we could give up our stipend, even though it's in the charter we could waive it and that's $7,000 a year. >> won't let you. We've actually tried it. Yeah, I think they tried it. No, they tried it a couple of years ago. You can certainly You can certainly write a check back to Parks and Recreation or Friends of Main Street or You actually cannot do that unless the

048department has their own account, like a a account. So, if you write a check to the town of Winchester, it goes in our general fund. You cannot dictate where it goes. where it goes. So, if anyone is really wealthy and wants to leave an inheritance, you can't Please do it, but know that, you know, I don't want you coming after us, you know, from the other side saying, "I wanted it to go here." I can't. I'm prevented by law from doing it. >> We can look at removing that stipend with the Charter Review Commission. I'll bring it up. I can't. Well, you were on it. Yeah. I didn't even know what it was, a stipend. So, everybody out there on Facebook who's upset about our $83 a month, we literally have to take it. There

049was a There was a There was a There was a There was a post that said we were getting considerably more than we actually do. So, just for clarity, the selectmen get $1,000 a year. That's correct. And the mayor gets a little extra for going to all of his ribbon cuttings and He gets $1,500 a year. And we all would be glad to give it back. And taxes are taken out of it. We do it in other ways. Right. And we pay tax on it. We do. We want to give it up, but we can't. All right. You guys spent some time on Facebook, I see. I tried I tried to get off as quickly as I can. So, how can you get the word out? >> Yeah, I know. I lose out. And that's

050the biggest And this is a particularly hot time on Facebook. Yes. Yes. The problem is it's a very small percentage of the population. >> for leaving out the education people while we figured this out, but I think it's important based on what we're going to do now. Theoretically, having walked through all this, we're at a 6% increase and a 1.75 to the mill rate. And all you've done in essence is you've two, four, six, you've injected $821,000 in {quote} {unquote} new revenue. You've taken out $821,000 of expenses, which was those five or six roads. You everything else we did on Monday. So, in essence, the recap of literally the last 45 minutes. So. Thank you for entertaining that. Um do you want me to reset everything back Remember, no motions, nothing's definite. You all >>

051Let's leave it where it's at for now, cuz I think this is a work in progress that I mean, I'm comfortable with. I think most everybody here is. This looks okay so far. I'm assuming you screenshotted the old numbers already anyway, right? >> It's all It's all in there. No, so what I was explaining to Tom earlier is I have the muck around copy over here. Tom has the old He has the master master over there. I thought I knew where we were going tonight, right? So, let me muck things up. Let me And then, when we start making motions, we'll go over to Tom's, and that's the master one, because I thought it's important to walk through every possible scenario to show you what it looks like. And then, as motions are made, we'll

052we'll we'll do it in the master document. So, that's all this was. With that, I don't want to take the mayor's job, but maybe I will a little bit. Dr. Luby, you ready? >> While she's getting ready, I'm going to run out. Okay. But do you need a quick 2 minutes or no? Make a motion for a 2-minute For 2 minutes? Uh recess for 2 minutes. While she sets up. Okay. 2-minute recess. All in favor. I don't think we need to motion to Thank you for your presentation. Mics are off. You guys can go. >> Mhm. >> We're back from recess at 7:50. Madam Superintendent. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to bring a little light to the numbers on the page of the Board of Education budget. Um we shared a presentation a

053couple weeks ago, I suppose, back at Pearson School, and it had um all the things. It had our goals, it had all the emotional appeal, it had all the things. In uh respect to your time tonight, I'm going to sort of zip it right down and really just go to numbers, because I think that's obviously what you need to be brought up to date with is whether there is any room in this budget to take further cuts. Um so, I'm going to be sort of direct in that way, but at any point if you want me to dig in deeper on detail or zoom back out to why it matters, ask the question, please. I welcome all of your questions. Um so, just to paint a little context, uh our budget process begins way back

054in October when we start building. By the time I had a budget that I presented to the Board of Education, I had already said no to countless requests for staff and things that we need. Um, the budget that I proposed to the Board of Education reflected $115,000 of spending reductions. We went through, and I'm going to show you where in the budget anything that's within my purview we sliced, and I'm going to show you that. Technology lines, supply lines, like nothing went up that's in my control. Um and there were lots of things that never got into the budget that we wanted. The budget that you're looking at that's in your book tonight has no added positions. I know that in the larger town budget there was some discussion when I was here um during

055Paul's presentation, there were some departments that had additions and modest growth in wages. There is nothing in our budget. There is less in our budget for the coming year than is in our budget today. Um, there's also no capital, no repair, there's no anything like that in the Board of Ed budget. So, the Board of Ed, when they reviewed uh the budget that I presented, uh cut $500,000 out of the budget that I proposed um in anticipation of the fact that a large increase would be undesirable. That $500,000 took into account everything we knew that I had proposed. It was about $370,000 for five full-time positions. I've labeled them special education. They were things like a BCBA, um paraeducators, special education teacher, which we know we need, first of all, and we also know that

056if we add those positions, we will uh limit future outplacements for students because we'll be better able to meet their needs. And, you know, it's hard to budget for what you won't have to spend as a result, but when you see the magnitude of special education outplacing a child, you understand why spending a little to save a lot makes a lot of sense. Um we also had other things in there, lunch monitors, part-time custodian. Altogether, that was five $377,000, I think. So, to get all the way to the $500,000 cap, I started going backwards from where we sit today. And we're pulling out a grade six teacher. We Since the history of dawn of time, I believe, Winchester Public Schools has had four teachers at every grade level. We have somewhere around 75 to 80

057kids in every grade level with extraordinary consistency. We have a couple of different ways of seeing that in your budget book. There's a table um on page seven that shows you the predictions, and page eight shows you the history, but we're very standard for that. So, we have already anticipated that we will take out a sixth grade teacher for next year, bringing the class sizes up into the upper 20s. Actually, we're starting at 24. One new student moving into the older age range. Um and we will need that position the following year because the grade coming behind them actually has five sections at the grade level. That's where your COVID bubble happened a little bit. People held kids out, so ordinarily, we're four at every grade, but next year's fifth grade will have five sections.

058So, that sixth grade teacher is going to have to come back. So, just also by way of setting the table, I'll remind everyone that we have come with an 8% ask this year. If we had been doing 2-3% every single year, we wouldn't need the 8%. But where inflation or the cost of living is up 50%, we're up half of that over the same period of time. So, we are playing catch-up and it's not um necessary to assume that if we do 6% one year, 7% another year, that it will be 6 and 7% every year. At some point, you reach the place where you have the supports you need in the schools and you're only moving up with the cost of living. But, we are filling some pretty vast holes as grant dollars evaporate.

059So, you see that left-hand column shows you all the years of zero and you don't have to do the math to recognize the impact of that in our schools and what happens with the value of the dollar. We survived that during that time because we had receivership money and we had COVID money that followed it. But, just like you've all just been talking about creating budget holes, we've been masking the needs of the schools through the good grace of grant funds. So, in the absence of those, we are suddenly left with an enormous cliff and we're trying trying to just survive. Um this is a summary of all the numbers just to show you where we are. This is a um I'm calling it like a location Excuse me, a location budget. Um we have

060two groups of out-of-district students. They are out-of-district special education students who through a planning and placement team meeting, the family in conjunction with the school district has said, "You don't have an appropriate program. You We need to send this child somewhere else." And that means we're paying tuition and we're paying transportation. And that is a whole lot of money. The out-of-district choice, the far right column, is a significantly smaller amount of money and that is largely magnet school and that's our science program. We pay tuition to that in the neighborhood of $4,000 a the Um and then the district-wide Hinsdale and Pearson obviously is the pre-K 6 program. Um And you can see that the increase for the pre-K 6 program is $440,000. Our health insurance alone is up 400 um We'll get to that

061in a second, but that is the amount of just our health insurance. So, in other words, we're eating the cost of the health insurance increase and going backwards. Um Okay, good. Yep. So, here's what I want to show you. This is the cover page to the budget. In your book, it's page 20 three. If you want to follow along. What I've highlighted are the lines that I can influence other than personnel. And I'm going to share this. We're not going to go through every line in the budget unless you wish to and by all means we can go all the way to the pennies and all the way to um band-aids for the nurses supplies or we can stay up a level. But the ones I've highlighted here in yellow, we're going to just take

062a look at those for a second, but what I want you to notice is all the yellow ones are the ones that are in parentheses, meaning they're going backwards. Where we had the ability to mitigate the rising costs, we took it. So, you'll see wages is up 1%. We've cut positions, we've hired less expensive people. We are up literally 1% in wages, which given that we have contractual raises, means we're actually less than that. If everyone had 2 and 3% raises, you would expect that number to be 2 and 3%, but we're We have mitigated that as much as possible. That 420 number is basically the amount of the health insurance, which again is the entire amount of our increase. In the bottom half here, we're going to take a quick look at the yellow

063ones at these, but property services is the Chromebook, please. Transportation is uh that is our in-district transportation, 51X. That's the buses to get to and from school for us, pre-K all the way up through Gilbert. The uh that also includes the special education transportation. That's all kinds of transportation. The special ed out of district tuition, we really have no ability to influence. The state is well aware of just how prohibited it prohibited it is and looks for ways to help, but there's not much to be done there. And of course the Gilbert school tuition. So, the only things I have sway over are in yellow and they all went backwards. So, the 300 series is the first yellow line and that's professional technical services. You'll see that line on the over under is down $24,000.

064Um anywhere we could cut, we did cut. Um the legal dollar amount is up because that's what it costs to use the lawyer. It's there's not much to be done about that. We did add for the first time $5,000 for professional development. It was really more nominal to say the teachers we value you and we want to spend money on supporting you. Um if you cut me $5,000, I will respectfully and happily take that out. It That's but that's the size of what I can control. Um the medical advisor are not an option. $45,000 for outside evaluations is for students who need um special education evaluations, psychiatric exams. Um $13,000 for an auditor, that's state required. That's uh Paul talked about the town audit, that's our piece of it. Audiology is, again, a required service.

065Technology services way down. Um, and the last one, the substitute and temporary staffing, that's uh substitute nurses. In the 500 series, this is the second one of the yellow lines where we have sway. It's down $39,000. Um, choice placement, some of that is actually because some kids were categorized in funny ways, it's not really down that much. Um, adult ed tuition, we don't actually influence, we don't provide that, we're state required to, so we pay the money to at advance. We get a grant for $25,000, so we pay half of the state, and they take the grant money and they provide You're required to provide adult ed, and we're so little that it doesn't make sense to, you know, they put out the booklet with all the classes, and our people in our community can

066attend those, but we don't have an option about that. Um, field experiences are field trips for the kids. Again, if you said to me, "Julie, you've convinced us, we're only going to cut, you know, $30,000," I would be loath to go to that 16, but if it were a small enough number, that's something I can look at, and if we don't have to take the kids on field trips, but we should. Um, so supplies, the instructional supplies is largely things like math workbooks, the reading workbooks. Um, our science curriculum is very hands-on, so it's straws and marshmallows and paper clips and all the things to do sink and float, you know, connect the wires, but that's instructional supplies. Um, instructional software licenses, you can see we trimmed. Nurse supplies is up a little bit. Negligibly,

067$1,000. Um the food service subsidy is what we have to pay to make the food services run at a zero. We can't run it at a deficit. Um tech supplies is mice, keyboards, and administrative supplies is the walkie-talkies, computer folders. Um And again, that's down. Equipment and software licenses way down. We shaved, we went through every single program that we paid for, got rid of anything that we could live without. So, I think the biggest thing there is the administrative software and licenses. Those are things like PowerSchool, our student information system, which we're required to use. It communicates to the state of Connecticut, sends all of our enrollment data. But again, we got rid of anything we could. Dues and fees, we have $11,000 for things um like professional organizations, Chamber of Commerce. Uh we

068pay $1,000 to the guy who tells us whether or not we can open school on a snow day. Um theoretically, we could quit that and just wait and copy someone else. Um do whatever Region 7 does, but you know, we would be literally the only school district in the state that doesn't hire this guy. Smart man, right? $1,000 from 169 school districts. Just to tell you it's snowing. Just to tell you it's snowing and whether we need to open school. I know. And the the Y also hires all the public works directors, too. We pay for it, too, to the towns, though. You sure? I don't think we do. John, right? Yeah, I don't think Winchester does. Because I >> towns paid for it. I didn't know that position existed, to be honest with you.

069I'm like, where does one apply? It's not a close call. Yeah, $1,000 167 school No, our guy. He's our town guy. Not Phil. Jim? Phil Passante? Yeah, I share it with Phil Passante. He's on the I just added him to our distribution list. I'm sorry, John. Um so, the town doesn't have to pay cuz we got his one. So, coming into the school, you know, so a savvy superintendent says, "Okay, this is a big number. Nobody's going to be very happy. Um what can I get rid of?" So, last year, um I was on a superintendent's call when everybody was struggling and someone said, "Huh, we're going to have to stop doing transportation to the out-of-town magnets." I called Nancy. I'm like, "We're not doing She says, "We don't." Okay, then there was that. "We're

070getting rid of library aides." I'm like, "We don't have that." Like, we have all those years of zeros, we have shaved, shaved, shaved, shaved. Just in the last 2 years, we or to the budget you're getting today, eliminated a classroom teacher, a speech and language pathologist, a speech and language assistant, special ed para, academic interventionist, kindergarten assistant, behavior tech. Our EL teacher went from full-time to 0.8. Um we removed um the full-time executive assistant that worked up at Gilbert School doing special education, uh which has put a lot of workload on the remaining people. There used to be two people that worked partial day in the schools so that when people come into the school, there's a person there to greet them at all times. Now, there's only one secretary left in each school. So,

071if she goes to lunch, the principal sits in her desk. Um that'll be harder if we have only one principal. Um so, we are down to one secretary in each school, one secretary for special education, and one secretary for all of central office. So, all of those positions are gone. We don't do um we literally don't do anything we're not required to do by law. So, a few of the things what I was hoping you would see by the page with the yellow lines is that I guess my point of all that is any cuts to the Board of Ed budget is people. I mean, if you add up everything I'm just going to hop back to that for one second and show you. If you add up everything in the yellow, it's about $550,000.

072$25,500,000 is Gilbert, out-of-district special ed, transportation, and personnel. And the only one of those I can influence is personnel. So, that 550,000 that there's like you know, I could get 5, 10,000 out of for sure, but past that it's people. Um I've been heard to say if I had to cut, say, $30,000 or something, I would not cut a human being. I would find it. As soon as you get to about 50,000, we are tipping over and the only way to get that kind of money is a person. And in fact, uh we got a memo yesterday that uh the president has released his fiscal year '27 uh budget and we are down about $30,000 in federal grants. So, this budget is now 30,000 short because we use every grant dollar to pay for staff.

073So, we're already in a $30,000 hole. So, couple of things to have in your thoughts when we start talking about reductions and um staff. Right now, we have um in classes roughly 20 kids in a class. It varies a little bit in different grades, but on average it's probably about 20 students per class with four teachers. If I go to three teachers, then you're taking one class, seven kids, and putting it on the others. Now, you're in the high 20s. If you go above 18 in pre-K and kindergarten, if you go above 20 in one and 2, and if you go above 24 in grades 3 through 6, the teachers' contract has an overage fee, if you will. So, if I have four teachers with classes of 21, and then I go down to three

074classes like I would have in my fourth grade, those class sizes will go up to um actually 21 plus I did bad math there. Actually up to 28. Um and then those extra kids cost 124 each. So, I just eliminated my lowest-paying my lowest-paid teacher, cuz that's how education works. You get rid of the last guy in, the young new teacher. Um and now I'm paying someone who's a veteran at the top end of the scale 124 for every child over. So, if you go from four sections to three sections, there is some savings, but if you like I in one of the scenarios I'm going to show you, if I cut one teacher in grades 2, 3, 4, and 5, I'm only saving the amount of three teachers because of the penalties I'm paying

075to do that. So, when you get into you know, that just it's like a Möbius strip. At some point it starts to actually cost you more instead of less. Um the other thing that I didn't take into account right away and was reminded I have to add back in, for um every position that we eliminate, if people don't find other work, they will collect unemployment. Um it varies extraordinarily based on how long they worked for you, where else they worked, what their salary was. There's a lot of variables, but loosely we just priced out a few people to get an example, and it looks to be about a third of what we're paying them. So, if I eliminate three people, I actually have to eliminate a fourth to cover the unemployment of the other three.

076So, every three people becomes four people. Can I stop you for a second? Absolutely. Um that stipend, is that a state mandated thing or is that something that the Board of Ed gave to the teachers in their contracts? It is in our teachers' contract. That's what I thought. Not entirely uncommon. A lot of So, some districts don't actually have a vehicle, they just have a hard stop, like you can't go over. So, this district had a plan for what would happen if you did go over. Okay. Uh Otherwise, we'd have to hire home teacher. If we had a hard stop. It's going to be one or the other. Some districts, if you don't have a mechanism like that, if you get one more student, you have to open another section. And the union will hold

077you to that. So, arguably, like right now, I think I have one second grade class, I think, that is um one student over. So, there's a teacher who's getting 120 each month that child is in class. Um right now, our kindergartens next year, we have 79 students registered. So, we're starting at um three sections of 20 and one of 19. So, the limit there is 18. So, there's another unbudgeted shortfall, cuz we're already seven students over the four teachers that we own in the current budget. Um The other thing that when I was really, you know, Paul and I had talked and I said, "What do you think I should bring? What do you think they're going to want to talk about?" And he said, "Well, you may want to come prepared with what it

078would look like if you sustained a cut of this, this, and this." Um so, I've been giving a lot of thought to where I would go if I had to. And one of the things that's sticky is that we have a lot of folks who are paid, like I said, "Well, I wouldn't want to, but I could give up the instructional coaches." Except they're paid for with the Alliance Grant. And the Alliance Grant isn't going to pay for a fourth grade teacher. So, I can cut them, but it doesn't actually help the budget situation. Our reading teachers are paid for with Title One money. I can cut them, but it's not We pay like $4,000 of her salary in the appropriate budget. We're paying them in grants. So, the positions that aren't like your classroom

079teachers are actually all living in those federal and state grants already for the most part. So, that's a little tricky. You know, people will say, "Well, why would you cut a classroom teacher and not but the coach?" It's like putting coaches in saving money. Do the coaches get benefits, health care, and all that from us though? Yes. Okay. So, we have We there is an expense, particularly health care. Although, we pay that in the grant, too. Oh, it's paid for the I asked so cuz that's paid for by the grant. For the most part, yeah. We we use every grant dollar to cover as much of every person as we can. We have written into there. So, it does often cover the benefits. Um the savings would be, you know, 5,000 or less a person,

080which at that point it's penny wise and pound foolish. Um and then the last piece that I would really have to go through all the different contracts and think through. For example, in the administrator's contract, if I cut the assistant principals, they can take teaching positions and keep their salaries. So, we wouldn't save their salary. We would save the least expensive teacher salary. So, the more And one of my assistant principals is supplemented I think about 40 or 50,000 of her salary comes out of the grants as well. So, I I just say to you by way of saying, if you're hearing things and saying, "Well, why this and not that?" There are just these weird pressure points of it doesn't save you money to cut some positions. So, with that said, um if I

081had to cut $500,000 out of this budget, it it completely human beings because as you saw there's nowhere else to go. In case the screen became see-through. So, the kindergarten classrooms, which we're starting at 20 kids in a class, would have only the one teacher. There'd be no assistants in there. We'd have to give up the safety officers. Um we also already eliminated we have um Tom Dillon, who's our part-time director. He works one day a week for us. We already cut that, so there would be nobody engaged with safety other than me and one principal. Um we would We put a lot of time into finding a principal. We had over 40 applicants, great candidates. Uh they're supposed to be coming back next week for um performance tasks, but if we didn't hire one,

082then the one remaining principal would go between the two schools. Um across the district, we don't have counselors, we have social workers. This is our model, so we have two at Hinsdale, two at Pearson, and one at Gilbert. Um they manage a lot of family and student stuff. Um we would pull one out and have people cross buildings. Um we currently have in the budget six interventionists, three at Hinsdale, three at Pearson. Four of the six are paid all but like $1,000 by uh the Title One Alliance. Alliance. The Alliance. There are two of them that are in the uh appropriated budget, so one out of Hinsdale, one out of Pearson. Uh we currently have three preschool teachers. Two of them teach a full-day class of 16 students, and one of them has two half-day

083classes. We would give up one section of that and be able to serve 32 less students, because we wouldn't continue to have two classes. Um and we could give up the two reading teachers, but the savings on that again is very minimal because they're in grants largely. And that's at a half time. So, the loss of two interventionists uh leading to more referrals for special ed, that means that the out of district costs can really skyrocket, right? If you had to refer more. So, when kids are falling behind, intervention is the first line of support. Mhm. And Mike. Go ahead, tell. No, oh, sorry, you got to Sorry, apologize. Want to make sure we heard Kevin. Sorry. Intervention is a regular education piece. The One of the things that I've been wrestling with a little

084is you can't really not have any interventionists because the definition of identification for special education is the lack of response to intervention. So, it will get really tricky if we don't have any interventionists to be able to say, well, we tried to intervene, but nothing worked. Um because there will be no one to support the classroom teacher. It will just be the reading teachers will be gone, the interventionists um So, ultimately, you would have students needing more support in the classroom from the classroom teacher with no hands on deck to support. Somewhere there's going to be the kids who are now managing in the classroom with special education support. Eventually, yeah, they're going to fall off the other end because the less humans we have in the schools, the less able we are to continue

085kids. And that will also impact the regular education students as well, because they're not going to have the attention of the teacher because the teacher's being time is being consumed by the kids that need more assistance, correct? Yes. If the risk of saying what I think is obvious, there is nothing about this that is good education or that I feel good about or that I would be proud to say I was a superintendent of. If we we rid of all those positions, we are doing irreparable harm. And unfortunately, at $500,000, I have nowhere else to go. And I guess that's the main thing I wanted to make sure that if you don't believe that in your heart of hearts, take me through every page of this and ask me what else we can give up

086instead. Find it. Show me. Find it. Help me because at $500,000, we will not look like the same school system. And that's $500,000. Um at the risk of being ridiculous, I'll show you what a million looks like. It's everything you saw before, and then it's also four more classroom teachers. So now your class sizes are 26, 7, and 8 in all the little grades going all the way down to second grade. Um no instructional coaches, no assistant principals. So now you have one principal and no assistant principals across two buildings. One nurse to go between the two schools. The law requires us to have a nurse for the district. Best I can determine on some quick news research, it's not illegal to have one nurse go back and forth. We do have a student in

087each building with medical needs where typically, if we don't have the nurse on site, the parent will keep the child home. So that's really less than ideal, but it's not against the law. Um we would have to give up some special education teachers, a special administrator, and another social worker. So two of the five. That should get me about to a million dollars. Somewhere around there. You can also eliminate the superintendent position because I won't be here. Um 1.5 is all of those things I already said. The kindergarten assistants, the safety officers, the principal, the assistant principals, two social workers, two interventionists, two pre-K teachers now, so we have just 16 seats available, which we have to maintain at least a 50% ratio of regular education, special education, so we're pushing it there. We may

088get out of compliance with that. Reading teachers are gone. Five classroom teachers. We're in grade one, we're up into the high 20s now. Instructional coaches are gone, the nurse, the special ed. An assistant superintendent, a custodian in each building, which is ludicrous since we have only two to start with during the evenings to clean the whole building. It's one and a half in one building and two in the other. And we would have to get rid of library, art, music, which are the specials. The teachers are by contract need to have 45 minutes a day to do their planning for their teaching. The way they get that is when the kids go to art, library, and music. So, if we didn't have specials, the kids wouldn't have library, art, and music, and we would stop

089the school day 45 minutes shorter so that the teachers' prep period is when the kids went home. And that would affect Gilbert because we run one bus run, not two, correct? So, we have two tiers of buses, but at our day, right now they start before us and end before us. So, unless they want to go later and extend their day, yes, it would impact them because we would need the buses to arrive around when they're doing their afternoon runs. So, pre-K through 12 would have to go home 45 minutes earlier, probably. So, 1.5 million I mean Like I'm saying with a straight face, but I mean this is catastrophic. Love it. And this is after the cuts that you took when your board asked for $500,000 grant. We took the $500,000. I think some

090of my board members felt that that was they were doing the people said things like, well, we're going to do the work here so that they don't have to. They being the bill board of education. >> They being you guys, right? The board of ed did that in anticipation of knowing there would be an expectation that something would be done. So we took out everything new and started going backwards before it got here. Um and Paul said 2 million was on the table, so I tried. Uh one of the things that I did mention is they went like if you look at the number of people, you're at 10% of the staff with $500,000. We only have about 150 people total who work in the district. Um many of those paid through grants. So that's

09110% of the people. That's 15 to 20% of the people. This is 25. This is one in four people who work here are gone. And this is a third of the staff to get to $2 million. All right. Do you have any reserve funds that could be applied to reduce your ask to the taxpayers? Great question. So like every school district at the end of the year, if you haven't spent your entire appropriated budget, you either give it back to the town or you can respectfully request that it go into your um reserve account. So we have about $40,000 in that because we spend differently in the appropriated budget, but we have about $48,000 I think in there. And there is if we make it to the end of the year intact, about $400,000 left

092over of a undesignated public grant in going to say that is essentially our safety net. Um Nancy and I started having the conversation that you know, that would be the ultimate budget hole if we apply it, but what we think saying was if we had to cut $400,000 for example, so either we do all of these atrocious and unthinkable things or we spend the $400,000, have zero safety net. You know, that means if one child moves in with a $150,000 tuition bill, we have nowhere to go. Like we have no cushion whatsoever, but at least it puts off the decimation one year. The following year we would have a $400,000 hole, but who knows what can happen in a year? So >> So if you had a teacher had a a student move into the

093district that you didn't budget for that with special ed, and you would be able to take the money from your savings, that's what you're saying. If that student stays, you wouldn't have the funds then, and if something else happens, another student comes in, you wouldn't have the money. Yeah, we're you know, we talked about like because I was listening you all talked about the town and then however much you have in savings and whatever percent. We have $400,000, so I don't know what that is as a percent or what would be advisable. I you know, I don't This is the only large business I run, but I imagine in the real world there's a percent of you know, they say you should always have X amount months of like your household income in savings, you

094know, God forbid something happens. I don't know what that threshold is. You're at 2%, sorry. We're at 2% of what? Okay, so we have a 2% cushion. Um which it would be insane to use up, but I would probably means and I will have to look each other in the eye, but I would use that before I would decimate the schools. Um 40 in the 44,000 or whatever in your That's the non-lapsing fund or is it called And that's where the town gives you permission to hold that excess. Right. And you said every district does that. So, under state statute, every district can say to the town, "Hey, we've got this amount left over. We'd like to put it." And a lot of districts fund their capitals that way. Like, whatever you don't spend most

095districts' budget is a little less tight than ours. And most districts you know, if we're getting down to $40,000 of leftover money on a $26 million budget, we're budgeting really close. Like, we're living right at our edge. I think a lot of districts have a lot more fudge room. So, you're not, you know, putting more things into your budget trying to make sure you have leftover funds to go into the non-lapsing fund. That would be lovely, but no. My first year here we had um 45,000, 48,000. And the year before that they had I think 1,600 left at the end of the year. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor. I am have a family emergency. Can we take a recess and let me see what the situation is? We're on Recess at 8:26. >> Mhm. >> It's

096been a week this week pretty much. Sorry, folks. Okay. We're back from recess at 8:36 p.m. Continue. So, I was asking you question when we took the break. So, you talked about this this law the statute that provides for that you have to return the funds to the unused funds to the school. Correct. Unless the the the school the town unless the town gives you permission. >> Yeah. You said every that applies to every district. I'm not sure now. Does it apply to >> it is. Yeah. Does it >> budget is yours to keep. Okay. Does it apply to Gilbert as since they're part of our appropriate your appropriate budget and they're considered a district in of themselves? I can't answer that as since I'm not a lawyer I won't say if it does apply

097to them. I can tell you that they not return funds. They're it's a little different because they charge us tuition. >> Okay. Right. And we're not a municipality so They're like a vendor. So, no we don't get money back at the end whether or not it's expended whatever they charged us as their student. Okay. And I'll assume that that's the way the law is. Thank you. Now, those those big areas of transportation, um like how does it look like uh as far as, you know, the I know the bus system and and also the out of district transportation? Like how does that look? How do you find um you know, is there an RFP that goes out or like how does that work as far as negotiating with those vendors, finding those vendors? Those are

098vendors, right? Yes. Yeah. So, are you doing the out of district transportation? Yeah, let's start with that. So, let me get to where we transport to. Let me get to 500. Um Yeah, I know. This is my phone as fast as I can. Okay. So, in the 500s, our in-district transportation, district-wide regular transportation, the 512 R line, it goes out to bid. Um we actually our contract ended, we went to bid this year. There was only one bidder on the contract. Um we negotiated against the one and only bid. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to do that, but we did. We didn't really save money, but we restructured it. It was going to be like 8% in the first year, 7%, 6%, 5% increase each year, and we negotiated to smooth

099it out a bit to have less of an hit this year. Um so, that's how the district-wide transportation works. The out of district transportation is we have one person whose job it is to do all things money related to special education. Um and she contacts the companies that exist. First, if the student is added, let's say you moved in and you're going to need to go to Oak Hill. So, if we already have a student at Oak Hill and it's safe for you and the existing student to go, then we just add you onto our existing run. If we don't have an existing run, then we have a list of all of the companies that offer special education transportation and we will reach out and see if any of them even have the capacity to

100do it. More often than not, you're not taking a low bidder, you're at the mercy of trying to find someone in a sea of nobody can do it. Um but we obviously try to find a person and try to find the least expensive person. I think in our book on page 57, you break down the differing vendors and the number of students, correct? 57 is that shows you we have roughly 26 or 27 students 20 21 22. So, one situation you have one student whose transportation is $130,000. Yep. So, you're you're paying a million three for 26 students transportation. So, let me ask you a question out of the box here. Have you ever offered the parents some money? I love that question. So, we have one parent who currently does it for mileage reimbursement

101at the IRS rate. >> Well, let's let's give them the let's go higher than that. So, I drafted something right before break, um a letter, a fact sheet, and a contract, and I've asked our special ed director to send it to the special ed attorney to make sure A it's legal, but B the proposal will be to say to parents, "Hey, we'll give you $1,000 a month to transport your child. It's going to save us, you know, we get some reimbursement, which is shown against the tuition, but it actually Even $2,000 a month will save us. Right. I mean, have you entertained that? Have you So, like I said, I drafted it right before break, um as soon as we have a lawyer tell us A it's legal and B what you've written is of

102sound quality, then we will send that letter to the 26 parents. Realistically, I don't know how many of them have the capacity >> They can hire somebody to do it for $2,000 a month. Well, that's what I'm thinking. Grandma's going to go, right? For $1,000 to help with your household bills. So, we're That's we're thinking exactly the same way. I won't know if anyone takes us up on that for a few weeks because I would be pushing that one. Even if you had to do the numbers and make them worthwhile. Because a million three is a lot of money to spread out between 26 parents. Yep. Some of Well, don't know if it's 26 parents. We don't know um but what do you know, some of these students require very specialized transportation. That's why the

103expense. Can you explain what type of specialized transportation? >> Typically, the transportation will have restraints. It may be wheelchair accessible. Some students can only go one student on a van. They are not considered safe to be with another child. Often times, you're paying for the driver, the specialized equipment, and a second adult on the van because the child can't be alone. Um so, there's a lot of costs with it. My assumption is that if it's your child, you probably own a vehicle that you can transport your child in. They would have to, right? Oh. Or else the kid stays home. Right. So, I'm thinking that they might, you know, whether or not a parent has the ability to do that consistently. It would have to be the kind of thing like you can't get a

104bus contract on and off. So, people would have to commit to doing it and to give us notice if they can no longer do it. We would always have to be accepting them back if they say we can't do this anymore. So, we're not >> you could shave a million dollars off that number, that'll save a lot of teachers' jobs. We're not getting a million dollars off that number. Realistically, if one student So, typically, I'm going to say on average, it's 60,000 student? If we're paying 160,000, figure their tuition plus the transportation, we're getting back 2/3 of the 60 from the state. So, it's only the transportation is really only costing us around 20,000. So, the savings per student is probably going to be in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 20,000, not hundreds of thousands.

105So, if 25 parents, if five of them took us up on it, it might get me a hundred thousand dollars, but it's not getting us anywhere. Because special education costs for out-of-district students do get reimbursed. Let me show you where the tuition page is. Nancy 562 So, these are the same students on this page. And see how the tuition is like 2.7 million uh plus 7 3.4 million minus 1.3 million. So, this for out-of-district students, if you're spending more than four and a half times your per pupil, so call our per pupil 25 just for easy math. So, four times that is a hundred. So, call it like 112,000. Call it 110. So, anything above 110,000, we get back 2/3 of it. So, just for ease of bookkeeping, you're seeing all of that shown on

106the tuition page, but it's actually the combination of tuition and transportation. Like some of that transportation costs is defrayed by this 1.3 million but rather than splitting it half on one page, half on the other, it's all on this one. Um Well, a hundred thousand dollars is a start. >> Well, the 1.3 million comes off the total cost. So, what's the total cost of these 27 students' tuition and transportation? 3 million something? So, it's 1. 3 million was the transportation number plus the 2 million here is 3.3 million after state reimbursement. So after So, okay. So, after that 1.3 is the 3.3 is after that 1.3 has come off already? After the 1.3 is after the 1.3 is off. Right. Now, now we're required to provide the trans- transportation, correct? So, basically we'd be asking

107the parents, "Would you mind?" And if they change their mind >> sign a memorandum with us that says we're willing to do this. If they change their mind and you don't have that that that fund, your savings account, to make up that difference, or when your student comes in, you still have that problem. 100% it would be risky. My feeling is desperate times call for desperate measures. We offer it. If three people take us up on it, six people take us up on it, it's great. If it busts and three months into it, they're like, "Yeah, we can't do this." then we're in trouble and we'll never do that again. Cuz you can't force them to continue sign a contract, you're going to have to send them back. Oh, no, we have to provide the

108transportation. They could They could enter an agreement with us and back out, for sure. So, entering into something like that could put you in the budget accordingly could put you in a very dangerous fiscal cliff. Right. Within the same budget year. Which is why I'm not making a reduction on it based on an idea, but over the next hopefully we get back from Reagan on Monday, it goes from my special ed director to her special ed attorney, hopefully we have it out to parents by Wednesday. And see if anybody fights. But even if they fight, they can change their mind at any point. So, you'd still have to keep this in your budget, and then if it's not used, it would come back to the town under that statute, correct? That's one way we could

109do it. Or I might say to the teacher and just leave the bus thing. Depends on which way the cat will jump. I'm feeling like And it'll If it's not your child, there's special licensures that's required in order to transport people for disabilities, correct? Yes. For the for the right family that could actually be a move that's helpful for them because I mean $1,000 a month to some families could really like, you know, that could make a huge difference in and uh you know, also it's more time with the parent or with the grandparent rather than with strangers. So, for for the right family it could be a move that is both beneficial and better for the child as well as, you know, the financial advantage. >> These are, you know, like false hope. The

110way he's looking at every lever to pull. I mean, we're coming with things we've never done before. Probably I don't know if any districts are doing but you know, we are looking under every rock and trying anything we can. So, so the median income for the town of Winchester for a family is $66,519 uh to $68,800 and uh $90,000 or $890,000 or at a 1.8% poverty rate. So, this would definitely help some families that that's that's pretty low income for for this town and Yes. It's a win-win. to me it's it's this is going to be tough. But you don't know whether that parent is at home, whether they have other children that are coming off the bus, a different bus, whether they're going to have the the resources, whether grandma is healthy enough to

111manage a child that has difficulty and if they have a good friend that can come with them and monitor the child in the car. There's just way too many variables. You can't budget that way. It's not going to work for all 27 students. If it works, like I said, if I can get five students and save $100,000, I think it's worth But it's not going to be a It's not going to be $100,000. If the lottery wins, it's going to do it. Right. The same teachers, Julie. Me too. It's right right there with you. Well, we're you know, we're we're talking about uh you know, every number we talk about is if a human life and a child's life. We're talking about So, you know, what I like about this proposal is that, you know,

112for for the right family it could be a better move for the child and for their education. If there's cost savings involved, fantastic, but it's I I love the idea of giving more options to families, you know, it could work really well for some families. So. Other comments? So, I I appreciate all the work that that the school staff has has done in all these presentations, but unfortunately for us as a board, um not to sound mean, but you guys are just a line item. And we just look I kind of look at what's coming in and and and what's going out. And I I haven't heard anything about the the ECS money, what's happening. I know that the Republicans in the uh in the legislature are pushing, I know that Jake is. So, they're

113pushing to increase this by $1,192.612. 612, so that brings the total to the ECS to 9,217,569. Um and I'm also hearing that the the majority Democrats in in the legislature are going to shoot this down. So, there there is the money could possibly be there and it could possibly come. It's just sad that that's that's what's happening. I've been uh uh frustrated with some of this and I I've I've shown it a couple times. Um we also have to remember this budget and I'll repeat myself again, only passed by eight votes last time. Which again is showing that maybe some support's there, but some of this possibly not there. Um I just don't I don't know, you know, I'm just I'm I'm torn cuz I cuz I know what the need is, I know what's

114there, but I also know what we can afford. I I've taken a little bit different approach this year. I'm looking more on the revenue side. That's what I don't want, fiscal cliffs. I don't want to presume that we're going to get $200,000 from our cameras. I hope we don't get any money from those, but from what I saw today, I I can definitely I got a feeling there's going to be some, but if we could predict the future, um we'd all have a lot better lives, so that's just kind of what where where I'm at and and the other thing that came up, and and I brought this up once before, was the historical appropriations that got pulled out, um and how they went. And and and I I just don't know how they did

115this. From 2013 almost right up to 2021, the schools were flat at 19,958,149. So, that must have been when it was in receivership. That was '15 to '17. >> '15 to '17. So, right. So, and I remember uh the last superintendent saying there's going to be a fiscal cliff. There's going to be a hole. And here it comes, and it's not just on the school side we've been seeing lately, it's also been on the town side. Um we we had police contracts, we had ambulance contracts, we had all sorts of other stuff, and and also don't forget that um you are having capital projects done because your roof was approved, but the town is also paying for it, so it's not coming out of your capital budget. It's actually going to be coming out of

116our capital budget, so But we have no capital It's just it's it's just very frustrating to to see what's really happening across this whole state, and we're not the only school district that's in this position. I've I've heard some of the things that you even said, if we don't get this money, we're going to close the door. Maybe we just close the door. Maybe we build a school. Maybe we do something different, out of the box. Like Selectman LaMere says. So. We We It's It's not you know, we're in a very unique situation in this district because we can only control a portion of our education budget. You know, I looked at the minutes, you know, for the Gilbert, you know, corp and when they did the budget. There was no ask to the head

117of schools there to propose cuts or what would happen in the scenarios. And we have four members of the WPS Board of Ed that is all that are also on the nine-member Gilbert board. Not one of those members posed a question to Mr. Susi about whether or not they if you could count discount $10,000, $100,000, $200,000, nothing. Yeah, but is it is it up to the to that the the Gilbert uh board to do it or is it up because they're a vendor of our Board of Education? So, is that up to the superintendent >> It's not >> ask the question? >> not up to the superintendent. It's up to the board of The board negotiates. There's no negotiation with Gilbert. >> which is also part of my frustration that they're not even here to

118be part of this conversation. And it's Cuz cuz this is all one town here. We're not It's not the Board of Education or the superintendent against the Board of Selectmen, kind of what this kind of feels like it is here. You know, it's like us against them. And that's that That feeling I'm I'm starting to get here. And it's And it's The question is is that, you know, so, you know, in all the years of budget negotiation of negotiations with Gilbert to try to get a contract. Even in under the current board, Gilbert's never ever been willing to have tuition as part of the contract. Never. Even this year this recent negotiations. I know not when I was trying to negotiate for a couple years were they ever. The only time they ever tuition was

119ever part of a contract is when the receiver was here and set did a 2-year contract and said, "This is how much we're going to pay you. Not paying you a penny more. You take it or you go elsewhere." That's the only time they agreed to it. And you know, that's not you know, the best way to negotiate. It's not the best way to keep, you know, a good healthy relationship and I'm not suggesting that. But I was stunned when I went back and looked at the Gilbert meeting regarding the budget that there was not one question about, "Well, this is an $800,000 increase we're asking for. Is there any way we can reduce this?" Not one question. The questions were all about "How do we sell this?" Because the Gilbert board's not responsible for

120negotiating their tuition down. They're responsible for doing what's fiscally best for Gilbert. To Bill's point, it is Julie's responsibility to play nice with Gilbert and to negotiate a vendor, which is what they are, negotiate to the best of her ability. Yes, they have this crazy law which gives them the authority to say, "Sorry, no." But it's not up to the Gilbert board to look for reductions. They're not That's not their business. It is up to Julie to look for that number. >> Well, when they talked about how in in their budget meeting, when they approved this budget, which was an under an hour meeting, according to the minutes, they did say, "Well, this is what we need to run our school and this is showing that we're good partners with the town of Winchester." How

121is that being good partners? And that's the problem. I think it's not being good partners by not being here for this meeting. I would agree with you there. they have 2. 3 million dollars and I have the bank statement I can pass around. In your an account in a investment fund. We know about 1 million plus came from a covid related grant they got which was to replace was because they kept people employed and it was for people under the IRS guidelines that was for entities that lost revenue because of covid. They didn't lose any revenue because of covid because we kept paying that bill. Well, they lost all their students that came from out outside of us. >> they lost those students. They lost not 1.3 million. No, but they lost >> And then

122the other million where did that come from? We don't know that. We don't have anyone here to ask that question. >> go to any of our other vendors and say open your books, please. She can't call the bus company and say open your books. Oh my gosh, you made 10 million dollars last year. We're going to negotiate our contract down. We can't tell Gilbert how they want to run their business. What we can do and what is the superintendent's responsibility is to talk to Gilbert and see if she can negotiate something and they have in the past reduced their ask. Now, last year they asked for $200,000. Right? As opposed to as opposed to 1.5 I think was the original number that Winstead Public was looking for. So, we obviously had a lot more questions

123for Winstead Public at 1.5 million than we did with Gilbert at 200,000. But, we can't expect Gilbert's board to say let's see if we can save Winstead money. That's not their job. Their job is to do what they think is fiscally best for that organization. We have to ask and that ask hasn't been or have you had conversations with them? During the budget process we explored what the tuition reduction would be if we kept our current sixth graders and didn't send them as seventh graders. Figuring if it's $24,000 a kid, we could save money that way. Um No, I know you proposed that at one of the Board of Ed meetings, but have you spoken Have you spoken to the headmaster and said, "You're asking for $817,000. This is a very difficult budget year. What

124can we do to work together to, you know, I I'll bring some savings. What savings are you willing to bring?" Cuz they've done that in the past. So, we directly asked them uh could we keep a grade level and that amount of savings was about $300,000, not the $1.8 million that you would get by one supplying. So, that was not a successful trip. Um Beyond that, what have we done? The feeling is we're all waiting at the time to see if they're willing to be okay and then there would be a discussion of sharing it. Yeah. Yeah, so Yeah, I mean, again, they have come to the table. I I sat in this room with them 2 years ago prior to Mr. Susi being there and in the room they made it they made deals

125with us right here to bring the cost down and that we are able to to share with Windsor Public. Could you um go back to the historical appropriation slide that you had up there? Um it's one of the first. Um yeah, that one. Can you make it bigger? So, I mean, they're right there. There There's our problem. I mean, that's 9% Oh, between 10,000 uh sorry, 2010 and 2026, Winchester Public Schools has increased 9%. Uh Gilbert School has increased 55%. There's the problem with the system. I mean, how can they can How can WPS continue to absorb? I understand that we, you know, can ask, but this is This is the inequality of the system. I mean, I want every child to have a great education. So, but if this was a regular school district,

126wouldn't it be about equal? Wouldn't it be about 30 30, you know, 25 25? I mean, that shows everything right there over the last 16 years. And it's not just a line item. These are kids. These are These are community members who work in our schools. These are our kids. This is our future. We can't just treat it like it's a line item. We have to look at it in the importance of investing. There were We've got an I know you all got these because there was a number of emails that came in from people about, you know, about this budget. And there's not one email that we got saying, "Don't spend the money for education." Not one. In fact, one of them says, "I want roads and education, but if I had to if

127you have to choose, let's choose education." And, you know, these are from you know, you know, there was a lot of the ones that can ask, you know, Gilbert this question or that question. We can't ask Gilbert that any of these questions on behalf of these taxpayers because they, you know, don't they're not here. You know, and >> One of those emails, the one that was on your desk today as an answer to one of the questions. Yes, no, I saw I saw and yes, I saw You're correct. The other questions that they've asked we have answers for. >> that aren't asked. You know, there's questions about whether the there's any endowment for Gilbert. I know the answer to that is no because you can look at their budget. There's very little funds that go

128from the Gilbert from the trust into the court. Very little because I asked for that information and it's under under $20,000 in the last few years that funds special little projects within. They do do a scholarship program. That's wonderful. That's not changing our ask. That's not changing changing what we need and what we were asking and they're asking us to have the taxpayers pay. We have a number of people that have schools that concern They're concerned about getting lawsuits. If we're not providing the special education needs in the classroom because we're getting rid of all these people to do cuts, we're going to get sued. And that's going to be really expensive cuz their parents are going to get their kids out of our system into out of district and it's going to cost a

129lot of more money. You You can't decimate a school like this. I think Dr. Looby's been very clear on what what she has the ability to cut and what she doesn't have the ability to cut. Now, she They can use the $400,000 they have in their savings. And then if something happens, something happens. And that's not the type of fiscal cliff that we want to have. No, we we we don't. We don't. >> And what about >> But but also the percentage we're looking for for the taxpayers. Not all these taxpayers have children. I'm I'm not saying they shouldn't pay. I technically don't children right now, but I'm paying. I don't have a problem with that. We can only keep asking them for so much. This is going to happen again next year. The year

130after that, they're going to come and ask and they're going to ask after that. This A lot of this stuff is all state mandates. The state has put us in this position and it's not just us. You say we're unique. It's not. There's a ton of schools coming forward this year saying, "We just don't have it. We're going to have to close our doors." >> in that we don't have the ability to examine or reduce the totality of our budget. We don't get to go into our high school system and say, "Okay, do we really need to have this club being financed or this teacher being financed when there's only four students in the class?" >> Well, we have the same thing with the with the WPS. We don't have the ability to go in

131and say you can you're going to cut a teacher. That that's up to her. That's not even up to us. That's why I said, "Unfortunately, like I said, I'm frustrated." It's just a line item. We We can't We don't have the ability to cut any more than the overall ask. That's That's all. >> Okay. So, the question The question I have why are we why should the taxpayers have to pay an extra mill almost for an increase to Gilbert when they have an account is 2.3 million dollars that's been sitting there for a while and they're Northwest Community Bank it's just there why can't some of that I mean I know they took 250,000 towards that has I guess the question is who is who asks who negotiates with Gilbert I mean town manager Harrington

132have you had the opportunity It's a vendor it's like going to a bus company and But I did ask We time out I do want to I was You're going to throw your two cents in it's This is the longest I've ever been quiet in this building it's like It's like the water and sewer they're also water and sewer is a vendor of the town I'm a but they charge what they charge This board did direct me on Monday to not only put the invitation out but that was also then including the chairwoman as well I did copy you on the responses um I do try and not have meetings outside of public meetings so I did get a response on and I will admit I went way out of my lane but I felt

133I was safe because my own bosses told me to be way out of my lane and asked if if there was any reduction that you know Gilbert could take the initial email back was exactly how much I said I didn't get a number but you know this is definitely a troubling budget a larger number would be better than a smaller number response back okay if you could come if you could please provide us an update after tomorrow's meeting that would be helpful sorry Kurt I know you're here it goes on to say or perhaps Kurt could come to a Gilbert meeting Kurt come to Gilbert you're on the board aren't you Gilbert board so That's what I said to my I didn't go back and forth on an email but that that was the response

134that I got. So I didn't get a number. I didn't think it was my place to ask the number. I didn't you guys didn't give me a number but that was the response to a question you had asked me to go ask them. Would you please put that last slide back up again with the years and the budget and all that for a second? So um first of all this is a lousy situation. Dr. Looby not having control over what Gilbert wants to charge because of state law is a lousy situation. The state having billions in the rainy day fund and not funding ECS since 2013 is a lousy situation. We're stuck with a lousy situation here and you have a lousy situation. But the problem is what this board needs to try to do

135is balance the needs of education, the needs of town, the roads that we never seem to get to. All of that well I shouldn't say that. We are doing roads as part of the bond but there's a lot of things this town could use. And we have to balance how much people can afford. Now last year the total budget went up. Make sure I'm looking at the right line. 6.9% right? Now I know that's not all yours. I know yours was uh 3.1 3.1 or no 9.2% actually went to Windsor and 3.1 went to Gilbert. Gilbert but let's look at the total package. So 6.9 last year and the year before that and that dollar amount was $1,500,000 round numbers. And then the year before that was a 4% increase, 4 and 1/2% increase for

136$944,000. And the year before that was 4%. I mean, we can't bring these types of increases every year to the town. What is a um What does a school lunch cost in the school system? No, but they It's $3. And 60% of our families are on free lunch prior to the change, but 60% were on free lunch. That means they can't afford $3 a day. I think one of the things that I would point out is if you you got about 16 years worth and the total budget has gone up 23%. So, to the point that's been made a few times that we can't keep going up 5% a year. If we had gone up a modest 1 and 1/2, 2 each year, >> You are You're absolutely correct. You're preaching to the choir. That's

137my problem. Shame on the people who let that happen. We can't go backwards. We got to go forward. And I would do want to say this because I I feel so badly about what you say and you're complaining at this. I want to say to you, I understand that this is an awful situation and I believe that you understand it's an awful situation on our side. And all I can do as a superintendent is show you the impact of decisions that you make. I can't I'm not in your shoes. I don't get to make those decisions. All I can do is give you the information. If there's a half million dollar cut, this will happen. There's no You saw I think compellingly there's nowhere else to go. I mean, I can mitigate it with some

138of the 400 post of the 400, but like that's the impact and that's my job. I have to advocate for our schools. I have to tell you plain and true the impact. I don't mean to position myself against you. I don't envy you sitting in that chair as I'm pretty sure you don't envy me sitting in this one. I I've already been losing sleep, so. Are you sure you I have as well? One one thing I'd like to >> years old, Bill. Look at me. One thing I'd like to reiterate for everybody watching, everybody who is here who is Ultimately, again, and I said this Monday, this isn't our decision. This is our proposal. We're going to go to the town and say, "This is what we propose." It It's the town. It's not us.

139We're here to make decisions, to guide, to to get the information, pick a number that we feel the town and and I can already tell you the town's going to be split right down the middle. If you go back to your slide with the historics, it was split down the middle back to we started it it's been split down the middle for 100 years. It's always going to be split down the middle. I don't want to pay, I want to pay more. And the eight votes last year was not a mandate. That didn't say That didn't say, "Oh, good. We can do this again." I heard from homeowners last year that go, "How did that pass by a vote? Did you vote?" "Well, I was busy, but I'll be voting next year." So, Exactly. Last

140year's eight votes was parents getting fed up with that slide showing the historical disadvantage. We know that the disadvantage is there. The cut should be equally split across. There should It was 20 Can you go back to it again? It's 23% um is the increase for the town. It should be the same for the school district. So, why is one side 9%, one side 55%? It's a messed up system and I understand ECS have messed up. I clawed my way to the top and looked Governor Lamont in his face in his office and said, "You need to increase ECS for Winchester and everywhere else, please, too. Um you know, and here is the problem." And, looked him in the eye and, you know, he said he understand, but, you know, whatever. But, And it was

141proposed budget and they're going to flat-out vote it down. Correct. I understand it's a it's it's a big issue. But if you want to solve this problem with the 55 and the nine, Yep. build a school. Let's do it. That's the solution to There we go. Let's go. Because it's There's I can tell you what the state state legislatures are not going to do. They're not going to say, "Let's get rid of that requirement that the that the academies can charge or the the named high schools can charge whatever they want." That law is not going away. Yep. Right? And we Listen, we were all at the Board of Ed meetings and the people sitting back there that are part of Board of Ed got to listen to me pontificate for 10 minutes about all

142the things that we should do. And I'd like it to be their legacy to solve this Kilgore problem once and for all. >> all in this together. Yeah. Because it's frustrating, but at the end of the day, we've got all of these families who are who right now by some creative accounting we did in the first hour here and taking the those eight road projects back out, we're still asking them to pay 6% more than they currently do. And that's on top of a seven and almost seven and a half percent last year. And what was the year before that? 5%? Five or six, I think. >> Yeah. So, guess what? >> Most of them in that same three years have got about four to six percent increase in their salaries. But that's not because

143we're adding positions. That's because of things beyond the control of everyone. The health insurance I mean, even the Gilbert Gilbert budget, it's huge increase for the health insurance. Huge increase for ours. That's a lot of money that we don't have control. We don't anticipate that same type of issue next year. I mean, so the the comment like, "Oh, you're going to come back and look >> it last year, either. Well, we Well, Be careful with the uh of No, but it's the way What happened with the health insurance is a whole different animal. Shouldn't have been able to anticipate cuz we were under pain. Here's what we're up against. We're up against what was done during those years when nothing was funded. That was a terrible idea. We were and and when all the what

144I call the funny money was coming in through COVID and all that stuff, we didn't fund, right? We were We were creating the cliff that we spoke about earlier. Yep. Now the cliff is in front of us, okay? I want to ask >> is what I've learned, and this is my third fun-filled budget, what I've learned is you have to have a balance between making the investments in the town. Education's a big investment. And I understand all the arguments for funding education. I would love to give you all of the stuff you asked for in the first 2.5 million dollars. I'd love to give it all to you. And then let's add some more special stuff. That's what I'd like. >> Yeah. But that's a That's an 18% tax increase, and that ain't >> happening.

145Okay? I don't think we're going to get six through is the problem. Inflation last year was 2.7%. You can try to make an argument to the to the electorate that, "Hey, we're we're only raising taxes 2.7%." And in a minute I'm going to ask him to model what that looks like. But we've got a balance between what can the town afford, what are they willing to pay, and how do we keep the best possible education? I'm with you. I want the best possible education. Yes. But I also realize that we have to we we can't keep having million-dollar increases every year in the Board of Ed. It just doesn't work. And we've got to figure out a way to make it affordable. And the problem is is that the the WPS can only control an

146additional certain amount. There's Your ask is $400,000 extra, right? From what That That's $444,000, something like that. And the rest you can't control. You can go back to Gilbert and say, "Will you please, pretty please, can you see whether they're, you know, they do want to be fair partner?" Which would be fabulous. You know, cuz they do have the resources. They do have the funds available to help that we don't have, that our taxpayers don't have. And it'd be great if they can do that. And I know that's going to require a board meeting, you know, and you know, you've got to do the meet. There's a lot to do. But I think one thing that we may want to think about I don't None of us here know whether the back the budget passed

147last year and the and that the people who voted against it were voting against it because of the increase or they didn't think it was big enough. Okay, we don't know that. So, we can do what some other towns do. And when we put out a budget in the referendum, we can ask uh why they're voting against it. Because it's too high or too low. That we can ask those questions in the referendum. And I would suggest that we could talk about that on Monday when we frame the referendum. Because it would be nice to have that information. You know, are people going to reject If they reject the budget, whatever we come up with, are they rejecting it because it's too low and it's not funding education or roads sufficiently or is it because

148it's too high and they don't want the increase? That's a question we need to have. We're just making assumptions as we're sitting here cuz we don't have that historical information. Tom, could you do me a favor? Could you run um uh minus 500,000, a minus 800,000, and a minus a million on the the uh mill rate? Do you want that off the fresh document here or off the one that was on >> That's got to be Paul's. Paul's got The one that Paul has. So, from our We're starting out From our 6% increase. Yes, 1.75 mills. You want to go on the screen so you can see what Dr. Luby still has on the screen? No, I think you should put it on the screen. Yeah, we don't We're good. Thank you, Dr. Luby. Good

149evening. You know, as I connect, um um there was a question about adding a question to the ballot. My bigger question is is because our charter is uh state that it must be a machine ballot and we have those new machines. We need Tom's laughing over there. We need to find out if that is an actual option. Um which which I'm glad I'm glad you've given me till Monday to answer that cuz I couldn't answer that right now. So, I think it has to be kind of simple, though, like uh is it too low or too high? Yes or no, right? >> have any feeling on that information? You can't put that on the record. I You know what? I saw you before you came in the room and then then I said you were

150staying and thank you then. Thank you. While you're working on that, I'll just ramble on a little bit. Um some of the problems that we have are what we are. Um we are a distressed municipality. We've been on I have the list right here. We've been on the distressed municipality list 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, we came off in 2015. We were off the list in 20 16. We're off the list in 2017. And then we've been back on it since 2018. Uh for those that don't know, a a distressed municipality is a town, borough designated annually by the Department of Economic and Community Development that faces high levels of economic, fiscal, and social distress. Criteria include high unemployment, high poverty, aging housing stock, and low or declining rates of job growth, population growth, and

151per capita income. Uh Selectman Hester said earlier, our median income is about $66,000, um which is considerably lower than the rest of the surrounding areas, which their median income is $93,551 annually. There are people that are struggling in town, unfortunately. A lot of elderly um you know, they're making decisions to buy food, pay their rent, or buy their medication. And I do worry what charging them 33 extra dollars a month is going to do if we increase their taxes. Cuz no matter how good or bad our school system is, if you can't afford to live here, you can't pay your taxes, or we can't fund the things we need to to to fund. Can you also have those numbers, Bob? I I I can't show you all at once because of the way you've >>

152one at a time? So, we can do one at a time. >> a time, starting with 500. Can I just respond to that briefly to that? That's what got us in this problem. Mhm. It's it's it's not being willing to do the increases that were necessary. Well, we haven't been able to because people haven't been able to afford it. I understand that, but that's what got us into the problem. And because we had those those extra grants for a while, we were able to improve our education so that our kids, you know, in the or do it in the in the particularly in the lower grades, are doing extremely well. If you saw the presentations, you know, our sciences, you know, we're number one in our area, you know, math and in in language arts

153are number two. I mean, that is outrageous improvement because we I remember when I was on the board originally we're coming out of receivership, we were doing really poor. And we used all all grants to get the interventions in, to get the supports in, and work on, you know, curriculum to such an extent that we're incredibly successful. And now if we take all that back, we're going to go back down the drain because again we're not funding. You know, we have to we can't keep trying to maintain flat budgets. It's irresponsible. It's going to impact impact significantly investment in this town. Some of the letters that we got emails we got regarding the budget from citizens talks about that. And that's huge. We want to grow our grand list. That's the best way to reduce

154our taxes, but we have to be be invested in the town. And education schools are a main driver of investment in the community. So, you know, I totally understand people who, you know, struggle. We have some tax relief programs that we can look at for those particular type of people that are available, but we can't be just saying we can't be raising taxes because of those people because we can't we need we can't then grow the grand list, we can't then reduce the burden. And we're going to lose when it will be just devastating kids for our future. I'm not saying we should have a flat budget. I'm just saying we need to be careful with any tax increase. So, we've funded education over the last two budgets an additional two and a half million

155dollars in the last two budgets. Two and a half million dollars went just to education. Didn't go to anything else. With this ask, it's four and a half million dollars over three years. Where does it end? That's the question. And four and a half million dollars, we're asking people who can't buy a $3 lunch to year after year after year take another tax increase. And these are not small increases. 7 and 1/2% last year was a large tax increase. 5 and 1/2 the year before was a large tax increase. We can't do that again to people. People are struggling. And what I've learned, and again, this is my third budget, what I've learned in this deal is you have to somehow balance what's most needed with what and and making the investment in the town,

156right? I agree with making investments in the town. And I wish we had more money to do it. But you got to balance the investments and how much more you're going to tax people. And you know, um what did we do? We did 7 and 1/2 and 5. I mean, that's a big increase over 2 years. And now you're looking at another six on the shaved down budget we've already created, it's still too high. And it's shaved down. It's still high. >> they're assuming this numbers. There's There's a solution There's a solution to all of this. So, we just need to find out from Gilbert what they're willing to cut. Then we will have our cut. They have $2.3 million in a capital account. >> Kevin? How long is it take Okay, next year they

157got to give us another five. Next year they got to give Yeah, I I said earlier, it's like going to the bus company saying, "You guys got $10 million in the bank. You got to give us a discount." They pay taxpayer, don't they? But so is the school. So is the bus company. They don't have to They They are an outside vendor. They are a corporation. They can do what they want. Make no mistake. Just because they have money in the bank doesn't mean they have to give it to us. Why do we need to borrow money? So, we need to find another option. >> $2 million. I said this before. We need 400 homes paying $5,000 a year in taxes. There's your $2 million. Remember, we are starting to invest and things are are

158starting to happen. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was built but brick by brick, day by day. And I think that's what we've been doing up here. And if we have been slow I agree with your numbers, Billy, but what what did you say? 400 homes To come up with $2 million? $5,000. >> If those 400 homes appear in Winchester and we magically get 100 more students at $24,000 a student to educate them, That's 2.4 million. Okay, Tom. It's not Tom, it's Oh, two. I have the I have the agenda, right? So, >> 500. >> I just want to set the deck. This is all of the revenue uh increases that we took. We did subtract out the 821 in uh those five or six roads. So, right now in the modifier is

159a $500,000 reduction. That puts the mill rate at uh an increase of 1.26 4.32%. And that's that's 500, right? That's at 500, correct. And that's also just a I was zoning there a little bit. You also removed the 821,000 already. >> That is correct. Yep. Hey, now show me 800. That's 4.32 4.5. Uh sorry, Mr. Mayor. What was that? That was 4.32%. Yeah, you know what? I'm going to jot these up. >> So, 3.43 was the mill >> them all down. It's a 1.26 mill increase and it's 4.3% tax increase. >> I got it. Correct. Okay. That was minus 500. Let's do minus eight. You're up. So, you're at 30.13 >> .96 3.30%. 3. 3.3. And now the million. All right. 0.76 2.62% And the mill rate would be 29 93 board. And you devastate

160this school system. You set this town backwards significantly. Cuz this is going to come out even if Gilbert contributes something, it's not going to be equal. And so the elementary school kids are going to lose and we're going to end up increasing out of district costs for special education which we're never going to It's going to take years to recover from. It took years to recover from that you know, once we were in receivership. We didn't get those kids back. >> of recovering from receivership, that's the problem. We're still No, we're recovering from irresponsible budgeting during those years when they did nothing. Correct. That's Make no mistake, that's what we're we're recovering from. Cuz everyone wanted flat budgets. >> Yeah, I I I think >> Irresponsible budgeting during those years on the Board of Education

161and this board. Yes, absolutely. I I totally agree and I think I remember one referendum six times. There was the Board of Education >> Six times. tried to go ask for money and they were told by the Board of Selectmen to reduce the amount and amount of money on a number of those years. There was always cuts asked to the Board of Education and they always took it and in one year, you know, um Gilbert refused to contribute to that cut at all. So, we can't guarantee that the Gilbert Corp is going to agree to help out in the situation and the result is going to be we're going to end up in litigation, we're going to have outrageous expenses and we're going to be off the fiscal cliff that you've never seen before. And

162that's This is Cuts like this are absolutely irresponsible. You saw the presentation that Dr. Luby did. What it's going to involve to cut make these cuts. Cuz all she's operating on, all she can control, is the budget that she makes. She can't control what Gilbert does or does not do. And their ask is over $840,000. Not uh the BOS the BOE ask for their portion of that budget. >> Is there any way we can get an answer from Gilbert before this budget is finalized? Is that even >> That's up to Dr. Luby. Um so it's not really up to me. I think the time frame issue that you're dealing with is I don't believe you can have an answer to that question unless they meet as a board. I don't know that to be a

163fact, but I'm assuming to make a decision. Well, in the past in the past the head of school has made an offer and then brought it to the board. And the head of school is typically fairly persuasive with the board. Fair. So I would be I would be reaching out to him tomorrow. Wherever he is on vacation and tell him that you're staring down some pretty serious adjustments here and they got to come to the table. I I can't tell you how to do it, right? Our job is to simply go, "Here's the money that we have and it's got to be figured out." And I predict if we do these type of cuts the budget's going to fail because the parents are going to come out and vote it down because their children's welfare

164and education are at risk. They do that it's only going to go lower. Really? That's very responsible. >> but but but the homeowners taxpayers may come out enough and say they don't even want it this high. That's why we need to have the question so we have some guidance as to which way the town goes. I think the question's a great idea. There are some towns that actually separate their questions on the ballot. I know Simsbury is one of them. No, you're I'm about the budget. You're talking about the education budget Senator Winfield. >> the budgets. So, they both have >> want They both have to pass to pass. If one passes, one fails, both budgets fail. >> don't want to We can't separate the budget. We can't separate the budget, but we absolutely can

165in the We can have two questions. Are you supporting this or not supporting this due to the education budget or >> too high or too low or the town budget? We can separate those in the questions, absolutely. And that's the guidance we're looking for. Yes. What do you guys Well, I think too high or too low is more of the is what that is. What we need. Is it Is it too high? Is it too low? So, we know which way >> should ask it for both sides of the budget, though. You should ask it for the town budget and the BOE budget. >> have four questions. Is the town budget too high? Is the Board of Ed budget too high? Is the town budget too low? Is the Board of Ed too low? We

166can ask all the questions we want, right? I think you're about to say something. There we go. You don't want to pollute it too much because people won't answer the questions. >> we're just asking whether the town budget is good or not. You have to break it down. So, you know, that's something I think we should look at formulating those referendum questions if we're looking at it. And you know, you know, we're going to discuss more on Monday, I know. Not You know, we're trying to get some information before then. And go from there. All right. I think we're all pitted against each other um in the same way that much of the town is, but I think we're really kind of all saying the same thing. We're We're dealing with the system that is

167flawed. And I'm very happy that the Board of Ed has recently opened up, you know, an inquiry to to help guide in solutions, and I'm very happy we all do seem to be in agreement that that the system is flawed and we need to fix it. And you know, of course this is is a tough year. Every year is a tough year, and we're going to continue to have these problems until it's fixed, but I think we need to commit to to fixing the system, whatever that may be. And all I ask is this year that we don't let 600 children They're real I'm the only one up here who has a child in the system right now. These are 600 lives, educations. They will grow up and be the residents of our town. They

168will go out into the world, you know, and do things. We can't, because of our system's flawed and because, you know, we fight at this desk, we can't let 600 children fall through the cracks. And it's not a one-year problem. The things we do now create problems for the next year and the next year and the next year. So, we are agreeing because we want a, you know, what? A 3% instead of a 5%. We're agreeing to throw 600 children's educations under the bus because of a broken system. We do need to fix the system, but we can't let those children fall through the cracks. And what's But unfortunately, that system's not ours. That's the state of Connecticut. We we we only have so much. The state of Connecticut is kind of holding us hostage,

169too. Because they haven't gone up since 2013 on the money. Like I said, it's in the works now. Almost $1.2 million. Children and children, we must watch out for them regardless of what systems we're fighting for all of our 11,000 people. >> of the education, but we also have to worry about the I don't know. We have 11,000 residents. I don't know how many households uh we we have that pay taxes. But we have to What's that? About 6,000. So, we have 6,000 households that pay taxes. We have to be concerned about those 6,000, too. I hear you loud and clear. >> the same I believe it. The parents and the children live in the town, after all. That's 3,000 right there. >> I I'm Okay. Well, we don't know those numbers. We just know

170that that we have handed out very large tax increases the last couple of years, and I don't think there's an appetite to hand out another big one again. Well, we don't know until we ask them. Well, this is true. But what depends on what we're going to send them, basically. Right. But why why go for a devastating cut off the bat, and why not try to keep it closer to what the ask is right now, and see if the taxpayers are willing to pay that? And we'll have Then we'll have the data as to whether it's because it's too low or too high, and town budget, education budget. Why not put that out there just like that before we try to start, you know, slicing and dicing so much? I'm not saying that that there's

171we can't have some reductions. We've talked about that. But, you know, it shouldn't be 500,000 million 800,000. That's absurd. That is irresponsible. Being responsible for this decision is balancing both sides. It's not just what education needs, it's what the taxpayers can afford. We've been down this road over the last 3 years. >> is responsible to make a decision. We try to give some guidance. You know, select what the proposal is at and we can say, "Hey, this is what our our superintendent is saying she needs to properly educate the children of the school. This is what they have the school to Gilbert is saying they need in order to properly educate the students of that school. This is what the town is saying we need to run our town and provide what services we can

172in a responsible way." This is what And let them make the decision. >> our job also to say, "Here's how much money there is to spend and if you're not getting what you want, work with Gilbert and figure it out because this is how much money you're going to get. That's what it comes down Gilbert is not always willing to work. And hopefully they >> it is. We unfortunately I wish we could come to And this is this is a Board of Ed decision, not ours. But I would like to say today, let's start shopping for the land and put the building up because this is cuckoo what we go through here. Okay? >> and with it and the and the unfortunately the sad thing about that is that that as a result because of

173that, we will lose the history of Gilbert which I know is dear to a lot of people who went to that school. You know, I wasn't in the town. I didn't go to school there. I don't have that same sort of attachment to my last high school, but people do. But, you know, to change the system, looks like that's the road we're going on and that's sad. We we can't afford the system the way it works right now and I and I agree with you. There's a lot of sentimental value to to Gilbert and I and I'd hate to see that have to happen. But the reality is and and I know that that they're commissioning a study and please God doesn't take 5 years to get the study back. Um please God it comes

174back very quickly. But I think at the end of the day the the the three alternatives that they've given the study, you know, I I see the first two as probably not even possible. And the third one's the only one that really makes sense. But that's not our decision. Our decision is if they come to us and say we'd like to build a school, we we'll figure out how to pay for it. Mhm. Um and make sure the budget works because we know probably what a school would cost and how to fund it. What we don't know is how much does it cost to run it. And that's the missing ingredient right now. Once we know that number, this this decision at least for the finance board here gets a whole lot easier. Yep, that

175Yeah. But I don't think >> Mr. Harrington's awful quiet. Any other comment? Uh I I do want to caution the board on one thing. We we threw out ECS uh tonight and this is the problem and and it it's in every town. It's happened for over 20 years. ECS gets wired into the town. It's a It's a It's a It's a grant to the town. Your budget, along with 169 other towns' budgets, will be decided. Session gets out on May 6th. You wouldn't have the ability to increase the Board of Ed budget without jumping through a few hoops. So if if if that budget does have legs and does move and it increases the ECS by $1.2 million, it doesn't go to the the the Board of Ed. You've appropriated $26 million or whatever the

176case may be to the Board of Ed. You can't add an additional appropriation unless and as you you're going to have to go to referendum with it. Or as we did with the boiler project, I could make the argument it's an emergency, which then gives you the power. That's just me, but you don't have >> Can we not fund it and again, I'm asking, can we not make an adjustment to our budget Town support for education. >> support of education? Although that's generally non-educational costs. So, repeat the question. I'm trying to follow. >> So, that first of all, and and I think the chances that money actually materializing are really small. But in the miracle that it does happen, okay? And we've already passed a budget, um could we absorb that $1.2 million into the

177cuz you said it gets wired to us and then fund schools through the town support for education account? >> You'd be changing a line item that was voted on a referendum. It's it's the same box, whether it's the Board of Education line item or town support for education. I kind of sound like Selectman Hester right now. I truly see the line items. Whether it's that line item or that line item, you got to jump through all the hoops to do >> the mechanism for adjusting a budget post referendum if that happens? >> So, again, the the two ways to do it is referendum because of the dollar amount, it's above X amount of percentages and I think it was anything more than two or $300,000. And or or or, not any and or, as we

178did with the boiler project, this board declared an emergency. And I would think it was $580,000. We did not go to a referendum on that cuz the board felt it was an emergency. Which you need heat, so agreed. Um the board then took the action and and voted itself to fund the 580 for the boiler. So, um I just caution on ECS. I got excited, obviously. Then I started playing scenarios out and even more in my head tonight. I'm like, wait. Even if we get an increase, but the budget's been decided, how do I get that money in? Oh, I got to either do this or I got to do that. So. I hope we get the 1.2. Heck, I hope we get 2 million. Ken, you've been having discussions with the commissioner, correct? About

179changing the ECS formula because we are getting less than other towns cuz the formula is different for us because they don't count all We don't get the full amount because the Gilbert is presumed to have endowment and it doesn't, so Yes, one of the down One of the downfalls of the endowed academy is that our percentage of uh for the students at at Gilbert is less than the percentage for for WPS and um we're also um There's a other than the uh DECD ranking where we just jumped from number 11 to number four most distressed district, there's another like the PIC ranking. I I forget what PIC even stands for, but they give additional money when you reach number 20. We're number 21 most distressed in that district, so I tried to argue and this

180is they go off of the year before, um but given the DECD um designation comes out sooner, I argued that I mean, there's no way that we're not going to be above 20 next year. So, I mean, that could affect the number, um you know, so there's We don't know. Who Who knows? Who knows? >> is also pushing to change the ECS, which is the Connecticut Council of Municipalities. Uh the chairman, I think the mayor of Torrington was in there uh talking about it and I I follow them on Facebook. I see them up there all the time. He's always talking about it. They They really need to change that system. The state of Connecticut does. And Can I make a suggestion, too? The uh we all got the thing you sent out to the

181parents. Why don't you send something out to the parents tonight to call all of their state representatives and push the majority towards voting for the budget that was introduced yesterday that gives us the 1.2 billion dollars for that. The problem is that's If you're talking we just have Jay. You know, that's our representative and he's already >> you can blow up everybody's phone there. Well, that's true. You can call everybody. They're not one of their constituents, they might not listen to me. That's the problem. Well, you can hit Lamont, Blumenthal, Murphy. They they all make a nice salary. Hammer their emails and cell phones. >> doesn't have anything to do with the state budget or anything like that. Do you have any other comments on the budgets tonight? Make a motion to adjourn. Oh, easy

182there, buddy. Slow your roll. I I just want to make one more comment about ECS. I I do think that with all of the pushback from every town, I do think that in by next year, cuz it's a biennial, um you know, they do a two-year budget for the state. I just if they don't change it by next year, I mean, that would be crazy. But, I think there's a huge there's a huge amount of effort going on, um all across the state and that is one thing that came up in, you know, when I was able to meet with the the governor and his chief of staff and all of them that, you know, that this it is changing. It may not help us this year, but I mean, we have to anticipate that

183hopefully hopefully there's a pretty big chance that next year we may get, you know, a sizable amount more. Short session this year, too, wasn't it? Eight days? There's also a good chance you're going to get a small increase next year just to throw everybody a bone and appease them. And anything after that, the money the state's struggling, too, they're going to tell us. There's 169 towns in Connecticut and every one of them is is lobbying for their, you know, school districts to receive an increase in ECS. So, uh let's talk about what tomorrow morning's website is going to look like because right now if you know which one of these models are you going to put up there next. Whatever ones you guys tell me to. This is selectman for >> We have the 6%

184increase, a 4.3% increase, a 3.3% increase, and a 2.6% increase. May I offer a suggestion? You've taken no action on anything. I would not Except for the roads. No, we didn't do that. >> No, we didn't do that. No action. So don't have to change what's up there right now. That's just a recommendation. >> Right. Okay. That's fine. But you guys also Yeah, I'd like to float it till the next meeting. I want to digest it. >> nothing on the website. >> change anything because we didn't vote on it. If we had voted on something, then I would say change it. >> Um Sorry. Stay quiet too long. I think it's important to note my schedule's FOI-able as well, but I'll let this board know. I was supposed to have a meeting with the uh

185education commissioner Tuesday. Something came up. That meeting is now scheduled for Monday her and I. Um There was an opportunity for me to talk to her. I've taken it. I think the commissioner of education, she's heard from So like the bishop, she's heard from residents. I think it's important that she hears from the town manager of what this is right now. And and and and and you know, I sat through 3 years of these meetings and and so I'm having a conversation. Can't tell you where it's going. I can tell you good news, we're meeting again Monday night so I can update you on on Monday night. So I want to let you know about that. Obviously, you know, I'll do whatever we have to do for the town. Um I I said it in

186the presentation 2 weeks ago. The budget that the town manager proposed budget was the non injection of money from the state of Connecticut. You know, there there were there we've been the same number for so many years, you know. I think Dr. Looney, I think, you know, our side is a You hear me talk all the time. I was told Troy I would pick up the carpets to see if I could find two more pennies under there, you know. But, when you have, you know, inflation, you have mandates, and no additional funding comes in, it it creates what I think why we're here till 10:00 at night and why we've been meeting so often. And before we adjourn, is there anything that the board will need? I shoot, I think I'm going to keep, if

187the board's okay with it, the agenda for Monday very light. And just basically turn it Should we base Let's do the budget. It should be budget. Just get rid of all other Right. Times like I need I need transfers. They are quick transfers. That's okay. The couple transfers we can handle. We'll do them at the end. That's fine. Okay. So, one one question. So, looking at the budget schedule that we put together. Yep. We can have special meetings from Thursday, the 21st, through um Thursday, the 23rd, which is Thursday. So, the reason I'm bringing this up is, you know, we do have, you know, the chair of the the OE here, who's also on the Gilbert board, and we're looking for him to get the conversations to have that whether Gilbert can help a little

188with this um dilemma that we're in. Um it may be appropriate to have another meeting cuz we know we know um holiday and um Mr. Looney is not are not available on Looney's day. Um so, you see you're not available on Monday, maybe we do a meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday, the 22nd, so that we can have a conversation, if necessary, with them where we can, you know, we can explore as well. I mean, we have do our doing due diligence. So, I want to just see maybe we can find out whether there's any availability from you know, Craig, I don't know. Do you want to speak to this if you think there's any reasonable reason to have another meeting to try and talk to Gilbert that kind of way? Like you guys got to

189go through your process. I mean, we have to make a decision, you know, by the 24th. The 23rd. Just a quick correction. We have to make it by the 23rd because Thursday morning by 10:00 a.m. we have to get everything off to the paper. Right. So, that Thursday is the 23rd, so the 22nd. 20 I apologize, 22nd. Yeah, we have to have our decision done Wednesday. By Wednesday night. >> Oh, cuz your your budget schedule says we can have >> I then we went back and we called the paper and ever since I won't use their name. A new individual a new bigger company took over it. They have new rules of when deadlines are. Okay. All right. So, Wednesday the 22nd would be the only other It'll be the only other last last one.

190>> last opportunity. Which I will not be in town. For whatever that's worth. So, that's, you know, I just I just we need to try to Would you be in town the 21st? Uh no. I I I could do the 21st in a remote, but I am leaving Tuesday morning and I won't be back till late Thursday. I think this is such a serious issue and you know, if we can somehow reduce the ask without decimating our elementary schools kids that we are serving. I guess if if the board if I could put the chairman on on spot, when do you think Gilbert could if they're willing could make a meeting? I'll have a discussion with them. Could you get with me? I I can then send information out to the board for informational purposes,

191and then I can pull the board via email, as long as 50 million questions don't come in, and then I can I can back off of when a meeting can be held. They're not available to meet anytime this week, I understood. Like, we can't meet them tomorrow night or even Friday night, right? I'm under the understanding that Mr. Susi is away and possibly I I don't I don't know exactly their circumstances. And they have their own meeting on Monday that they That's why they can't be here on Monday. >> meeting. Right. No, the trust meeting was today. I think um and again, I'm just going on the way it's worked in the past with the board and with the head of school, that the head of school pretty much can give you an idea, I

192think. I'd be on the phone and let him sell it to the board. That's how they've done it in the past. We can get that Monday. But we saw $200,000 in one of the budget years come right off the Gilbert budget in this room. He committed to it, and went back and sold it to the board. I don't think we have the time to wait to see for the board to meet and all that stuff, cuz this budget's, you know, we're at the deadline here. Is there a certain number we're asking of him? Well, I would go to the board if if I was negotiating with them at this point and say, "I'm staring down a really ugly cut, a million dollars. Um how much can you participate with?" Considering you already took a half

193million dollar cut on your budget. I mean, it's it's their budget, too, right? They have to understand that we're writing the check. The check's only going to be so big. They got to come to the table. I mean, they don't have to. We'd like them to come to the table. We'd like them to be a good partner. Yeah, both both asked started, you know, between the 800 800 900,000 dollar increase range. WPS took 500,000. Gilbert has taken none, so that's where we stand. I don't know if Gilbert was asked to take anything yet, though. Have they been? Yeah, I will make a note, just, you know, fairness, they did they did use 250,000 of their capital account and to reduce, you know, but they do have a lot of funds available to them for crew

194reduction of the ask to the town and that would be greatly appreciated. >> But I don't know if they've even been asked. Can you comment whether they were asked at all so far? I thought you said they had asked, but they said after this or You you made the suggestion of taking grade seven back. That was the only conversation. Other than that, there's been no ask, correct? Yes or no, Gilbert? What are you saying, Kurt? There has not been an ask. Okay. Our board motion and then ultimately didn't choose to ask them to It's time to make that call. So, Monday night will probably be a late night for us. Is there an appetite to move the meeting up an hour? Oh, you got time. You have time. Sorry. Do we have the uh charter

195revision is supposed to meet in here? >> No. I mean, that could postpone We could commandeer the room. Yeah, but we're on the charter We we can we we can be excused. We're just there in an advisory role at that point. >> Yeah, I mean, the other thing is they could Yes, sir. Yes, sir. >> They've asked me to attend that. That's right. I'd be happy to go there. Maybe what needs to happen is we should ask them to potentially reschedule for the 27th when there is no conflict and That's already been kind of put out there that they're doing the meeting on the 7th on Monday, so people might be wanting to attend it. Well, if we started earlier, they'd still get a chance to attend. We're not going to be out of the

196room The only problem with that is that the chair of that commission is in Italy or somewhere somewhere this week. So, I don't I mean, we can reach out to Candy about it, but I don't know how much she's checking her email. Well, she's on Facebook all the time. Send her a messenger. I'll note, just so the board should know this, that if you do move that time to 6:00 p.m., then does become a special meeting because you've come off of the agreed-upon 7:00. You will be limited of what you could do in that meeting. I know we're going Well, we can just turn that special meeting in and There's always a creative solution. That that would that would work. Yes. I never thought of that. Doesn't matter me either way, Todd. Whatever. It's all

197about me, so I'd like to break the record of last year, so No. I don't really want to be here till 3:00 in the morning. Neither do I. I just want to pop over for breakfast sandwich, boy. Really? I'm I'm okay if you guys want to start at 6:00, call a special meeting, and then go right into our regular meeting at 7:00. If not, we'll just start at 7:00 and let it go from there. I think I can make 6:00 work. Right? I can make 6:00 work. >> Then I can leave earlier. Cheryl, can you make I can make 6:00 work on Monday. 6:00 p.m. >> I can't do anything this Thursday or Friday now. Special meeting, 6:00 p.m. Monday. 6:00 p.m. 6:00 to 7:00, and then our regular meeting at 7:00. Special meeting. We

198can take care of the Tom stuff at the special meeting. Do you want to reach out to Candy about moving the meeting? We'll definitely do it. Yeah. And then, I got to talk to you about agenda. Um pledge, public input. I'm not going to do town manager report on any of these. I think we just get down to business. We have to decide the sub at 7:00, right? At 6:00 At 7:00, I'm just going to basically keep the same agenda. >> Continuation of budget workshop? Yeah, budget special meeting for budget budget budget work and hopefully we'll have some information. The Monday meeting should have it on the agenda to to potentially act on the budget. >> Yes. Yes. Okay. That public input on um Public meeting public comment >> the 7th. Yep. Because special meeting,

199right? And then Yep. Uh it it could be a long public input. It may go over an hour. >> at 6:00 we're not going to get a meeting. >> simply for public comment cuz there's going to be a lot of it. >> Yeah, you're going to have an hour's worth of >> We're adding an hour really for public comment. Yeah. That's fine. I'll add other agenda items in case I can't so. >> We could I So, we'll open the 6:00 with pretty much the agenda that was on today's agenda, which is >> comment. Except adding public comment. So, we might have a brief review of what we've talked about if there's any if anybody's come up with a another idea that they want to float and then we open it up for public comment. Paul,

200just to give you more work. Can you um put together a spreadsheet showing the different cuts that um Troy asked for the 500 to 800 and that just just one page new page with the breakdown and we if you would be willing to submit a document for us to have for that meeting as to what that would involve. You just You just what you just did. Those slides. So, we will have those before the special meeting. That would be I'll be able to just screenshot that. I just want to see >> so he can see if he's able to pull them up. Cheryl, just Just so I'm clear, you want one sheet that basically has that highlighted. >> If we do If we reduce education budget by this amount, this amount, this amount, this is

201what it is. Yes. Okay. Just give us a screenshot with the mill rate and the increase, right, Charlotte? That's all we need. Yeah, just just what that is. So, you can screenshot that and call it the million dollar One I would like it side by side, and then we have the, you know, we have her PowerPoint point presentation of those pages showing what's involved in it, so that we can have that information. I I actually I have to do it because he has the We'll get what you need. He'll get it. No, you can do it. I'm just saying it. We'll get what you need. Julie will send over those screenshots, those pages of her PowerPoint where she shows what those cuts will be. We need to motion the special meeting. Uh Mayor asked, "Do

202we need a motion to special meeting?" No, it's under general. The Can I ask one more question before we adjourn of Dr. Luby? When you've gone through this budget process beginning this year, and the original budget ask was two and a half plus million dollars that you took to the Board of Education, and I think as I remember watching a lot of those meetings and attending some of those meetings, you were pretty bare-bone even at two and a half million dollars, right? And there was a lot of discussion with the Board of Education on what might get cut, what might not get cut, and then they gave you a number, and then you went through and looked at it for real and came up with what the best possible scenario was going to be with

203the two million dollars, right? She's nodding. Yes. So, for the people out there, she's nodding. For the people at home, she's nodding. Okay. You've seen three scenarios tonight, a 500, 800, and million dollar adjustment to the ask, to your budget. I would ask that you think about rather than just send us the slides on what you've prepared, here's what a million looks like. If you were truly faced with a million, would it be exactly what's on those slides or would you have to sit back and go, all right, I've got to really dig in and figure this out? Cuz there were changes between what you thought was going to happen and what actually happened when they took the 500,000 off. So, when they took the 500, we got rid of everything that was new. That

204was 377, I think. And we got rid of one sixth grade teacher, and that got us to 450, let's say. 460. You might want to come back up so that people can hear you. Sorry. Sorry to drag you out of the chair, but I think it's important that we have this chat before we adjourn. Yes. So, the 500,000 cut it, you know, the board debated lots of different ways to actualize that, but ultimately we got rid of everything that was going to be new. And then we cut one sixth grade teacher, got us to about 450, 460. And during the time all that was happening, we hired a new head custodian, a new custodian to replace a regular custodian. Both of those had modest savings. We were able to renegotiate a copy machine vendor that

205we used, we saved about 5,000 there. And then we decided to ride the rails a little bit. We got it down to like $19,000. And we said, we're going to count on turnover savings for that last little bit. We're not going to cut a position for $19,000, but we figure that old guy's going to retire, we're going to hire this young guy, and we'll find $19,000 throughout the district. I want to ask the question differently. I think maybe make it easier. So, let's say for the sake of this discussion, and this is discussion only, that you got a million dollar reduction to the increase to your ask, right? And now you're sitting down to actually implement that budget. Nothing on that slide you're going to send us is going to change? That is how you

206get there. I mean, only people. So, you've done all the homework. There's no adjustment you would make if cuz if you're faced with that reality, I guess I'm trying to understand the slide you're going to send us, it shows us what a million-dollar cut looks like. If you were faced with that reality, would there would you change it? Let me say it's totally 90%. I would have to go through and figure out who each human is and what their salary is and, you know, right now it's based on a typical teacher is $70,000. You know, right, they're based on averages, if you will. But, that's probably 90% what it would look like. And of course, if the I'm sorry, one thing. So, if the budget, again, hypothetically was adjusted to this number, then of course,

207it's it's it's net of whatever whatever you might be able to negotiate with Gilbert. Cuz if Gilbert said, "Listen, we'll come in with three." Now you're seven, so that's a whole different adjustment. Well, you saw the 500 slides. It was still all that and part of the million. Okay. Uh those slides are realistic, whether or not I mean, there's really nowhere else to go. Wait, you're getting up to a million? I'm trying to remember. I think at 1.5, we canceled specials and shortened the day. At 1 million, we got rid of pretty much everyone we could. Like, there is not a lot of fudge room there. The only variable would be if we take the whole and use, you know, we fig- I did the math, too. It's a 1.5% cushion I have with that

208$400,000. I might apply that. I just wanted to understand, and I think we'd all like to understand if it actually happened, would those slides change? Would there be adjustments that you would, you know, not It's one thing to hypothe- hypothetically talk about it. It's another when you're sitting with that budget and go, "Okay, I've got to really make it work." Would it change? So, we've been sort of moving towards that throughout the whole process, going from very theoretical to very practical. Before I actually give someone a pink slip, do you think believe I'm going to figure out who the teachers are, what their actual salaries and try and salvage one position? Or make a judicious choice that I can keep two people by getting rid of this one other, but largely that is the magnitude

209and largely those would be the decisions. Okay. So hypothetically Hypothetically, Gilbert could give you a 400,000, that would be a good neighbor, and you got 400,000 and a little bit of savings, that's 800,000. If it's a million dollar cut, it's only 200,000. So that changes the whole thing. Or if it's an 800,000 dollar cut, it's a zero cut for you. So there's So there's nothing none of that goes away. It's all ifs, though. No, but I'm just saying hypothetically that could happen. >> Yeah, she does build 400,000 dollar cliff into her budget next year cuz she's taking it out of savings, which wouldn't be there next year to do. So that would be potentially one issue. That adds to your So you got to do some things in your talking. My crazy feeling is if

210I'm going to lose those people, I may as well win here or lose. Right? That's I think what the cliff means. Well, by the way, in a year maybe ECS got better and a whole lot of things changed, right? So >> The catch though is if I get one really expensive special education cost in the middle of the year, I'm laying off a teacher in the middle of the year. Which could increase the cost, too. >> Going to the town manager and saying we just blew our budget. I mean, there's stories of other districts that go back to the town and say, "Hey, we're 80 million dollars over budget." Like I'm not really sure that you're allowed to do that legally, and yet it does happen. Like those emergencies. I'm sorry. >> Like that's those

211emergencies with zero in the savings account instead of the 1 and 1/2% that I said. I understand what you're saying. That's But I'm saying we have to be creative here. I'm all in for creative. I probably am I won't go to the full 400, I might do 50. I mean, one kid is $150,000. >> Right. Like I do hope >> go to the casino for a reason. I'm not good at this. Um but I will take advantage of anything I can figure out rather than lose humans. So, yes, that is a very realistic scenario that I've given you with the possible exception of if there is any reduction on the part of the Gilbert School or if we apply some of that $400,000, which is irresponsible, but also responsible. They're they're both at the same

212time. So, Right. I hope you have very good discussions with Mr. Susi. Me, too. Wish you luck. And I do hope your teachers come to work tomorrow after hearing the conversation tonight. I know that I had a teacher tell me after um the last meeting where the education was discussed that she uh carries a uh you know, resignation letter in her glove box cuz she's so fed up with the way our town teaches, you know, deals with stuff. So, um I I do hope that That is a crazy reality. Yes. >> I do hope the teachers listening understand that My concern right now is what you just said before was that the the Board of Education voted not to have you go and ask Gilbert for a reduction. Is that what you said before? I'd

213have to go back and look at them and see if they voted. Somebody suggested that they do that and they agreed that they won't go into that. Okay. So, So, do you need your board's authori- permission since it wasn't granted before to go to Gilbert and ask for that reduction? I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've all directed me and I just probably not I was having a conversation with him tomorrow anyways based on what we're going to have to And it'd be similar to I have a very good relationship with them. Yeah, no, I am sure you do. And it would be similar to her calling the bus company and saying I need you to give us a discount. So, I don't see why you can't talk to And I

214do. I think this is a very unusual situation and there's a lot of dynamics that trying to you know make sure that she can do it. She can do it or ask her to do it. We will make sure that the question is posed. It's been done before, Cheryl. I mean, right in this room. But there was a vote that said don't do it. So, that's the scenario. Well, I don't Do you remember um Kurt any type of action by the board that prohibited her from speaking to Gilbert about a reduction in It was brought up before we got into the discussion of our budget. Um you know, we looked at that we because Gilbert passed their budget before we passed ours. And it was brought up that we go to them and open their

215budget the day after we voted on their budget. Um and our board decided to say let's let's go through our process. Yeah, so you didn't vote to direct her not to do that. You just felt they passed their budget. So, what it's and we haven't finished ours yet. We don't need to go ask it yet. Okay. Yeah. But the time is now. Yes. Yes. Madam Superintendent, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. If anyone thinks of anything you'd like me to come prepared with feel free to send along questions so that I can be of most help. Snacks. Thank you so much. It's going to be a long meeting. Motion to adjourn She's usually very good with that, especially at our committee meetings. I'll second Thank you, Mr. Chairman. All in favor? Aye. Thank

216you. 6:00 Monday night. Um the TV if your mics are on, turn them off and I got to