001you're in the show the broadcast is live okay now seeing the presence of a quorum um i'll call to order the budget subcommittee of the regional amherst helen regional school committee when i say your name please respond that you're present heather lord president kerry president allison present oh so question since you're not actually on the committee should i be asking you if you're present does anybody know okay well i just did um it's okay all right um and stance are present uh so uh dr slaughter sent us an agenda and the first order of business is to approve minutes if i only had gotten them done so i was hoping to find my notes from the last time we met which was back in january and i didn't get a chance to do that so
002we don't have any minutes sorry okay that's okay um we will move on to public comment and i have received no public comment so i think we'll move right along to the next item which is new and continuing business and the first item there is the fiscal year 20 audit review and we received documents from dr slaughter and i am going to turn the next section over to him okay so this is the fiscal 20 audit which just to make sure everybody's that's the fiscal year ending june 30 2020 which is now more than a year ago um uh traditionally this is you would have this kind of review kind of uh december january probably um usually the audit is done in the late fall and early winter and then we have uh the the
003report uh ready by by january so um with last year being what it was that all got delayed um and so that's why we're doing this as late as we are um so it'll be interesting because we'll do it and then basically turn around and do it all again really really soon and from my office standpoint we've finished supplying things to the auditors and then we're going to basically turn around in about six or seven weeks and do it all again if not sooner so it uh they'll kind of come back to back in that regard so just to sort of take you through the three documents that i sent to you they're really sort of three pieces there one is a really short one which has to do with the um review of the
004end of year report so the auditors take a look at the interview report that we do with the state and they look for anything that looks off uh relative to uh your the other financial information they're looking at they found a couple of things so that's what those findings are um one of which i actually is one i discovered when they were asking for things and i was looking for that information and looking at what i had reported to the to the state and actually kind of simultaneously discovered they would have found it immediately as well and recognized that i uh needed to to alter uh one of the entries and then uh there was a subsequent one that that they also notice and mostly is having to do with the fact that um this
005is my first time through this and it's quite the process to say the least um they weren't huge they were not ones that were um you know sort of materially worries them i think it would be the best way to describe it they they were ones where we wanted to make a correction and the state does allow us to make corrections to our submitted report um a rather extended period of time but nonetheless the corrections were made and so that's uh the two findings that they had were ones that that we corrected without without issue um and i think the other thing that it states there and one of the things i'll note about all three of those is that the the otters spend a fair amount of time talking about what they do and
006what they don't do they're very very clear about the things that they can't determine and i think part of the reason they do that is because i think people have an expectation that an audit is that they go through every single transaction and it's not the case they sample our data um and you know test uh to a level of degree that that they consider is sufficient to make a determination about how we how we're doing our business so so even with the interview reports the same sort of thing they're doing a uh a review of some uh probably the interview report they're probably a little more extensive because it's it's not quite as lengthy to look through that as as the other parts of the financials um so they talk about what they can
007and can't do what they are or are not going to do or can make statements about or not make statements about but i think the key things you want to look you know sort of be aware of are the phrases um whether the uh when they consider the the opinion to be modified or unmodified and what that really says is that when they looked at the financial statements we gave them and they put it together if if they have to modify those to represent our financial picture accurately that's a much more problematic it's not you know unheard of or anything like that but it's always better to have an unmodified opinion which means that they look through the financials and how they were structured what they said to you know to them and to the
008public at large is that that's a true picture of what what what happened with your finances in in fiscal 20. the other things that you want to look for you know i think that are particularly of of note are what they call material weaknesses or significant deficiencies um because again that's where they're using their uh i mean that's a bit of you know auditor lingo but at the same time what that really is is identifying is that when they went through things if they found something that you know would or could cause uh the financials that were reporting to be inaccurate whether they really did or didn't if they were just such that they would potentially cause that and especially if they were to potentially cause some inaccuracy and we wouldn't have a way to
009notice it so a lot of times the you know they talk about the third thing they talk about is is internal controls and internal internal controls are basically your process policies and procedures that you follow they compare those to you know general accounting standards and and uh if they find something in your processes that that would cause a material weakness or a significant deficiency then those are things they're going to mention they're going to call out they're going to ask us to address and take corrective action on it and so um those are things to kind of those are phrases anytime you look at it whether it's ours or any other one that you might ever do those are phrases that are pretty uh you know pretty red flags pretty much red flags if you
010see them um because they indicate that you know something could be going on that we wouldn't notice could be going on in other words there are things outside of our control in a way that would you know we think our financials are one way when in reality there's something else um and so in in looking through those uh you know our finances they didn't find any material weaknesses they didn't find any significant deficiencies which is always good news um you know we do want to know about something like that um if they have uh opportunity to find things that they feel could be done better they will let us know uh they didn't have any comments in that regard um and so that was also a bit of good news with regard to our our
011audit um so those are the sort of overarching things i would say the end your report review again you know we do an audit because required by the state to do that so the end of year report we file one for each of the three districts the region in particular uh and actually amherst and pelham also had interview report reviews by our auditors um just like the one you see here for the region um the second one is what's called a single audit sometimes called a single audit or or a government uh or federal funds audit that's this medium-sized document of the three um and what that is is they look specifically at uh you know our grant funding like idea and title one and those grants uh because we receive over 750 000 worth
012of federal monies uh we're required to have that type of audit and again they're looking for the same kinds of processes procedures that meet with general accounting standards and allow us to represent how we spent their money and on what accurately and so again uh you know the the short story is that that there were no uh there were no findings there were no material weaknesses or significant uh discrepancies or deficiencies in what they saw and then the third piece which is the big long one which is uh looking at today and thinking wow there's a lot of filler here but not really i mean it's it's actually it's intended audience is the public and so therefore that's why it goes into so much detail about how the retirement system works it goes through how
013mtrs works it goes through how uh the hampshire county retirement works and what the options have and it goes through open in a fair amount of detail so there's a lot of just additional information that they're providing along with the financial statements and again the fact that it was unmodified indicates that what we gave them and demonstrated as our financials for the district were were an accurate representation of what really happened which is good that's what we want to say and what we want to see you know they often comment about whether or not we're our policy procedures are effective um so they're not looking for i mean obviously if they find some sort of mistake or or discrepancy uh they'll point it out but that's not their intent they're what they're looking for is
014that if you're doing processes that will lead to accuracy in in the hole but they don't look for errors particularly um so it's kind of a funny thing with audits that you think they're going to find oh where you made a mistake or this that or the other it really isn't they're focusing on whether or not how you go about doing your business is in uh in such a way that it would maintain the accuracy and fidelity of the numbers and represent what's going on financially for the district uh correctly and so um if there were something problematic then it's likely that they would have then commented on uh something not adding up the way it should add up um and so that's you know they didn't have any of that so that's again a
015fortune thing um the other couple things i'll point out is one of the big ones that you show on an audit in the financial statements is uh you have to represent your oped liability on your on your balance sheet and that really it makes it look really bad it looks like we're in the you know negative 70 million dollars um the and well and the other concern is when you compare from night fiscal 19 to fiscal 20 there's a significant increase in that number um so first is just it's a large negative number because the liability or the you know the the money we will at some point in the future owe has to be sort of put onto your balance sheet so they they're basically saying you have to represent what your obligation is
016to all your current and existing retirees your current employees and existing repairs you have to represent that on your you know because that's something you're gonna have to pay at some point um so there you know probably eight years ago or so that became a standard to put that onto the balance sheet so it made everybody's balance sheet go really negative because no one's got their retirement benefits funded fully so um that's one thing the the other thing is a bit concerning in looking at that number you know is that it went up significantly um from the previous year and what that really is an indication of is how uh our evaluation change so every other year we do a full evaluation of what our our liability is in other words what our um future
017responsibility to retirees is uh around benefits um we do a full renewal of that every other year in the off year which is current fiscal 21 they make an estimate so do kind of a quick estimate of what that change has been but one of the significant things between 2019 or more importantly 2018 when we had our last goal done in 2020 when we had our more recent full analysis done is who we had do that work is different and they made some very different assumptions about how much health insurance costs are going to go up how much uh return on investment we're going to have um and those those two in particular were things that they did very differently than our previous uh actuarial who does that calculation and so that made uh you
018know our opeb liability go up significantly the town had the same thing happened to them so uh they were much more conservative in what they thought um health insurance was going to do in other words they projected much higher health insurance costs over the next 30 years as they project out they also projected more conservatively relative to what essentially what interest earning there's going to be so as you put money away into our opeb trust um you know that you get interest and an interest on your interest and that helps to to uh reduce your your liability and their you know estimate for what that return is on investment is was more conservative much smaller number than than the previous uh the previous actuarial so that those two things uh how they go about doing
019the calculation uh were pretty significantly different and therefore made our our open liability go up quite a bit so that's you know it's the portion of things we have to pay it today um so it it's you know it's a number that's going to change a lot over the years plus minus as things go along but it gives us a sense of how big that liability is and a sense of the urgency to continue to fund our opeb uh trust fund as we as we move along um so that's those are things that kind of jump out to me on the on the financial statements that you know i know them but then you sort of see them and start reality when they when they put on paper like that and so i want to
020explain that a little bit for for you guys um but i was pleased you know kind of going through this one for the first time fiscal 20 um i only had a tiny part of that one as far as you know being in this role but but uh and you know the full end of year responsibility and some of that so i was pleased that they didn't have a lot of things that needed correction or or things that they were worried about that's really a testament to my predecessor and of course this my staff and in the work that they do and how well they do their work and and so i'll ride their coattails on that for sure i think i'll stop there and ask if anybody see any questions as you went through
021and looked at that i think it jumped out that you were like what the heck is that or or something that looked concerning or off-putting or or not so does anyone have questions i i actually do have one question um dr slaughter the so you said that they look at the full liability um how do they determine what the full liability is do they have some kind of actuarial formula for saying you know this person may live this long and therefore require benefits that's exactly the kind of idea that they do yeah they they get a list of current retirees and a list of current employees and they make estimates about how long people are going to live uh you know how many are likely to become retirees for the current employees how many are
022likely to become retirees what their likely lifespan is like what their life likely you know health burden is going to be um so they make all those kind of estimates on on that um they also you know like i said they estimate uh you know our our trust fund and how it's how well it'll grow or how quickly to grow or how strongly it'll grow they will also uh estimate uh what they think is going to happen in the marketplace relative to cost of health insurance um so they use all of those things and and as part and parcel like it's pretty extensive kind of thing to do and it's it's funny that that you know people will often you know and kind of rightly so look at that number and be it's very scary
023but it's and there's a lot of of you know significant uh and thorough uh computations involved but at the same time there's a lot of estimates um you know they're rational and reasonable and appropriate and you know it's what actuarials do all the time it's how the whole insurance injury industry works though um but yeah they take into account all that sort of stuff okay thank you um any other comments or um so i guess i have another question it so will you be presenting this to the full regional committee i will um you know and i think how we do that will be a little bit determined by how you want to do it um it could be a thing where i could do kind of like what i did now except probably even
024more brief hopefully uh but um but if you would like to do that kind of introduction it's perfectly fine too i think it's up to you and the chair uh as to how you want to approach that but but i'm happy to sort of explain the terminology which is really i think one of the biggest pieces is like what are the terms that they're using uh and what are the sort of key takeaways from from what we've seen and i can do that okay does anybody have any feedback about that what you think we should do or what dr slaughter should do no well i i think it's it's great that there weren't any important findings um so well done and everybody else on your team i think um it's it's i mean that should
025be i think one of the things strongly communicated to the the committee and the public um i i i'm also i mean this opeb number so i i think i'm the figure out what my title is pebb is that like i i think i'm the one who signs the documents for gopeb and some of the papers so if i remember correctly we slowed like we slowed down our contributions to op to deal with some of the financial right we more conservatively the challenges we're facing so we were worried for fiscal 20 i've got to remember now i think for fiscal 21 i think we went from like 98 000 to like 68 000 i think we reduced it i think we brought it back up this year i have to look i haven't looked to
026see but it is one of those things the more aggressively we can put money away the better but obviously it's like you know it's like spending money on capital it's means you're not spending on operating so then you can't you know there's a sort of the uh the balancing act between the here and now and the and the future and trying to strike the right balance there but that's kind of my question is like are we going to have to um because it's changed like i guess the concerning thing is is is that if if if it's a moving target and if it just got harder to hit um are we going to have to take a hit in some other areas to address it or are you not worried about it i guess that's
027one of the things i'm i'm curious about if it's going to become an issue under already kind of tight financial yeah i don't think we need to take immediate action i mean i think it's you know it's it's a bit of a bellwether for the future i think there's a couple of pieces um i would suggest that they're their estimate of health insurance costs are um we're pretty pretty conservative maybe a bit too conservative i don't think we'll see health insurance costs uh rise as much as they expect them to for us um so i think that's one differential i'll make in in sort of how i would characterize that number i you know it's still a very big number the other piece is that you know we've got time um if if um so
028we you know but we do want to keep it in mind keep working at it the the excuse me uh the other thing i would say is that we are currently funding trying to fully fund our retirement um so the folks that pay new hampshire county uh you know that's a system they sort of you know that one and that problem kicked in earlier so in the mid 80s the state required everybody to kind of make a plan for funding their retirees because they had done a kind of pay as you go on that it was starting to show up everybody's uh budgets and so the the payment we make to hampshire county each year includes some sort of one way to describe this we're trying to catch up so there's a there's a when
029you're doing that kind of funding for a future retirement benefit whether it be you know pension or or health insurance um there are estimates of what you need to put away sort of every year to sort of make sure it has enough when the the group of current employees retires but for our pension we're doing that chunk plus some because we've got people who we didn't fund previously and so we're still trying to get caught up and when they talk about being fully funded so before the great recession in 2008 the target was i think 20 30. i think they kicked that out for pensions to 2035 or something like that they kind of extended the time horizon um and depending on the you know how that retirement system performs it may we may realize
030uh or get to sort of a fully funded state sooner than that when that happens our assessment for hampshire county and and uh you know will drop significantly so then we can just switch and use those resources to help fund our opeb at that point um you know things that would happen that would cause us to take a different strategy would be if health insurance we started having health insurance go up you know 10 12 15 every year and there wasn't anything we could do about it i mean you know we we've had circumstances like that in the past we've generally had things we could do with plan design and some of that sort of stuff to alter um and you know sort of mitigate those cost increases but you know you could be in
031a circumstance where you know that you don't have those options anymore um i think we're not in that place and i don't foresee us being in that place i think we've been pretty good about being attentive to our um our costs um in a way that that uh we shouldn't see that kind of sharp spike if we had a really sharp spike in in health insurance costs then that would change the conversation considerably because what we would find is that um you know the chunk of the budget that goes to benefits in particular for retirees would become much much larger and and really eat into to our ability to operate our schools so i don't foresee that happening so i think we've got some time um you know it is disconcerting to see a big
032jump of 14 million dollars in what we think we owe but um you know i think we you know we don't want to explain it away we don't want to minimize the need and the need to continue to address it but i think it also indicates i mean you can just see how the difference in going from one actuarial to another can make a huge huge difference in what that number looks like and so it's um it's important to kind of keep an eye on it as we go through the years to to try to shrink it or try to have it you know be working in a direction where we we fund more fully and and have uh um you know that number start to come down uh you know and and and not
033have the big jumps like that but you know i think changing actuarials makes a big difference um and that's not to say they're good or bad it's just a much different set of assumptions and so but it also indicates how you know uh how volatile it can be and how how much you could change but unfortunately we're not going to suddenly stop and everybody retire tomorrow so we don't have to come up with all the money right now so that's good um any other comments or questions at this point um actually i do have a question um dr slaughter is the hampshire county retirement is that what all of the teachers and the staff are part of is that their retirement plan so teachers and administrators all pay into the mtrs which is massachusetts teacher
034retirement system which is its own system but everyone else all the custodians clerical paraprofessionals those are you know the folks that pay into the hampshire county along with the municipal employees at the town hall and that sort of thing and so um it's roughly half and half first into the two systems they're very parallel in a lot of ways um the state teachers retirement system i think is a little more mature in some respects um but it's you know the concept is the same in both cases all right thank you that that's helpful to understand that for me um all right well um i guess if there are no more comments or questions um thank you dr slaughter for that i learned a lot listening to this tonight so thank you so we'll move on
035to the next topic on the agenda which is the school budget basics for the public and um as those of us who were at the the regional school committee retreat know the budget this is something that came up um in that during that time and i guess the thing maybe to do um miss mcdonald shared a couple of documents with them one of them was the notes from the retreat regarding the budget things related to the budget um which miss lord prepared the notes from our meeting um and the other was is a document that she shared with some suggestions about how to proceed with this particular item so i'm not i guess what would be appropriate for tonight is to perhaps discuss i think miss mcdonald's document and the suggestions that she makes in
036there and see how people feel about that does that seem reasonable to everybody dr slaughter so when we last met as a as a subcommittee we had been talking about this this topic about how to present things to to the public generally what are what are good ways to do that and we were i think a bit in the throes of of budget so it's a little difficult to sort of really spend some time on it but uh but so that's part of why i wanted to put on the agenda tonight is because there's been subsequent conversations not really knowing that you guys had talked about it at the retreat but knowing that um you know the superintendent myself and ms mcdonald had a conversation uh regarding thinking about how do we outreach sooner and
037and you know sort of build some some uh you know some knowledge base and awareness in the public about how we go about what we do and and uh and and what all is involved in getting the budget constructed so that the people if they want to uh you know sort of impact the budget when's the right time to engage i think is one of the things that i think and and this has been true i've been in you know town meeting and on you know around budgets not just school budgets for a long time and one of the struggles that most folks have is that you know the budget starts way earlier than anybody knows unless you're in it for a while and so to impact the budget you really have to have that
038conversation essentially this fall because once we kind of turn the corner of the year the realities of what finances are available what resources are available start to hit and it's really uh difficult to make any sort of major shifts in how you're thinking about spending your money at that point so you know that's a piece i think that the public generally uh it's hard to pay attention nine months early right you know because that's really what it goes down to it's like we're talking october about something it takes in effect the following july um so it's it's it and and it's the other thing i would suggest is that um you know it's really complex and i think that's one of the other things to convey to people is that in as much as some
039aspects are fairly straightforward there's like so much revenue and so much expenses and you know you can't have more expenses than revenue right um but the number and types and constraints on on the different revenue sources and expenditures you know is it's really complex really quickly when you talk about like assessment methods and you know chapter 70 formulas and you know all that sort of stuff and i think that tends to to numb people a little bit um because it starts to they get out of their depth and they get uncomfortable and so i think it's imperative i think i mean this is my opinion so i'll share it with you and you guys can go from there is that it's imperative to kind of keep the the basic through line of the conversation always
040in a in a frame that anybody can access and so you know when we get into talking the specifics of assessment methods or you know capital funding or you know whatever it is um you know i think it's always good to have that sort of touchstone that that most people can kind of come back to and understand broadly what's happening and and because the the details get really nuanced really quickly and really um difficult and and you can talk to business officials around the state and there are aspects and i'll admit to this myself i mean there are aspects of of some of the things that i don't know exactly you know i mean partly because they don't come up for us i mean that's part of it um you know the things that just
041don't come up in in our circumstance uh and and yet but there are also just subtleties of of things that you know i invariably am going and looking up the details on just to to make sure that we for execute the right steps to you know sort of get the funding right or get the the uh projection made properly or you know make it a reasonable estimate about how this that or the other thing is going to be funded or not funded so um you know it's it gets really complex really quick so i think it's it's helpful for us to keep in mind that it's that complex and we want to have a way to kind of come back to touchstones that are uh broadly accessible for people to kind of keep the conversation
042where it needs to be which is about what's really important to us where we want to spend our money in the broadest sense you know and and how do we have those conversations which are are ones that we can all have and public can have and can be meaningful and and so i'll say that and stop there okay i i assume you looked at the document that miss mcdonald shared i did yeah okay um so i'm not quite sure where to go from here i guess i'll ask for comments from either miss lord or miss spitzer if you have any thoughts about the timeline or that she's suggesting the kinds of things that that are suggested in there i certainly i think they fit into keeping dr slaughter's comment in mind about how complex it
043gets um i still think there that we can do more with the public about how the budget happens starting early trying to get input from people about what they feel is most important those kinds of things so um and timing is important because of the budget process starting so early um so any comments this video thanks um so i think this is useful to have this document and i apologize i came in this today so i didn't have a i'm just reading it now and reacting to it so i um not fully formed but i a couple questions i had kind of for um doug is what um what pieces of this are we already maybe not doing because it's been i know it's been hard you've been starting in a time of covid and
044a pandemic and i know some of the but i feel like some of this stuff was getting done um in years that were non-pandemic years in terms of some of the reports that we put together for the like those big budget books we had i feel like some of the bullets under the ideas might at least intersect or overlap a bit with some of the work that's already ideally getting done in a in a regular year um and then my other question was this idea of i'm curious about when it says possible timing like considers regional budget process advisory committee like how is that going to be different than the budget subcommittee um i i've been hearing a lot of feedback from folks that um they don't want to commit to additional subcommittees at the
045last like in i think we heard that somewhat in the meetings i'm curious about how um this is this a separate committee and if so how would its task be distinct from the budget subcommittee would it have members from outside of the the school committee and is that what makes it different is maybe we'd bring in folks who who are constituents rather than just members of the administration and the school committee um so those were my initial questions but i think it's a really great idea to start trying to bring in town officials who are part of this process where especially at the region because i think the more information they have in the better understanding hopefully the more smoothly the process will go if i can just offer one quick thing um yeah i
046mean my goal this year you know certainly for a number of reasons is to get back to some of the things so like we you know traditionally published a timeline of of when we were looking to meet and you know when the decision points were you know i'd like to get back to doing that and and making that a more public document getting that i think there are some opportunities to put that more clearly on our website um i think the you know the sort of big budget books i mean there are aspects of that that um not having had an opportunity to really build them it's been unfortunate because they they do help answer a lot of questions for folks and i i think getting back to that is is helpful i do think
047they are an overwhelming document because they're usually a couple hundred pages and people you know start to get trepidation about opening something that large but uh but same time i'd like to do that independently just so that of the whether the public leverages it much or not but for you know for the school committee's sake is as well as my own and really quite honestly my you know the the you know the staff and principals and administrators those are those are really useful tools for them as well and so certainly goal of mine to get back to that and many of the other things we've done in the past to help paint the picture do i think there are ways we could to you know update our website or make things a little more um
048uh you know well easy to find but also visually you know simpler i think there are there are aspects of of that budget book that are a little i mean the text is great but i think it's oftentimes um a little overwhelming to kind of get through all of that and and so um some some i want to do some thinking about some simplified versions of of some of that same information so that it's a little more uh hands-on i'm sorry sean mangano probably two years ago about this thing goes yeah i'd like to have one of those pictures with like a dollar bill that like the slices of the bill represent the pieces because that you know when you think about a dollar people can you know get their heads wrapped around oh 50
049cents a spin on this and 12 cents is spent on that and and you know i appreciate that you know pie chart does the same thing it's just not always as tangible when you sort of lay out a dollar bill and say okay well this much of it's for this and this is for this for this that gets a little more digestible in some ways so i think there's a few different ways we can can approach that um relative the other topic which you ask about about the the you know advisory committee i'm going to defer on that let maybe the chair mcdonald weigh in on that a little bit more or the rest of you because i don't have opinion i mean i have some opinions but it's not my purview i guess um
050so i'm gonna call on miss mcdonald even though she's not a member of the budget committee i'm still gonna call on her because she has presented this information to us miss mcdonald um thank you so i i just want to uh answer um the thought just just a start as a starting point this was um the intent of this is not not to proscribe what we should or prescribe what we should be doing um it's really just from conversations um uh just captain encapsulating all of them in one spot because i think that's easier than having sort of abstract conversations it's easier for us to look at like words on page and be like oh no that's not what i want um that's not what makes sense um so none of this um it really
051is just a starter for conversation and the advisory committee um you know again i'm not sure on this i uh that but there's conversations um and i and i think you know conversations that i've been having with um folks from the town council for example um and just uh just remembering our four towns process last year um that there's a desire to or just a energy maybe as a word i don't even know if the full form desire but to to think about the process um and um you know in a way that sort of brings the groups together and brings our member towns together in the region in a different way then i shouldn't say different um in a way that is as collaborative and open and in working on the budget um and
052sort of not sort of getting to it i think when did we have it was it february i think there was some sentiment that that was so late in the process um for for some things to begin to be discussed and so this was a thought to create a way to sort of create create a committee to talk about that process and the process only sort of to do to collaborate across across the towns before we get to the actual four towns meeting um i know that like there's significant downsides to this to this idea um not least of which is it's more committees um and um you know ensuring that the right members from different from the member towns are involved um and i shouldn't even say the right enough is probably more the
053right word um defining the scope narrowly enough so that it isn't creeping into the role of the actual four towns meeting i mean i i'm sure doug has lots of other sort of potential downside perspective on it um so i i'm not i'm not thinking that that's what we would do it was just a sort of an idea of like how do we bring build a more collaborative process um you know around sort of the four towns meetings that can work um and has worked um so i guess that's really the question there thank you um miss lord do you have any observations or comments all right um well i guess um i had a s so um hearing ms mcdonald's comments and looking at this i wonder if we could think about if there's
054going to be an advisory committee i guess my opinion my feeling is that that would have more to do with it sounds like what you were thinking miss mcdonald of getting the the town people together earlier in the process i think that some of this work is really work that the budget subcommittee should probably do not an advisory committee i think you know if we're going to try and prepare some information for the public where maybe we can define some of the things in a way that might be easier to understand keeping it general enough that you know we don't get people down in the rabbit hole but keep them general enough i think that might be the role of the budget committee too so um i wonder i i don't know anybody else want
055to comment on that i i can see a role for an advisory committee if we want to bring other people in from outside at some point in the budget process miss mister i guess i'm just trying to understand if the is the idea to bring folks in earlier so they understand how we got to the numbers we got to like is it an edge like trying to help them understand our constraints or you know the the the values that led to those numbers um or is it more because i think the thing i'm worried about is it's not is it going to be or is it going to be a meeting where we're trying to get those that information so that we can the district is changes what is spending its money like is it
056supposed to have any impact on how we actually are spending the dollars or is it all about trying to get them get a baseline understanding of the process so that hopefully the meeting will be a little more harmonious because i i guess i'm a little worried if it's that one of educational piece or is it more about like participatory budgeting so that they're having more say in how we're spending the dollars because i think we're all elected officials from the four towns that are represented and that is kind of our role and so if it's i hope it would be more the educational piece dr slaughter if i if i may i i think you yeah this sort of there's sort of two pieces here i think in in the broader sense i mean i
057think there is you know opportunity for uh well let me back up so traditionally in a four towns meeting it was here's some information about how we're thinking about our program studies and that sort of thing and and you know obviously comments could be made as to whether you know the select board in leverage or truth very likes it or doesn't like it but that's more critically the school committee member from that town's responsibility to sort of weigh in on that uh in regional school committee meetings as we do our budget you know i always have you know sort of envisioned the four towns meeting as a conversation about uh you know sort of ability to pay and capacity to pay um one of the struggles we've had more recently is about the mechanisms of
058of how the assessment's done because there are you know sort of multiples it's and it's you know it's a long-standing and ongoing issue it's it's so i think that my thinking is is the following is that i mean obviously you know they can offer any of the four towns and their members can offer a suggestion about you know we think you should spend more on this you know the bright program or the this you know or that but that would be something they could do through the regular sort of budget hearings and process that happens i think that um you know there's an i think there's an education piece about how the assessments work and how um you know the different methodologies impact how much a particular town pays independent of what that you know
059sort of target is but just sort of you know what is the burden that's borne by each town you know one of the mechanics of that how what influences it what impacts it what doesn't impact it um i think that's an educational piece we can do and then the second piece is then to have those conversations that we've had but in more of a tangential way which is um you know how do we get to a place where you know some very different philosophies about um how that you know sort of cost should be born um and and i think that you know knowing the tools we have and the mechanics we have one piece but then the second piece is um how do we productively work to a uh a place uh of agreement
060you know a compromise you know that that is uh palatable and understood and i think that's the area that's been more of a struggle for us in the last you know few years and and i mean it's always been there in some respects i think it's more strident of late because i think that there are you know some uh you know there are different pressures in different towns um the three smaller towns you know really in some ways have the same kinds of pressures in that uh you know their ability to raise taxes and the costs are in sync you know um uh and differing and and you know different views within the community about you know what's uh what's a fair way to divvy up that that that cost and so um i think
061getting you know thinking about ways we could engage that conversation about how to um balance those different points of view because i think that it's been clear the last couple times that i've been involved you know uh there's a very strangely different point of view about you know a full statutory method versus a full uh regional assessment regional agreement method and the varying flavors in between that um and i think that and one of the other things that's really a significant difficulty is with amherst being so large you know uh how that impacts things good and bad you know if amherst has a great year financially its ability to sort of have a huge positive impact uh on the on the finances of the of the region is is pretty significant whereas if you know
062if leverage has a great year and they want to go five percent uh you know amherst may not may only be able to go one percent that's you know there's a huge difference there and so understanding that and how those interact is also part and parcel of that conversation about how to strike that compromise and and i think that's that's the real you know sort of there's learning the mechanics of how it fits together and you know um what's at play between the sort of two primary tools we have which is a statuary method or a uh a rolling average method um we can invent an entirely new one if we wanted to go there um but then i think the second is how do we you know get participation and find common ground about
063where we land uh relics of that and where we see ourselves in the future too i think which is also hard um you know communities are are facing the prop two and a half limits of twenty five dollars per thousand dollar evaluations you know once that hits you're stuck you don't really have an option to go above that and that's gonna create uh some crisis in a number of communities around the commonwealth not just ours but but i think that that's coming in the next you know three to five years maybe not quite that quickly uh depending um that's going to change the conversation in it i think because the the um the ability of towns to to take action is going to change they're going to have less tools at their disposal so i
064think that's that's kind of how i see it i think you know i think keeping ourselves focused on those those kind of two aspects would be perhaps most productive um and can be started you know i mean it's always a concert tomorrow i mean i don't you know those are not things that need to know what the estimated revenue needs to be for you know fiscal and i think in some ways kind of keeping i think in some ways to have those conversations having um you know using a generic number as the target and then and then uh talking about how those different mechanisms of assessment method and that sort of thing play into that um might be valuable because it it abstracts it from the immediacy of the coming budget um and so that
065that might be a way to to have the conversation about the mechanics which is one of the things i think we really need to have without it getting quite so tied to the specific more personal things of how does school work next year and what's involved and what's not going to be there next year or whatever it is so good long-winded sorry but um it's good sort of i've sat in both sides of this you know over the years so i've thought about it quite quite a bit in some ways so it quite it's it seems to me like we're really looking at two pieces on this um both you know both have some educational component to them we're looking at the assessment method process and we're looking at how the budget gets created and
066what you know um and what perhaps defining some of the things for people in a more general way about you know special education regional transportation those kinds of things in in that affect the revenue and also some of our expenditures so i don't know it seems to me like we're really looking at two two parts to this and um [Music] i might suggest that the the budget subcommittee would continue working on some of the part not the assessment method part initially but the how do we talk to the public about the budget process when it starts how you know um what the at the parts of it are and then maybe we have an advisory committee that kicks in that might bring it that deals more with the assessment issues and that might bring in
067a couple of people from outside maybe a person from each of the towns somehow um anybody want to comment on that no i'm sorry so to bring in the the folks from the towns would we would we be bringing them bringing them into this committee that were proposed i'm sorry i i it's around dinner time and i'm getting i think my hunger is getting in the way of my ability to prosper so can you just restate the last bit about bringing in members from the town and what what we'd be doing i wonder if we were going to have an at a at a point some point if there were going to be an advisory committee that was going to deal more specifically with the assessment part of it um as opposed to the budget
068process part um i guess that's what i'm suggesting and and if it were an advisory committee if we wanted to that means we could bring in outside people we wouldn't have to but it would mean that you could so go ahead i'm just trying to connect this to the work that was done previously on like wasn't there this entire assessment working group that tried to get to a new method and so we wouldn't be trying to find a new method we'd be trying to educate about what we're currently doing or what the what the goal be to to try to come because i feel like there's this there's the bringing together and and sometimes i and sorry to be negative about this it's just but it does feel like there are some fundamental conflicts that
069are not going to be easily um addressed because of you know these structural issues that that the school committee doesn't have any ability to to really fix on its own and are not going away as as as was mentioned so with the convening be to try to just get people to understand that we actually don't have a like this is the statutory method this is the regulatory method this is what we've been how we've been muddling through for the past few few years or is there some sort of goal of actually trying to amend that process and get to a more um consistent way of figuring out um i i can only tell you i guess what my opinion is from the conversations that that we've been having is it wouldn't be looking at trying
070to create a new assessment method um i do you want to comment on that dr slaughter um i can't um i think that you know uh the state definitely would prefer us not to have a different method every year um i think that you know and i think that what what their concern is or what they think about is um it becomes more difficult to be planful if you're always sort of moving the you know changing the rules of the game and i think that's hard for our our communities to be able to uh to evaluate the the method as well and so i think that you know um i i don't know that there's a particular outcome that we would necessarily be able to get to you know in in what would make my
071life a little easier you know because it's all about me uh no is is that uh if we could get an agreement on a particular assessment for a few years i think that you know then if everybody's like all right we're going to do this and this is how we're going to do it yes you know this methodology whatever that you know is some variant on what we've done in the past few years and just hold it steady for a couple years i think than that uh we can see how that plays out over a couple years which i think is also constructive to the communities as to how a consistent method kind of plays out um but i do think that there's you know and i think this happens within communities as well as
072across communities that you know fuller understanding of what are the pressures you know financial pressures um because i think that you know if you go to you know within amherst certainly and i think it's true in all of the other towns it's like uh you could you know you spoke to 20 people in each of those you might get very different opinions about where uh where they think the stress points are and it's not that they're inaccurate they just may you know their view of how important something is versus another thing so i think that's that's a that's a piece i think we have to that i think would be valuable to explore and to have the time to explore and and have each community understand their own sort of mechanics of of finance and
073and constraint and as well as the other you know three communities and then i think that gets us in a place where we might be able to have a a a way to find a more permanent solution to an assessment method but you know which is part of why the state came up with the statutory method um you know there's things i like about those things i dislike about it um you know uh one of the pieces that one of the communities likes to talk about a lot is is that it includes income and you know my counter which is great i think that's not a bad thing to factor that in but my counter argument is that well yeah but a local community doesn't get a tax on income they can only tax on
074property value so it's you know yeah if you have people who have a lot of income then you potentially could have them pay more but you know and they would be willing to pay more for their schools however you're still limited by 25 per thousand so there's a limit to how far that can go so you know there's there's plus and minuses to you know to to any method we have and and so i think it's um it's going to be difficult but if we could in the shorter term come to some agreement about an assessment that we could hold steady for a few years i think that would be a really big win for everybody and we could all take a collective deep breath and then kind of continue to you know understand the
075the difficulties we all have internally and externally and and and how to maybe get to an assessment method that we can get to more permanently miss pitzer i like the idea of getting to something consistent and i guess i'm wondering if the school committee is the one to convene this working group just because it is such a contentious issue is there any and was the assessment working group prior convened by kind of an outside party or a figure that was i don't know it's just a thought i have in terms of maybe being able to break down some of the um barriers to good communication might be having a third party who's not the school committee trying to navigate these i don't know just a thought i i don't know the history of a previous
076working group do you dr slaughter so i think that there's um i don't know if it was you know formally the formally not formerly formally um school committee that necessarily convened it it was clear in i think the way um the previous working groups and there's been a few have been started was ostensibly through school committee saying we'd like to do this in communities than you know offering people to participate um to be honest i think sometimes the people that have been in my role have asked for it um so i think it's been kind of this uh organic process that it's happened in some ways i mean i think the more recent ones have been more formally the school regional school committee said hey let's put this group together can you offer a few
077members that can participate in an active way but i think that that you know how that charge would be written would be a critical could be a very helpful thing if done critically i guess and and the school committee could take a different uh tact than they have in the past and that's not a criticism it's just it might be necessary to take a different approach to frame the work uh because i think we've you know we've taken i mean we've hired a consultant you know so it's an outside person to come in and talk about you know different methodologies and how they play out in each of the towns and and that's helpful and and you know um and useful but i but um i'm not sure that's the i'm not sure the mechanics
078is where we need the consultant help uh if we were going to have that i think there were other sort of mediation skills that might be better um you know but uh i'm not hungry but you know certainly i think that it's kind of been driven by the school committee saying hey why don't we form this group to talk about this people have been you know the membership of the school committee are hearing from their town officials that like hey we should have this conversation and so i think it's kind of uh somewhat organically but somewhat directively through school committee happened in the past well it's seven it's actually a few minutes past seven um [Music] uh i don't know that we've really gotten exactly to a place i so if i could yeah i'll
079offer a couple things so i'll say that i'm hearing a few directives from the group about things that we can do and and so we'll talk you know sort of the small bite-sized things or or well-defined things so you know i think i i think around sort of broader educational sort of stuff you know getting back to a budget book in a timeline that's more easily exist and are more easily on our website i think having other documents not the full budget book but other documents and you know both specific to the upcoming budget but also generally about the budgets i think building some of those kinds of of materials for folks are all things that myself and folks in my office can kind of put together and then give to you guys for feedback
080on you know those are going to be useful and powerful and helpful perhaps more explicitly in the conversation about fiscal 23 but at the same time i think they're going to help this broader conversation we're having i think on that sort of broader topic um i mean i think there's some educational things we can put together uh around you know assessments and and constructs and and um you know that are kind of things we've talked about before but we can be you know perhaps present them in a way that's a little uh more digestible i've been thinking about that a little bit over the last year or so um and i the other thing we i would suggest is a sort of takeaway that you may want to discuss at the at the regional school
081committee is whether or not the members of the school committee want to go back to their towns and and and do some work in the town to sort of sit with the you know their finance committees and their select boards to articulate you know uh here's the the things we are you know thinking about concerned about constraints we're operating under you know things we think are important or not important in our community as we build our budget this being one part of it i mean that might be a useful first step for um starting to get at that other kind of question is this to sort of in in a parallel to you know this mcdonald's sort of putting together this list of you know things that have been discussed by making a a sort
082of concrete document that we can look at and react to um is often very very productive and so i think if if it might be worthwhile to have uh you know the members reach out within their own communities to sort of try to elicit from those folks in their community with those things that are top of mind relative to you know assessments and and you know in their financial constraints and some of that so you know so it's going to be things that the town administrators are going to be able to sort of articulate fairly clearly or your finance committees are going to say hey these are things that are coming up that we know we have good or otherwise you know that uh are in her you know our horizon you know or they
083can say things like well our community you know really values having you know x percent of the budget for contingency or our you know our community really values uh if we have access in our in our savings to you know essentially lower our tax rate you know it was in a town meeting uh i can't remember which one it was but they actually they literally took money out of of their savings and in order to lower their tax rate uh for the coming year that's that's the strategy you can use uh you know other communities don't do that they're like no we've got this in the bank we're gonna use it for capital expense or whatever you know so there's different strategies there um so so i think there's what i suggest as far as
084you know moving ahead i've got a boat list of things from that list that i think you know are all going to be things we're working on and then i want to work on uh but i would suggest maybe a conversation that at your you know soon regional school committee meeting about kind of a listening from from the town sort of uh their worries concerning constraints etc that that kind of helps sort of build this frame of of specifics um which i think is we've often talked in more generalities i think and so i i think getting more concrete with some of those uh discomforts in each town or or around their finances and that sort of thing would be would be helpful i mean it'd certainly be helpful for me but i think it
085would be helpful for the conversation amongst the four towns to be more explicit about what uh what's driving their their thinking i i think that sounds like an excellent idea it would be a way to to involve them early you know and the idea that we are actually reaching out to them to understand more about their situations and in addition to helping us i i think that might be a good good thing to do so okay i'm going to make a suggestion see what you all think um i'd like if it's okay dr slaughter to maybe have a conversation with you um and to write up some of the notes from tonight that we can bring to the next regional committee meeting which is next week um and i can i'll loop you all in
086along with miss mcdonald since she's the chair of the regional committee um does that sound reasonable to people i would send something out before the meeting so everybody can have a look at it is that that sound reasonable dr slaughter does that seem reasonable to you it sounds fine to me i think you know you have time i know yes and no is i guess the answer to that question it's always yes and no i've got there's no shortage of things to do so if this is of importance then it obviously sort of takes take some precedent there and i think the other you know i mean i think it's it's key that miss mcdonald is is willing to put on the agenda so she's gonna have to put that on her amended you know
087basically sometime between today and tomorrow as far as i mean but the topic can be broad but i mean it does uh it will need to be formally on the agenda okay so i will need to communicate very quickly you know if we don't have things together until tuesday that's a different story but right but to at least get something on the agenda so there's a placeholder right we're meeting on wednesday actually next week because of russia right okay that's because of the holiday um on monday we have to post tomorrow right so um okay all right so that's sounds like maybe the next thing that we do that's okay with everybody i'm seeing nodding heads okay all right thank you um again i'm learning a lot which is really good um so i guess
088i'll take a motion to adjourn i move to join the amherst regional legend subscribe [Music] um thank you uh all in favor miss lord i miss pitzer spitzer aye and stance or i and thank you everybody have a good evening i'll look for emails from you good night thanks all right