Triboard Meeting October 22, 2025

001two. >> Good evening everyone. Um it's nice to meet again. Uh so this is the October 22nd uh 2025 meeting of the Ashland Tri Board which is a meeting of the select board, the school committee and the finance committee. Um, as it is a meeting of all the boards, if I could ask uh the chair of each board to call their meeting to order and we'll start with the select board. Joe, if you wouldn't mind doing that. >> Not at all. Thank you, Mr. Tom Manager. Um, call the meeting uh the select board to order at 6:15. Can't see the clock. >> 6:15. I'm sorry. My biological clock's off too. The mic's on. >> It's on. >> There we Okay. And uh Miss Tosti, if you wouldn't mind calling. >> Yes. Um I'll call the

002school committee meeting to order at 6:13. >> So, >> and I will call the finance committee meeting to order at 6:13. >> Finance committee to order. 6:13. >> Excellent. >> So, 6:13. Sorry, uh we're getting started a little bit later than what we had anticipated, but um you know, that's that's the way technology goes sometimes these days. But uh thank you all for taking the time to uh come here and assemble tonight and talk about uh the financial condition of the town of Ashland. Uh it hasn't been that long since we've met. We actually met earlier this year a couple of times as we were going through the 2026 budget and as we saw during the course of that time um in those discussions uh we're facing some serious financial challenges uh coming up well

003actually starting in FY 2026 and they're actually only going to get worse um as the years go on unless we take some kind of action and make some kind of decisions which is one thing that we're going to be talking about tonight. Um, I will say that even though this might seem, I don't know, kind of almost as if a surprise, it might be a surprise to some of the residents, um, as I'll show tonight and as we go through it, and I think the superintendent would do the same thing. Um, you'll see that this has been a time coming and, uh, what we've been able to do is manage by being creative, by being hardworking, and by being, um, selective in in what we do and how we do it. So before I move

004on, I just uh want to introduce Superintendent Jim Adams who will also be presenting tonight and um we have a number of staff here from both the school department and uh the municipal side. I won't take the time to introduce everybody. Um, but I think their um their attendance here I think is is important to note just because first of all they they've helped you know write the financial ship or or continue to write the financial ship. But they're also very very invested in what we do tonight and what we say tonight and what you say tonight I should say. So, just to go over a little bit of the agenda tonight, um we'll start. We've got a couple of new FinCom members. I know most of you uh know everybody here, but um I

005will just after the agenda just give a a couple of new FinCom members an opportunity to introduce themselves briefly. Um we will then move into Superintendent Adams school department specific data presentation. Um then we will go through um the overall budget and municipal data um and talk about that and then we need to have an open discussion and talk about some of the things that we need to consider uh financially moving forward and and one of those is an operational override. And so what I am hoping comes out of tonight's meeting is you make a decision as a tri board, we'll do it through a straw poll, excuse me, um is whether or not you want to move forward in exploring an override officially. Okay? And I'll talk about next steps at the end, but

006that's my hope coming out of this meeting is that a decision is made um in regards to that. Okay? So, uh, without further ado, I know we have a couple brand new FinCom members. Um, Ken Early is here and then Anton, I believe, is on Zoom and and Rohit, is this your No, this isn't your first tri board meeting. Um, but Ken, if you want to just introduce yourself, uh, make sure you bring your mic up here and use that big booming voice of yours to carry forward. >> There we go. Thank you. Uh, good evening. Um, my name is Ken Early. Uh, I am, uh, I've been a resident of the town for quite some time now. Um, I, my wife and I are raising two children here. We have two kids in the

007Ashland school system that we love. We love the town very much. Uh, to pay for those two children, um, I am a I I I'm a lawyer. I practice law in the investment management business. I I work at a um a firm called Mercer, which is a subsidiary of an insurance a large insurance company. I commute in and out of the city. As I told my Thincom uh colleagues, the only thing I really really complain about is the commute. Other than that, I'm generally a pretty happy guy and I'm very happy to be here and it's very nice to meet you all. >> Um and I'm more than happy to answer questions about my background if anybody has them. >> Thanks, Ken. Thank you. And >> Anton, I believe you're hiding back there in the

008um on in Zoom land. >> Yes. Can you guys hear me? >> Yes. >> Hey guys, my name is Antonov. I'm also a new member of the finance committee. Um I've lived in Ashlin since 2021. Um and I'm uh I think I might actually be the only person here on Zoom because unfortunately today's my uh first day back from paternity leave. So, uh, >> getting back for six was a little tough. Um, I'm also, uh, I'm an attorney. I practice, uh, commercial real estate at a firm called DA Piper. Um, and yeah, same as, uh, Ken, just willing to answer any questions you guys might have and looking forward to working with everyone. >> Excellent. Thanks, Anton. As you can see, one of our financial strategies is now to stack the fincom with attorneys uh,

009so we can Yeah. And the school committee. So, uh, Lisa me, I hate to tell you this, but, uh, the legal budget is is being reduced. But, um, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Superintendent Adams, who is going to go over, um, some school specific data, uh, regarding the financials. Jim, >> thank you. And, uh, welcome to the new members. Throw you right into the the scalding water of having just conversations about, uh, town finances and overrides, etc. So, um, again, for the community, Jim Adams, superintendent of schools, and I'm just going to present a a really a grand overview of where we are, uh, from a school perspective with finances because I think as we look at finances from the general government and the school side, obviously, you know, Michael

010and I have worked well together. This is my, you know, 12th year superintendent and we've really worked hard at developing a relationship and working through the financial impacts of not only the schools but some of the special considerations of schools such as, you know, the the building projects in town, uh the the apartment complexes, the um moveins, the special education costs, the rising special education costs, the cost of transportation, utilities. All of these things are really having a a detrimental impact on our overall budget. And I just want to again share an overview of of a projection, if you will. And I want you to take some of this with a grain of salt because obviously we don't have uh true numbers as we move forward um for FY27 28 29. But I'm trying to

011give you a an overview of what it looks like or what Chris Matthew and I and and Mike Cyra uh have looked at in terms of the data uh to ensure that what we're presenting to you tonight is is really pretty accurate in terms of a vision of where we are. So before I begin, any questions on on really what I'm looking to present here? No. Great. Michael, how we do this? Okay, >> there should be a way. >> Yeah, I should probably put my glasses on, huh, Mr. Kendall? This thing here. >> Yeah. >> There you go. Now I got nothing. delete. >> Yeah, we we'll just stick with it here. Okay, so this screen here and I apologize for not having handouts for you all, but uh some of this got uh finalized

012a little while ago to be honest with you. Um partly I'm I'm giving you a presentation here that makes a number of assumptions, right? And these assumptions go back to policy and conversations that we've had as a community over the past 12 years to be honest with you. And really where we've begun our conversation from a school perspective is when we look at our operating budget or our appropriated budget, we typically start and have started uh it's a you know with a 3.75% increase. That's that's where we've begun our budgeting process in years past and that was came out of conversations with um with the town many years ago and policy. This is the number that we we stuck with. That doesn't mean that's where it ended up. Uh it just means that's our beginning

013point. So what I am trying to do here is really show you what 3.75% if we just stayed on that number, what does that really look like in terms of service delivery, in terms of our uh ability to uh manage uh a school system of 3,000 kids, 500 employees, um you know, and close to a $50 million budget. So I think that's that's important step number one. So FY27, for instance, would look like a 1.66 66 million increase at 3.75% over the appropriated budget we had in the Springtown meeting. So you can follow the the the trail there, right? But what I think is critically important is that you understand that's really not our budget. That's what's appropriated that comes out of taxpayer funding. The rest of it, the rest of our budget comes through

014either grant funding, uh school choice funding, so students who are choicing into our system. It comes from charging families for transportation. It comes from charging for rentals of our facilities. It comes from many years ago of of hosting international students. So there are a number of things that go into the budget that you don't see as an appropriation. I think that's critically important because when we start losing school choice revenue, when you start losing building revenue, when you start losing grants potentially from the federal government, those all have really, you know, negative impacts on the overall service delivery to our students and our families. So, in this instance, I'm giving what what it looks like and again, this is a higher level overview of the budget itself, right? So, we have grant funding of $882,000.

015We have school choice revolving, meaning we have and use school choice monies to help offset our budget so it balances to that whatever that number appropriated number is. Right. >> Just in case everybody doesn't know what school choice >> Sure. >> do the 5-second version of >> I'll do the 5-second $5,000 version. Uh so so school choice in Massachusetts is under Mass General law allows for school districts, towns to opt into the ability to to have students come into your community from other communities. You get $5,000 a student. That's that's what we get for a school choice student. So each year the school committee has to vote on whether to open up seats or not. So I'll give a quick example. Let's go. Freshman year high school, five students uh five seats are opened by

016the school committee in April. We fill five students uh who come into Ashlin High School, say from Framingham, Hollist, wherever you get $25,000. So that money can be used for any purpose unlike transportation which has to be used specifically for transportation expenses. So when we charge families to utilize the busing that has to go towards paying for transportation where school choice funds can be used for anything. Okay. So is that yes >> that I have one question on that in regards to when you then look at chapter 70. So we get $5,000 for the students that are coming in for school choice. Yep. >> But then when we go back and we do the review of our student numbers for chapter 70, does do we get additional funds for those students? >> No. or not.

017>> That's no, they are out. >> We're only ever gonna get $5,000 a year for each of those students. >> At a higher level, um Yolanda, yes. At at a macro level, let's assume a student comes into the Ash public schools who is a English language learner or who is a uh on a special education plan. >> Uh we get incremental revenues. >> Okay. >> In addition to the 5,000. >> Perfect. Right. Great. That's what I just said. >> But it's not correct, Joe. Yeah. this that help ease the I'm sorry. Does that help ease the delta? >> Yeah, it's on. >> Yeah. >> I just I have a very low voice. You want me to use my outside voice? >> Use Donna's voice. >> Okay. I'll use my outside C voice. You won't like

018it. >> Um so if we using school choice and say it's it's the $5,000, where's the delta? Because it costs Ashlin what? >> Say $16,000 a student. a student, right? So, you have an $11,000 delta. Where is that money coming from? >> Yeah. So, again, it's it's a a challenge, right? So, here's here's how I would look at it this way. >> Say we have 20 students in an English class, right? And the average per pupil cost is $16,000. We add one more student who's a school choice student to that 20. We're still paying the same, right, for the teacher to be in front of the the kids. We're still paying for the lights for those 20 kids. It's it's so immaterial that that it wouldn't matter. We wouldn't be adding students to our to

019our through school choice should it put class sizes over a limit where you might have to hire another teacher. Okay. So, so we have space if you will within the classroom where it's being absorbed already. The teacher is already there. >> The lights are still on, the heat's on, etc. Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. Sure. The seats are also pure per grade. So, it's very specific what we open up. It's not just >> I just want to make sure that the folks at home that are watching this have a better understanding of what >> No, it's a great it's a great question because they're going to say the same thing. Well, there's an $11,000 here. >> Yeah, it can be very confusing. >> Can May can I just ask? >> Of course. Of course. >>

020Quick point of clarification. Uh when you say 5,000, where is that money? Is that coming from the outgoing town or from >> Yeah. So it so it comes from the outgoing town but through the state it it gets repurposed through the the receiving town. So we have students who are out who decide to go out of district. It comes out off correct if you look at the cherry sheet >> and I don't want to get too granular here but on the cherry sheet you'll notice there's school choice out >> and school choice in. >> So yeah and and obviously our goal is to have more in than out. Um and and years ago we did not have that right. We are we are in a in a position now where our choice numbers because we

021are a highly desirable community to be in educationally especially at the high school and therefore uh our numbers are certainly increasing. >> Yeah. >> Um question how many in and how many out? >> So great question. Right now we have just under 60 students uh in school choice and we had less than 20 out. >> Um and that number varies. We'll know October one to be honest with you. Um, remember we only not only have students who are out choice-wise, but who attend uh KEF, right? So that freshman year they go to KEE and there's a different appropriation for that, right? Um, so we probably have under 50 students at KE right now. >> Thank you. >> Yep. So, so again, we're at like 47 million in terms of of our real true budget, if

022you will. appropriated 44. This is sort of was a interesting task for me to think about our budget driver projections. So what does it really mean when and Michael says to me, "Hey Jim, where are you with your budget? What what's it really going to look like?" Well, there are lots of unknowns here, right? So let's just start with things that we can predict. We can predict and I'll make sure everyone gets this slide deck. We can predict what our salaries are, our cola, our cost of living. So that's your raises steps lane. So teachers and educators and and pair of professionals, you move year to year based on your experience and your your um degree status um and other personnel contracts about 1.6 million next year. That's an that's the increase. I want you

023to keep that in mind, right? So, because let's just back up for a moment. What did I say? Our total increase could be at 3.75%. >> 1.6 million. So, we haven't talked about anything else yet. 80 plus% of our expense, our budget is salary, is personnel. So, as we continue on with FY27, what else is happening? Well, we know for a fact right now that special education costs, out of district tuition costs are going to increase probably close to 18% next year. So, private schools who have our students in town for special education reasons, whether it's residential or day school, we know because we've already started receiving bills for next year or letters from these schools saying, "By the way, our rates are going up by 21% next year or our rates are going up

024by 15% next year." So if you remember two years ago and I have a slide up here, it went up 18%. And then it last year was probably closer to 10. These school district or these school systems, private schools are are in an enviable position where they can basically set their price and it's going to be approved at the state level. And that's a challenge for many districts. We may have less than 40 students. We do have less than 40 students out of 3,000 that are that are in out of district placements. Now, there's an offset for sure, which is circuit breaker, and we we'll get into that a little bit. But as we're talking about local finance, state finance, the Commonwealth right now is under a lot of pressure to to be able to

025meet mandated law, which is 75% reimbursement for circuit breaker. It's not going to happen this year, folks. We've been lucky the past few years. where it has happened or 73%. There have been times where it's been in the 20s and while state law says it has to be 75%. If there's the the funding is not there, it's not there. So what's next? Increase in technology costs. We know on average there's about 10% of our technology that licenses etc. But also we have Chromebooks a replacement cost. So, we need to start filtering these into and figuring these into our o over overall operating budget. We don't have, as you know, there's not a specific capital plan that goes with the school system. We have we have a townwide capital plan where folks work together, Chris, Mike's

026group, etc. to have conversations about what and how we fund capital items. I firmly believe that as a district and as a an organization, this should be built into our budget. We should we should know ahead of time that we need these funds. Uh facilities expenses. Now, some could argue this is going to be this is a much higher number than normal, but we're adding in again projection, right? If we're in conversation about the national public schools being responsible for field maintenance of of the national public schools. Now, DPW is in charge of that, right? It comes out of the enterprise fund. comes out of of the general government operating budget. And we're in the process of saying, okay, should the schools be responsible for not only the rental facilities of our of our fields

027as we do for our buildings, but also the maintenance and upkeep. This is a this is a guesstimate, if you will, of 250,000. But listen, I've started looking at the enterprise fund and the math and and the personnel that you need to ensure that our fields are up or you know are properly kept up. That's not a that's probably a low number. It's a but I'm adding it increasing utilities um curriculum needs English language arts that's going to move over to FY28. We are in need of our curriculum change and the materials and the professional development. That's a pretty hefty number, $750,000. It's a onetime expense for the materials. It's an ongoing expense obviously for professional development in years to come, but as Mike and I were talking, this is something that we need to

028do in the near future. Um, less reliance on school choice. talked about school choice being something we can utilize for um any expense. Right now we currently have eight educators, eight folks that we pay their salaries out of on school choice. That's $630,000. If school choice dried up and just think about the math, we're spending a million dollars in school choice this year. This year we're bringing in 300,000 over a it's probably not very good, you know, to think about. Okay, a what three times the amount we're spending that we're bringing in. Probably not a good ratio, right? We're spending a million, we're bringing in 300,000 eventually because we've have a reserve and we've built it up. That's going to be depleted. So where do these folks go? They have to go to the operating

029budget. That's just what has to happen. The the ESSER funds that came in, the millions or $800,000 that we had in ESSER funds through COVID, we've absorbed a lot of those teachers in our operating budget. We were strategic about that. Then we have our our federal funding of salaries, 266,000. What if those go away? We've got to be prepared. I it's it's a mess. transportation about 152,000 incremental increase. The athletic annual operating deficit. We as a community have continually charged our families users fees for athletics. I am of the belief and of athletics is just an extension of the school day. It is an extension of the school day. It is part of the public school educational process. Yet here we are. We continually charge families to participate. But guess what? We don't charge nearly

030enough to cover the costs of running an athletic program. And I've got a slide a little bit later to to show you that it's significantly different between, you know, what we bring in for users fees, what we have built into the operating budget, and what we really need to run a program. >> Jim, what's the typical uh what's the typical athletic fee for students? I know that they vary a little bit. >> Yeah, I'm going to bring it up, Claudia. Yeah, but good question. I have it in another next slide, I think. So, so here's really where where I'm going here. Estimated increase, assuming all of these things occur, right? Assuming we would need to absorb all $600,000 into out of out of school choice, assuming we lose all $266,000 of federal funds, assuming um

031at a district is that 610,000 increase. Our true number in terms of an increase in the budget would be about $4.19 million. A 3.75% increase is 1.6, leaving us a deficit of 2.5 million. If you were sitting in the room with me in November with Chris, Mike, and our admin team, this is actually where we start our our conversation. We're starting a conversation at a $2.5 million deficit before anybody even says to me, "Hey, Jim, by the way, we need another English language arts teacher. We need another English language acquisition teacher. We we need these things in order to move our district forward." Then it compounds and adds on. So, I've just extrapolated that for for a three-year window. So, you can see that it goes from 2.5 to 3.1 to 2.5 again, you know.

032So that's that's pretty consistent questions on this slide. Again, it's these are hypotheticals obviously with the exception of like our salaries. The first three or four are pretty consistent. We know what those are. >> I think it's just important um to point out that this is maintaining a status quo. >> Yes. Yeah. This is this is basically you've got level service, right? Level service is one thing. That's we're not adding anything to our our organization. Level funded, you would just give me the 44 million, right? And say, "Hey, have a nice day." And I'd be like, "Okay." Uh, I've got a $4.1 million deficit. Average teacher salary you say is 90,000. I've got to cut 50 people. Fine. That's sort of the conversation, right? That's that's going through your head. >> That's going through my

033head. just quickly ask your CBAs I is this the first year of the three year >> no this is the second year of a three year thank you >> so I will not spend a lot of time on this because it it really is you know baked into that that last slide this is our special education out of district costs right 18% 10% these are estimates Um, and there's a lot of fluidity to this and it I've been in town meeting with many of you and and the the week before town meeting a student may have come back into district or student moved out of district or a student came into the district and we just don't know and then when we become fiscally responsible uh you know these are conversations that are really a

034challenge. We don't know what our numbers will look like, but I'm just showing you the incremental cost increase of about 791,000. That does not include potential reimbursement of the circuit breaker. I'll be clear. That's on another slide. So, but athletics and the reason I bring this up because we don't talk enough about this. I don't talk enough about this. I know in um what's going on here, Michael? There we go. Um, in my 16 years here in the town, I can tell you we do not talk much about funding and have not talked much about funding athletics appropriately in our budget. We've made significant conscientious decisions on how to keep our classrooms running, how to add electives, how to ensure our students are getting the skills they need when they leave our high school to

035be successful elsewhere. Whether it's in work, trade schools, college, military, we do a hell of a job. I say that very proudly as a superintendent of schools. We do a great job. However, there are deficiencies within our budget and with how we've approached things. Uh, I believe athletics is a significant component to having a well-rounded experience as well as the arts. We made significant investments this year in our budget in the arts programs at Mendes and at Warren or Mendes and at the middle school. I'm proud of that. Athletics, our operating budget, what's in our appropriated budget? It's 384,000. What does that cover? Could be salaries of the athletic director. Could be a little bit of transportation. Chris will correct me if I'm wrong. Uh stipen positions for coaches. We collect about 290,000 in users

036fees, but the actual cost to run the athletic program is closer to 975,000. So we we're typically running a $300,000 deficit. So you're like, Jim, how the heck do you then close that deficit? Well, at the end of the year, we're literally Chris I say we and I say we, it's usually somebody else. Um, Chris literally is going through line item by line item of the chart of accounts to determine, hey, do we have thousand $1,000 savings here? Oh, great. Thanks. We do. Let's apply it to the athletic. Do we have $2,000 of savings for this teacher? Because they didn't. We anticipated they were getting in moving to another step, but they didn't. Okay, we can apply it to this is again it's a game you don't want to play very often and that's similarly

037with enterprise funds with revolving accounts you don't want to do that too often. So, here we have an example, Claudia, of what you were asking, right? $450 for ice hockey. $350 for alpine ski, football's 300, cheerleading, all the others, all those are 290. So, really 290 is the number you look at, uh, for the most part. Um, and then we have co-op teams that it depends on the the school system, depends on who owns the co-op, if you will. they determine what that rate is um for and I just gave a little snippet here. Westboro, a very similar size school district, very similar community in terms of um you know economic socioeconomic status. They budget 515,000 in their operating budget and they use 255,000 from user fees. So they're they're at the range, you know,

038they're alreadyund, you know, $40,000, $130,000 more than we are just in their operating to start. >> Does that include the field maintenance as well? No, that's just that's just running the programs. >> Transportation coaches and I'll give an example because uh this is hard to read and this is why I think it'll be important for you to get. I break everything down and my athletic directors do not like me. uh partly because I am a former accountant and I want to break things down as granularly as I can to make sure that whatever we're doing we're doing you know the best way possible. So, in this instance, this is from last fall, right? Last fall, and it's even hard for me to read here. Um, last fall we had 557 student athletes. Okay, that's middle

039and high. We have 850 high school kids, 600 plus. So, we got 1,400 kids. Well over a third are playing and participating in extracurricular sports. We have waiverss for those families who can't afford it, you know, for the cost of playing sports because it is expensive. Um, and and what I do is I break it down by sport and but really what you want to focus on is we brought in $120,000 in users fees at the bottom in the yellow, the third row over from the left. 120,000. It cost us 257,000 to actually run the programs. Okay, so that's pretty significant. So, we're we're starting the fall with $137,000 deficit in athletics. And I'll tell you, athletics certainly matters, right? I we get more conversation with athletics than we do Oh, sorry. I can't do

040that. when I share the um the slide deck with you, you can click on that link and it actually breaks it out for a full year and you can see each season how that deficit gets created of 300,000. It's pretty significant. >> Could you talk a little bit about waivers? How how are waiverss um >> achieved and are they achieved it if if a child plays it by family, by sports? >> It's by sports. So you'll notice Claudia on the the third one over or the fourth one over from the left. So golf for instance had three students qualify for a waiver. So, they have to fill out paperwork, whether it's free and reduced lunch, whether it's, you know, we we have the ability to to to look at specific um data within our student

041management system to say, "Okay, this family's going to qualify." They ask, they qualify, they fill out a form, we go through the process. So, so it's significant. So, there's 30 or $23,000 worth of waiverss for student athletes. Significant. So, chapter 70, for those who are new to the table, this is the state aid that comes in. Um, and what you'll notice is Michael and I have always been pretty conservative with our number because you just don't know like we're in town meeting in May and in July the state finally passes a budget. So, that number can can shift one way or the other. We had a huge increase in 2024 of 15.82% in chapter 70. the Student Opportunity Act, the the state government said, "Listen, we have yet to actually fully fund Chapter 70." And

042a lot of work with with President Spila for years and years on this and finally it got through. Well, it's now tied to so we're at a certain level now. it's tied to enrollment, the incremental costs of English language art or English language learners, uh free and reduced lunch, whether it's um the um special education. So there there are lots of little factors that go into determining determine what child and how much you get per child. I think it's fair to say based on what I'm hearing out of the state house that hey a 1% increase is probably where we're going to land right now. That's $50. They start at the state level at $50 a child if you're held harmless, if you will, meaning your numbers really are not significantly changing or your numbers

043went down and you basically get whatever they start with $50 a child. that determines your chapter 70, but it can't be less than what you had the year before. That being said, last year they adjusted it to 100, 115 maybe um per child. So, there's movement. It's it's not significant enough where Michael's going to count on $1.6 million in revenue like we had in FY24. It's not going to happen because one, our numbers aren't changing dramatically like they did. This was coming out of CO. We had a we had a dip initially coming at 2122 and then all of a sudden CO really people felt a little more comfortable and they came back in in droves. That helped in addition to the uh the student opportunity act. This this is in the budget book from

044last year. You just noticed that we're we're spending um $3.3 million in revolving accounts. Circuit breaker, which is the special education reimbursement for out of district students. Um rental, I went through these building rental, international tuition, school bus revolving, school choice. You'll notice our projected balance is really where, you know, I want to land on this page. Really, it's like we're we're projecting to have fewer and fewer dollars to run the system to balance our budget. If we had to use $1 million like we're using this year for school choice next year in FY27, we'd have about $500,000 left over. I'm assuming we're going to get a few few more dollars than we anticipated revenue-wise here. based on the number of students who have actually um school choiced in. I don't know what it looks

045like because they could decide to choice back out in the next, you know, month. But that number could go as high as 350,000 for school choice revenue. So you'd add another 150 in. So you get to 4 410, use a million, you only have 400 left. It's it's a perilous situation to be in to rely on revolving accounts to balance your budget. Student enrollment, you can see um that 142 coming out of COVID increase, right? That is really when it hit for the 23 24 budget. Uh when they started passing the S SOA, um that increase really helped us. We're up 12 kids from last year as of yesterday. Um, we I mean I look at enrollment every single day. It's probably drives me nuts and drives everybody else nuts that I look at it

046every day, but I do because I want to know where we stand. And this is, you know, I think we're flattening out a little bit, but I'm concerned obviously with continued housing building projects. What's that going to look like? There is no true metric that determines what and how many kids are going to be coming in and what that profile of the child looks like. We just don't know. Uh, you know, this is not updated because the they've not finalized the FY24 per pupil district, but last year to Joe's point, you know, our number 16,000 per child. I told you this puts us in the bottom 10% in the Commonwealth, what we spend per child. All those other towns above us are, you know, spending more. Holliston's number is going to jump ahead of us

047because they did pass an override. So all of I would say the majority of those communities have passed overrides in the past five years. Not in the budget. I haven't even talked anything about capital. I haven't said a word about this. I'm I'm talking to about a $2.5 million operating deficit. We have capital needs of $12 million. Roofs, modular replacement. Who's got kids at Warren? We bought those 12 years ago. They had a 5year lifespan. They'd already had a 5year lifespan. We bought them used. We continue to refurbish. Turf replacement. Again, the turf's been in 14 years. Laptops. Um the uh I don't use I don't use um I use Macs, but apparently you know the the the operating system now Windows you have to have an updated computer. >> Um you can't utilize the

048ones that we had for our teaching staff, student management system, uh district data analyst. Like these are all things that actually bring in revenue to me as well. like a data analyst helps us determine what we can do. Um, Chromebooks are for kids. Um, boiler. I think the little little munchkins that get away deserve a little stay away from uh rain, which is a roof, and deserve to have a little heat. Um, but um, that's that's really where I am. Uh, and I will open up for questions. I probably took a little longer than than Michael wanted me to. Um, but I I can only say that the working partnership that we've had with the three boards uh has been unbelievable. We are an envious community around the Commonwealth and and I think the school

049committee would tell you the same when they go to um you know, we have our upcoming superintendent and school committee conference in a couple weeks. Folks look at us and say, "How do you do it?" and and it's I don't know how we do it sometimes except it's really a collaborative effort and that this community has invested in schools. It's invested in capital projects, a public safety facility, a new Mendes, it's invested in general government understanding public safety is critically important. But at some point we come to a crossroads and I'm sure and we thought that crossroads was here a long time ago. We've we've survived to get to where we are. Uh I couldn't be more proud of of our budget in terms of in the support the town has given us. We've averaged

050about a 5% increase in my 12 years. It's pretty significant. That's what makes people envious of us. How do you do it? It's it's at some point those revenues from building projects are coming to a standstill. And what does it look like? What does this community want and desire? You know, I want the early kids to have a great education. I want everyone in this room who have grandchildren and children in our schools to continue to expect the same level of success that we have, if not make it better. That's the challenge before you in this community. As a taxpayer in another community who's building a brand new $300 million high school, I get it. It's tough. It's hard. And my community votes for overrides as if they're like Pez candy, you know, uh, and

051it is what it is. But, um, that's sort of the, you know, the situation we're in today. So, I will leave it there if you have questions specifically. um happy to answer them and I will make sure you get the the slide deck as well. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. First of all, this is great. Sure. Um exactly what we want. >> Can you pull the microphone? >> Oh, of course. I'm so sorry. I'm not used to this. I apologize. >> Thank you. Um thank you again. Um, one one thing we debate from time to time in finance committee is um, we talk about other towns >> like this town, this town does this and this town does this and then we talk about what that town's doing and then we can >> nitpick and

052say, well, they're not exactly like us for this reason, which happens, right? And that's fair. But, you know, in your experience and and just based on what you've seen in doing the role and looking at these numbers, I is there which of these towns should we potentially examine more closely that have been down this road that maybe have done it what you would consider to be the right way? And as a follow-up to that, are there any cautionary tale towns that have gone too far and then we should also examine that with the same level of vigor and energy? Yeah, I I think somebody asked me this question today. Uh actually Chris and I were in a union meeting this afternoon and we're talking about stipen positions and about looking at coaching salaries. Like who

053would I really compare Ashlin to, right? And who's done things the right way or >> it's it's really comparable because you go on the state department website and they say, "Okay, I don't know like Bill Ricka, Burlington are all towns that are similar to Ashlin." No, they're not. >> They're absolutely not. I mean, have you been to Burlington? Have you seen the the industry that exists there? Have you been to Denim? They've got more money than anybody. Right. But Westboro, although they do have some commercial, right? Uh I think Grafton, >> I think Mend Upton, the Nipmuk school district, I think are really highquality districts that are worth looking at in terms of the work they've done to to even consider passing overrides, etc. Cautionary T, one of my my favorite superintendents, um is in

054Franklin. They've had three overrides fail in the past year and and and now their user fees for athletics. There's $1,000 to play football and hockey and like it's out of this world. It's >> it's a it's a challenge for sure. Um >> you said that was Franklin. >> Franklin. Yeah. Excuse me. Yep. And and they're they're a much bigger district than ours. They're probably almost twice the size. >> But but again, it's a community that has values education. It's a excellent system, but they've not been able to pass an override there for the last couple years. They've tried. Um Lucas is a good friend of mine, the superintendent. He's like, "Jim, I don't know what to do." Like it failing by 10 votes or 20 votes. It it's close, but right. Um but I would

055say those are the three three communities that I think um the school committee might have a different um perspective on that. Mark does a lot with school districts and communities and towns and uh with his work and um but locally it's hard, right? NIC just passed. Hollison just passed an override. Are they worth looking at? Sure, they're a little smaller, but it's it's a local district. Um Medfield DS, they don't they don't go for overrides. Um but they can't get a building passed, which is interesting in Medfield. Um, so it's a it it's >> that's like a part of the equation. Like I feel from from being here the last time or even as far back as when the high school was built. >> Um, but do you remember the last time we did collaborate

056with other communities, we we researched it um some of us on school committee um met with people uh school committee members from other communities that had successfully like Grafton, remember we had good relationships with them, got all kinds of input on what they did. We were in people's homes. Uh I I think there's a piece of it for me anyway, and it's anecdotal. I don't have anything to prove this, but it's just like getting into the head of the voters in this town. You know what I mean? Like we feel like we did a lot of like the things. >> Um and I'm sure we didn't do everything perfectly and maybe there's a different way to structure it that um piques people's interests, you know, if they have line items or something that we didn't

057do. But um but there's this this thing about like why are are the people of Ashland like resistant to it even when we do that homework and try to understand the best approach and it still seems like it's not being you know accepted. >> I'd love to hear from some people in the room why they feel like that is the way that it is. >> Or maybe if you disagree. >> I I'd like to go ahead. >> No wants. No, actually I'm not going to not going to answer that question, but um I actually had a question for you, Jim. Uh first off, again, thank you very much for your presentation. Just as a point of clarification, I'm not trying to de dim diminish the importance of athletics, but we've been talking a lot about

058athletics fees and and such, but I just want to make sure that folks at home have a clear idea what the material impacts will be uh with the def deficits that you say will run like what are going to be the academic sure impacts of that as well. >> Yeah. No, that's a great question and and the only reason I'm talking a little bit more about athletics uh is because it's not something we have talked about in 16 years. It just hasn't. Uh and and and I think that's an important piece that we have to make sure we fund all of our programming and and I again that's just part of a whole comprehensive educational experience in a in a public school system. That's what I believe in terms of what could be a drastic

059again I don't want to create this firestorm of this is what would happen but think about 1.5 $2 million deficit that that Michael says to me or FINCOM and the school committee says hey Jim we've got to cut 2 million from your budget to make it balance that only means teaching staff that's what it means it means administrative ative staff too and I don't want to like last year in our budget process we reduced our admin team by one um and I think that's really where you look first but it could have detrimental impact on curriculum reading specialists co coaching specialists all those things matter to our our students but it's personnel and it will move our system backwards to what degree I'm not sure Makita But we're talking assume you lose 20 educators. That's

060pretty significant in this community. >> Class sizes would address >> class sizes go up. >> Yeah. 100%. >> We lost all the libraries at one point. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the ways to think about it is we talk a lot a lot about closing gaps, right? And achievement gaps and stuff like that. >> And to lose positions would make that nearly impossible to continue that effort, right? because you'd you'd you'd be struggling more and more to just meet to to teach the the the needs, right? And so, um that's that's for me at least that's the biggest fear isn't like, okay, we'd have to raise a fee here. We'd have to do those are impactful for sure, but >> one of the things we continually talk about is making sure we close

061the gaps >> and uh significant cuts would would have a really big impact there. I think they would probably widen. They wouldn't we wouldn't even probably be able to keep them where they are. And so that's that to me is is a is the probably one of the easiest things to say that is probably the biggest risk. >> I agree with Paul and also adding just general student progress. So you know the gaps for sure will be harder to fill, but as you mentioned just keeping our students on the same trajectory to continue to make progress is going to be a lot harder. And so those gaps will inevitably um become bigger and be more prominent. >> Yeah, >> Joe. Yeah, >> thanks Jim. I just want to answer law's question about you mentioned something

062about getting into people's heads and and making sure that they understand what's what's going on. >> Do you know how to do that? >> Never mind. Yeah. >> All I can say is that in years past when we tried to do an override, they kept on saying we need the money, we need the money, we need the money. And near the end of the fiscal year, >> there were monies available >> that that came back. So now the people that >> are listening to us saying, you know, we need this override, we need this override, when in fact, well, when the true figures came in, we didn't need it. that resonates big time in in every resident in town that has that that can vote >> and you know well chicken little and and that

063and that's that seems to be an issue and people don't forget >> so I' I'd like to weigh in on that um and just for people who don't know me I'm Marcy Culverwall a new member of the school committee also um CFO of a a medical school so um I spent a lot of my time in in the numbers And the environment we're dealing with from a macro perspective is completely different. We are postco the personnel cost has increased. That's a fixed cost in the town and the school budget. So that is is totally different. We are in a new supply chain world than we were before. So the cost of goods, shipping, tariffs, all these buzzwords you hear in the media, that's a real cost that's going up. Um, and then the other thing

064is the the question of what funding we could get from both the state and the federal government is a complete real risk. And you know, the government's shut down right now. So, we're not blessed with the executive orders every week of what could change, but that's a real risk. So, there's three new risks that exist that did not exist at the time the town did tried for an override before um that we'd have to plan for. But the thing that is so key to me when I'm having discussions with people about, you know, why can't we do what we want to do is the fixed cost is what it is. So to maintain the status quo, we absolutely have to educate people of this is the cost to live in this town, to maintain all

065the wonderful services that we enjoy for our schools, for our our um other community members with the, you know, the senior center and everything we do, the library, all the things. And so we've got to make a decision as a town. Do we want those services still? And what is the cost of that? And if the revenue is not meeting that fixed cost without any additions of, you know, any new nice to haves, then there's there's that. And I think it's that simple. Like that's a new it's just new and everyone sees it on the news. So I'm very passionate about the numbers. Um, >> but that's how I would, you know, Marcy, I I think it is that simple. But the other piece that's that simple is that everybody is feeling that in their

066personal lives too. >> So now it's not so simple, >> right? That's right. >> Because now it's it's another place where my pocketbook gets hit. >> Um and certainly, you know, I I'm certainly very uh >> totally get it, >> but it's just sort of a reality. And I think that that's, you know, part of what we're faced with. I I think that um that is a piece that we have to drive home though. I mean, people need to be reminded of that a hundred times over. Um I think some of the reasons we haven't passed overrides, you know, there's this community is very different from what it was 20 years ago. Um I think that that was shown when we voted for the public safety building and for the high school. Um I think

067the other things that we always need to be thinking about is the additional fees that are placed upon uh families with students their and I agree with you Jim 100% that especially in this day and age where kids are on their phones all the time if they can you can get them in a sport I think every parent wants their kid outside doing some kind of a sport or some kind of extracurricular activity beyond the school day and we have to think about trash fees that people pay their water bills. you know, all those things are in addition to our our tax rate, right? Um, one question I I think it is is important to look at other communities. Um, you know, you just look at basically I think mendupton and it's a couple of

068thousand more per child. And so now you're talking if that was us getting those $2,000, it would be almost $6 million or, you know, I don't know exactly, but in a large number, right, that would solve our problems. And so when I look at the communities too and I see Hollist and Hopington and they're right in the same neighborhood as us and now you said Hollist just passed, >> right? And and Hopington hasn't. I know they've talked about it. So, you know, how do it would be nice if they were way up in the 20 grand per kid, but they're not. So, how how does that compete with what we see in our classrooms versus what their students getting in their classrooms? Is there a way to differentiate? >> Well, there are a couple ways,

069right? I mean, we can look at standardized test scores. We can look at AP scores. Like like again, we're looking at the the end result of our of our students and and what it looks like in the end. Um, and I would say we are as successful as as any district around with our students who are metriculating out of the Ash public schools. Um, and that includes, you know, Hopington, Dover, Sherburn, Medfield. Like if you look at those numbers, um, we're there. I think Hopington's an interesting scenario, interesting case. They have they've invested a lot of money in their building projects, right? They built a brand new elementary school and as it opened they still needed to go back and invest in another couple million because it was too small because they didn't anticipate Legacy

070Farm and all of the number of students who were coming out of there. So, so I I think that impact isn't necessarily doesn't necessarily equate to the per people cost of running the school system. Yeah. >> So, sorry. I was gonna say I um first of all I I I agree with Marcy. I think that um I think I think the standard of what people's expectations are have changed a lot over the last you know it's been nine years since we've last gone for an override and things have drastically changed. Our population has changed quite a bit as we know and our population is going to change more. I know you were looking at the enrollment numbers. You know, when we think about these 40B projects, one of the one of the things that I

071don't know if you know, it's really well known. I'm sure, you know, you're looking at these numbers, but for a 40B project, 10% of those units have to be three-bedroom um apartments. So, when we talk about a 250 apartment complex at the Mill building, you're talking 25 units of uh of three three-bedroom units. So, you know, you're you're definitely, you know, I know we we've talked in the past about the the um the delta that happened when Cirrus was built and it wasn't quite what we expected, >> but I think this is a very different um I think it's I think it's going to be very different simply because >> these are going to encourage families to to come to Ashland, which you know I I I love to have families come to Ashlin. Um,

072but it's this controlled way that we can plan for all of this and and I think you know I was so that was that was one thing and then I have one other question for you because I I know you kind of glossed over the the capital needs and I think that that is incredibly important >> because if you think about the list that you had and I assume those are things that need to be addressed in the next three years that's $12 million in capital that's additional $4 million per year if you spread it out. So now we're talking about a $6.5 million deficit, give or take. So it's >> it's, you know, it's it's the education, it's it's it's all the things that that go into the budget, but I think that that

073capital is is just as important because we can't we can't keep pushing that aside. >> Sure. I don't disagree with you. >> Yeah. So >> So thank you. >> Yeah. And just uh I want to get switch over to Michael, but to go back to your point, Joe, about the optics of I I think we we try to do not an alarmist point of view and we don't try to say the sky is falling, but when somebody wants it when we say we need an override, we we essentially in some way saying the sky is is about to fall, right? And so when we then go have town meeting and there's $350,000, that's what happened nine years ago, right? There was I think it was 350 uh was the number but this is the challenge.

074Everything's complicated, right? And so responsibly we still have to be doing that because the department division of local services says we should have so much in free cash and that's the proper budgeting thing. So how does that you know it is that's the challenge is this is complicated >> and it would be irresponsible irresponsible of us to go over that cliff to the point where it's that dire at that point because now if we're not meeting that threshold of what they're saying we should have for free cash and now we're we go and we try to get accredited again and now our credit is bad and now we're hey we need an override, we've already done a lot of damage. And so, how do we balance that? And I think that's part of the plan.

075We really need to make sure we're thoughtful about is we we need to be able to articulate it without causing damage that we have to then come back from, right? Uh but how do you do that? How do you get people to feel the pain or understand the consequences of making these decisions, but at the same time balance it? building projects are now fully hitting our our our tax bills and everybody's tax bill just you know went up in the last year and and I felt it everybody feels it right so we have to be thoughtful of that and and there's a lot of things that are complicated to balance uh but to go back to your point that is an optic even nine years ago when I had some idea of what things were

076like and not as probably as in-depth as I do now I it made me look look funny at it it's like hey why are we doing this and now I have a better understanding now of why we do these things. But, you know, I'm I'm kneede in all this and I'm I know it to a certain extent, but I'm learning still. But, we need to have how do we get the other, you know, 12,000 voters who don't have that opportunity to spend all that time and energy on it? How do we message it properly to them? I think that's the biggest challenge is is >> and it's a catch 22 respect for that because if we lose the credit rating that we have we're spending more money for bond ratings and and everything else. So

077now that compounds our our debt so we're not gaining anything by actually we're losing them and I'm sure Mike will talk about that in detail. Thank you. Got to bring this down a little bit. So, hi everybody. Um, so before I really get into the meat and potatoes of this, um, I just want to thank and acknowledge Superintendent Adams and his staff and, uh, also all of you, um, as well as our team. Um we are where we are today and we are as successful as we are by virtue of the team that we have here. Um it's one of the things that has kept me here is our team collectively. Um staff, board members, volunteers. Um and it's one thing that I know is going to help us continue to be successful in the

078future regardless of what happens. Um, we are hardworking, we are creative, um, we have a can do attitude that really I think is unmatched um, throughout the Commonwealth. As Jim alluded to or Jim said, I I experienced the same thing at the MMA conference. You know, how are you doing all of this stuff? You know, h how how, you know, because they look at the metrics that I'm about to show you tonight and they're wondering like how does this work? And it's not magic. It's people. It's people. And we're going to talk about a lot of numbers. We've already talked about a lot of numbers. You're going to see charts and graphs and all that good stuff. But there is one primary question that you all need to be asking yourselves tonight and everybody needs

079to be asking themselves. And Marcy alluded to it and so did Brandy is what kind of quality of life do you want to have? That's what it's all about. And that encompass quality of life encompasses a lot of things. You know, it encompasses the costs that you pay, taxes, fees, but it also encompasses the services that you provide or that we provide for you on your behalf. It also encompasses the events, the camaraderie you see at the corner spot and the experiences that you have as a citizen or excuse me, as a resident of this community. And so that is the primary question as we go through tonight and we go through this discussion as it extends throughout the budget season is what kind of quality of life do you want and what are you

080willing to pay for it? >> Does anybody want to take a shot at what quality of life means to them? >> I will. Um, sure. you know, just from a the perspective of living here for so long, it's uh I think it comes down to health, safety, education, community, um certainly services that we enjoy, whether it's, you know, my street getting plowed or coming down to the town hall here because I need to file some sort of a form or what have you, and having that being done efficiently, uh it just means being um being solidly aware that the place that I am residing and living is uh is is the place that my myself and my family belong from a from a comfort and um also affordability perspective too. Um that's how I'd pro

081probably sum it up for the most part. >> Yeah, I think a lot of people would feel similarly. >> Yeah. >> You know it it's what's that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and like you know you go outside and you see your neighbor. You know you know your trash is going to be picked up. You know your street's going to be plowed. you know, when your kid gets on the bus is going to a safe school system that's providing a top quality education, you know, that's a that's that's quality of life. That's part of quality of life. But we are here to talk about numbers um as well. And so, as Jim talked about, I just want to kind of say this too, projections, budget projections, they are as much

082an art as they are a science. Marcy, you know this as as as a CFO. Um, you know, you're taking the best data that you have generally from the past and trying to factor in what, you know, what do you want to to include as part of your projections moving forward and you come up with some numbers and generally I've been very very conservative. I still am conservative, but this is what the financial picture looks like today. Okay, if we look in into we're in FY26 right now. If we look going into FY27 and beyond. Okay, so the primary drivers as we've talked about is we have the municipal budget going up 2 and a.5%. And whatever that number is, whatever our collective bargaining agreements are, whatever our non-union increases are, whatever our fee license

083costs are, we make it work within that number. It generally consists of about $350,000 every year. now in the general fund or excuse me in the general government side. Okay. And then we also have um the school department as Jim mentioned going up 3.75%. But what about some of the other things? Well, we've got KEFtech which we take uh prior year um numbers and we extrapolate that out through FY31. Um we look at the health insurance numbers, pension numbers. Obviously, we can't gauge what those are going to be exactly moving forward. But what we do is we look at what are the increases in the past. You know, what is that moving average look like and then can we use that to project into the future. And then we also look at things like, you

084know, we know what our 2 and 12% is going, you know, we know what that figure is going to look like on a base levy, but the big big um unknown is new growth. And I've talked about this before. New growth is what you get when you bring on new buildings. When you add an addition to your home, when you add on a deck, all of that factors into new growth. And when you had a project like Cirrus, you saw new growth numbers go up to like 1.2 million a year. And that is money that is not you not only get that year, but it gets added on to the tax levy. And you continue to see that each year. Um, but over the last few years that's dwindled down to 400, you know, $500,000.

085Big differences. Big differences. So, when you factor that all in, you know, what you end up with is, um, basically I use new growth estimates of $500,000 moving forward each year, just kind of a base amount. Um, now I have the levy limit right now at uh 27 going at 60.5 million and it grows to 67.7 million over 5 years. But our expenses, they're going to continue to outpace our revenues. They already have. We've already talked about that. I I'll review that a little bit. Um, and so what happens is that, you know, in 2031 we have revenue of $90 million, but we have expenditures of $98 million. Again, that's 5 years from now. You bring it back to next year, you know, we're looking at uh a revenue number of $81 million and an

086expense figure of 83.6. So about a $2.5 million deficit for FY27. That's what we're looking at in the immediate future. Um, as you're looking at these, there's one thing I I I want to introduce as a caveat. This does not consist or does this does not include the bond amounts, the taxpayer amounts for the Mendes school because we have a ban, which is a short-term borrowing that ends next year. We're going to be bonding that long-term next year. Um for is it what uh we've we've done how many years of ban? Cindy three. >> So it'll be a 27year bond because it was a 30-year authorization. Um what happens with an override will determine how we structure that. That's why I haven't included it. You know, we can structure it, work with our financial advisor

087and you know, structure more on the front end or and more of a tax increase on the front end versus the back end. But, uh, that's what FY27 looks like. A, um, a $2.5 million deficit. So, who who here has heard of a 40B project, right? We've got three of them. Um, not only that, we have a number of projects that have been permitted and they haven't been built. So, we have a another 40B project that was permitted a few years ago, the Arbella at Ashland off Memorial Drive that has not been built. That's in litigation. We have 501 Pond Street at 120 units. We have Homer A, which is at 29 units downtown. you know, when you look at all of those, um, Don, who is, uh, I can't believe I'm saying this, the

088senior member of our finance team here, uh, in terms of tenure, um, who's been here a year, um, Don has projected, you know, what what kind of tax increase would we look or tax revenue would we look at once all those are built? And conservatively, I think admittedly, that number comes out to 4.2 million. So total. Okay. And so what I did is I actually took uh not that full amount, but I took $500,000 each year and I added it onto that new growth number. So we went from $500,000 each year to a million dollar in new growth each year. So why did I do that? Why did I spread it out? These projects, if they get permitted, the ones that aren't permitted, if they get permitted, everything else, it they're not going to all

089be built at once. They're going to there's going to be a runway associated to that with that. And so that's why I've spread it out a bit. Does that make sense? Does everybody? Okay. And so what does that mean? So that means our new growth number goes from $500,000 a year to $1 million a year in new growth annually. Um so what does that mean? Well, that makes a makes a little bit of a of a impact about 20% but it doesn't solve the issue. Um, we still in FY 2031 will have a $7 million deficit uh after after that gets factored in. You know, if we had a $2.5 million deficit before in FY27, looking at a $500,000 new growth number, if you do some quick math and you put that up to 1

090million, our deficit goes to 2 million. So, still pretty pretty significant. So, that's, you know, scenario number two, if you will, right? What does that look like? And then this p or in FY26, if you recall, as part of our tribe board discussions, what we ultimately decided to do was take 2.2 million out of our rainy day stabilization fund and use it to balance the budget. And so what if we continued that practice? What if we continued to fill those deficits with stabilization funds each year? those that's onetime funding each year. You know, in FY27, again, I'm using those enhanced new growth figures, the the million dollars, you know, that would be a $2 million transfer in FY27. Um, in FY28, that's a $3.2 million transfer. Okay, that would balance the budget for those years.

091And then in FY29, it's a $2.8 $8 million transfer, but we still have a significant deficit and our funds are depleted. So, if we continue that strategy and not put money back into the stabilization fund, which you know we have done before using free cash, but that's that is tenuous. Um, we'll be able to balance budgets until FY29. So FY27, FY28 will get a couple years relief. So as you can see, it's not really a solution. It's it's more like a bridge if we decide to use that. And again, they're finite resources, the stabilization fund, and they really should be used for emergencies and onetime expenses. >> Michael, can I ask a question? >> Sure. how much um of the town but or the overall Ashlin budget is funded from external sources. So the schools

092have some grants, you know, that come in chapter 70. Are there other external one like that could have a risk of going away? Um >> Oh, Marcy, that was a good segue into into what I'm about to get into. >> Oh, it's like >> mic magic. We did not have a conversation beforehand. >> Okay. Because that this is a question like okay if you don't have it in tax revenue how can you I mean are there other ways we can make up for it or why can't we just make cuts you know why can't you know we've got all these new faces right you know not necessarily talking about you know exchanges you know people think I think sometimes that they're all ads not just uh replacements but as you'll see we've already implemented significant

093you know budget reductions or not necessarily reductions but kept things stable and we've already maximized a lot of our alternative revenue sources. So, let's talk about overall what we've done to go ahead and um and go ahead and balance the budget overall because I think, you know, we're having these serious conversations and I think I said at the beginning, it might seem like a surprise, but we have been working up to this for several years. Um, it started in FY 2019 uh when we cut the municipal efficiency fund at $25,000. Who remembers the municipal efficiency fund? Yeah, I didn't think so either. It's it's kind of a nerd thing, a municipal nerd thing. Um, it was a fund that we had set up and where departments would submit proposals for projects that were relatively small

094in scale that uh or cost that they proved could provide a return on investment. It was kind of like a bank. So, one of the things we did is we got the pole pads. You remember you see those at town meeting. You know, instead of having all those people there checking people in, we have the poll pads. It makes it a lot more efficient. But, you know, we started getting some lean fiscal times and we decided to cut that. Um, in 2021, we reduced our payo capital that we had worked hard to get up to 750,000. We then reduced it uh down by $250,000. And then in 2023, we reduced it again to zero. we reduced it by $500,000. So in three years we went from a $750,000 PGO capital line in the budget to

095zero. Um in 2023 we also switched our sped stabilization fund. So we were using it at the end of the year to basically any kind of you know unaccounted for expenses that were coming in that we hadn't planned for. we now anticipate that and put that in front uh basically of the year in in the beginning of the year uh and that helps us balance balance the budget and then we started getting into some serious one-time fund usage and some serious deficits um so the ARPA allocation for budgetary purposes I put 3.5 million in here that's actually a mistake that was the total amount we used some a lot of that was per 818,000 Again, that's a I need to correct that was actually used uh for ARPA to balance the budget or from ARPA

096to balance the budget. And then we also used overlay surplus, which again is a very very finite uh resource. I won't get into what overlay surplus is, but we tapped into it for 350,000 in 2025 and 150,000 in uh 2026. And then finally, the big the big one, we had to go to the stabilization fund. you know, no magic anymore, like no no no no no magic happening. Um, $2.2 million came out of the stabilization fund, the rainy day stabilization fund in order to balance our budget. Um, this you don't I included a sheet in the back uh because I don't think many people could read this. So, so I went ahead and included in the back and it's basically your FY26 budget uh revenue figures including it also includes 25 and 24 and I've

097highlighted where those one-time funds um are seen in that chart. But to Marcy's point, like we have maximized other revenue sources and grants and revolving funds, things like that. So for our fire department, we used $1.3 million out of the ambulance revolving fund last year. So we didn't have that resource until like FY17 or FY18, but we have increasingly used that to help balance our fire department budget. So that 1.3 million, about 450 of that was for an ambulance. The rest of it was for salaries and wages in our fire department. So a significant amount. Um, our recreation revolving fund uh funds a the vast majority of our recreational operations at 55,000. The meals tax, which um which we passed back in 2013, didn't go into effect until 2014, that provides $300,000 for us to

098provide services. Our building revolving fund, uh, we tap into it for $142,000. animal control. So, we have a shared service agreement. We regionalized with Hopkin to bring in some extra revenue, 114 other sources like the STOP grant that we used to fund uh one of our positions in human services. Um you know, some other things, those total up to $185,000. So, I mean, you can see this adds up to $2.6 million, which represents almost 20% of the general fund budget for municipal departments, municipal services. That's a lot, folks. That is a lot. Marcy, does that help answer your questions? >> Start. >> Okay. You got a little bit more more want a little more detail there. >> Give me the Excel files. >> Okay. Um, and let's talk about what our staff looks like. Okay.

099Um, so we have added positions, right? No, no doubt. As this town has grown, we have had to add positions. So, we've added positions in police and fire. We've added positions in library, but we know what we had to do that because if we did not, we were going to lose state aid. We would lose our certification. We were on waiverss for many, many years. And we would lose certification and state aid if we didn't uh fund that the library at a certain amount. You know, community center. We've certainly we've started a human services department. It's a vitally needed resource for this community, especially as our population changes and in DPW as well. But if you look at how the town has grown versus how our staff has grown, it's virtually identical. So in 2007,

100we had one employee per 132 residents. In 2025, we have one employee per 127 residents. And one important point here is all of this staffing, the staffing increase at least on the general fund, 95% of it has been funded through outside sources. Part of best position, our communications position, that comes completely from outside sources. Nine of our firefighters are funded completely through outside sources. Sam, our sustainability coordinator, who does a ton of work bringing in grants into this town and bringing a sustainability lens to everything we do that's funded through agger on the aggregation program. We have maximized as much as we can with outside resources. And then the key difference is in 2007, what infrastructure projects did we do back in 2007? Nothing. We didn't do sidewalks. We didn't do really do roads. We

101didn't do water sewer work. We certainly didn't do community development projects like the Riverwalk. I mean, we had just completed building a high school, a community center, and we did some renovations here, but that was it. I've looked through the town meeting warrants. I've asked everybody who's been here. We didn't do anything. And we're playing catchup now to a certain extent. Just ask our DPW and how many water main breaks they go on. And then, you know, you look at what we look what our departments look like compared to other communities and what they're able to provide. And so I use our old friend Sudbury. We're back to Sudbury, right? And I know, oh gosh, how could you use Sudbury? Oh my gosh, they're they pay, you know, twice as much in taxes. It's virtually

102the same size as us. And I hate to tell you this, back in 2000, excuse me, 1985, average home value for Ashland and Sudbury was virtually identical. And we all know correlation does not mean causation, right, Makita? But Sbury starts passing overrides, start enhancing services. Why do people move to Sudbury? Why is everything so expensive? Because of schools. I would say services, but you know what? They don't even have sewer. They don't even have trash. You if you want trash service in Sudbury, you have to contract a private private hauler. But looking at some of the departments that we do share, you look at our conservation department. So they have nearly twice as many staff as we do in conservation. And yet we do significantly more violations. I think it's probably four I think it

103was four times as many violations, you know, that require ongoing enforcement, ongoing action. And what makes our team so dang special is that they do more with less. So, our our our conservation agent, Becca, anybody who knows her knows she lives and breathes this stuff. She's also our tree warden. She also works with land stewardship. She does stuff, you know, with some of our properties that we've owned or that we own. And she also helps with storm water and she also does all these educational programs. That stuff is not assigned to the Sudbury staff. Looking at our planning department, they've got twice as many FTEEs and yet they do half as much as we do. You know, we if you look at the different type of permits, a planning board issues and a zoning board

104issues, you know, special permits are the one in 40bs are the ones that take the most time, take an inordinate amount of time. Um Paul, I think you got a family member that could probably attest to that, you know, but um you know, it's a lot more in terms of workload, but our planning staff also work on projects. It's a little bit different. They don't have like a pres a special projects person the way a lot of communities do. In our building department, again, half the staff um bringing in, you know, 59% more revenue. Now, a lot of that's, you know, can be out of their hands in terms of what comes in, but they still have to do the work to inspect it. So, we talked a little bit about T. So before I

105actually before I jump on, does anybody have any questions about what I've shared so far? Okay. So let's talk about some comparisons with other communities. And I think that is important because while while this discussion is mainly about the quality of life we want here, it's important to look at what other communities are doing so we can show value. That's important. We need residents to know that, hey, we're already a good value. And so, if you choose to invest more with us, you're in you're making a smart decision. You're making a smart investment. So, I usually show the average single t family tax bill, and we're, you know, probably in the bottom, you know, third, you know, maybe at the top of the bottom third, if that makes sense. Geez. Um, probably probably an easier

106way to say it's fifth or sixth from the bottom. But what I want to look at is what's the growth rate look like in the tax bill? So if you look at the average single family tax bill from 2016 and you compare it to 2025, how much has it grown during that period? And so we're still smack we're like smack in the middle. So our tax bill has grown 35.46%. in that time period uh compared to you know some of the other communities the 17 other communities which I've chosen which range from Marboro at the bottom to Milis at the top in terms of growth and average single family tax bill. So why did I choose these 17 other communities? It's because those are the five communities that immediately surround us and the communities that

107surround them. And so why did I choose those? when you have communities like, you know, Sherburn, obviously very wealthy communities, but then also, you know, uh, Marlboro, um, and Framingham because we buy the same materials from the same vendors. We compete for the same people all within that region. And so we have to pay competitive wages, we have to pay prevailing wages, we have to pay prevailing rates for services and goods. That's why those are chosen. >> Michael, just on on that chart, um is that just the base levy increases or for example, our building projects, the tax bills, is it is it the end tax bill or you just talking about levy increases? >> It's the end tax bill. Okay. >> So that includes debt exclusions, things that we've added on over the years.

108And so I wanted to do a little bit more analysis and then look at okay we talk about the growth in tax bills but let's talk a little bit about affordability and what is the growth in our per capita income as well. So I compared those two and so out of the 18 communities Ashlin is right in the middle. So it's it's a little bit better than average. It's number 10. Um and so the differential is 15.7%. So Ashley on average Ashlin residents have seen their income increase 15.7% you know more than their tax bill has increased that does everybody understand that? Okay >> so that that's the average right? Right. >> So that's everybody. So if we had people on one end of the spectrum who had dramatically greater increases then that would raise

109that number. Right. Yeah. Increases in >> in uh income growth. >> Yes. Correct. >> Right. Because one of the things I'm kind of thinking about is, you know, are is the stratification that maybe we see in the country reflected in Ashland too in terms of wealth. Right. >> Yeah. I I think Claudia, I don't have the data here for that, but but but my instinct is that yes, and I think every community is seeing that. Um >> some communities probably more than others. Maybe. Yeah, you're you're probably right. Just I mean, look at this. I mean, if you look at the ones that had the tax rate or their tax bill grow faster than their income, you know, those are Westboro, Wayland, and Weston, right? But if you look on the other end, you know,

110the ones where their income rate was uh significantly more than the tax bill increase, looking at Southboro, Upton, and rounding at the top, proving that the rich do get richer sometimes is Sherburn at 82%. So Mike, if I can just follow up on that because I was having the same thought that Claudia was examining the median figure, right, which gives a better sense of that. I think is going to be important for us to understand sort of where our community as a whole really is. >> Okay. So median would be important as opposed to just the mean. >> I think it's something we need to be cognizant of. >> Yeah. And and and really just be care I appreciate you putting this up there. So take this for what what I'm really intending is you

111got to be careful on how we position things like this because the residents income didn't increase 15%. the incomes of the residents are up that. In other words, you don't want to message it that you're talking to someone who's struggling to pay their bill, whose income hasn't gone up 15% in that time. So, the the Ashlin resident that has been here for 20, 30, 40 years may not have seen that increase in in in that. And so just just be when I saw that I'm like oh because it almost sounds like hey we built these expensive homes people moved into them and now we look at it as in value uh for but when we we're trying to talk to people who are at the different end of that right um that's not going to

112resonate it's going to it's going to resonate probably counterproductive to a conversation at least it could uh and and I'm not I appreciate you putting I'm just looking at it when I had a similar reaction, but it was just like, >> well, I don't think it means that everybody's income went up like that. Uh, and I'm concerned with and it's just going to be one data point. I get it. So, I'm we're not going to hang our hat on that, but I just can see how someone can can read when when we say that as in like, hold on a second. My income hasn't gone up 15% in that time frame. >> Well, it's interesting. Actually, the income in Ashland has gone up 51%. But not every individual person, >> not you're always going to

113find you're always going to find that's what the average is. >> So I would So just to piggyback on what Paul said, I think the the underlying message of that says, well then you can afford to pay more and we don't want to that's not the message that we're that's not the message that we would deliver. The message that we would deliver is, you know, this is what it's going to cost for us to have level service >> and keep the quality of life in Ashland, >> you know, and then >> kind of work the numbers if we have, you know, whatever numbers we but but I but I kind of I kind of have a little bit of the same kind of cringey thing because >> that to me is like, well, Ashlin's dead

114center, so you guys can afford to pay more and I don't want to message them. >> Yeah. How I mean the way people interpret it is the way people interpret it. I think you know I think ultimately like the question is is what kind of quality of life do you want? >> What I take from this we should focus on that's what I take from this actually is >> to your point I don't think we should be focusing on the growth of income of Ashland. It's our efficiency as a town. >> And so I think you can use these numbers to sell not sell to give that message. It's a different message and it's not about the income. I mean, you need a ratio to look at, but that should be the point of this

115metric. >> You know, it's a our income, you know, the median or, you know, the full average. That's a different conversation. And it does, of course, mean well, you can pay for it. That's not what we're trying to that's not what this should say. I think it's the efficiency, right? >> Which can only last if we keep up with costs. So, I think you have to like massage these. The numbers are great. just the way we message them. >> Yeah. >> Some of these things are hard to communicate to the voter >> because the first thing is you look at, oh, we just I I just want to say the reason this is in here is because I was asked before when I would put up like the single family tax bill. Well, what if

116our income's right? >> I didn't mean to I didn't mean to throw a monkey. You're you're you're I think you're doing exactly what she's talking about is the what you're trying to convey is efficiency and value, right? Um, and when I'm just I'm just communicating as we look forward to how we communicate these things. And this is just data point. >> I looked at it and I'm like I I had that moment of like oh I can see someone who is resistant to the conversation >> looking at that data point and how we might say say things. And I just highlighted as those are the things that we need to be careful of because we can do 99 things really well and the but the person that we need to reach is the one that's

117going to latch on to the one that resonates poorly with them, >> right? >> And so we just need to be really really almost more mindful of those pitfalls to not step in as few of those as we can. And that's a good point. And I think I think Paul, you also kind of unearthed a little bit of something else there, which is if you want to find a reason >> to not vote for something or to vote for something, you're going to find it. >> You can take any of these numbers and kind of come up with an argument against it. >> But I think to Paul's point, I think in in terms of the it's the messaging of it, not the numbers itself. But I think we also have to be very mindful

118of how, you know, if we're moving forward and asking the community for an override, a huge chunk of this conversation is going to happen by people who have small snippets of information on social media. >> Exactly. >> And this, I think, is something that can be taken very much out of context and remesaged if we're not very careful in terms of how the data is shared. And so I think that it to your point in terms of the message of it, I think we need to be super mindful of how we share the numbers, what they mean, how it's how these things are explained in a way that people can understand because this is really confusing, frankly, like a reading through some of this. >> So I'm not doing a great job. >> No, you're

119you're doing a great job. >> I'm not clarifying, >> but you're talking to a room full of people who have a baseline of understanding of what these are and it's still confusing, right? So kind of thinking through ways to really simplify the message of what do these numbers mean? Um and and why are they important to understand as part of the conversation because I think >> that's fair >> all of this is going to be taken wildly out of context in snippets on social media because that's just what happens now. >> No, you know >> and it it can really muddy the waters. Yeah, >> you're you're right. and actually you know hold that thought the simplicity of the message and and I'll come back to that because I think we can learn a lot

120from some of our previous attempts but uh Shantel again we did not communicate beforehand but this your efficiency comment leads us right to the best overall metric that we can use for overall efficiency which is the um expenditures per capita. So just like you know the per pupil expenditure you know you look at how much money a school district spends on its school system and you divide that by the number of students that it serves. You basically take the municipal or not just the general fund but the entire budget and divide it by the capita per cap or the number of people and you get a per capita expenditure number. So very similar to the uh per pupil expenditure. And then I also added on the enterprise funds that you see there in orange just

121because I know, you know, some of our fees are higher than than the average like our sewer fee, water fee is is is reasonable, uh very reasonable, but our sewer is extremely high. And so I wanted to, you know, try to get as much of a big picture here as we could. And so that combined expenditure per capita, again, we always rank towards the bottom, if not the bottom. We're we're here second from the bottom. You know, when you look at the 18 communities, um Upton Upton is a unique community going through a lot of changes right now. Um but um you know, this just shows there has been minimal investment in the community in terms of general operations. Um >> okay, so this this has not that does not have the debt exclusion numbers.

122general enterprise fund extend. >> I believe it does because I believe this takes our whole budget and and divides it by the number of people and so that would include the debt the um debt service numbers. So Yolanda just take the expenses line on that on the budget the total budget and divide it by the by the uh people. >> Okay. So you're saying these this what we're seeing here for Ashland and all these other communities includes debt service for all these communities as well as for us. >> Correct. >> Yeah. And and this is just a general comment I was going to have for everyone but you and Jim as we present these things. I would always encourage us to be putting the data sources and links to the data sources at the bottom

123of these things. So it's not just trust us. Here's the thing or if somebody wants to look at it, um, somebody has that question, right? We can't >> we can't spell it out in every single with every single lens. So, uh, you know, Jim and you and and anybody that's going to be putting out something, let's just be really super transparent and have a link to the Cherry Sheet or whatever it is and maybe a little snippet of we pulled this and you know, just how we how we because we're trying to make it simple, but you want people to be able to say, "Hey, I have more questions about it or I'm not just going to trust you, Michael. What is it? How does how do I do this?" And yeah, so just for

124whenever we're putting these things together, let's let's start to try to do that because that'll be part of our messaging and part of our transparency and trust, right? I think we've built up a lot of trust over over the last decade or so. Um and I think that would just help in the conversations going forward. >> Yeah, that's that's a good point. And um I'll just say, you know, the comparative the comparative data comes from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Um so yeah, we should include that uh moving forward. Um, I can tell you if you just look at our tax, you know, if you took a $100, right, and you said, "Okay, let's break it down and figure out, you know, how much of a $100 goes to, you know, our departments." You know,

125nothing here is really out of the ordinary, folks. Um, you know, $55 going to education that includes Keith Tech and the Ashlin public schools. That's generally that's generally normal. um you know where we really really get hurt I think sometimes is that benefits and insurance number um and I'll I'll get a little bit more into that um uh one of so what what's driving a lot of this deficit is our fixed costs I think Marcy you mentioned fixed costs earlier health insurance you know when we joined the GIC uh back in like 2015 2014 14 2015 we saved a lot of money at the beginning. So we saw an immediate savings and then you know we started seeing less of an increase than our uh our previous health insurance group the west suburban health group

126and so the GIC became very very attractive to other communities and guess what happens then they start joining them joining the GIC and so that starts pushing up costs and pushing up costs and so I think our the in FY26 we saw an increase of it was over 10% I believe and that's combined with I believe it was about a 10% increase the previous year. Uh there's several different reasons. Believe it or not, the one of the biggest drivers are the GL GP1 drugs. You know, those are driving up a lot of the cost. And so the GIC is looking at ways to kind of limit that moving forward, but we're still planning on um we're still planning on um you know, the the projections, you know, that that we have with it with it

127going up a continued 10%. um pension obligations are expected to increase and that could actually go up higher uh than than what we have anticipated. We're basing it on previous uh you know previous years and the growth over previous years. But there's two factors that go into the pension assessment. Number one, it's who are our pensioners and people are living longer and people's salaries have have naturally grown over time and so that number is higher, right? And then there's a catchup provision. So we're required to be fully our pension system, the Middle Sex County Retirement System is required to be fully funded, I believe, by 2042. Middle Sex County has decided they would be fully funded by 2038. So there's a catchup amount included in our regular assessment. So those are the big drivers because,

128you know, if you look at a health insurance budget of 7 million, you know, you start looking at 10% on top of that. Well, I mean, that's 700K just right there. Um, so it can be pretty pretty significant. >> So, and Michael, just for uh transparency on your previous slide when you had the dollar uh that $55 did not include the health uh the health and stuff like that. That's that's part the biggest part of that uh component are the school employees. So, just to be clear on on that proportion, it's not like, hey, that $55 is not all-encompassing of that cost. And the other one is it's I I know no one in this room is saying municipal and school, but just as as that lays out, it's not 55 isn't all in encompassing.

129The the the overwhelming majority of the health care is uh we have the obviously the most employees. So, >> right, it's a good point. Um, I won't go through all of this just in the interest of time, but um, I can tell you I met with our fire department today. You know, we have grown their staff over the years, but it really hasn't grown in the last five or six. And they're looking at some of these building projects and they're like, "Wait, you're looking at population increasing more. You know, more calls, same amount of people. Now you're also talking about big buildings. We've got, you know, we've got six firefighters that are scheduled to be on a shift. Sometimes they drop down to five. not a not a good not a good ratio when you

130see you know some some buildings you know go up in flames and you know you know you've only got that many people kind of running in now granted we have mutual aid coming in but it takes a little while for them to get here and you know public safety DPW those are kind of easy to point out right you know those are easy to kind of make the case for you know we need to look at our administrative staff which hasn't grown like we need more in our finance Um, you know, there's a lot more requests for information. There's a lot more information desired to help make decisions. Um, that's important. Transparency is important. Um, so we need that. We need, if we want to look at long-term planning, we need to hire additional planning

131staff. You know, we need to look at pro if you want to look at more projects, etc. We need to hire more administrative staff as well. So that's kind of the whole situation. And so what are we, you know, what how do we get out of this mess, right? H how do we how do we make a change? How do we change the trajectory? Um we could cut or freeze, right? I already have our department's looking at a 5% reduction for 2027. They're doing two budgets right now. As Claudia can tell you, I got a fire chief who's panicked. He's he's going around squeezing squeezy toys, telling he wants to cut my budget 5%. You know, it's it's you I talked to Douggee Small today, you know, at DPW. 5% that cuts out virtually everything

132out of salaries and a bit of salaries as well, you know, but that's the number that we would have to hit to basically shave off our portion of that deficit. Um or we can increase funding for services, look at a levy increase um and invest in new projects potentially, you know, depending on on the amount of that increase. Again, it all comes to but there's no magic bullets, folks. We've moved to the I'll get into this a little bit more, but you know, we have made some really really strong reductions in costs. Um as I've shown you previously, we've looked at other sources of revenue. who use other sources of revenue significantly. Like I said, 20% 20% of our general general government budget comes out of grants, revolving funds, and other resources. What we're probably

133going to have to look at doing is doing something that's kind of in the middle. We'll have to look at a little bit of a levy increase and a cutter freeze as well. You know, what what that looks like. you know, these conversations are going to evolve and um that's how we'll get a little bit more fidelity to that. But if we do go for an override, it's important to talk about what it's going to cost. Okay? And so I said a a FY27 deficit is going to be 2.5 million based on our current projections. Well, if you looked at a $1 million increase, so that's an $158 increase on the average tax bill for a home valued at $720,000. So that's the average single family home. If you factor in condos, I think that

134number goes down to what 690 something around maybe a little bit less. Cindy didn't have it right in front of me. Didn't think I was going to say it. She's looking for that. I I'll go to the $3 million increase. >> Michael, is that an annual figure? >> That I'm sorry. Yes, that is annually. That is annually. And then a $3 million increase uh would be a $475 increase. So a $3 million increase in the levy equals a $475 annual increase on the tax bill again for a home valued at $720,000. >> And and Michael, this doesn't take into account. This is just on the municipal side. This does not include >> No, this includes everybody. >> Oh, it does. Okay. >> This includes everything. >> I just wanted to >> make sure we were

135on the same page. Okay. >> Is there going to be a slide that shows potential cuts and freezes as well? Nope, not yet. >> Has that been I mean if you guys have thought about what the override amount would be I mean if we had to do this given this uh ven diagram. >> Oh >> you guys talk discussed it or >> I So John talking about big figures. >> Yeah. So 2.5 million. So you look at 30% on the um on the um municipal end. So you're talking about $750,000 and then the balance uh on the school end. Yeah. You're talking about significant, you know, 1.8 million for the school department. >> Okay. >> Significant. It's significant. >> Um, and like I said before and Jim has said, you know, we're talking about projections,

136right? So, there's a number of things that we just don't know right now and we'll get a little bit more fidelity on as as things go, but we'll have to make a decision on what to do for FY27 before we get that info. We're not going to know what the impact of these developments are both from a cost perspective and a revenue perspective until it happens until they get built. You know, for all the constrnation that we have about building projects here in town, only one large one, the Asher has been built. You know, again, I'll point out there's I think, you know, including the 40BS, you've got five projects that are still on the horizon potentially. State aid. Um gosh, 1% that was a killer. Um you know, don't look at the state's going

137through the same thing. Um so I'm not anticipating, you know, a huge increase there. Uh as I said before, health insurance trends, uh hopefully they'll go down, but if they go down, I'm not expecting them to, you know, completely wipe out the deficit. And again, pension cost trends, you know, those are really really hard to anticipate, you know, depending on, you know, who's who's still on on on our pensions. Yeah, Joe. Mike, with respect to the insurance aspect of it, um if GIC keeps increasing over, you know, over the years, would it be safe to say we may want to start looking at other uh other insurance groups? >> Yes. >> Okay. And and are we actually looking at that now? >> Yeah. When does our this round up with the GIC, Katherine? >> Yeah.

138And I think we we have requested data. Yeah. So we have to get utilization data first and kind of you know have the experts look at that and see and go basically shop it around. >> Michael is the new growth from the Asher in included. >> Yeah, part of it we we haven't captured all of it. Have we done? Did we get all of it? >> We're at 100% already at 50. >> In 2025. Yeah. And then I I have a question um at risk of um being purchased about schools or whatever or education, but on on the dollar figure I if or the $100 figure, $55 goes to the schools. So I always thought it was $70 out of a hundred. >> Are you happily surprised or >> Well, and and that includes that

139includ tried to do that number you're thinking of I think is one that was trying to capture the healthare costs and it was a it was a That's that's one of the reasons I brought that up is >> it's I don't I don't want that dollar bill to say that's the schools and this is municipal because it's not it's there's a lot that's overlapping, right? And so the healthcare costs, >> you know, what is that? $17 probably $15 that goes over, >> you know, back to >> back up to seven. So, so just finally I just you know we're going to get a lot of questions as this discussion evolves and you know two I can already hear because I've already got them is you know okay I see the town spending a lot of

140money on different projects you know sidewalks buildings you know land purchases you know why can't we stop doing those right why can't we take the money that we're spending there and direct it towards the operations that we're talking about and the thing is the money that you see spent on those items those are restricted you can only spend them on like infrastructure projects or open space you know whether it's CPA funds or grants or money from the state that has a specific earmark I mean it is a testament to our team as to how much and our legislative delegation I've got to give Karen and Jack a lot of credit for you know being able to help get us those one-time funds for those projects in order to do it now. We just don't have

141enough people to do them all. That's we're kind of in this weird situation where we've got more infrastructure money than we do have people to execute it. Um but that that's you know it's not something to complain about, right? Um but we can't bottom line is we can't use that money to fund operations. And then the other questions people are going to be like, you know, my my taxes are are high already, you know, and so what efficiencies have we done to put them into place? And I'm not going to go through all of them, but just to give you some, I talked about the health insurance and the move to GIC. So from 2015 to 23 to 2023, the town saved $10 million by making that move. So, we compared the growth in uh

142the West Suburban Health Group, our old group, and then what we ended up paying through the GIC, $10 million, and that number is being updated to capture the last couple of years. Um, and I anticipate that number will go up. Um, and then the other thing we've done is solar projects, like our street light budget after we I don't know if you recall, we got a grant, so we didn't even buy them. We bought we bought street lights with a grant and replaced them with LEDs, right? And you know, so our budget is still the same as it was back in 2014. Uh same thing with our utility budget. We have a number of offsets and credits that we can use. We we directly offset some of that energy use. It's been a significant game

143changer for us in terms of fixed costs. And then we've made different personnel um changes and reductions. One of the things we did is when we moved the school department it and we started you know they still work for both the school and municipal ends and I will tell you the only way it works is because we have Paul Carpenter and his team. Um but we reduced you know the number total number of IT positions here from six to one. We had one IT position dedicated here and when we moved uh Paul over we didn't backfill that one. So the when you say you reduce IT positions from six to one that you >> I'm sorry six to five. I'm sorry. >> Okay. Reduce it by one. I'm sorry. >> How's that possible? Because I

144mean I know. Okay. Great. Okay. >> We cleared that up pretty quickly. >> So we want to make sure that we data we use. >> Oh yeah, Paul is watching it. Maybe >> we have more than Paul. So okay. >> Any of you get upset about that? So, so let's just, you know, end this by talking about next steps. So, again, as I said at the beginning, what I really would like is for this board, the boards, I should say, to take a straw poll as to whether or not you really want to look at at an override for FY27. And so, if you do, what we'll do is we'll come back in December and January and we'll bring to you various override options, what the amounts, what the structures look like. Remember, you can

145structure it a number of different ways. You can do a menu approach, you can do a lumped approach, you can do a tier. Um, I would anticipate u, you know, if everybody is satisfied, you know, the select board would have an opportunity to place uh, the article on the warrant and the ballot for March 26. And then on in May 26, we would have the respective town meeting and ballot votes. And if you decide not to move forward, um, we will continue to look at alternative measures, but they will include service cuts. They will include service cuts. >> So, I'm going to I'm going to jump in. First of all, thank you both to you and to Mr. Adams. I think this has been great information. Um, and I'm going to bring back something. You

146know, we had we had two meetings in the spring leading into the 2026 budget that were not public like this that I think we need to make sure that moving forward any discussion like this we have again is done via Zoom so people can participate and watch and and I think that's important. Um I personally there there are 17 people in the room. Yes, we're all elected officials, but 17 people of a community of 18,000 people, I don't know. I I'm not ready to take a straw vote tonight because for me, as I said when we were going into 2026, we need to reach out to the community. We need to find out what the community understands and what they think about this because yes, it's a lot of complicated information. And yes, we are

147all very much in tuned and aware of what's going on. But if we think this is something we need to do, we don't want to start it as an uphill battle with the community because they're going to say, well, you know, why can't you look at making reductions, right? Why can't you look at what you're doing at the library? And yes, all that we're doing at the library is great, but do we want to continue that? Let's look at what we're doing in for f, you know, for wonderful events in town. Do we want to continue doing all of those events? Is that something we support? You talked, Michael, about quality of life. I agree. Quality of life is very important. But I think the other thing we all have to think about is that

148what I consider important for quality of life and what I can do to support that quality of life might not be what the whole community can do. So for me, I I would like us to take a listening tour, create some kind of listening tour, go to different groups in the community, go to the mom's groups, go to the PTO's, go to the whatever group we can think of. and to the seniors to the you know all you know these different groups and do a listening tour and say this you know with with some of this data this is good data to talk about what we're doing and what we want to do and to continue doing in our community as we start thinking about this >> so can I ask a question so >>

149so what is when would you make what would you need to know to make a decision what would have to be what would you have to hear >> I want to understand what in you know what is important enough to the community that we are doing as municipal staff and school staff that they are willing to support financially. Right? We we do all these great events. Beth and her team do you know Fall Fest was wonderful on Saturday, >> right? If Well, what if we didn't have that anymore, right? because that might be something they're right, you know, to to um to John's point, like we're having the conversation about what we're going to cut. And this is something I've said is if we do an override and it does not pass, we have to

150have we have to be ready to say, okay, override doesn't pass as of July 1st of 2026. This is what we're losing as a community. This is what is not going to happen in our community if the override doesn't pass. And again, I don't want to do it as a an emergency or oh, you know, you know, screaming and yelling, but we need to be very clear that maybe some of the events that we do at the corner spot wouldn't happen because there's staff that have to run that. Maybe some of the great programs at the library wouldn't be able to happen anymore because we don't have the staff to do those programs and to be in the building as much as they are now. Maybe there's something that has to happen at the schools

151that if we don't do an override, we have to be clear as to what we may not want to do. So, I just want to have a con. I want the community >> to be giving their input to us about what they support, what they think is important enough to to support an override. >> Isn't that >> I just wanted to can I I want to ask about that because obviously we're just representatives and I'm not elected so I'm just a volunteer. We're just representatives of the community so of course that matters. I'm confused what that would do to our timeline given how imminent this is. And I think we're saying we recommend we're we don't put forth the override. We recommend that a override is needed and then we take that time to talk

152through all of that with the town and the town gets to vote or not vote for it. I think that makes sense. But I feel like one thing we learned is the last time it was a really long process if I'm right. >> Felt it. Felt felt pretty long. >> It was not that long. It seemed long, but it was not that long. >> But I think some of the things we maybe learned or you got the sense that maybe there was so much time that it got confusing and not that we want to rush the process, but >> how it was presented last time was confusing. >> Oh my gosh, it was very complicated. Just the fact that you guys are talking about we didn't make cuts but when it didn't pass folks it

153was ne that was never the plan. Remember the plan we didn't have a deficit the first year. The plan was to go ahead and pay it was a five-year plan passed an override and then you would bank the additional money and use it throughout the four-year period. >> So I'll say >> try explaining that one. >> Yeah. I'll say that someone who is a voter and was not uh elected at that point, I I did find it kind of confusing to make a decision, but I do want to echo Yolanda's sentiment. The last time that we got together when we met, I think in the spring and we talked about this, um we made it very clear, I think we all made it very clear that we needed to make sure that we had some

154kind of community input >> um on this cycle. And that's why we're we're we're talking now, right? Um, you know, I'm looking at the next steps. It's it's important. I think it's important for us to inject some element of community feedback before we make any final decisions on what if if an override happens and what that looks like. So, I think that um you know, I understand the time crunch. I understand that we're running a little late on what we need to do, but I think if we skip that and we need to identify the best way to do this within the time we have, but we need to include that community listening piece, an education piece to determine what our next steps are because we did say that we were going to do that

155last time and I think we do need to fulfill that that promise. >> I guess I'm wondering why can't they happen in tandem? you know, it's logistically happen at the same time. >> Like I said, I I think we sure, but I'm just saying that like we just have to include that and we can figure out what's going right now and then at the end of the year we come back together then we're starting again. We do at the same time. >> Here's why. Well, or I mean, you know, again, I'm only one person. There's a lot of us sitting at this table because my fear is that if we here go, you know what, we think an override is what is needed based on what we've heard from Michael and Jim. >> Yeah. >>

156We're going to start going to the community and they're going to go, >> you guys have already decided. >> You guys have already determined. >> Well, it doesn't have to be presented that way. That's part of the messaging >> and that's part of >> that's not the sentiment at all. And I think I just want to I I think the clarifying part here is tonight whatever we decide to do, you know, it says here that we're looking at override options. If we if we do a straw poll tonight and say we're looking at options and one of those options is not to have an override, I'm comfortable with that. To say that we're proceeding, we're going to proceed and look at these options, include community input and such, that's fine. But to say tonight that

157like, yep, we're definitely going to need an override and, you know, we got to figure out how we're going to structure it. I don't think I'd feel comfortable taking a straw poll on that tonight. Just for clarification. And I think that's maybe that's the differentiation here that we need to to to from a communication standpoint and from a procedural standpoint that we need to make um and and and maybe go forward like that. >> My understanding was that we were going to take a vote on exploring options. >> Yeah. not not saying to the community that we have to do this. >> So I think that we're kind of on the same page with regard to that because I think part of our fiduciary responsibility >> forward with exploring an override for 2027, >> right?

158And exploring could agenda don't do it. Yeah. >> We just need to be clear about >> for sure. Clarity and transparency is key here. >> Yeah. And I think we need to commit to that community involvement. >> 100% agree. I communicate that. >> Yeah. If I can just and just to clarify maybe so ultimately a decision is not made to put it on the ballot until the select board make that decision. >> Um and I want to clarify there's two bites at the apple here essentially. You know you got a town meeting vote and you have to have a ballot vote as well. As noble as Yolanda you and Makita you know your intentions are I've never known that to happen in any other community. In most other communities, the the leadership decides based on

159the information they have, okay, we know it's it it is going to be a community discussion. The leadership decides, okay, we need to look at making this decision. Okay, we're going going ahead and making a decision to put it before the voters to have that conversation. What you're talking about, I don't think there's necessarily the time to do anything anything well in that structure. And also, you know, I I don't I like I said, I think it's it's very noble and admirable. Um, but I I don't I guess I don't really see much of a difference. I guess I'm kind of thinking like the way Shantel does. I mean, that's the conversation. This is what we're putting forward. This is what and I think we've heard continually about what's important to this community. I'm seeing

160a lot of headshake, nod. I think some of it's semantics which is really important versus we're saying we need an override versus we're saying we think we need to talk as community about our options >> several of which are types of overrides and one of their options is not to vote for an override. So part of it is messaging and semantics but I think to miss the opportunity to start now would be a big mistake. >> And I I agree. I I think like we should if we decide that we're going to kind of explore these options that all of us here, not Michael but all of us here are tasked with the community engagement over the next two months so that when when we do have options in front of us, we have some

161>> right so they're informing the next steps very much informing >> and I would say that that's all incumbent on us to have these conversations and maybe >> as different boards, we figure out the ways best to do that. >> I I think that's fair. And I don't want I think when we we say semantics, sometimes people think that's dismissive. That's not. I want to make sure. I know that's not what you meant. I wanted to clarify that as well, but because again, you know, I think we have to be very specific and intentional with our communication. Even during our discussion this evening, I think clarifying the point tonight about our path forward was a worthy discussion to make sure that we understood that we are going to go forward and we're going to explore

162options, one of which might be not pursuing an overlight override, but we're exploring options at this point. And if that's what we're doing tonight and we're saying that we're going to commit to doing that, I don't have any any problems with that. But I just want to make sure that if that's what we're doing, we're communicating that clearly. >> Yeah. The other the other component is I don't think it's binary. I don't think you can have the discussion with the community without doing the work because >> it's going to be a not it's going to be a very productive conversation if you don't come with any answers to the obvious questions and and those things. So, >> uh and quite frankly, we we can't do anything binding because our agenda just says discuss budget. So,

163we can't take a vote of any substance even if we wanted to. Uh, so just be clear on on on that. >> Uh, but but I think it's committing to the work and I I agree with you. I think we talked a lot about the committing to doing the work before and I think some work has been done but that's going to be key because you can't have the conversations without it's the it's the catch 22 and you got to fi find that right balance of when are you ready to go have that conversation and you're always going to have people saying you've already decided because you've done all this work but we have to do the work >> to understand whether >> to have a good conversation because you can't just say hey what

164do you value okay thank you I'll come back and get It's not you're not going to get that many iterative conversations, right? So, so you got to strike that right balance of when you engage during a process of discovery, right? You need you need the information to have a productive conversation. >> I I don't disagree with you, Paul. I think that the information needs to come first. I think one of the ways of discussing this with everybody in and around town, giving everybody the opportunity. Uh we've had public forums for a lot of different things and I think this is really important. It's important for every resident in town. So why not have a public forum on this topic have all the question have all the answers to the questions we know are going to

165be asked like like you've already mentioned and then you're not missing people. You're giving them an opportunity to come to a public forum. Whether they come or not, that's up to them. I mean you can lead a host to water, but that's as far as it goes. So you bring people in, you provide them a location, community center maybe here. We have other, you know, options. Zoom and WACA has all these different uh technical advances that we could utilize to reach as many people as possible to sit and go talk to people individually. That's a great idea, but at the same token, you're putting a lot of energy out there and you may not be reaching the people that we need to reach. So my suggestion would be to set up a public forum, get

166the answers to the questions that we know are going to be asked, and then if the people decide to come, they come. If they don't, well, shame on them because it's it's their future. >> It's their tax dollars that we're that we're we're working with. >> I think, you know, and another I I think a question I would love to know from the community is what kind of information do they need, >> right? >> Like what kind of what kind of questions do they have? What do what do they want to know, >> you know? Um >> I think one one thing I'll mention along those lines is um speaking on behalf of the finance committee. We're anxious to have public engagement because we feel that there is a mirror that needs to be held

167up to this community and there's nothing emotional in that statement. It's this just that this math eventually if something is not done there is going to be a fiscal reckoning of some kind. That's just a plain that's it. Full stop. I mean, and so, um, I'm not trying to frighten anybody, but a a protracted economic downturn with unemployment and declining home prices and rising interest rates and rising inflation will devastate us. And we're not concerned, finance committee, again speaking on behalf of the committee, we're not concerned about a 2% deficit because we know these guys can sharpen their pencils and they might have to lay a few people off and that would not be great. But we're not worried about that because we know that that can be absorbed more or less and we could

168probably get by with minor disruption. A systemic disruption though 10%. We're not ready for that. And it's we're not doing this more or less for the residents that are even living here today. We're looking at doing this for the people who are going to be here 10 years from now. That might not be you. It might not be me, but that's the fiduciary responsibility we have to the town. So I I hear and respect everything everybody's saying, but to a certain degree I and I want community involvement, but there needs to be a unified leadership here because if we go into this divided or if people are wishy-washy or and you're entitled to your opinions, I don't mean that in a bad way, but if we're not approaching this in a way that uh is

169backed by the data, the reality, and holds that mirror up, it will not work. >> And uh I I I'm nervous about what that means for our future. Yeah, I think it's Oh, I'm sorry. >> Please. No, >> I was just going to say I think for the purposes of how do we move forward from tonight? Um I personally would like to see us commit to a meeting in December where we talk about um here's the different options if we choose to move forward with an override. Of course, with the option of not moving forward with an override also on the table. What does it look like with that $1 million figure that you said? What does it look like with the $3 million figure that you said in terms of how would that impact

170the school's budget? how would it impact the town budget? Um, and if we don't do it, what exactly does it mean? And so by and and I would like to see us commit to a meeting in December because it took us three months to put this on the calendar and we can't do that again. We and we we have to be mindful of we have to we have to commit to that and I think we need to at least figure out the next steps of how do we move this conversation forward? And I think that's the next piece in terms of that very specific data. What would those different options look like? How would they impact the town? And if if the decision is no, what does that look like? >> To that to that

171point, I my recommendation is everyone pulls out their calendar because I mentioned this to Michael. I said, can we put on the agenda that we put a date for our next meeting because to your point, it took us three months to get this one. And this is important. I mean, if we all think this is important enough, we think this is important enough to meet together. you know, um I was talking to someone from another community. Their tribe board meets on a quarterly basis. Every three months, their three boards sit together and I think it's something that I think it would be positive for us, especially with these things that we're looking at to do that. So, one, I would, you know, recommend let's pull out our calendars and try to find a date in

172December because if we try to do a doodle poll, that could take weeks. >> It's great. Just >> sorry, just just before I forget about it, one of I think the variables that I think needs to be on the table is just a timeline. That's what made me nervous about what what's shown up there is like, hey, we're going to do this at this time. Let's commit to the work and then if the work says, hey, we're not quite ready, but we will be, we'll be able to bridge to the next one, right? So, let's scrap we need to have some idea of a timeline to to work towards. Sure. But let's make sure our messaging isn't like, hey, we're racing towards that data because that doesn't give us a lot of time to do

173the work and do some good, you know, if if we had a few more months, it might feel a little better, but I just think that needs to be one of the variables that we're we're exploring, too. The only the only thing I would say to that, Paul, is you know, yeah, you don't want to say we're racing through this, but we we know we have guidelines based on our charter and I bylaws of when things have to happen, right? When we have to vote things when things have to fiscal year, the next fiscal year. Something that says, hey, we know working back from those dates, if we want it at this time, we need to do it then. But I'm saying um >> we should have started having this discussion after our budget in

174the spring, right? When we used $2 million in surplus funds to cut close our budget bud budget gap, right? And we knew that when we had our tri board meeting, we were talking about how we need to start the discussion sooner rather than later. And because of different things, we didn't. We waited until, you know, October 21st to start this discussion. Mike, what just this all this talk about time frame and stuff, right? I mean, you you guys are the ones who ultimately have to put forth the effort to build out the plan and tell us what you think, right? I mean, from a time frame perspective based on everything that would be involved to taking it up to a vote. Can you just get get a thought on like what we need to have

175done by when? I mean, if Yolanda's point, come back in three months, you said. I mean, and look at a plan. Is it going to be two months? Sorry. And I mean, how much longer? How much time do we have even after that to potentially delay? >> March. >> Yeah, I mean the the board would need to take a vote by March. Just, you know, Yolanda pointed out, you know, according to our charter and and according to our bylaws. >> Um, >> okay. >> When Cindy, when are the department heads due? >> November 20th. >> Yeah. I mean, this is this is pretty accurate. Um, I mean, in terms of of of what we need. So, you know, we we could look at late I think we'll need till late December to kind of come

176up with some thoughtful and varied options and strategies. Um, you know, we can present that to you. Uh, you can give us feedback on that. If something looks good or attractive to you at that point in time, we can go ahead and move forward and start really kind of ramping up and start, you know, collecting a lot of data as to what that looks like. And then you know if if it is to move forward with an override vote you know there's I think some things that have to happen you know politically um you know that is going to you know require some organizing and I can't necessarily do that Jim and I can't we can advocate but we can't necessarily be a part of doing that. So yeah I think John this is this

177is a pretty >> can't even all you can do is give information. No, we can advocate. >> We can advocate. >> The the superintendent and the and the town manager can. >> Now, I just want to put out my concern about going out for forums, you know, without having a solid recommendation from this group. I feel like we're elected to look at all this information and come to some kind of conclusion and make recommendations. And of course, as any of us who have been through the previous overrides, getting input is part of the whole thing. That's all we did the entire time once we decided to do the override. We were in people's homes. We were doing everything we could to educate, answer questions, and so forth. But I feel that what we're here to

178do is what we just did is get all the information. We've heard that in a short period of time we are not going to be able either on the school side or the town side to maintain a level service which is very concerning and should be to everybody and going out to see if people like Yolanda you mentioned it being an uphill battle like of course it's going to be an uphill battle like that's a given right no who I I'm retired I don't want to pay for an override you know but I I will because this these kinds of things are important to me. Um, so are we asking people if they like >> I just want to do a check-in with the community on what >> to make sure that the values that

179we all think are important to the community are actually important to the community. That's all. And you know, if people want to wait, we can wait until we have more information and and you know, then go out and ask the question as we have these override opportunities. But my other concern about that, Yolanda, can I just I just want to finish my thought just because I'm to the age where I'm going to forget what I want to say >> by time it circles back around to me. Yeah, I trust me. Um my my other thought is though like without like a recommendation who's coming to these forums like the people that come out are going to be like the same small group of people that that come. Um it's not the community. it's just, you

180know, a few people they're going to offer input and then what are we going to do if 10 people say they don't want an override? Is it off the table? If a hundred people, if a thousand people, like it just feels very wishy-washy to me when we have a real problem and people have put us in the position of coming forward with potential solutions. Now, they might not like the solutions that we're suggesting and we'll find that out along the way. We might have to tweak our plan. We might even have to abandon the plan. But I think I I'm just against going out there saying, you know, to the 10 people that are going to show up. What do you guys think? >> So, can I I want to can I jump in? I've

181been trying to listen as much as I can tonight, but I >> I think having been one of the people was on the override committee last time, which seems like like somewhere between 5 months ago and 20 years ago. I think there are a lot of things that people put on the table tonight that are really important and and I still struggle, Joe, with something you said earlier about people have long memories. I have a long memory, right? I feel like we're going through that process in a certain way and it turned out not to be necessary. And so if I'm scarred at that, I'm on this committee and I'm going to support an override at some point in time if there's one put to the community, I'm mindful of that. I think the community

182input is critical. But I also think that's what the vote is, right? We're all elected to kind of look at the information to Lor's point and say, "We see a problem here, right? There are a lot of solutions to those problems. Some of those problems might be overright. Some of those might be we've learned the community's like it's not that much of a problem for them. Cut it. Right. And that that's all they want. But I do think as people who are elected this side and appointed this side, but all the people who are committed to the community, we have to take that responsibility in the roles that we're in and look at the the figures and say we see a problem here. Right? And I'm okay sort of making a little bit of an

183assumption for myself that is people like what they have here, right? We can't continue to do that if we don't solve our financial problem. That's my takeaway from from this discussion. And so it's not just a matter of like it not going backwards. It's if we just want to stay where we are, we have a financial problem. I think where that leaves me is certainly saying look I think it's something that has to be on the table for discussion. I think it's also critically important and we spend how many how many times did you come to my house Michael Jim you too when we did these forums trying to get 10 people more you and I talked about it Brandy right coming in and trying to get to groups as big as we could and

184what we end up hitting was the same 20 people over and over and over again and so while I think it's absolutely important that we reach out to the community we have to start from somewhere and the way I see it the place we're starting at is recognizing that there is an issue and communicating that out with something that says this might be a direction we're going in. It's not a commitment. You know, to your point, Mikita, it's not a commitment to do anything. I also don't think there's a way that we come out of whatever those feedback sessions is with anything that really represents what a vote will, right? We're going to hear from a certain number of people that have strong opinions on one side or the other or both. um and we're

185going to sit there sort of still struggling with the same problem. I think we just have to be honest about that. So my opinion is like I'm not committing to anything but I think we need to move forward with the idea of exploring this. I think we also need to be doing the outreach, whether that's a a town forum kind of thing, Joe, and I agree with you, but I also want to be cognizant of what we're likely to get out of that, which is there are certain number of people that are going to be active that have different opinions. And I'm not saying it's all going to be one side or the other, but we have to be mindful of what what are we really going to get out of that that's going to

186say, "Oh, there's no way that that's going to happen or it absolutely is." And I think we have to take our role as leaders seriously and be prepared to say, "Look, folks, you elected us to to try to push in a certain direction." And you guys get the final decision because it's your community, right? It's every it's everybody in this room's community. It's everybody outside this room's community within the town. They get to decide what we're going to do. And one of the ways we find out what they want is putting a vote to them. Michael, when do you see us having more about this, Mike? When do you see uh an opportunity to have more solid figures? And uh I I know I wish I could pull a rabbit out of my hat, but

187that's not going to happen either. >> I would think we have some understanding of I mean, if we're showing a potential million dollar, you know, that we need either million dollar or $3 million, we've seen from the school department what their potential deficit is. We've seen it from the from the general government side what our potential def deficit is right so to me for me the thing that I think is important is okay if we need to cut x million you know x amount of money what would that look like what are some things that what are the options of possible things that we may lose as a community >> I think that's >> I think from the school side Yolanda I can only speak to the school side but that gets kind of dangerous

188to start doing that before we actually have to do it because things change so quickly like the enrollment might change. So we might not need 10 kindergarten teachers, we might need eight, you know, and so that we're going to look at it a whole different way on that budget season and then it affects our credibility. If we said we were going to lose this teacher, but then something changed within our system that we no longer have to lose that teacher, that doesn't mean we're going to pay have the pain somewhere else. >> Here's here's an example, right? Jim has mentioned that the athletic department has a $300 a $300,000 deficit every year, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, we either have to make up that deficit or do something to not have that deficit, right? There's a

189number of us around the table that are here in finance and if you have expenses more than your income, you need to have an idea of how you and and I understand it's tough with specifics, but then we can say from, you know, potentially we can say from a from a school side, we may need to if we can't meet the expected increase in costs, then we may need to decrease some of those costs. And it's hard because you don't want to have specifics. I >> It's hard to say exactly what. So, one of the reasons why athletics has kind of stayed the way that it is is because every single year, we're forced with do we hire the special education teacher or do we put more money? >> I've spent the time on the

190school. I understand, >> right? So, you've been on the school, but that's why it's hard to go out to the community though outside of >> So, maybe we don't need those specifics, right? People are saying, well, we need maybe it's not that specific that we need, right? Maybe the understanding is we see this budget gap between revenue and expenses. We're expecting a higher potential budget gap based on federal income or state income and state aid. So if from that perspective, you know, we right if we're if we're looking at pure numbers, we we do need a budget. We do need an override, right? If we're looking at pure numbers based on what we heard tonight, heck, we need an override. My my thing is that I want the community to I want to know what

191their specific values are, right? You know, you there's a lot of talk about sports. My kids didn't do sports. Does that mean it's not important? No. But it's something we have to think about, right? We do a lot of community events here in town that are all great events. Are they important enough to our community to support that? right of the stuff the great stuff that's happening in our library the the the people we've added in different departments all the great stuff we're doing in our community center and at our senior center if people value that then I would feel more comfortable saying okay enough people that I've spoken and I'll go out and do some of this on my own I have no problem doing that if I hear enough people say I value

192the things that I'm seeing Ashlin doing and I can get behind this then I think we should move forward Yolanda, we just did that. We spent the last two years going through a comprehensive plan. We have a final document that's very very um ambitious >> and I I'm proud of the work that we all did that had so much community input >> and very clearly stated what the community wants. And based on all of that, I'm comfortable saying the community wants the quality of life, wants us to not cut services. Um, and so I I I I feel pretty okay about making that assumption. Um, >> you know, I I think that the community needs to to react to this specific stuff. I think that that's part of part of the work that we need

193to do. But as far as like what the community values, we've we've we've heard that from the last two years. So I think >> we never we never put a dollar value on it though, right? >> Well, that's true. But that's what the vote is cuz I was thinking the exact same thing is we know what the community values and we know what the community wants. The question is can the community can the people afford it? That's the decision that goes to the community. But I think we do have a great understanding of what this community values and and then but then it's >> spent a long time trying to flush that out, right? >> Information via the forums and meetings that we had over the last two years. >> It wasn't just a set

194of individuals that said one thing at one meeting. It was a collaborative effort by a number of people over two years. >> Over two years. So, um, I don't disagree with what you're saying. I the information has to get out there and I don't I don't disagree, Mark. I agree with you 100%. Lori, I agree with you. I just there's a pit question, right? >> And that's again, Chicken Little, you know, I'll I'll throw out the libraries. That didn't pass because everybody was, you know, we're going to lose the library. We're going to lose the library. What happened? You didn't lose the library at the end. >> We lost the library. >> Not I just want I just want to say something in school. You're talking about but it sounds like I mean it sounds

195like there there is agreement here that you know the path forward involves a very strong and clear and intentional communications effort from this group to to the community. and we need to listen to find out, you know, you know, we can lay out the options. We can say what we recommend. We can listen as we're gathering this feedback. And to your point, if there's adjustments that need to be if there are adjustments that we feel that need to be made before the final proposal goes in, I feel like we're all sort of we're we're we're kind of describing the same thing in different ways a little bit. And so we might be missing each other, but I think we all do agree that, you know, we're not making a definitive defi decision on what this

196looks like after this meeting. I mean, it's non-binding. So that's not going to happen tonight, but uh we do agree that, you know, we need to get more specific information. We do need to make a communications effort with the community and do some listening and then finally we'll all end up voting on it. that communicate that community outreach and participation between now and the vote is critical and that's what I'm hearing from this group tonight. >> Yeah. >> Am I wrong? >> No, you're not on back to scheduling the meeting in December. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I just have a question just partially a statement and a question, right? So, make no mistake just from finance committee again. Disclaimer, disclaimer. We need to do something. Okay. Full stop. All right. The math is the math.

197Um, I think that what we need to do is is and less us, more you. You guys are the elected ones. Okay. We're appointed. >> All right. Yeah. >> Yeah. I want no part of that. >> But we're consulting. >> But, uh, okay. Now, we're a team, right? I'm just kidding. But, uh, in all seriousness, >> in all ser in all seriousness, I like to joke around. I'm kidding. Of course. You know, I I think when it comes to what what what being a leader means to me, and I I just put it in simple terms when, you know, when I'm when I'm parenting, I say to my kids, you need to do this. And then I say, what are your thoughts on that, right? Like I'm the parent, I'm the leader. I I've made

198this decision, but I want your input because maybe something that I've just said to you, you see it a little differently, and maybe what I'm saying is not fully the way that I'm thinking that it's going to work out in your favor. So I think we we need to leave this meeting is committing, this is my opinion on behalf of the finance committee, committing to doing this thing and then going to the community and say we've decided we need to do this thing. Here's the mirror. Here's your community and all your values and all the math. Look at it. Tell us what you think. Maybe we missed something. And then we have a vote. My question for you guys is the time frame is ridiculously short. Um, I know you can vote on it in

199March if you decided to do so. Can you vote on it earlier than that? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah, we could. >> Sorry. >> No problem. >> You know, the process is if if we decide to move forward. The latest is March. >> The latest. >> Plus, we have to look at when it because we have to put it get it on the ballot as well as put it on a warrant for town meeting. >> Okay, cool. I just wasn't sure if March was like a fixed thing. That's all. Okay. Thank you. That's very >> drop dead thing. Got it. Okay. All right. So, um, if we do this next meeting, how I mean, I'll get together next month if if if we can. I mean, it doesn't need to be two months. However

200long these guys need to put together a plan, the sooner the better because then we can make the commitment and then we can start having these community discussions which I I agree are very important. And just as piggy back, one of the things I was going to mention is as you two are the leaders of kind of putting this together and doing perhaps if you feel the need to have a workshop at some point that you extend to the to the group here and we can post and whether people show up or not, that's fine. And it doesn't have to be this big formal thing. But the challenge with being public bodies is that iterative conversation and collaboration is is cumbersome as we've you know learned trying to even schedule this. So just to throw

201that out there as a potential tool that as you collect these things if you want feedback from the group we don't necessarily need to say hey we're you two are saying hey I'm going to you know I want to see if I can get people's feedback on Saturday from 9 to 11 and we'll post we'll all post and if we can show up we'll show up and we'll have a collaborative thing. So because if we wait till my concern is you're you're two people and your staff and you're going to be collecting data but there's all these people that are like hey what about this? We have lots of different people looking coming at it from different angles. We we need to be able to iterate faster than talking now and talking in December, right?

202And and so uh my my just throwing it out there if you have the ability to whether it's on a Saturday, what whatever time it is, but if you all want input during there to get so you're not just coming because what I don't want to have happen is you spent two months doing all this great work and then you come here and we're all like what about this? What about this? Now you have to, you know, when we couldn't be potentially giving you iterative feedback along the way, >> mindful of how we need to do that as as public bodies, >> but we could do iterative, right? It could come out to each, it come out, it could come out to each board >> and we just respond back to the town manager, right?

203You don't discuss it with your fellow board members and you send it back to your, you know, you guys can communicate with the superintendent. But the iteration does happen that can go one direction one time. But then the iteration by definition is now the >> we also all have meetings between now and and when we meet in December. So it could be part of you know it could be put on a select board agenda. There's all kinds if they want to do it. I'm not saying that that we have to do anything but I'm just concerned. >> Yeah. I'm I'm I'm more concerned of just saying, "Hey, we're going to next talk about this as a group >> and you all have and you can't work with us except for in public meetings." >> I

204I think that's a good point, >> you know. So, yeah, >> if you I'm just throwing out there as a possibility of you do that, we post. So, we can be there >> and you know, if we don't have a quorum for school committee, hey, meeting didn't happen, great. uh if it does we have take minutes and do all those things but we can have a more productive conversation at that larger meeting. >> Okay. Thank you. uh everyone, you know, great dialogue and I appreciate it and I think as we get our marching orders, if you will, um I the one thing I want to be cautionary of to all of you and to our community and some would argue that I I've been a a leader and a superintendent who has a soft spot

205for my faculty and staff because I do and because I think about the morale of my staff on a regular daily basis and I work hard to develop a an organization and a community of of learners within my building that is respectful and appreciative and thoughtful of one another. When we start having these conversations and you start saying, "Hey, Jim, we want you to pull together that 10% cut and and be ready for that conversation." I just want to warn everyone here. Uh it may not hit your desk. It will certainly hit mine and it hit Michael's that that there's a morale piece that will impact and infect our school system. >> Yeah, >> it will happen and it that's okay. It's it's why you pay me. I can deal with it. But the greater

206point is as we start having dialogue in terms of options, I want to be able to be clear and transparent with my folks. They're like, "What 25 people are you cutting, Jim? What does that look like?" I don't know. I can't tell you that as hard as I've worked in the 16 years here developing building relationships with my faculty and staff. I can't tell you that it's so it then becomes an issue within our community too, right? because a lot of our faculty and staff live within this community and we certainly know where our educators are going to stand in terms of their desires within um the budget cycle in terms of an override or non-override and and cutting this or cutting that. Um they certainly will be protecting of of of their roles as

207they should be. I have no issues with that. But I just it's just cautionary. I think we're having great conversation, but I don't think that has even come to anyone's tongue tonight saying we've got to be thoughtful. Yes, we may have to go down and have an option that says we have to cut X percentage, but if I went back to my admin team right now, and I know we have some faculty watching this because I've had a couple texts, and and if they're saying, "Hey, Jim, you've got to walk away now and think about cutting You know, >> you already have a directive 5%, right? >> No, that's not my directive. I mean, Michael's conversation with his staff. >> It's not my conversation. >> I I don't have that directive. >> And and I

208think I'm working on my budget. I'm trying to figure out what my budget looks like. >> So, right now, you're not looking at any budget for 2027 that includes cuts. >> I am not. No. 3.75. >> I'm working on a 3.75% increase right now, which would absolutely lead to potential cuts. >> Okay. Okay. So, you're Okay. So, you're Okay. Because I >> But I'm not I'm not working under the the presumption that I have to start with a 5% cut reduction. >> And and my my specific instructions to my team were you going to do two budgets. So, one is a level funded budget, not a level services, but you keep the same funding as FY26. And then you also do one with the >> Yeah, sorry. >> Sorry. Just uh >> level service. >>

209Yeah, I've got uh a couple So, our departments are doing um a couple of different budgets. One is a level funded one, so the same funds as as FY26, and there will be reductions there. Um there will have to be some kind of reductions in services there. Um but then also a 5% reduction as well and I and I can I can support 110% what Jim said. Um just asking my department heads to do that has created a level of discomfort and you know even when I've told him like if you need to cut salaries don't cut individual positions just cut it off the off the salary line and we'll figure it out. It doesn't mean that you're going to get a 5% reduction if we do. But, you know, on one hand I'm saying

210make a 5% reduction. On the other hand, I'm saying, hey, don't worry about it yet. Um, but one thing I was very clear about is I don't have all the to my staff is I I don't have all the answers right now, but I will be 100% transparent with you um in terms of the direction that we get and the direction in which we're heading. And the other thing I want to point out is there is a time issue here because this is what we're talking about tonight, but Jim and I have to walk and chew gum at the same time. There's a plenty of other this is not the only thing on our plate. You know, we have a lot of other things that we have to do. And so this timeline is put

211together in a way that gives us I think with the time we have probably the best possible chance to give you the best possible options. >> Yeah. I just want to echo a little bit about what Jim said because I I have a long memory in this town and and uh you know I was here when we had an operational override that failed and that ultimately we did lay off many people and many teachers and it was devastating to this community and I would suggest to you that even today >> 22 23 years later um that there are still positions that we never got back 100% >> that we have many fewer at the high school many fewer um uh think of it but positions we have fewer languages that we teach we have we

212never recovered from it. So um but in terms of the morale it's absolutely palatable. So I just want to uh and I was sitting here thinking about that Jim so I had put words to it but it's true. If you think December is fine, I mean, that's fine. But I think if there is this motivation to do this sooner, I'm first and foremost happy to get back together sooner if that would afford you guys more time. But I realize that we all have different schedules. What do you think? Is December okay? >> This December is okay. That does not preclude us from having any dialogue ahead of time. And you know, there's one thing I would ask you to start doing homework on. And if you can't, and it's easy to find these resources on

213the Massachusetts Department of Revenue website or the Division of Local Services, however you want to talk about it, is um the structure. So, there's a number of different ways you can structure an override. You can structure it as a menu approach where there's an individual question for different departments. You can structure it as a lump sum, you know, just one big number that encompasses everything that we want to encompass as as a community. And then there's also a tiered structure which I believe is what we tried to do at the last one where you have like one kind of base number and then enhancements in another number. Um you know both to to get the higher number both would need to be voted on. So I would encourage you to take a look at that

214kind of do some research on that. Look at what other communities have done. Um because I would appreciate your thoughts on that because that that's going to be a big decision. Big part of the decision I should say. >> Yes. was just >> for Hollist. It was just for their schools. When Jim mentioned it, I texted a friend of mine who's on their select board. And >> what was the amount, Yolanda? Do you know >> that? I don't know, but it was just Yeah, 750. >> Yeah, but it was small, but it would Well, >> for the school department, give me 750 right now. >> Did they have menu items or was it just a >> I could I'll find that out and I'm sure it's just curious easily find. So, do we want to

215look at a date in December? Can can I ask one question before you get to the date and and I'm trying not to add another topic to this, but I feel like the conversation is leading to work for for Mike and Jim. Um, and I'm wondering whether or not there's wisdom in having some sort of committee like we did last time, which was couple people from each of these committees, Jim and Mike, and and there may have been business from others. Um, I I I don't know that people whether people feel the need for that. And and the charge of that committee was looking at the different options like Michael was just outlining, but some of that was also thinking about the strategy of how to support the effort at that point. Um outreach like

216we've talked about. I'm not volunteering. I I did mine did it once. >> I was just in a meeting today, Mark, and the and the comment was whoever comes up with the idea has to do it. Yeah. >> No, but but I'm just quite frankly in fairness to both of them like their staff. They work for all of us. We're the elected and appointed officials that um kind of are more directly accountable to the community and and um I think part of our jobs collectively is to support both them in this work too. So um I I want to put on the table maybe it's not something that has to be resolved tonight. Maybe it's something that we talk about at individual meetings and can be taken up once kind of see what we're even

217talking about. I don't know. But it just um doesn't necessarily feel exactly right to me to sort of say, "Hey, you guys sorted out." >> Yeah, I would support that because I think part of what happened is we had all these discussions. I I think you and I spoke a little bit in um when we all met as the tri board. We talked about all these things we should do because no one's nominated nominated or tasked with it. It doesn't happen. we come back six months later, nothing's happened. That's just human nature. So I think if you do have a committee and people who are committing to working on it, I think that >> well I mean I mean so perhaps >> if that's wanted, >> how best to support you in this effort, right?

218We've thrown up ideas, but I think at the end of the day, um you're hearing we want to support you. I'm concerned just about, you know, two months of non-communication. I know we'll have meetings and stuff like that and then >> we we meet and we want more. We want something different, but you didn't hear about it till two months from now, right? So, >> I would I would just throw out you two talk. Figure out >> about what I think they told us. >> Okay. So, I'm going to >> finish the sentence, but you guys talk. figure out how best we can support you and let us know whether that is a subcommittee uh whether that's your working group what how how can we support you to make sure that we meet the deadlines

219and have productive conversations. Okay, we can do that and maybe the best thing to do is check in at our at our individual meetings, you know, from now and then and and you know, after we have those conversations, but um I would I would say just to give us, you know, adequate time to again put together uh some good options for you, I would say, and I know it's bumping up into the holidays. Um, and I'm not I'm not totally familiar with the with the um religious calendars, but would at some point the week of the 15th be okay for people? >> Hanukkah begins December 14th. >> Okay. >> What Joe is mentioning December 10th? >> December 10th >> after the school committee meeting again similar to what we have tonight. >> Wednesday, December 10th.

220>> It's one less week. Is that going to be all right for you guys? >> We can make it. We'll make it work. All right. We'll make it work. >> Does that work for all the whole select? >> We'll already be here, right? We have to move our meeting earlier like we did this time. Would that you'd want to start at 6 >> so or I mean probably should I mean it's 9:00 now. So if if it's going to be I mean hopefully maybe it's not as long as we we had to go through a lot more uh this time. But >> not a problem for me. >> Start starting it later I think is going to be >> you know >> I mean 6 I mean if you want to push to 6:30 >>

221I don't I don't need to. What about >> 6 fing our meeting? >> It was more starting our meeting. >> Marcy, does that work for you to be here by 5? >> 6 p.m. >> Yeah. So, we'll we'll move our meeting, Jim. >> On the 10th, >> 5:00, >> consider it done >> and then whoever can appear at 6. >> Okay. >> Thank you both for everything that you put together. again, you know, I know Jim and I and I know the staff feel this way too is um >> like we know like >> it's tough >> this is tough but with the team that we have we'll figure out a solution whatever that is I do feel confident about that I mean we >> we are we do a lot with a little already

222but this has been an excellent discussion I I feel I feel good about the dialogue And um it's it it teamwork. It's going to take teamwork to solve this problem whatever way we choose, right? Whatever direction we go in. And I think this was a good good exhibition of what that teamwork looks like. So >> yeah. And and I just want to I probably say this each time we meet, but >> this is unique in the totally. There's you can count on one hand and you you'd still be able to ball your fist on how many other communities can have these three groups sit here have a good conversation that doesn't involve you know some some choice words have two leaders uh that work so well together. So and and I think it's a lot

223of it is the work that you both do. So uh kudos to you on that. >> Yeah. >> You're here. >> Yeah. >> Motion to motion to adjoin the select board. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Wacka. Good night. >> So, so select board is not done. >> We're not done. >> Select board if you could please stay. >> Yes, we have to stay. >> Oh, you have something else.