001Sorry. All right. Let's call the meeting to order here at 8:10 a.m. Sorry for the late starts. Um old business budget discuss uh discussion budget timeline is really just next week we'll have our first reading of the draft budget [snorts] uh which a little bit into next meeting day and agenda. So we'll jump over to revolving accounts policies. Um I know you put together those slides and then you also found some sample documents from communities. Do you want to go through the slides? >> If we can just go through the slides. So the slides um that I shared in the folder. >> Uh it's just a copy of the presentation that we reviewed last year. >> Um and it just gives kind of an overview of revenue offsets, but I think that it's it's um
002relevant to the discussion today. And so I put this in here. I don't know if this is something that we may want to share on the budget website as well. Um but it just kind of speaks to when we talk about revenue offset what that means. Um and so in just saying that we have a number of revolving accounts. Um and um they can be different types. So some of them are user fee revolving accounts, some of them um are tied to federal grants, some of them are state reimbursements. That's um the circuit breaker program and then the other sources. And it's always just important to note, I know we talked about this at um warrant committee that a decrease in any of the budget offset or reduction in revenue um would have the same
003impact to the operating budget as an increase in expenditure. So that's something that's really important to remember as we talk about some of the changes that we may make with our revolving funds going forward. Um so an example of a revolving fund is the extracurricular fees. Extracurricular means um the determination of the fees are decided on an annual basis. So I think last year we were reviewed the fees on an iterative basis. We started in December. I think the last fee that we approved probably was into the March time period. We have a full fee schedule, but this is just a snapshot. We actually had made some changes to this since um I had put this presentation together. So there is an updated rate for this year for FY26, but you can see this just
004kind of an example. >> Did you see the feed schedule? Have you seen that back then? I think I think this was like school committee meeting number one it might have that we voted on these changes or something. So I have seen I have seen something. >> So I can pop that in the folder too just the most recent and then in the most recent version of the fee um schedule that lists them all. It does have there is a column that shows the date of the last change. So it kind of gives you a sense of like when we've updated it. And so this is like 3750 to part is a family fee to participate in. >> It's a student fee. Student fee. >> Yeah. And participate in any club. >> That's And so
005it's at Pierce. And then at the high school, we actually updated last year. So like I said, FY26 is blank here, but the um updated fee schedule has the new rate and it's for um the clubs. And then we at the high school level and I believe we did it for Pierce as well, we added a um a different fee for drama >> and it's actually a higher fee just to reflect the conversation that we had was drama was the time commitment is more reflective of like participating in a sport. >> And so we didn't think that the 37 or 25 was reflective of that program. So, we update it and now I believe it's $100 for a student to participate. >> But I can get I'll pop a copy of that into the um
006folder for today. >> Yeah, I think that's helpful context. Obviously, we're not adjusting the fees within this conversation. But >> yeah, but the fees again are so closely tied to the revenue that's coming in because that's essentially what makes up the offset. So just to provide some context on why your budget offsets important um they help to reduce the total operating budget funding need. So um you can see here the adjusted gross budget was uh for FY25 was $71 million. We had over $4 million in revenue offsets. That was grants, circuit breaker, um, transportation revolving, a number of different revolving. And then you can see the FY25 net budget amount that doesn't match. I don't know where that number came from. So just use this as more like uh because that doesn't match the um
007FY25 operating budget. But you can just see the relationship between you have a gross budget number we receive in revenue offsets. So that helps reduce that number and then the net budget is what is funding it down. >> Which number did you say is not accurate? >> 67. >> Oh, got it. >> That number should essentially be what your town meeting should be. Yeah. >> That's correct. And so budget offsets can fluctuate from year to year. They may be reduced over time. However, expenses typically increase year for a year. So an example of a budget offset fluctuating or being reduced um would be some of the COVID funding that we received. So the federal funding through ARPA and ESSER um we received that funding. there were expenses um that were associated with that funding and
008then that funding was eliminated. And so that's why you either take those expenses and you rolled that into your budget. That's a lot of the conversation was how that funding was creating funding clips for communities because of the rapid drop off in funding available or um in some instances if you have expenses that are associated with supplemental funding then when the funding goes away the expense would then go away because it's not sustainable. Um, >> I assume most of the 4 million in offset special education >> Mhm. >> grants or whatever. >> That is a big that is probably the biggest um percentage. Um so again this is just I just wanted to provide this just to just to give some overall like context >> um to revolving kind of like the mechanism of how
009they work when we're looking at the budget and um the relationship to the school's operating budget. >> That's right. Thank you. And so I also provided some information specific to the revolving accounts that we have here at the school department. There are several documents in the folder. One of the documents is actually gives the legal reference to the mass general law. Um so that you can see why we're able to have each one of the accounts. Um and that was just put in there as a kind of like a point of reference. This tells each one of the revolving accounts the um legal reference and then it shows if there's any statutory spending ceiling. It shows that you can carry forward the balance year over year. Um and if there are any kind of limitations
010around what you can spend the revenue. So this is set for us all. We every municipality school district needs to follow this chart. Um >> so you cannot have a revolving account that's not correct. >> So the revolving account um some of them may fall under like certain categories and it may not specifically say it on the grid, but you would have to tie it to one of these categories. >> Mhm. a long fantastic back. >> So that's just kind of the list. So you can see that. So when we talk about the revolving accounts and how kind of like the mechanism of how we're using them, we're not just doing that because that's what you know Katy Blake thinks it's a good idea. We're doing it based off this information. And then this is
011the revolving fund history. So this goes all the way back to 2015. You can see some of the balances. Um and it has just the list of just a number of revolving accounts. Some of them are we don't use anymore. Some of them are still active. Um, but I think what was and this was something that um this isn't a sheet that I put together. It's something that I somewhat inherited which I'm grateful for because I think it shows some really good history. The piece that is was really interesting to me is to look every single year and just see the revenue that we're receiving and then how much money we spent. And so typically the revenue and the expenditures are similar in the amount. Um but if you go over to the FY24 budget,
012that's the year that I think it's really significant. And that was the year that we um that was kind of the first year that we experienced the deficit. So, um, >> yeah. So, we're making making about a million dollars >> here. About a million dollars there. >> And it and it's it's um Katie, is it is it um we really have to look at all of these in isolation because looking at the bottom number of the totality doesn't mean we can attract any of that money. All these things have to be cooked in separate pots. >> They can't be added together. You know what I mean? So this >> uh this isn't a um [clears throat] a unique collection of accounts that can be added up at the bottom of the aggregate. They have all
013they all have different seasonality. They all have different rules. >> They all have different offsets. Um [clears throat] so they're really all unique into themselves. >> Um for example, summer school, you collect the money in FY26 this year, but we'll like spend the money in FY27 because you start the program in July. community. So, so there's this there's season out. Well, all that said, what you to Katie's point, >> what did you take in and where did you spend? >> Yeah. >> So, that's important for like community schools like you know like if we're you have to just Yeah. I'm sorry. Can you go ahead and you >> No, that's okay. I just I think the important part really that and it almost feels like there's been a little just over the past several years
014of the budget history there's been some confusion. And so when you look at this for FY24, we brought in $7.6 million in revenue. And again, to John's point, that's in totality. So that um each account has to be the expenditures have to be specific to what that revenue was brought in for. So it's not like we can say, "Oh, we brought in $7 million and we're going to spend that $7 million on copy paper." like we can't do that. We have to spend the money on the um specific reason why we brought that revenue in. But if you look at the expenditures for FY24, our expenditures were essentially $2.4 million higher than the revenue that we're bringing in. And that's not sustainable. >> And so in those expenditures were real expenditures. That's not that wasn't
015a one-time expenditure. that wasn't something where the expense was going away. And so because we used revolving funds to cover those expenditures in FY25 that those revolving funds weren't available to us anymore. So those expenses had to be picked up by the operating budget. And that's why when we started the year last year and when we looked at the Q2 report, we said, you know, it looks like we're going to have about a $2 million deficit because in looking at the revolving fund utilization from the previous year, seeing that those expenses did not go away, but that revenue went away, that revenue is not available to us anymore. um that's what created kind of that issue that we experienced last year. And that's why it's so important for us to make sure that we're not
016doing that on on an ongoing basis because we were assigning expenses to a revenue source that was not sustainable. And so I think that is kind of like overall the the basis of why we're having this conversation and that I think that framing is why when we look at each each account specifically and look at the revenue that we're bringing in and we look at the expenditures. I would say that the important piece of this potentially could be almost setting if we're saying we want to look and say okay we're going to set our policy around these parameters I think it it may be important to say we should set a policy around making parameters around how much of the revolving fund we're spending in a year. Um because what happened in 24 is we
017just spent too much and we didn't have funding for it in the next year. I don't know if that makes sense. Like I feel like that kind of makes it I don't I I almost confused myself in explaining it. So does that make sense? >> Well it to to me it really um between that and not budgeting to actuals you can see why the whole thing fell apart. Jimmy like this is this is the kind of a snapshot that you >> well this was the way and you knew this uh >> that's how you paid up >> this is how >> you pay the bill you charged everything yeah you mortgage and you paid that's it right there. So that's the 2 >> yes >> $4 million closing bank account gap by by overleveraging these
018accounts and then >> to a lesser extent we we had to do it last year right for 900,000 I do think it's informative instructive that this number is lower than we've ever been [clears throat] back almost >> I mean last year you took a big you had to take a bigger share when we bought accounts we did in 24 took [clears throat] more dollars out in FY24 but took 50% revolve accounts. >> Yeah, but that's cuz there was nothing left. >> No, well, yeah, I know >> it was a high percentage. >> I think what does it mean practically when a revolving account is negative? >> It can't be negative. So, if your revolving account is negative at the end of the year, they we have to close that off to the general fund. And
019so, that essentially would be um closed off to the town's free cash. Okay. And so we have 90 days to clear a negative balance. Um or else it would go against our free cash allocation. And so circuit breaker at the end of the year we were negative. Um because the funds weren't received until July, but because it was in within the 90-day window, it didn't even like general music is negative. list here at the -23. >> So, and I'm not even sure that the general music line is one that we use. So, I can look into that one. That may just be like a formula error in this um document [clears throat] cuz the account that we use there is a music account that is used >> um but it's not the general music one.
020>> Gotcha. >> So, I will look into that. Right. >> Mhm. And I we did not have any accounts that we needed to um clear balances to the to free cash last year. >> Is Blue Hills Preschool the preschool with the Tucker Road? That is >> correct. Yeah. >> And that's operating in the red. >> Uh no, that is >> it was 254 says, $,000. I think that's why forget it seems like similar to maybe community schools that was making money last years. >> And then we took a a chunk >> in community schools has made a substantial upgrade in the types of services that they offering. >> Yeah. >> But like nurses, [clears throat] you know, intervention specialists and inclusion specialists. So they're they're going to be in need of a >> Yeah. increase
021in pace. So some of these involve the reason why I I just to say this out loud because maybe people know it. Circuit breakers different right the money comes in from there it's a reimbursement from the state you hold it you expend it etc. Athletics um is how much do we put in from gate fees in uh student student fees to pay play the sport combined with money from operating. So it's like a multi-pronged kind of so we start talking about buses and sports. The reason why um fees comes into it to where uh Katie started is that those those are the different pieces of the cocktail, right? you add a little bit more fees and you don't have to put as much from the volume account and you can but also having the flexib
022like when you get when you get to the point in three years where you have normal balances again you do want to give Katie in Katie's role the ability to move those as levers >> to make things worse because when you're in the last quarter >> and you see that you know you've had some ups and downs with like every team made a tournament this year in the fall >> so good new story but oh my god they're going to every time a bus goes off the campus they uh Why couldn't I just lose in the lock game of the year kind of thing, you know? So, >> but when so but you want the flexibility of moving operation money over when you need to because you had a good year in athletics and you
023want to >> um so that there's but to me >> I'd like to f I'd really like to prioritize the ones that we really think we need to pay attention to >> and I don't know if the policies can be the same blanket as me. I think they need to be different for each balling count. Whether that be focus on circuit breaker, transportation, athletics, whatever the big ones, community schools. >> Yeah. >> Um food service we really can't touch. We touch it to a certain extent because Katie manages all those dollars. We add some expenses to that. But and then then we'd have to go through this and anybody who is on a year-to-year basis not paying who's who's whose expenses outweigh their revenue that are only surviving because they had a balance back in
024the day. >> They have to be yeartoyear solvent. This is the only cash flow kind of communication that we have in municipal budgeting. >> Yeah. >> You mean we don't worry about cash flow from the bigger sense. This is our only cash flow worry. >> So if you go to the other document, so this is the history. So you can kind of see every year um the revenue all the way back to 2017. So then I tried to take that document and just take the information from last year and organize it in a way because each one of the accounts acts somewhat um somewhat differently. And so I tried on this document to organize it by the type of account. So with revolving funds, you can have a self- sustaining account. And so those funds
025are typically used for programs where the expenses fluctuate. Um just like athletics is a perfect example. Um however, for a self-sustaining account, the goal is for a break even financial status. So examples of that, those are are accounts kind of in that first section, the summer school programs that we operate. Um, adult school, which is our driver's ed program, community schools, and you can kind of go down. We have some fundraising student accounts which I don't know that I would those are kind of separate because it's the money that is raised by the students goes directly into accounts and then can be expended for um what you know some of the requests that they're asking for. And then AP AP testing is a self-sustaining account. So the students are are paying the $90 fee to
026take the test and then we're just essentially paying that fee to the college board. And then the second section is the offset. And so to exactly what John was just saying, those um revolving accounts are not self- sustaining. So the the revenue that we receive in is just offsetting a portion of the overall expense, but it's also coupled with funding from the operating budget in order to completely fund whichever program. So athletics only funds a portion of the overall expenses. Um same thing with circuit breaker. circuit breaker is only funding a portion of the tuition payments that we're paying for out of district placements. Preschool only pays for one teacher in some instances. It's not paying for the entire preschool program. And um same thing with transportation. Transportation only pays for um a fraction of
027the overall transportation expense. yellow bus transportation expense that we have. So, kind of two different buckets. And I think the way that we look at them with our self- sustaining accounts, we want them to remain self- sustaining. And so we almost have to make sure that the fees are set appropriately so that those funds can remain self- sustaining because if they start because we don't really in any of the accounts have significant balances. If they start to not be self sustaining in any fiscal year, we're going to start eating away at those balances. and then it may get to a point where we'd have to talk about funding them from the operating budget, which I don't think we're in that position to be able to do that. Um, and then it's the same with all
028of our offset accounts. We just have to be mindful of the fees that we're charging and then the revenue and how much of that revenue that we're using to offset the expenses as those expenses increase year-over-year. We know transportation 8% increase that's in the contract um that we just signed into. So just being mindful of those increases will occur year and um we may have to potentially look at the fees if we want to continue to be able to offset the expenses at the same rate. K. Are there any offset accounts that you think should be self- sustaining just or delet in in [clears throat] my opinion the the kind of lighter ones should be all self- sustaining, right? So the after school program passive peer should be self-sustaining. You should only be giving out,
029you should only hold an afterchool program class like you might put a menu of like 12 things for the kids to do and they have to have way we used to do it is if you don't get 10 students which pays the stipen you don't run it. So if it doesn't doesn't get up to 10 students then you don't run it. Um, or if you have a couple that go way over and I have 20 in one class and I and I already have a couple of nines and I run the couple of nines because I got a little juice from these, you know. So, but in the aggregate it should be self- sustaining. Just can't run >> and and I think that, you know, when you get into clubs and activities, clubs at the
030high school and middle school are it's a big number. It's a $200,000 expense >> in just a high school. >> And the revenue offsets, the revenue coming in is There's no one that runs this in every building, every high school in America, unless they have a dedicated person just to this money in money out thing and supervising it and it's happening on a regular basis. Um it just feels like a big um ice cube that you're trying to pick up and hold. Do you mean like it just keeps falling and you can't >> is Karen Cahill ran uh orientation for every teacher who wanted to do a club. She gave them new rules. She told them if you didn't have up to x amount of students you couldn't run a club. She really was vigilant
031about it this year and it still feels like it's like >> Jimmy and and I and then students drive clubs, right? So then you don't want the student to come and say we want a club that goes talks about recycling or rock climbing or whatever the thing is and then a teacher volunteers and then this contract in languages. If teacher volunteers for two years in a row, it gets to become a club and I reserve the right to not run any clubs if I don't clubs. we get to save on club. The union doesn't get to say, you know what I mean? But and and so these are small things that just add up that you know what I mean that and they don't to Katie's point, the fees never keep up with the inflation
032of the statement and then um in in the fee collection. It's just a challenge to have that um it's not a but there's fees. >> Yeah. People come and go like I have the the vinyl record club and everybody comes and listens to vinyl and then it becomes a cool thing. So now 10 more kids are shot showing up and they never paid and you I mean it just it just it es and flows a lot. I don't know what it exactly looks like at melted high because I haven't I [clears throat] haven't experienced it this year yet. Uh but this is not uncommon for that to be a little bit looser and so you end up having it be more of a burden on the on the operating budget. That's essentially what it is.
033That's what that was. And so my my my my biggest worry is um from a self-sustaining lens to make sure the community schools has our fee structure set in order for that to be self- sustaining because they have taken on more responsibility. So that's one thing that we want to think about. And then obviously I think in my eyes I have highlighted uh transportation, Medicaid, circuit breaker, facility rental, athletic and revolving in community schools. If we wanted to kind of focus on a couple, >> I think all those are good. I think I think yeah I mean we obviously want all these to fund. I think from a policy perspective the question is beyond funding my mind is there some type of baseline kind of pot that we feel like needs to be created within
034these accounts beyond what we spend on name basis to create some buffer >> to say if we have a big swing of kids participating clubs that don't pay we have something within that budget that can adjust can accommodate for that right or we have again something within community schools where if we need to hire a onetoone nurse in a particular year and didn't and like didn't budget for that like we have some buffer that can kind of cover for those costs because there will be some kind of up and down. >> I don't to your point of like needing to provide the school department some flexibility with how they manage the budget. I totally agree with that and I I'm not 100% sure I disagree with what was done here as it relates to like
035utilizing his accounts to balance the budget. There was a lot of issues I think concerns with in terms of how we got to that point, but like ultimately that might have been the best decision for closing the budget in FY24. I think they what I'm trying to think of from a policy perspective is you know what are the the foundations we are trying to put in place to have robust kind of balances within these accounts and then what are the checks and balance say like hey the school department needs to do this okay from a community perspective from a school committee perspective I think our standpoint is like okay what at what point do we need to be informed because if Katie's moving $500 here and there to like cover something like that's on a
036big that's just work that you'll need to do a $2.5 million deficits is like okay how do we how do we monitor that a bit better than we were able to within this year um so like getting to the policy docs themselves I appreciate you sharing this I think this one's interesting to me this one mostly is just informative it doesn't really have policy >> I like this part I and I was putting that within mine of like being clear on you know for anybody. Yeah. What are the things that are bringing in money? What can what do we spend money from this account on? >> This seems like a lot of work to maintain a yearly basis. So, I wouldn't I don't know how helpful it is. And even this we keep this kind
037of in in the other document. >> Maybe not. I do like the kind of related laws like I think that's always helpful kind of context. Uh, and I think the purpose, you know, an overview of purpose because I still have questions of like what what is the difference between the Copeland Foundation account and then the rental account versus >> Sure. >> So, like there's still some of that I think would be helpful. Um I that kind of brings me to the doc I uh this was based upon the one that was shared to the budget coordination committee and so I just kind of changed some stuff around but essentially what they did was kind of list all of their kind of uh reserve accounts talked about what is the target that they want to have
038within those reserve accounts. Most of it was like 2 to 3% in order to create some buffer. Uh and then like what would they use the fund? >> 2 to 3% expenditures. >> Yeah, I think so. Um and so yeah, I can pull up that that document um that Nick shared previously. Um and then below they have like a little section about each each account and somewhat similar to this in terms of like what is the purpose and um so from my perspective I I think the work really is like this part like >> and and I have a lot of question marks there because I'm just not sure. There could be plenty of these accounts where we just say what is in is in what's out is out and it's kind of it's just
039going to be kind of onetoone. There's not much monitoring. We don't need much reserve in the adult education account. We don't need three months of expenditures. There's not really operation there. It's just or the AP accounts, right? They don't need months of operating, right? It's just they pay the $90 and then they take the test or pass through. >> Um, but I think there are to John to them to your point of like what are the ones where we want to have some type of pot behind the actual expenditures on an annual year. >> Yes. What is the size of that? This is the question I we can kind of get to. And are there other goals also for like generating costs? Because I think athletic fees, right? There's the paying the stipens, there's the
040paying the buses, and then there's [snorts] equipment. >> There's like how much are we? >> Yeah. How much are we covering kind of that? How much are we covering the football stands replacement, right, for all the the athletics that use that facility or use CO? Like, are we trying to gather any portion of those funds to help that kind of cover for capital needs given they use it? May maybe not. >> But those are things that I think about of like are there other goals within these funds? Those things I think to your point have impacts on what the fees are like how high are these fees? Are we actually able to accomplish any of these goals? But I think starting from a place of like [snorts] what is our goal? Is that something that
041we think families who are participating athletics like a portion of that should be going to kind of a maintenance cost to save the space that they're using use that for the refinishing of the instead of waiting on the capital committee to give us money to refinish the Copeland floor fieldhouse floor. So that that uh Katie and I in agency >> Laura talked a little bit about that. >> Yeah. Um the Copeland rentals in the facilities revolving cop rentals was supposed to had a had many years ago anytime anybody rented the um field uh would have to pay a search charge for lack of a better term that went directly to that revolving account that was dedicated to facilities maintenance um and also capital planning to to do the field over every Xmart years. >> So
042there's a specific judge from Brooksfield that the goal was to have it build up enough to be able to go back to the copals and say we've staged 500 and now we're asking you for another 500 because it cost the millions. So it's like it was demonstrating partnership >> and so uh they actually dedicated the funds they used to fund the rental coordinator >> in an effort to make sure that the money that they were making by renting facilities went back to maintenance and that the search charge for the field was used in order to create a a capital savings account [clears throat] >> for the time to go with them to do stuff over. Mhm. >> Uh it looks like over the past 14 years that's been flattened out to not not that's not
043what happens right now. >> Yeah. >> Uh the facilities you're involving how should be going to maintenance of the auditorium in school classrooms in the spaces that are used by >> and go to the re uh the the ongoing maintenance of that. If it's a basketball net, if it's a the soundboard or whatever that that should be out of that account. So it should never be an expense to the town of the schools, right? Uh and the Copen rental was actually specifically for the field to search charge for the capital. >> Yeah, that's that was 15 20 15 years. >> Yeah. I I mean I think it again our kids use those spaces all the time and so you know separate from the rentals like there's some just operating costs to maintain these things. the
044rental costs also cover the custodians who have to be on site contract to cover for those things. >> Um, yeah, but I I don't know if [snorts] I think that eventually gets to the fee question like are high enough that they are accomplishing those goals that we're both being able to pay for the staffing required to provide access and building whatever pot we feel like we need on an annual basis. Like that's the question like what is that pot that we think we need to be generating through these fees based upon our current current rental quantity that we think gives the school departments flexibility to to cover those those needs. So I don't know if this is what you're saying Mark but a way to think about it be like so for whatever for any
045of those areas for Copeland we think that the rental the rental usage generates x percentage of our capital expenditure and so therefore the fee the search charge or whatever should cover that amount. Like it seems like whatever we're charging for rentals should cover the depreciation on the facility, right? I is that is that what you're saying? >> Yeah. And maybe it's not a 100% >> we shouldn't be I don't think we should be coming out of our pocket to pay for uh capital improvements that are for capital wear and tear that's generated from rental. >> Yeah. I the issue is what is generated from the rental versus what generated from gym class or our own students using it for volleyball. >> I'm saying we could like figure that math out. >> No, 100% estimated. >>
046Yeah. I'm just saying I don't I don't know if it's 100%. I don't know if it's again our rentals is only 20% but we want rentals to generate 30%. So like they actually want to put a little more burden on that >> uh because we can't. I don't know. I don't know. So I think that's not my advice with this exercise today for what we need to do which more specific relates to the direct budget the the facilities rental revolving and all the conversation we're having now is a hornets nest. >> Yeah. >> And I think we should pause it. >> Okay. >> Because it involves what do we do with park direct? What do we do with the free basketball to Tucker which is a nightmare? What do we do with the free Glover
047wants which is a nightmare. So there's there's a lot of rental stuff that we're trying to work out. >> Mhm. Uh my my hope and expectation for this work would be to identify the ones that we really want to pay attention to in an effort to guide our budgeting work for FY27 and beyond in order to demonstrate to the town why we're allocating certain monies to rebonding accounts for 27 that might may take away from our ability to fund positions and in the policy or the guidance or the appropriate usage >> balance that we're striving for justifies dedicating certain revenue to that in order to have a long-term plan that may be in conflict with people saying what I can really I really want to I really would like to have one one year you
048mean like so I I think that the lost books in the rental and the preschool we'll just we'll have to have to figure that out as we go but these bigger ones where we have to potentially dedicate money now from operating to a revolving account balance by the end of fiscal and 26 in order to make sure that certain funds start with a balance that we have agreed to should be at least the first step of that and then have a second step and have a third step. So at the end of FY29 we're looking at healthy balances in um community schools circuit breaker athletics like the big ones. So we we're not we we have the levers in order to kind of deal with the extra three buses that go to the tournament or
049the five kids that move out uh move into the district without district replacement plan. The guidance from the state is one way to help our circuit breaker, right? That's one year's worth of circuit breakers. So let's build a plan that says in in FY27 we hope to have onethird of that as a balance. That's 1 million. You know what is that number we want to we want to strive for as guidance? Um, [clears throat] and so and then when so that I'd like to focus on a couple of those because they they're the levers that we're trying to replenish that are going to come at the expense of something this year. And it's very it's just such an important piece of the work that we're going to talk about next week and as we start
050talking about the FY27 budget [clears throat] because we could come to next week and we're almost making assumptions when we're building a budget but then if we if we create a policy that isn't in line with the assumptions then there could be a significant change. thing like and I I think going back to the budget philosophy philosophy that we talked about for this year, this needs to be a multi-year conversation. We're not going to be able to fix this in one year. And I think that's that I don't want to keep on looking at the history, but the history is a really important part of it. when you allocate funding in one year, it is we're going to have to try to adjust for that in a 3 to 5 year basis moving forward, right?
051>> And so, um, I think that's just something that we have to consider that like we're not going to be able to I don't want to say fix, but we're not going to be able to fix the balances in living. um it may take us three to five years but it's just something that it's an important goal that I think we should have. So this is a good good staff. >> So here's a direct exercise for for me. So if we want to say that in the as of July 1 of 26 which would be the beginning of FY27 that we would like to see X amount of dollars in that the guidance would be that for us where we are in Milton that we're striving for for one year of circle break the goal
052that we want to see a balance going into FY27 of X amount of 500,000 700 and from transportation We want to see it on that set. So whatever we do, whatever we collect and whatever the the rotation is, we know we're going to make a deposit for that amount to ensure that we're starting the next fiscal year program. Then at the end of fiscal 27 when we begin fiscal 28, we want to make that to go circuit break will go to maybe 1.2 2 million and we'd want to have that incremental goal set for those big pictures because the reason why that's important is if the pie is this big for FY27 absent any additional funds to put deposits into those accounts they're going to have to come out of the existing pie that we
053have. >> Mhm. >> So we're going to have to justify that against something that may be a production force. Do you mean people are going to why didn't that happen? How come we have to do that? So, we're going to have to commit to those being bills that we have to pay. >> Those aren't optional anymore. It's just like, so we're going to say that these five revolving accounts are going to have to have a deposit of some sort that we're going to be vigilant and pay them and we're going to prioritize them over other things until we get to the balances that are appropriate with a give and take. We'll be able to be uh able to have to be in play every year because they have ins and outs until that point. We
054have to take from what we have. So, um I mean I would I would I I agree with that and I would just encourage us and if we have a policy that's looks something like this to set the targets that we think should be in no long term like and we're going to be you know have compliance with policy for a few years. >> Um but that way we know >> the end game is >> what the end game is. And maybe we can have a as part of the policy, we can have something in here that says um I don't know, something to the effect of like if these balances are not currently met, the school committee shall direct the superintendent to set to to create basically what you're doing right now, creating a
055multi-year plan to meet those targets. >> Yeah, totally agree with that. I think and that that to me is the policy. I think the process how you get there is more procedure which >> you know I happy to discuss and like brainstorms elaborately here but I think yes right after the same thing like there's almost like something >> in order to reach a balance appropriate balances but >> yeah it's almost like what what happens so we're going to set the funding targets right what's going to happen if we don't meet those funding targets so that's just happiness but um >> probably wasn't even looking at that >> no no I agree I think we're all just on the same page of like yeah it's Okay. Notification. I think that gets back to this 2.4 thing.
056And then also like school department will present a plan. And then this way we can do both. We can have a target and we can a position where it's like okay lay on school system so that we can fulfill involvement counseling with the earth. Yeah, I I guess I'm I'm going to have I I see it as a chart. I don't see words, so I apologize in my brain. I see FY29 with 3.1 million in its circuit breaker. >> I see FY27 with a number that helps us get there. a CF by 28 with a a number that's takes 27 adds to it becomes a higher number. So over three or four fiscal years we get into because and if uh and so that that to me that's how I see think of these big
057five right cuz some of them are different community schools is a different animal because it takes money in it and takes it expends money so we have to up the fee in order to make that work. >> Um circuit breaker is different. >> Yeah. But it but it but circuit breaker in the the the the um the overlap in intricacies of how circuit breaker works with with uh budgeted money like we're always there's always a give and take but we want to end the year with more money than you had working towards the 3.1. So I don't want to restrict Katie's ability to use some circuit breaker in order to do this. There's a lot of reconciling that happens in the fourth quarter of every year to prepare for what the next year starts looking
058like. My opinion, is that fair to say? >> It is. >> And we want to be able to make sure that we leave Katie's role and Katie the flexibility to make those things work. You know what I mean? Um but uh again, I'm I'm happy to words figure out what what this looks like. I think we're in a we're obviously not in currently with the accounts. I think part of this is like what do we do in the interim as we build that back up and then like what is a long-term like it's a healthy conversation of if you need you know we talked about the circuit breaker the goal should be kind of but one year of expenses I don't know if we want to put an actual dollar amount or percent one year
059circuit breaker one year circuit breaker funds >> that's the that's the state guidance you should always have one year of circuit breaker funds so that that's the dollar value whatever that dollar value is >> yeah so So in from writing processing like that is what the cool school committees can set as our the policy around the circuit breaker funding um requirement and we are not there like because of anything y'all done we all know we're setting a we're setting a a balance and that's probably true for some other ones that we are not meeting. So then again getting back to like what happens if we have a unbalance that doesn't match the the funding target it would be this of like what is the plan and then that is where John creates like the chart
060of like okay here is what the school department here's what we are proposing our plan to be we want to invest a million dollars over the next three years >> and then [clears throat] that is the conversation we're going to have of like okay what does that mean to the operating budget like what what does this mean with that budget cycle is that something that's obviously a to your my priority the school committee all kind of aligned on within our budget priorities. Um but again like there's going to be some conversation of you say a million dollars over three years versus $800,000 over four years like what is the like there might be some some of that conversation. Okay. That's that is like the plan of how we get ultimately to the funding goal that
061y'all have been very clear on 18 months. >> Does that make sense? >> It it it does. I'm trying to um Yeah. No, it does. It's it's uh so one year, you know, in within that within that four years as the example, you could have a really good year where things just work. like these things are so bearable where all of a sudden Katie might say, you know, we're really looking good from what we budget and for operating uh for for our district and transportation and we just had a we had a flat year and so I can actually we can actually put in 1.2 this year, >> but the following year it might be $8,71, right? Because we had nine kids move in and whatever happens, right? So the flexibility is important, but the
062goal setting and the vigilance around having a minimum balance in that. So when we start to be able to go, they explained that the expenses went uh higher this year for a variety of reasons that the following fiscal year when we're planning for the next fiscal year, we may need to dedicate more of that year's operating money to put money in there at the expense of something else. And the reason why I keep saying that a lot is this is a good conversation to have when no one's having it. >> Mhm. When you're in front of the people who want more music, more art, they want a growth slide football team and they want to know why we can't do more for whatever X is and we're looking to reduce something, then they're looking to
063go up. We're looking to go down in order to fund this. They say just do that later and the and the and the strength has to come in saying we can't do that later. Yeah, we're believing ourselves the fiscal sustainability line in our philosophy has to really be bolded, underlined, and italicized. Right? This is this is the primary goal >> for the district over the next three years from a fiscal perspective is right sizing, resetting the budget so it's sustainable over time. Not only from the amount of FTEES that we have that we can sustain, but also through the fact that we need to have revolving accounts to support all that. And and my [clears throat] my analogy is so the duck's swimming along and you think, "Oh, that's beautiful, but underneath it all those
064revolving accounts of the paddles that the duck is doing that, you know, all those things happen every year in a really but you want you want the public to see the duck just going around." >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> But we want to have the money that that Katie needs in revolving accounts to make all the other things work. >> These are these are leisure things weekly. >> Mhm. >> Especially education. J and we need to talk a little bit about expenses this year that we're incurring already that we want to be clear about to the school committee that uh as much as we put aside 900 grand this year, this will be part of going to come against that eventually. Do you mean? Um, >> so I think one of my concerns too just
065with like the if the fund balance doesn't match the goal, I'm just trying to like operationalize this. >> Sometimes with the revolving accounts, >> um, the monitoring happens all during the year, but sometimes the activity is at the end of the year. M and I just have concern about I would never and if we think about this I'm I'm even trying to think about this if it's not me right just in general if it's just a policy >> you don't want the notification to come to you in June or July that oh hey the expenses has exceeded and now we're going to have to take a little bit more money cuz sometimes that's what happens that's like the timing is that the journal entries may happen in June and July and at that point it's
066too late to do anything else right and so I'm just trying to think about if there is a way because the school department will present a plan on how to bring fund balances back the plan may be a multi-year plan but those expenses I'm almost wondering those expenses have to go would have had to go somewhere right and we already there is already a school committee policy that says if we're reallocating budget that that >> notification needs to go to the school committee through the quarterly report if it's in the operating budget if we're trans transferring funds. >> Yeah. >> Um >> but this would you wouldn't be transferring funds. This would be saying like if if we're saying uh you need you should have a year's of a rears of the circuit breaker and
067>> again that's we build that up into 3.1 and then one year we actually two kids move in that have significant needs and actually we need to use 3.3 like that might be again totally fine that's like why you build that up and then we're going to be a little bit below that threshold and then we say all right how do we okay well again key would be like notifying making sure school committee is aware and then you all also as a school department say like all right we're now $200,000 under what we wanted to be. This is how we are thinking about how to kind of get back there to rebuild those those reserves either in the next fiscal year or again over two fiscal years going to add $100,000 back. What that is
068what I have in my mind. I I totally hear you too though on the language not being fees tend to come in and go out. >> It's not universal. >> So like is there a particular time in which like it's like by if like on this date you will report on it and then like I don't know. Um, so I really literally just typed that up, so I want to like totally leave Braille. I think the goal in my mind, and correct me if you're a bit different, >> is just how do we make sure the committee as a whole is informed about places where our, you know, expenses are exceeding kind of the income beyond kind of what the funding levels, the minimum funding levels we're trying to establish are generally aware. And then
069how do we make sure that we are clear on from a again holding the school committee accountable to monitor the school department of like are we getting back to a good place >> over time? >> Yeah. I'm in agreement on that to is the next step here like Katie and John you'll take a stab at this like you'll take a crack at this policy. Is that kind of process-wise what you're thinking? I I think from from my perspective, I'd like to with Katie take a crack at the the the planning of it. So, I'd like to do the work first. So, like I I think I have to say it I have to write it down my way and then have to then and then have you guys say that makes sense how we get
070there and then what the policy language however that evolves. I I just worry that the policy language that we're trying to apply to these accounts that are all very different not only for the seasons in which the money is gathered spended some of that goes over. So you could look at the bus if we looked at the bus revolving account every June it would be flush because we haven't paid for the because the the money's collected for the passes you know I mean so the seasonality of it is important and then the uniqueness of whether you charge a fee or not. So, I think circuit breaker is its own kind of thing. Community schools, it's its own kind of thing. I think sports and transportation might have a little bit of a sibling piece to
071it because they we collect fees for them to part of the operation. And um and I'm wondering if you want to focus on the big ones first and just try to really just tackle them so we can use them as part of our assumptions for FY27. That would be my call. I I mean again to to me the the policy for circuit breaker is simple. I think you'll laid it out. It is the having the one years and years of circuit breaker funding right that that is policy perspective of what the funding bubble should be. it again then is the what is the process what's the procedure y'all are going to present to us and say this is what we want to do but I don't and that needs to be approved within the context
072of the budget overall >> but I don't necessarily know that that leads to live like the policy on how are we handling that account long term long-term goals we have that's what we have agree based on kind of >> best practice I think it's in my mind uh a lot less clear Um, I'm just going to pull up the copy of what did, but it's just a lot less clear for me in terms of actually the other accounts. I don't know what we do want the funding balance to be in these other ones and maybe those have minimal impact on the budgeting process overall to your point. So, happy to look at which ones we think do. You mentioned transportation. So, I think we need to focus on the ones the self- sustaining ones to
073me are like their own bucket because those just it the fees need to cover what the expenses are. >> Um, so I almost like put those aside. And then I think the other ones are what is what I always refer to as like the revenue offsets. So that would be transportation, athletics, like kind of I think it's building rentals. Like those are the the big ones that I know we have built into the budget. So >> we need some guidance on that. Um, I don't know if there's any other like so I almost think that if we could come up with something for like that group then that would be >> Yeah. I mean I'm love to hear y'all's thoughts. I know you were hesitant to talk about the rentals themselves just because there a
074bit of a mess in there. If we want to talk about bud busing again this is just kind of the initial thought I had was on some amount of operating expenses kind of within the busing I don't know how it currently compares in terms of how much we had in buffer and then >> one third of one third of our fees fees make up roughly $380,000 of a million dollar roughly correct >> for transportation for this year 200 $250,000 of the revenue we received to offset the expense. Yep. And we bring but we bring in more than that. We bring in about $300,000 in revenue for transportation. So the example for that one then would be if we're usually of the revolving funds that come in we use 20 we use what's the equivalent of
07525% of the bill that we're using accounts for. >> Correct. >> We're keeping the other remaining dollars in the account >> for the to to help you know feed the fall fiscal year. So correct >> something like that we can come up with some sort of a you know >> uh and because then that will dictate fees right so when >> when the bus continues to go up by 8% and our fees have been flat 5 years if we're going to fund 25% of that bill by fees that would then kick in that's when you need to raise your fees >> that kind of that's starting to feel like it makes sense uh for athletic revolving it might be the same that we'll dedicate x% of fees in um game receipt leads to the total
076budget. So once the total budget grows and the percentage then is not matching that then we have that star indicated survey raise these for uh of the students and maybe gate fees circuit breaker I think is a very simple one we would like to the ultimate goal is to have the state guidance fulfilled of one year's worth of circle breaker in a rare future budget and that's just in how we're going to get there thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I think that's interesting to say like we'll raise a certain percentage of the overall cost of transportation. The way I was trying to think of it is we provide there's mandated transportation costs which we cannot charge a fee for. The school department needs to provide that regardless if we had no other riders that
077wanted busing. We still have to have that cost. That is like a some cost. It's an obligated mandate cost to the district. And so if we assume that is just going to hit the operating budget and then really what we want to fund through fees is any buses needed in excess of that to accommodate the optional transportation service we we are providing to families. >> So I know that's a bit hard because we are using our mandated buses to provide some service. So I guess in my mind I was wondering is there a simple way of saying hey if we were just providing mandated busing we could do that with four buses in order to provide busing to everybody who want all the optional we need to add an extra two or three buses right
078so let's say it's two buses so we want our fees to generate enough revenue to offset the cost of two buses that's [clears throat] going to be the standard user fee will get us to that number. Does that make sense? >> So my my story of buses looks this way that in order to provide the legal mandate which is all elementary students up through grade six into the Pierce, we need riders in order to provide uh the cost. I I think that because it's not number of buses added for students who don't qualify for free because of the law. It's the capacity on the buses that you already because you buy them by the whole bus. So the nuances are a little bit you know you know important enough to know that just to provide
079the buses for the K to six kids. We use the ridership and the fees so that to offset that to make it all work cuz as you rent as you enter the contract you enter for a full bus for a full year. >> Yeah. You don't get to kind of >> surgically make that work. So I and so I your thinking is absolutely technically 100% correct but I think of the the person in the community who says well why you know like we had why can't I just why can't we all just get together and pay for another bus it's just not that easy so the to me what's the Dunkin Donuts version of this that it cost a million dollars to to bring the amount of kids to school that we feel that we
080can logistically bring and this [clears throat] is the offset we need to do to make that happen. I'm trying to keep it more high level for the public to understand it because same thing with athletics. Everybody where does all that money go that I paid the game? No. Same you we're explaining things down to detail. But >> yeah, I think technically you're accurate but I think that it's it's it's nuance >> for transportation too. I think it's um it would be interesting to break it down with the mandated riders versus non-mandated, but I I have a feeling that we'd almost need the same number of buses, even with the mandated riders, because we run three tiers. >> And so, we'd probably still need 10 or 11 buses for our elementary schools. We would just be
081running two tiers instead of three. And the price is the same. >> That's correct. >> Whether we run two, one tier, two tiers, or three tiers, it's the same price for the bus. >> It's a million dollars. Period. >> It's a million dollars. Sometimes bus companies may quote that out differently, one tier versus three tier. But for us, it's just that they quoted it out same price regardless if we have the bus do one loop around town or three three loops. Um, so I think even if we were to turn around and say we're not going to transport any of the 7 through 12, we'd probably still need like 10 buses. Um, >> right. I mean, you can just you can just just Yeah, it's complicated. So, I think we just need to I would
082this is just how I learned. I would word it in a way that I could explain to somebody what I'm about to call it PTO tonight. Jimmy, tell me about buses. So this is how buses work. You know, we we collect about 350,000. They cost a million. Uh so we have to figure out how that works. So if we add a little bit more to Europe fee, we might get up to 375. But if we add another bus, that's 1.1 million. So you you can see that we're really not offsetting that. I I think that um and and I guess I I'm wondering whether the exercise of going through the what's mandated, what does that cost from the inside that's a lot that's a lot of human being work to do. Um and I guess
083I'm I'm taking the shortcut of I want to know exactly what you all want to be like, you know, how how do we want to approach the five big ones because it's having direct impact on what we tell principles we might need to do without next week. So we have a set of assumptions. These are the bills we have to pay. >> Y >> we have to do all this stuff and these revolving accounts. Our goal is to put this much money in them or at least have this much money in them. And that's why we have to make these choices. So we've been explaining that to them intellectually and we've been talking about that in our budget meetings, but we're about to scale it to all of them and we're about to show them
084our assumptions and the bill that we think we have to pay and then what [clears throat] that delta is. And that delta is where they have to really start doing some grindy work about how they want to realign anything in their buildings in order to get what they need done student achievement wise. And the other part is strategically, you know, keeping this a topic in front of the war community and select board related to the the district stabilization fund they have. if they wanted to make a nice deposit into that account that would relieve the pressure on us in the pace of us filling up sorry breaker account because we could use those as kind of joint balances to get there collectively. So when we say there's x amount of free cash left every year
085it would be nice that the revolving accounts in the town and the schools could have deposits made in those in an effort to kind of relieve the optimals. So the other part of it is how how do we want to strategically approach the work around this year's budget and you know the other year's budgets I I I I'm struggling to articulate it well uh >> yeah I think special education account I think knowing like what what is a long-term goal for that I don't know what that number should be and again I think that's separate from what is a year a one-year goal associated with like a request to collect forward and maybe tempers way too high and it needs to be two 3%. I'm not sure. But maybe to the point Nathan you made
086previously is like I I would appreciate as a next step >> you'all could do a pass through of this. >> Yeah. and just say like here are these were my initial thoughts of like what I think maybe these make sense and so like maybe these jive with you in some ways maybe some don't but you giving a quick overview of like we actually don't need a minimum balance for the tech school program >> I guess what's in is out there no reason for us to worry about that too much in such small dollars I don't know or maybe then we want three months operating expenses I don't know um I do think for busing it's You know, again, if it's a percentage, we want to raise a third of the cost of all of our
087buses, then maybe that is the maybe that's a reasonable benchmark. It does make it, you know, if we need to add another bus in the future to accommodate for increased need from the community that is not mandated. Yeah, there's no way of getting around how that if we're only covering a third of that cost through the fees, even if we increase the fees, that there's going to be some operating budget impact doing that. Yeah. And so I think my thought of trying to separate out the mandated versus the other is then we can be very clear on if the need increases or decreases for um for optional bus service for opt-in bus service that we can adjust the fees kind of to address that need because right now the issue we've been in is that
088need has kept going up uh and we have an increased capacity because >> we didn't [clears throat] want to take on that cost Yeah. On the operating budget um because money is tight or sorry I need um I'm having a hard time focusing because I'm late. >> Um okay. So next step I'll work through this. There's a different format again. There is other >> stuff um we talk through or I'll just reshare kind of the the template document >> and the name of that is two 2025 1111. Yeah, this is in the the folder. I'll drop again the copy of the town version. Um, all right. Uh, our next meeting is next week. We already talked about that. That's the draft budget 1119. Are we going to need more see if folks can have more
089than an hour on that? You have a sense of >> I can book for longer. Yeah. that be helpful not helpful for y'all or anyone else also take us for music just defer to you. [clears throat] >> Um I also want to let us know I'm not sure how what your presenting is going to be. >> Yeah, I think it's going to be more more high level the next next week because we have to have this conversation with the staff uh after there. Uh I have I have my my regular meeting abandoned. Do we want to try to go a little longer to address this subject in uh a high level budget pull for next year? >> I don't think we're going to be able to get to the if we can get the revolving
090funds great. I don't think we will. I think we bud we set aside 123 to kind of come back to the revolving fund conversation. Um but again I if those two things need to be swaps just based upon your internal work. >> No no we need to give a big picture overview that you need. >> Okay and then we'll just speak to the assumptions that we're using for the robots in the >> yeah anticipated anticipated. Yeah. Yeah. We we have to get we have we have to get in front of the lead initiative team again to get more detail about the uh the ins and outs from a from a um median view to to a closer view of budget. >> Okay. >> We have work to do. >> Uh that's not really Katie's been
091waiting to do the work but we have we're we're trying to move the work to the principles as best we can. Um and um >> yeah, that's no problem. >> Meeting 11:26 and [clears throat] >> yeah 119 and 12. >> Um I will make a motion to return. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Thank you. Sorry about that. >> No, all good. Hey. Hey.