001[Music] okay so now i'm allowed to take off my mask because i'm speaking it is really exciting and a little bit a little bit nervous to be back out in a group of people um having a meeting it is really wonderful to see everybody's face or at least see your eyes and your decorative masks if you chose and i do want to thank you all for being here tonight as we get ready to open our annual town meeting for may 3rd 2021 i'm calling the meeting to order before we get started would you please stand up and join me in 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
002okay at this time i'm going to open up a call for nominations for a moderator mr spike wonderful uh do we have a second okay we have a few seconds okay all in favor aye okay it's moderator good evening thank you all it's a pleasure to be the moderator what i'd like to do is outline what may happen or will happen this evening there's going to be presentations by the board of finance presentations by the town council and the board of education and there will be time for questions and discussion after those presentations at this time in accordance with the town charter i'd like to state that the budget will be submitted to vote at the referendum on wednesday may 12 2021 at the avon senior center community room west davon road avon connecticut between
003the hours of 6 a.m and 8 p.m i'd also like to announce that the acting chair nick hogan the acting chair the acting town clerk uh nick hogan will be acting as the clerk of the meeting and so in accordance with the town charter i'd like to present tom hogan acting town clerk to breed the call of the meeting good evening the annual budget meeting of the electors and citizens qualified to vote in town meetings of the town of avon connecticut being held here at the avon high school auditorium 510 west avon road in the town of avon connecticut today monday may 3rd 2021 at 7 pm for the following purpose to receive and consider a resolution for the adoption of the two thousand twenty one two thousand twenty two annual budget in the amount
004of one hundred one million two hundred sixty one thousand one hundred and fifty nine dollars as recommended by the board of finance for the fiscal year commencing july first two thousand twenty one electors and citizens qualified to vote in town meetings were invited to attend this meeting in person at the avon high school the meeting will also be live streamed via the internet the live stream may be accessed by web or by phone the live stream access instructions were also available on the town's website written comments on the recommended budget were accepted until thursday april 29th 4 30 pm by us mail to the town manager's office at 60 west main street avon connecticut 06001 or by email to budget comments at avonct.gov electors or taxpayers wishing to provide spoken public comments during tonight's meeting
005must be in attendance here at the avon high school there will be no opportunity for the virtual audience to provide spoken comment during the meeting pursuant to section 9.4.1 of the yvonne town charter the annual budget meeting will be adjourned to a referendum vote on the efforts that recommended budget to be held on wednesday may 12 2021 between the hours of 6 a.m and 8 p.m electors and persons who are who are electors and persons who are not electors but who are qualified to vote at town meetings will vote at the avon senior center 635 west avon road in avon connecticut absentee ballots are available at the town clerk's office at the town hall the effort said question will be placed on paper ballots under the following heading shall the annual town budget in the
006amount of 101 million two hundred and sixty one thousand one hundred and fifty nine dollars as recommended by the board of finance for the fiscal year commencing july one twenty twenty one be approved voters approving the proposed question will vote yes and those opposing the proposed question will vote no this was dated at avon connecticut the eighth day of april 2021 and signed by tom harrison the chairman of the board of finance thank you nick at this time i'd like to call on mr thomas harrison chairman of the board of finance to present the resolution of the annual budget upon that presentation we'll be asking for a second thank you bill welcome everybody put the glasses on so i can read this stuff all right uh first i'd like to introduce the members of the
007board of finance who are here tonight uh and with the lights and that i can't see all the faces but uh is margaret bratton margaret here okay right kathy durden okay good and we would go on you know what why don't the rest of you just stand up i've got the list here but it just takes too much time if you're on the board of finance stand up and introduce yourselves that's faster just say who you are okay this any better oh yes good okay okay uh first i'll read the resolution that's going to be before us shall the annual town budget in the amount of a hundred and one million two hundred sixty one thousand hundred and fifty nine dollars as recommended by the board of finance for the fiscal year commencing july 1
008be approved and is somebody going to call bill uh is there a second to that resolution second up front here uh call on time to present the uh thank you bill uh for the record could we have the name of the person who seconded this thank you okay good all right now what happens next is the basic presentation i think it's in the handout that you received so i'm not going to read every line or every word in this but you can follow along with that so you see our job in the budget process is to sort of act maybe as a referee the board of education in the town council the budget requests are there they are not yet you know official we'll have the referendum that will determine that but we are going
009to go through some of the numbers and you'll just see how we got to where we are and where we'd like to go with it this budget first thing if you have to follow have the slides if you look at the first one where it talks about what the board of finance does it's a sort of a balancing act we balance spending requests available funds and see if we can get them to sort of come into equilibrium and we've been fortunate with that the voters of avon have generally been very supportive of the three boards and the budgets that they put together so i think we'll continue that but that's our job to balance requests for spending against available funds to support it so if this budget that we'll be discussing tonight is approved by
010the voters the mill rate will increase let's get that on the table right away it'll go from the current mill rate of 32.90 to a new mill rate of 34.21 so that will happen if the budget is approved we have done this in previous years it generally seems to work out all right on the second page of the slide there's a summary of the budget i don't intend to read that but it's a very helpful thing you can see what was adopted in the last fiscal year what's proposed for this fiscal year and the dollar increase and the percentage increase of each of the items the board of ed town and so forth capital improvements now here's how if this is approved here's how we'll pay for it we'll use some non-tax revenues as you
011can see 11 700 000 there taxes come in at 89 million there so it's primarily as you can see going to be from taxes uh we don't have a huge revenue stream we don't have any parts of you know the malls in here like our friends in farmington have a big chunk of them all we don't have anything like that but we have some wonderful taxpayers who are very concerned about the town who like living in avon and they've been very generous in supporting the budget requests over the years and i'm certainly confident uh that will continue uh these charts i'm not going to read every one of them look at every one of them on page three uh there's a showing an impact of the prior year's use of various things the next one
012shows mill rate change comparisons from year to year and you can see that some years we have a higher mill rate increase than others but that's the way it goes sometimes on the next page slide seven uh there's a very interesting comparison about our bill rate compared with many of our neighboring towns here uh and i think we do reasonably well you know as i said we don't have big shopping centers or anything of that sort but i think our mill rate is very fair and reasonable and compares very well for the neighboring towns the next slide side number eight is the recommended summary how much is going to schools how much is going to debt service and so on again i don't have any intention of reading those numbers you can see them and
013decide from there the referendum we know when that is and we'll certainly like to see you do it the rest of this package you'll see the various charts numbers what some of the money is going to be spent for again there's no point in my reading it uh but that will tell you some very good news very good story that we have here in avon we're very fortunate uh that for the size of our town and the size of the population in the absence of major you know projects and that sort of thing we do a very good job of funding and the voters have always been very supportive which we appreciate we have a good citizenry here and they are very supportive of the town and that's great i think so i don't really
014have too much more to say uh about these various things but i will yield the floor for the time being to bill shea to call whoever you're going to have the next next speaker and i can come back at the end if after you've heard the town council and the board of education's presentations if you have any questions and how do they relate to the budget and mill rate tax increase and so forth we can get back to that at that time but for now i'll yield the floor back to bill thank you john well done i'd like to now call on mrs mcguire for the presentation of the town course town council portion thank you bill great job tom okay well it's nice to be back here again i'd like to take a moment
015to introduce members of the town council that are here tonight mr jim spike jeff bernatich anthony weber and dan paul heymus other key people that you should know that are here tonight are mr brandon robertson our town manager grace t easy who is in the back running the show and she's our assistant tower manager and tom distasio our director of finance who is driving the slideshow for tonight so at the very base of our process the mission remains the same to provide quality town services at a reasonable cost to all citizens and taxpayers evidence of the success of our mission is the niche 2021 best places to live in connecticut avon was ranked number three following west hartford and we talk this slide shows the total proposed budget for fiscal year 22. the board of
016education will speak to their funding request so not including the operating budget of the board of ed the town the sewer capital and debt service budgets total 36.7 million dollars this equates to an increase of 932 932 000 or 2.61 over the current year budget of 35.7 million dollars the increase to the town operating budget not including sewers capital and debt service budgets is 3.09 or 820 000 costs related to the sewers are funded by separate fees and assessments personnel services and wages comprise about 74 percent of the town's operating budget the total increase to the personnel services category is six hundred and eighty six hundred and eight thousand comprised of number one two hundred ninety two thousand due to increases and salaries and wages this includes the reclassification of an hr administrative secretary one
017to administrative analyst for eleven thousand dollars and two hundred and eighty one thousand due to the general wage increases for both organized and unaffiliated employees 196 000 is due to an increase in the defined benefit plan the plan closed in 1997 and we have three active employees this contribution is determined by plans actuarial val valuation our third big driver is a hundred and thirty thousand dollars due to an increase in hospitalization the increase in this category continues to be mitigated by 30 employees opting out of the plan through the town's waiver program as well as increased participation in the town's high deductible health plan uh health insurance plan rather than to predict the traditional open access plan and the fourth largest budget driver is an increase of 35 000 in the municipal insurance under the
018services of supplies supply category this increase is recommended due to industry-wide increase in risk across various lines that will likely result in premium increases staff plan to market all lines of insurance in the spring of 2021 to mitigate the impact of this category the bottom line of this year's proposed budget is that there is a 2.61 increase over the fiscal year 21 budget so the capital budget for all funds has decreased by 164 thousand dollars when compared to fiscal year 21. the total capital budget is 3.2 million dollars items with a minimum value of twenty thousand dollars and a useful life of more than five years are included in the capital budget highlights include seven hundred and thirty four thousand for road improvements four hundred and twenty five thousand for the third and final phase
019of roof replacement at rbs 398 000 for the first floor of first phase of the rooftop unit replacement at avon high school 226 000 to purchase dashboard and body cams for the police officers in accordance with the recent police accountability bill and 225 000 to repair the tennis courts at sycamore hills this year our debt service budget is about 3 million a fifteen thousand dollar increase from fiscal year twenty one when considered as a single category debt service and general fund capital is stable at five point nine million dollars which is equal to about two point two seven mills the increase in the debt service budget covers the anticipated cost of long-term borrowing associated with the turf field and a portion of the public safety communications systems project and as you may know both moody's
020investors services and standard and poor's have reviewed and reaffirmed avon's aaa credit rating in may 2020. this rating ensures that the town continues to receive the most competitive rates possible the town issued debt in the amount of 3.27 million 275 million in june of 2020 at a total interest cost of 1.24 due to our aaa bonding rating based on currently approved projects all outstanding general obligation debt is retired by 2035. so as you can see the town of avon has some tax relief programs this was just most recently updated the town council regularly reviews a tax relief program that is available to seniors or those who are disabled in december 2020 the council reaffirmed the income eligibility eligibility threshold of fifty seven thousand five hundred the benefit increases annually with the increase in the tax
021levy please take a moment or to review the tax relief programs that are available the application deadline is may 15th okay and this slide illustrates how avon's program compares to neighboring communities and the rest of the farmington valley so to get the most up-to-date information please visit our website www.avonct.gov sign up to receive email alerts of upcoming meetings in avon i thought i would bring you some of that community billboard tonight um because there's a lot going on and hopefully you've had a chance to check your email but i just wanted to mention a few things last week we had roughly 50 of our residents including our town manager members of the avon police department they all met at public works on saturday morning and were all given trash bags and we spread out along
022the greenway and i think we broke it down into ten different groups and picked up trash for for three hours we had came back with about 25 to 30 bags filled with trash and more that was put aside so that public works could go and pick them up it was a really fun morning and it was just a great to see a group of people come together to make the community look a little cleaner there um right now we are running um fee free brush disposal um we have two saturdays left may 8 and may 15 you can bring your brush to the avon transfer station all you need to do is provide proof of residency and you can um you'll kind of go through the the back part and drop off your brush so
023we have two more saturdays that we'll we're going to be doing that i believe the hours are from 8 to 12. members of the town council and some of the planning and zoning committee had an opportunity to tour whole foods let me tell you folks this is absolutely beautiful i think it's going to be a wonderful destination for many in our community it's wonderful because it's right next to the trail so people that are biking through on the greenway can stop and have lunch at whole foods there's even a special way to wheel your bicycle up to the whole food so it's you know you have the stairs and then you put your bicycle there and and and go on up and have your lunch um there's some really nice beautiful rock gardens there um
024so we're hopeful that they open sometime in june so get over there and enjoy it now another shameless plug which i think most of the um boards have heard about um we are hoping that you will join the town council for our first annual cinco de mayo bike ride we are going to be leaving from behind town hall at five o'clock on wednesday we are hoping that it doesn't rain if it does we will send out a town wide email we're going to be going about six miles some of us will be anyway and it will be really a fun opportunity for everybody to get out and get their bikes ready also on wednesday morning it is a bike to school day so be extra vigilant as you're driving if you're going into work or
025driving your other children to school that there may be groups of kids riding their bicycle to school we do plan to have increased patrols so just be aware of that and take part in it join it and be fun so just my final thoughts on the budget this budget reflects eight months of hard work to arrive at a budget that balances competing needs and provides significant value for our town's investment at the core we aim to provide the citizens of avon with a safe well-managed culturally enriched and fiscally responsible community we strive to satisfy the needs of all in our community maintain our infrastructure and be good stewards of the town as we look forward look toward the next generation the decisions that go into creating this budget are never taken lightly from the office
026staff to the department heads to our town manager and finally the elected officials we take spending taxpayer money very seriously we believe that the budget presented today reflects what is truly needed for our town to sustain us and put us in an excellent financial position for the years ahead your support of this process is important please support this budget at referendum on may 12th thank you and i will turn this back over to mr shay very well done heather thank you at this time we'd like to call on mrs chute to present the board of education budget thank you so much bill thank you heather and thank you tom it's good to see everyone welcome back to avon high school's auditorium it's nice for me to be back in the building as well this is
027a bit of a treat so thank you for joining us tonight it's my privilege to be able to introduce our board members as well as acknowledge our central office team i do know that we have some board members who are attending virtually so i will simply call everyone's name so that they can be acknowledged so my name is deb shoot i am the chair of the avon board of education jay spivak is our vice chair jeffrey fleischman our secretary jason and domenico jackie blaia laura young david cavanaugh bogdanoprica and lisa seminara it takes countless hours i probably i would say weeks but i think possibly months to put these kinds of numbers together and truly be able to present something to our board first that the central office team feels very proud of and has
028worked so hard on i always can tell how much heart and time went into those decisions so by the time we're asking questions we know that it's been fine-tuned and we really appreciate the efforts that have been made so i'd like to acknowledge our central office leadership team as well we have ms susan russo our business manager mr roberto medic our director of human resources dr donna nessler rusek our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and of course i am thrilled to be able to present to you dr bridget heston carnamola our superintendent of schools who will walk you through our budget this evening thank you good evening as miss shoot said i am bridget heston carnival superintendent of avon public schools i'd like to just take a moment to thank the board of education
029for their support in bringing this budget forward and also the town council and the board of finance for the countless hours that you spent on not only putting together the town's budget but working with us on ours and my as miss shoot said central office leadership team and the administrative team as a whole in avon public schools and all of our staff who really start working on our budget about this time for next year and certainly by the fall as you can see go ahead tom we are in full swing based on our priorities um as you heard heather mcguire mentioned our budget process too is grounded in our mission for avon public schools and i won't read that to you but that's the starting point for all of the work that we do one
030of the things that we like to stop to think about as we plan for the coming year as a school district and for three years and five years out as part of our strategic planning is where we are in the big scheme of of things insofar as our own accomplishments as a school district and again i won't read them all too these are some of what we have stopped to accomplish in the last year i kind of like to think about this as what we are utilizing our taxpayer dollars to do in the town of avon so our budget process as i mentioned really begins in the previous school year and comes together in the fall of the current year for the following year we went through all everything that you will see in much
031greater detail than you will see it here tonight in summary since last october and finalized it with the board of education on january 13th our budget development goals are the same as our strategic planning goals in our blueprint for excellence which are based upon student learning and creating multiple pathways for our students to be able to think critically persist in solving challenging problems working collaboratively and communicating effectively likewise we work closely with all of our staff and students to develop their own skills and personal growth and relationships so that our students graduate from avon public schools as 21st century citizens that are self-directed self-regulated and resilient so they can meet their own personal and academic goals in addition two parts of our blueprint are directly related to the systems that we employ from human resources
032through our curriculum development and certainly through our budget process we try to optimize the systems that we put into place each year to get the most out of all of the resources that we put in and also to develop our partnerships with both our families and our community as a whole this year we have three major drivers for the increase in this budget number one is an increase to insurance and other benefits number two are increased requirements for teaching and learning throughout the school district and number three are technology needs so as a entire district we had to think about numerous things as a result not only of the last nearly two years that we have been through pre-pandemic during pandemic and at some point in the near future we are certainly hopeful post-pandemic we
033had to keep the teaching and learning of the district going and to continue to meet our goals and our strategic plan and also all requirements set forth by the state of connecticut some of our main priorities are in regards to staffing and these are not necessarily add-ons from a budgetary number standpoint but we are clear about what each one of them costs that you may not have seen previously the first one you see on the list is a physical education wellness teacher that's here at avon high school and that is something that we attempted to keep in the budget last year and when we made some final cuts we reduced that from our budget we cannot do that again this year because we need to meet new state requirements related to a health and safety
034graduation requirement likewise we had a full-time business teacher that we had added into our budget last year that we took out again at the end of last year as you know when we were trying to prepare for what our future would look like in this year in terms of funding in covid19 era and we again knew that we would have to add it back in this year because this is a requirement regarding student graduation personal finance and also the partnership we have with tungsten community college for our students to be able to earn college credits in business we had to cancel as a point of reference for you ten sections full sections of students last year in this course which we will not be able to do again this year likewise due to our enrollment
035and music classes which we're obviously proud of in the district and work hard to support we are looking to break the split of a teacher we had a teacher split between the middle school and the high school for many years it has never worked well but it has finally come to a point in which we cannot maintain the numbers of courses with the one teacher going back and forth between the building so you see that's the one and anywhere you see fte that is our verbiage for full-time employee we also have an addition of a field service technician which you might also refer to as an i.t individual we have a fantastic information technology staff i'll be at a very short staffed one thank you again for being here with us helping tonight mr klein
036to see you and the partnership that we have employed with the town very often to be able to support town needs also through rit as you can imagine in 2021 our technology needs are not shrinking they are growing and our team has been having a very difficult time even pre remote learning and online learning uh with the number of devices students and families that and employees that they are serving so this again is something that we looked at including in the budget not only last year but the past four years and we are simply unable to continue to proceed forward without an individual added onto the team we'd actually best be served if we were able to put two in but again trying to bring a budget forward that was as fiscally responsible as we
037could under the requirements that we have we have put one in i should mention too that we look forward in this case to being able to save additional salary money in often overtime and additional monies paid out for the time that it takes above and beyond the work day and often very often on the weekends for our information technology staff in addition a floating nurse the primary purpose of this is so that when we are short a nurse if you think about each school building has one nurse assigned except here at the high school we have two because of the number of students anytime one nurse is out generally speaking we try to take one of the two that are here at the high school if we are able to on that day and redeploy
038them if not we pay a service to send in a nurse and that is significantly more expensive than maintaining a number of nurses on our own through one more salary and certainly in this year we have unlike no other we have seen the use of our nurses skyrocket that has been happening over time regardless of the pandemic but due to the increased medical needs that our students present at school as you know we work hard to maintain what we need in the buildings for each one of our students and as the years have gone by that has been an increase also in the medical needs that we see i won't read through uh this entire list you'll get the idea with it being technology uh these are primarily what you will see as additions and
039some of them may appear fairly small at the thousand five hundred dollars for example for some what we refer to as miscellaneous supplies but they are replacement parts for items that may be damaged lost or broken a lot of times by um the increased uses of students with individual technology it may not be a huge number but it is an increase nonetheless and i we do not expect that to change regardless of the method of learning with the amount of technology that we are using likewise we have had to put in additional software additional equipment wi-fi access points the normal maintenance and replacement of some of our technology such as our projector and our presentation pilots desktops here at the avon high school computer lab is a significant portion of this at the forty four
040thousand one hundred and eighteen dollars those computers are end of life in the technology world they are desktops that are seven years old and uh the software that we need to install to continue to support our advanced placement computer science class cannot be run on those nor can it be run on chromebooks you see some increases in instructional and general supplies and again i won't read each one of those in the essence of time and we've spoken about them certainly at other presentations but generally speaking one of the things for us to remember is that these are primarily increases because of the reductions we made last year in order to reduce our budget significantly at the end of last year's as we approached the 2021 school year we pre pre-bought much of the instructional supplies
041for this year and also held off on purchasing some knowing that we would be a little bit at a financial cliff so to speak in this year where we would now have to buy the things for the coming year that we did not last year and just a way to look at the budget distribution and of course we have all of the numbers with us tonight in anticipation that there might be additional questions afterward please feel free to ask but just to show you the overview of the distribution you see on the top of just below 80 percent of our budget as a whole is in both salaries and benefits and even though that is an increase it is actually a decrease in the percentage of our overall budget year over year and the reason
042for that is mostly uh due to a number of retirements that we saw at the end of last year some into early retirement incentives that were offered as we came into this year and needed additional staffing but limited salary lines so in other words as we had a number of people retire at higher steps in the salary schedule when we rehired we rehired a number of people that were coming in on lower salaries with uh usually fresher from school and or less experience but still the best people that we could find to hire so just to give you an example there the benefits alone the increase year over year now pause a second this is as you saw in the earlier slides with mr harrison and ms mcguire a 2.65 increase on our end is
043the board of education and um that equates to one million six hundred nineteen thousand seventy eight dollars and forty two cents increase year over year five hundred and four thousand nine hundred and eleven dollars and fifty five cents of that is an increase to benefits um insur health insurance workers compensation pension that's not teachers pensions that is pension pensionable funds for others that are not certified teachers or administrators and also post retirement benefits which i think you saw increase on the town side also also one of the things a 1.7 percent increase in our transportation contract which is a normal year-over-year increase which you would see in the contracted services end that's another three hundred thousand dollars and in increase in transportation so you see the majority of our increase is in the areas that
044i just spoke to benefits the technology and the staffing that we have related to the increased requirements for our students over all five schools and again the next is just another way to look at that from the driver's perspective just a different breakdown of the money and you see 30 percent of the increase is in salaries 31.19 percent of the increase is in benefits we actually have reduction in utilities and that's as a result of looking closely at our usage over the past six years thank you to ms russo our business manager for doing that and adjusting those numbers a small increase in our contracted services overall and transportation but a large increase again you see in tuition and to be clear about what tuition is primarily that is outplacement tuition for our students who
045with special needs that we are unable to meet in avon public schools and therefore by law are required to fund a different uh place of education for them supplies and equipment as you saw 412 000 or twenty five point five one percent of this increase that is uh the technology and also the increase in supplies that we are buying for the coming school year that we were able to buy last year for this year that i mentioned earlier that is in summary what has taken months to put together and we have talked about great detail in line by lines and other forums as i said i'm happy to answer any other questions that you might have tonight and just like to thank you again for your support of our students and our faculty and staff
046in avon public schools thank you deb and thank you bridget great presentation it's been brought to the town's attention that the people who are watching virtually are having some difficulty seeing the slides on the screen so i'm going to try to mention this again at the end of the meeting or before the meeting closes all of this presentation is on the website so if everybody could remember that that should be helpful all the presentations have been given wonderful job by by heather tom deb and bridget and at this time i'd like to ask if any other town official would like to comment quickly again any other town official want to comment questions there's going to be questions sure sure tom's going to answer a few we're going to say if you uh comments before the
047end of the meeting there being no comments from any town officials i'd like to open it up and allow citizens to make comments or ask questions and i would ask one thing is that you state your name and your address for the record sure good evening everybody my name is thomas frank and this is the first town meeting in avon that i've attended just to introduce myself uh i am a new resident we moved from simsbury where we lived for 20 years and at simsbury i was a member of the board of education for about five years member of the economic development commission the zoning commission and so forth so i've been pretty active and i'm very interested and very much admire what's being done here in avon much of which i've been aware of
048i do have a list of questions and comments and i don't i don't think it would be productive to try to get answers to these things i just want to raise them as questions or comments that might be of interest to the taxpayers if not this year perhaps next year um and so with your permission i just like to run through these questions and comments if that's all right sure i i how long do you think it's going to take if you had to guess five minutes i think that i think that if we can keep it to five minutes then what we'll do is ask if there's any other comments and come back to you very good how does that sound yeah that sounds good uh it might go over five so let me
049know when five is up please how about this when you think you're halfway through it let's see if there's other questions i'll do my best one one data point that i i'm interested in is the grand list changes that are associated with with this budget and um i'm just wondering uh if uh i think maybe other people might be interested in how the grand list has changed this year compared to last year in previous years a second comment i'd like to make is on page four of the presentation there's a mill rate comparison with other towns it's dated i think would be helpful if we could update that so that we would have a more up-to-date comparison also on page four there's no data entered for fiscal year 2020-21 and i was just wondering somebody
050else might notice that and ask a question fourthly i was kind of disappointed as as a new resident to see a mill rate increase of nearly just about four percent which is i'm just not used to mill rate increases of that type especially an environment where inflation is not that big of a deal although i recognize that salaries and benefits are the driver here and many of them are are mandated by contract but nonetheless that's a huge increase and i can't help but comparing it with what simsbury is proposing this year of something just about one half of one percent i know towns are different that would probably require a long explanation i just want to register a concern a 4 mil rate increase in today's environment is huge and i would not vote to
051approve that finally related to that i would suggest for the benefit of the taxpayers of this town that they would receive a clear a brief but clear explanation why on earth are we having such a big mill rate increase which i think is bigger than almost every mil rate increase in in previous years i might be wrong about that um now as far as the board of education is concerned um and by the way i much admire what avon board of education has been doing because in simsbury we were constantly comparing ourselves with avon especially in math and science could i make a suggestion sure could we take a brief pause sure sit tight we'll see if there's any other questions okay and if there aren't we'll come back to you if not we're going
052to go through some some of the questions in the audience and then get back to you thank you fair are there any other questions or comments mrs hornaday thank you for recognizing me without with my mask it's pretty nice i wanted to bring up the same thing he did which is i don't um it's been a long time since i've done this but the figures regarding the mill rate increase in the in the percentage that's given and then the amounts that are shown is what's going to be the increase i cannot reconcile those two things and when mr harrison explain that to us i think it's on page four um i wrote it down i'm sorry this little booklet's a little difficult but it's it says that the increase as the previous gentleman mentioned is
053going to be three something and then it says there yes 3.98 increase but then it says the meal rate will increase from 32.9 to 30.21 and i think that's 1.1 so if mr harrison could explain that a little more fully it would be helpful diane with with your approval i don't want to be doing it off the top of my head here with you know could we talk after the meeting and i can get the exact figures and give you a more realistic answer than just trying to pull numbers off this sheet if i will give you what you're looking for but it would be easier if i could work it with pencil and that sort of thing so that would be my preferred way to approach that but you'll have an answer but i
054just don't want to do it off the top of my head standing here okay okay thank you thank you okay are there any other questions or comments any did you raise your hand i'm sorry i'm trying to did you want to say something oh okay all right all right because good enough are there any questions or comments sir would you like to resume and we'll see if there's any questions or comments after that i'd like to make some comments and questions about the board of education budget and maybe maybe these questions could be answered quickly i'm sure they can be the first question i had i think it's been answered that that the increase in five ftes in in the in the education system um i was wondering if that's net of retirements and i
055guess it's is it net of retirements or not is it a net increase in five tes or grossing is is are the fts going up by five year to year or not no no how much are they going up year to year sure um secondly uh i know that my previous experience um working on board of education uh was that enrollment trends were really critical and really important and i'm wondering if the board of education could at least let us know maybe tonight what has the trend been in student enrollment over the last few years um and this year compared to last year okay yeah i think if someone from the board of edge would like to respond the microphone's right there i i think we're trying to make sure we're in rhythm here with
056how you want to do this could we answer each question as they come up absolutely all right and we'll take a break again if we have to and ask if there's other questions thanks bridget so i think one of the things maybe to point out that might be helpful to you is there's a bigger uh handout than i think what you have in your hand that some of these things are spoken to that i don't know if uh i'm sure someone else would get you i don't have one um but we is it on the website because i can look it up i believe so right the budget the budget hand the big budget handout that yes the budget's on the website yeah okay i'll have a look at the website like what mr robertson
057has our bound version that everything is in all of the line by no i don't want to look at that i'll go to the website that's where it is very good um so our enrollment is static at this time um as our as of our last board of education meeting for example i think we're up four students over the same time last year but we haven't finished kindergarten registration yet very good thank you um the next question is about cost per student trend in the avon school student a school system compared to the demographic reference group which i guess is b how does the cost per student in avon for 2021-22 or 2020-21 compare with other schools in the our drg that i don't have with me tonight in the last year the comparison would
058be from the state i believe would be 2020. um well i'm only suggesting that the taxpayers it would be good to let taxpayers know what how the cost per student comparison is um and i expect it's pretty good but some people might like to know it i certainly would in comparison to the other district reference house yes indeed um including simsberry and farmington and so forth um why don't we just take a quick break here while you look at your questions is there anyone else who has a question or comment thank you mrs hornaday my question regards curriculum and i know that secretary cardona has mandated the teaching of certain classes that i will be honest i uh think of flawed and i'm speaking specifically of critical race theory and i know that he when
059he was the commissioner here in connecticut said that we had to take that on in 202 21 20 or 22 for sure that we would have to do it this year or next for sure i'd like to know to what extent that is going to cost us money and exactly what section of the teaching program that's going to come under whether it's going to be under social studies or english thank you there is not a dollar amount in this budget that is related to that possible requirement actually they did make it a requirement it's not so to be clear though it is a course that will be offered that will have to be offered in all high schools as of right now in not the 21 22 year but the 22 23 year the curriculum
060is still in a draft form so i can't answer much else about it right now tonight but i can tell you that that is no part of this budget so i can't say what it may cost us yet does that make sense okay are there any other hold on one sec are there any other comments or questions yes go ahead this time you're not touching your glasses okay go ahead here we go you might want to lower your mask because everybody's gonna have trouble hearing you or come to the microphone please mr shea i have a conundrum first of all i'm a board of finance member but since we passed that on the agenda of seven point e i guess i'll be commenting as a resident on sevenpoint f if that's okay sure okay so
061i'm katrina moran and i live at 24 zachary drive in avon um the comment that i want to make could you could you step just a little closer to the microphone i'm trying not to spit on it sorry it's okay i just want to make sure we can hear you yeah all right i just want to make a comment basically um and it might help answer mr frank's question as well in last year's town council budget there was one line item for 1.3 million dollars that one line item was for a second geothermal system to replace the failing seven-year-old geothermal system at the library this single line item 1.3 million forced us to dip into the rainy day fund to cover it to cover just that one lineup of 1.3 million the people are being
062asked to pay 2.12 and it may have shifted brandon of the 3.98 tax increase just to cover it so that 1.3 million this year could have gone to our schools and instead the board of ed is being asked to give up 250 000 to support the three point nine percent increase that's being proposed so just think about when you go vote may 12 thank you thank you okay would anybody else like to comment or ask a question sir could you resume yes oh and i won't i won't i won't be much much longer and thank you very much for that clarification and that clarification really underscores the last comment that i i would like to make this is a really big if it actually is 3.98 it's a really big mill rate increase in today's
063environment and it's rare to get to see one that high uh these days and i had no idea how much of that mill rate increase is eaten up by this adjustment that you've mentioned and so that i just want to say that underscores uh my belief and in fact a request if you can possibly tell the taxpayers before the vote in in brief terms just maybe a couple of maybe two or three paragraphs why on earth is the budget going up the mill rate going up two point or three point nine eight eight percent and include that kind of information in it and i think that will make the mill rate a little bit more tolerable for the taxpayers that's all i have to say thank you an answer too sure go ahead we're having
064a little bit of trouble right now speaking of our it needs with getting on with our connection so one of your questions i'm unable to answer regarding the change in full-time employees from one year to the next because we can't log on right now that said i was able to pull up the what you asked about the district reference group the durg b comparison per student and as i thought it is the last year that the state published that is 1920 you can find this on the state website also so for avon that was seventeen thousand five hundred and ninety dollars and ninety one cents for simsbury it was eighteen thousand forty nine dollars and forty seven cents for farmington it was seventeen thousand two hundred and ninety seven dollars and for glastonbury it was
065one hundred and seventy eight thousand two hundred and ninety dollars um so that gives you an an example we are second from the bottom in that in that small group there are more towns but those are who we most often compare ourselves to in fact i think that kind in fact i love to hear that and i think that's just kind of information taxpayers should have to know that this school system is being run efficiently um by comparison to the reference group thank you you're welcome one other point i don't know how long you've been with us and i don't want to overstep and misspeak but since i'm already here the tax increase one of the reasons we are seeing it be probably at least twice what would normally be is because it was zero
066last year until so that's probably another piece of help okay any other questions or comments any any other questions or comments okay at this moment we're going to take a pause and uh tom harrison would like a couple of minutes and when tom completes uh his comments we'll see if there's any more questions or discussion thank you bill thank you i would like to pick up on the comment that was just made with the mill rate increase this year as was pointed out last year there was no milk rate at all mill rate increase at all it was two years in a row of the same mill rate so this year's increase is on top of zero increase in the mill rate in the last budget cycle it'll be ending this july 30th june 1st
067whatever it is but more importantly it hasn't come up and which is right that it doesn't come up but some of you or seem to be new to town and may not be aware of it so i want to make a brief commercial for the way the three boards that are represented tonight work you could be sitting in the audience of any one of those three boards meetings and you would not be able to tell who's a republican and who's a democrat we don't work on that kind of partisan basis we work on an avon basis what's best for avon and i've been on the board of finance since uh 19 i think it was 1995 when i first went on and that has always been the way that board worked and the other two
068there's no politics involved in it we can have our debates discussions disagreements the mill rate is too high too low you're not spending enough you're spending too much but sitting in that room you would not know who's a republican and who's a democrat and i think that's the way it should be in a town like avon we're not washington we're not hartford we do it with the best interest of avon whether we're republicans democrats neutrals independents whatever so i want to just call that out to attention that whatever disagreements we have it's the mill rate is this that the other thing let's have those debates let's have those discussions but just be aware they're not partisan they're what we as residents of avon think is best for avon and i think i hope it will
069always stay that way we don't get into what we're seeing down in washington now with the parties lobbing hand grenades at each other and the same with hartford so i for one am a resident here for many years and i'm very pleased and very happy that we don't have that kind of partisan bickering here and i don't think we'll ever get it but i did want to leave you with that thought the other thing i think it's already been addressed about the difference in the mill rate from year to year last year's increase was not changed from the one before that so i have nothing else to say the final thing reiterated we don't work on a partisan basis here in avon with republicans lobbing hand grenades at the democrats and the democrats throwing them
070back and i hope we never see that and i just like to leave you with that thought that this is the best way i think to run the town what's best for avon not what's best for a particular political party thanks bill turn it back to you be careful hang on one second you took my notes that's all right that's right take your time i stole it that's okay we make it work all right once again before i ask for any comments or discussion from the audience with the virtual audience please uh understand that the time recognizing the the slides might be a bit blurry or unclear and that all of the slides the whole presentation and the budget is on the website at this time for the last time i'll ask if there are
071any questions or comments there being none i'd like to congratulate the the board of finance the town council and the board of ed on the outstanding presentations this evening thank everyone for attending and participating and i'd like to advise everyone that there being no further discussion the budget will be submitted for vote referendum on wednesday may 12 2021 at the avon senior center community room 635 west avon road avon connecticut between the hours of 6 a.m and 8 p.m thank you everyone for attending the meeting will adjourn until then thank you you