001really Julie you're okay 602. let's let's start with tonight's finance committee meeting I guess number one and number one on the agenda is is reconciling if you will the the finance statements are spending for December November December 2022 and on board I see John Spang and Eddie Miranda Eddie Miranda yes all right take it away John please if you will or hand it off to Addie so thank you Al I think we we will start um with Eddie uh for a monthly report and then we have a couple um budget agenda items that follow that so uh let you get started Ed yeah and did I miss something I didn't get a an email with those those those budget those expenditure numbers don't we usually get those ahead of time need this stuff are you
002talking about the stuff that was attached to the agenda was it okay yeah um we may have gotten more than one invitation let me just double check here out and I'll tell you what date I'm looking at here uh this is from January 13th it was an updated invitation and the agenda was attached with all the paperwork okay that we're looking at the old other invitation my bad I'll just sit here and quietly nibble on my little appetizer trip yeah Ed's plugging in another computer the one we can see he's Frozen that's his at his desk okay a second hey maybe you can answer being a veteran that's right motion hearing person what do they do with the knives and the evidence from these compulsion hearings oh you know I don't know I know the
003I a few months back we were talking about how some of those uh remained here in Beaver Brook uh under lock and key by the super previous superintendent so I I don't know what the what Kevin does with them but that happened before him that's what happened with some of them I'm told so you found some is that it they found some under the lock and key uh they can uh they better tell the story than I I don't want to mess it up but I'm sure Kevin or Cara Pompano could tell you you ready Eddie are you ready Eddie are you a poet and I don't know you're a poet I can't hear them I can't hear Eddie yeah we can't hear you I can't even see him so yeah yeah he's I think
004he's going to join John Maybe uh good evening Gladys I see Gladys popped in there and Kevin and Rachel wow it's like Romper Room hello everyone oh God help me hi Eddie well we don't you gotta put the bike on put the song Down your your sound is off oh I said I tested it before and um now my computer is frozen frozen and then I use my laptop I could see you guys but you can hear me so um let me oh perfect let me just grab the agenda real quickly um what's your email I'm just gonna go to Kara Oke while Eddie's firing up the agenda I'll just say good evening to everybody hope you hope you all had a good MLK weekend yes thank you thank you I'm gonna share this oh
005where's your share screen here in the meantime I just want to say that um my name's not coming up I'm Zoom user I'm using a different device and something's been up on my phone and computer all day so um this is Ralph here if uh Ralph we see your name we see your neighbor but we don't see you oh okay um yeah it's weird it just looks all it's different than it usually is anyway okay hey Ken are you there Ken Wallace can you do me a favor can you share that um the uh the agenda with the uh Financial reports backup thank you Ken is everybody able to see that clearly do you want me to zoom in a little or can you zoom in about 125 yeah that's perfect thank you okay thank
006you um can you go into the narrative the next page Ken please or scroll it down here there you go so um uh good evening everyone I guess with technology we uh we figure out a a plan C and D at this point right uh so we're gonna I'll be going over the uh financials for November and December I like to begin with um Ken if you go to page four real quickly um scroll down to page four and if you could stop right there scroll over actually one more page I'm sorry again one more page I'm sorry okay go go up two more pages all right right there so if you guys can look at that line that tutor Special Ed line right there if you guys noticed that that is the uh tutor
007slash Paris um line that we had mentioned last week John did a good job mentioning at the board meeting of the 1.3 million dollars that we're seeing in a vacancies savings currently um we do plan on doing certain things with that part of it is uh we would like to request uh through the board a transfer um to purchase some uh computers and uh printers this year so that's something that we we will be presented to the board at the end of this month early next month regarding that vacancies of the one point uh the savings of 1.3 that's where that money would be coming out of that 1.3 uh Ken if you could go back to the narrative quickly please um as you know uh Across the Nation we're seeing these Labor uh shortage
008um especially in positions as we mentioned Pairs and tutors which has created the 80 plus vacancies currently as of today um 46 of those are Pairs and tutors we continue to do on recruitments um as I mentioned just a few minutes ago we uh we plan on bringing to the board and requesting a transfer to a pre-buy some student computers and uh replace it in a printer um equipment for the school for the central office throughout the district as we're all aware inflation is here I continues um the Consumer Price Index right now is 7.1 I'm pretty sure that'll go up later on this evening John will discuss about uh energy and utilities costs Transportation things that we're seeing that are going up good thing is is right now we've had a really mild winter
009so her fingers crossed that um we can hopefully get some savings there in that area if you can are there any questions before I start going into the uh general fund details uh Teresa um the para educator is that in connection with what was in the paper uh winning the lawsuit no the no this is the unfilled position that is something separately but that's not the same position that they were granted those are the tutor positions Theresa okay sorry kind of professionals it is the same um negotiated contract however they're in that bargaining unit uh but it's not the same as a position thank you you're welcome you're welcome any other questions before I go into the uh the financial details okay Ken if you could scroll down to the uh first page which is
010um our monthly uh Financial summary Grant uh fund uh general fund I'm sorry and the grant fund and it goes by your salary lines benefits purchase Services Property Services etc etc as you see at the bottom right you're seeing the balance of 21 million dollars that's unencumbered a large amount of that is due to the fact that we haven't encumbered uh not all of the health insurance has been encumbent and more in the details of the report you'll see that um in health insurance and and I'll stop there so you can see those you'll see that we haven't encumbered enough in health insurance and it'll continue throughout the months coming forward but this is very similar to last this time last year it was around 20 million dollars unencumbered um but as we mentioned we
011will be using all this money throughout the remaining five years left of the school year can if you could scroll down into the details please the next page if you don't mind the next slide I'm sorry scroll down one more time okay so if you see that line that health insurance line right there the uh 23.9 million that we had budgeted year to date we're at 9.7 million we've only only encumbered 3.6 but we as we know we have about five five to six months left of the school year um that's why that balance will eat up majority of that encumbrance there um and then very similar what I mentioned earlier the Tudor uh Ed Paris that 1.3 is another area Dental Assurance also is another area you could scroll down to the next page
012uh Ken as you notice in the transportation special ed those bills haven't all been paid or come in yet invoice so that 1.8 will be clearly uh taken up from the ones we receive the invoices and they're paid out and scroll down one more time uh Ken thank you and then if you go to the bottom that's where we're seeing that 21 million dollars encumbered as I mentioned earlier but as you can see that a lot of it will be eaten up I'm going to use the word e and I'll put a lot of it'll be taken up from the health insurance uh Transportation uh the vacancies we currently have that we will be requesting uh later on this month early next month on a pre-buying of purchases uh any questions here before I jump
013into the grants okay um in connection with the pre-buying of the purchases do you have have you created a schedule um is it by you know if by school you know is is there some sort of schedule that you can share I don't have that right here right now I know our our um director of I.T and our uh department is working on creating buying these um items in a list of items and where they will be uh sent to um if you want to get a list of that we can get we can come back and get you a list of where those items will be heading to yeah it was just here um some sort of a chart indicating their age and uh data purchase and proposed uh you know twice ending you're
014swapping out schedule you know I'd just like to see the schedule going forward okay thank you you're welcome Ken if you can ask you a quick question now um yeah uncovered balance unencumbered 21 million I can I can understand that we would have anticipated spending but we budgeted this but it's unencumbered which means it it wasn't spent or was put in and over budgeted uh could you explain that a little bit we just haven't encumberated in the line that I mentioned earlier in health insurance we didn't encumbent enough um and that's just throughout the year we encumbered every month or so we just haven't caught up to this point um what we plan on doing is we'll encumber the remaining amounts coming the following month very similar to what we did last year one thank
015you I have a quick question please hey sure go um Eddie uh thanks for this information and and for the explanation I just want to check in with you uh looks like we have year-to-date spent 51 million um out of the total budget of 141 it's about 36 a little bit more um does that um line up with where we were last year last year we were in uh I think it was about 42 43 percent um Kate the reason for the lower this year is because of as I mentioned earlier the vacancies those vacancies of uh 80 vacancies that we identified as um John and I were doing the budget for the new coming year um those were that's why it's it's less this time versus last year okay thank you very much Eddie
016I can see how Personnel is a substantial portion of the way that we operate here in our schools so appreciate that explanation you're welcome any other questions before I move forward okay Ken if you can scroll to the next slide the next two pages are our grants um we have a few little notes Here for everyone our big ones that and you know we've been talking about it for a while now especially last week we talked about you know the sr2 if you look into sr2 right there uh number 29 the 3.9 million dollars um which includes many other stuff that uh initiatives that need to get done I know um Dr casimero um uh superintendent wolfelson and um John have mentioned different things I'm sitting with the committee so this is something as you
017can see that um there is money available but this money is already accounted for for a lot of the uh the program incentives and things like that that need to be done so that's that's one area you can see there and then the next one is your sr3 your big one right there that 11.4 million dollars which we've been discussing for some time now um and as we go into more and and we talk on Thursday regarding the budget workshops we'll get into more of the essers two and threes and identify you know how many ftes are in those areas and what's being done there um Eddie can you just remind us when does the sr3 fund sunset that ends September 30th 2024. thank you so much well it's June 30th 2024 we have to
018expend all the money you know invoicing by September 30th 2024. thank you yep you're welcome are there any questions on the grants thank you guys and I'm gonna now turn this over to uh John who's going to dive into our energy and utilities uh background and what's going on there in transportation sorry and I need you guys need to talk to Ken about how you want him to move in terms of presentation uh Ken I sent uh very recently three documents and there's one that's called uh q a but you put that one up that's it uh well what I'd like to do as we go through the the budget cycle meaning our our series of meetings is um answer the questions that come up in the previous meeting as best we can or and
019then for example if there's questions tonight that come up we'll try and have answers for you uh on Thursday night and questions Thursday the following so I have put together um memorandum that I I think captures all the questions that were asked uh at our last finance committee meeting uh the first one I believe came from Al uh where he pointed out the difference in our uh numbers the um uh for salaries we had two different numbers and we found a mistake when we looked carefully and that was corrected uh the other night when we presented the the budget to the full board uh we also had discussions about uh line item budgets um you received that the other day there are three uh the line item book that I gave you actually has three
020separate I'll call them sorts and what we'd like to do on Thursday night is to vote a portion of the agenda uh just call it a line item budget review and during that period you can act what I'd like to do first is just briefly walk people through what the three different sorts mean how to read them how to drill down on a number it might have a question about and then after that just take your questions of um what what you're interested in knowing more about or what's in what and um we'll answer answer them um right there on the spot as best we can so that'll be uh Thursday there was also a question last week about what could we do now at the state level so I spoke with Ryan Bingham uh
021he's our our lobbyist uh for these kind of things and uh what he said was that he said it's still a couple weeks early but he did give me the date give us the date that the governor is going to present his spending proposal it's February 8th and right after that that's when everything starts to kick in uh but he did mention and we talked a little um before then uh some of the legislators are submitting bills and proposals and things like that you may have seen a few of them in the newspaper like I have uh they haven't gone anywhere yet and he expects to see a little more of that in the next um a few weeks but if there's anything real important it comes up he'll make sure we know about it
022and um just as as everybody knows what what happens is the governor goes first and he'll present his budget and then the legislature which is uh in two bodies they could accept it as is or they could the state senate could come back with their own version of the budget so could um the house come back with their own version or it could be a combination but that's when everything starts to happen uh it's all uh I'll say versus the governor's budget so that's um that'll be here pretty soon uh Ken if you want to scroll down the next page okay um right so uh there were questions about the positions uh that were in the budget and when you saw the presentation uh for the full board uh we provided a little more information
023um can can you uh go down to my attachments for a minute and can you I don't know if you can spin them uh the board uh I mean uh 90 degrees maybe or 45 degrees but um the the board will remember these we showed um exactly uh the positions uh the FTS the money uh where they were going to go uh this is our our big slide this has the high school on it Ken are you able to rotate it at all from your can you rotate it 45 degrees clockwise I think not um okay uh so uh there are three or four pages in there uh they're in your what you got and what we we're going to do uh Thursday night is is delve even deeper into these Pages uh we're going
024to have uh our high school principal Dan Donovan uh with us uh he's going to explain uh describe why he needs the 13 and a half positions uh and uh white amount of detail he also has requested for para educator positions that are on the top line there and then following him uh we have Dr casamoro come on and and talk about about some of the other positions we've asked for you know some of the Middle School positions we asked for three she'll explain uh why we we need those uh as well the safety Advocates are in there too so uh Thursday night the first two uh items on our uh agenda will be uh Staffing because that's that's what's driving this budget as you saw that's uh whether we call it a budget driver
025or pressure or something like that but um there's uh they're attached to your your um memo here as well see can you go back up Ken to the memo I had yep that's it we also had a question on the number of students uh that I want to say excluding the stated way that they combine things remember we saw our carawanzer in the fall and the state likes things a couple things combined I'm confused by that too uh but we're gonna uh lay out exactly uh the student count for you uh on Thursday so that that's the one question I kind of uh just said that's uh Coming Attraction and then uh finally there's a question I think it was Kate asked about the uh sr2 uh coveted relief grants um this right here you
026can see uh is from our uh the original application we made uh to the state um these are the positions we put in at this information comes over from our HR department and when you add up the salaries uh for next year uh it's a little over two million dollars that's uh that's why one of the line items in our our budget for next year is if you remember it's 4.5 million we'll we'll talk about that but uh two million is restore is carrying forward the assessor positions you can see how important they are and the other 2.5 million of the 4.5 that's the new positions you you just saw lay down and so I think by the end of Thursday night we'll have a very thorough understanding of why we're asking for that okay
027uh questions on the questions do you like this way of doing it where we uh come back and say Here's here's how we answered it and okay we'll uh yes John can I ask is this um something that you could send us a physical like a copy of an email I'm particularly interested obviously in that sr2 list so yeah my mistake I I thought we were meeting in person today I had everything ready to hand out uh I'm usually the last one I thought I missed it I thought I missed it so oh I'm going crazy okay sorry I say I'll uh you know what I'll do I can even send it out uh tonight before I go home so you can have it that'd be fantastic thank you I'll send it around um okay
028um let's so we we were going to talk we want to talk about uh energy and utilities a little bit so I'm wondering Ken if you could go to the second package that I I sent along there it is that one's in there right um so these are the uh four or five categories I I call them energy and utilities and let me just grab my um folks all right what uh if if you could uh indulge me what I I'd like to do is um do the heating oil last and uh go down the list I'd like to talk about natural gas first um and what uh the way we built that uh particular budget is we compared um what we're paying uh right now to what we paid uh last year and it's
029very uh but let me say this so we um we're very fortunate I think here in Danbury to have uh a guy uh on the city Side as knowledgeable as chip Volpe I don't know how many of you you know him he's very very skilled particularly when it comes to uh energy and things like that he's he's he saves the taxpayers a lot of money as I've gotten to know him he's he's very impressive he's been very um open and providing guidance and um he's uh I I trust everything he says after listening to to how he thinks um so what uh we did on the natural gas is um and we get our natural gas uh from eversource that's not the case across the state but that's how it is up here a year
030ago we were paying and you pay um the the unit of measure is uh 100 100 cubic feet so a year ago we were paying um are called five 0.972 cents per 100 cubic feet 5.972 cents last month last let's see the last invoice we had uh was December and that had gone up quite a bit it had gone up to um 8.628 so the increase there was right there on our chart of 44.4 now what that means is uh two things we're not budgeting any difference in usage we're budgeting the same level next year's this year that's a common way to do it unless you're planning to open or close a building or uh some type of change from from gas to oil or something like that so same usage of the current prices
031we don't think uh prices are going to go any higher in fact they've come down uh just a hair lately the market is very very difficult to predict these days so we're looking for uh increase over last year's budget but nothing more than that and you can see right there in the numbers that's a that's a big uh increase okay the electricity [Music] um go to that we did the same uh kind of approach but it's a little a little trickier uh check to his credit uh and by the way we we do a lot of Cooperative purchasing with them chick locked in our well let me go back electricity uh comes really in two parts you have your supply part and your delivery part the supply part are things that you can bid yourself
032you can find other providers of that I know some of us as homeowners were frequently Asked do we want to buy our electricity from someone else you can can do that since deregulation came on the scene but what what chick has done is he is locked in uh our electric rates on most of our accounts uh at a rate of 7.86 cents uh per kilowatt hour but the the good thing about that is it's locked in until December of 2024. so if they're you know these increases that we're fearful of that we hear about on the supply side uh he's protected us um and I think at a pretty low rate he's had this in for a little while so the the spikes that the rest of us are seeing this month as homeowners uh
033the city of Danbury is going to avoid those so I hope he gets some credit for that uh but the delivery charge uh that that can go up that's um something I'm I'm very worried about the eversources um they're pretty good at what they do um the on a typical bill of ours the uh it's about 50 50. the elect uh the supply charge is about half the bill and the delivery charge is about half the bill so we've protected half of it um but the other half is uh inched up and if it's you know when you look at your electric bill there's eight or nine ten different components of that under the delivery charge I won't go through what they all are but they're uh they're a very uh easy way for eversource
034to get increases and to bring in new things this year alone our delivery cost is up uh 13 percent now remember that's only half of the the total uh cost but we think um it will also go up our prediction is it electric rates the delivery will continue to go up and we think it'll go up another 13 uh from now until June so that's uh 26 over the year but since it's only half the cost let's put that aside as a 13 hike and then what we said is we think the same thing is going to happen uh for the next two six month periods the same increase we don't really don't feel um we have a it's so volatile that we should predict anything other than the increases that are going on now
035but if we look for another 13 13 twice in the budget year then we've gone up uh 26 or chick fields we should have 27 percent on top of our budget this year so to recap uh we're taking the increases we've seen on the delivery charge over the last six months in projecting them to continue when you do that your overall bill would have a 27 percent increase that's that's how we did um elect they're all different they're all different then uh propane um you know our school buses are propane uh powered in our our contract with sta uh we paid for fuel in this case it's propane and uh just show you the bills here we did the same approach which I got this right um we've gone from and this was a this
036was another one uh chick had locked that in for us uh for well over two years and and he he sent me some data he would go back four or five years our our price for propane was very very steady it didn't vary hardly at all but the contract uh was expiring uh last June it's um contract in what by last June when it expired our prices were much much higher uh he felt and I agreed uh that it wasn't smart to lock in at the high prices so we decided to wait well we took a small quantity and locked it in but we wanted to wait for the prices to come down and they've started coming down he still feels it's too early to lock in the price but they're they're they're still very
037much higher than where they were so we just we looked at the bills uh that we were paying last year and um the summer and this year in the summer uh last year we were paying less than a dollar per gallon actually 0.997 cents and this year we're 1.62.8 so it's gone up 62 percent uh just in in a few months so that's uh that's tough but what um we think is that um we ought to hedge that a little bit more and so you can see we've put in uh an 82 percent increase uh just in case um and what I might recommend to us tonight is let's take a a fresh look at this before we adopt our budget in a couple weeks and see if maybe we can bring that line down
038a little bit more uh but it it reflects a very a very sharp increase that we've we've had okay uh gasoline uh that's that's merely the the gasoline that's in our facilities our sites and Facilities trucks um next year uh we think uh gas prices uh are at their Peak uh we put in inflationary factor in it uh but boy they're they're very hard to predict too um I'm not sure anyone really knows so this seemed like a a conservative uh move to take and then um let me go back up to the heating oil and there that's also uh bid by the city for us Mitchell has the account uh right now Norbert Mitchell and uh this was the recommended increase that chick suggested uh we put in a 30 increase over what we
039were budgeting um we get a pretty good price per gallon last let me just see last uh summer let me see if we have it here just a couple dollars sit up up provide that in our answers well well here it is um I'm sorry as recently as December is he December 7th email uh he had a price of uh 3.28 cents a gallon that's how much we purchase uh and uh he wants to hold off uh thinking it could improve even more than that so that's um that's pretty good so that that's how we came up with these five I I think you'll agree it's all all very different um I hope you agree that it's it's so hard right now to predict um you know I mean you have to predict world events
040and pipelines and things like that and demand and recessions and um very difficult folks we think we've probably applied a conservative approach to each of these John do you have a recommendation on when you would have some kind of final recommendations on these numbers I don't know if you have a plan meeting with this gentleman on these projections and kind of when we can finalize these numbers I don't know if you're really anticipating any big spikes but yeah just curious um you know he watches the market every day before he comes to work and there's some prognosticators that have been pretty reliable uh we could do it a couple days before uh we adopt a budget I would think it wouldn't take long and we can quickly uh change the price if it's favorable or
041like that's why that would be my suggestion a couple days before we stopped thanks John yeah okay all right uh transportation school buses all right um there's a couple sheets here and let's just start let's start with the one um there and so this is what you saw um the other night uh now um so we uh they're not that hard to do this year because tickets will be the third year of our extension with sta so we have the prices so that part's easy and um next year they'll be going up uh 3.5 percent so uh and what the state uh likes us to do when we do our reporting at the end of the year they want to see uh what we do divided into three areas of public school transportation uh non-public
042school transportation and special ed the non-public's uh very quickly the law requires us to provide same level of service to not bus service to non-public schools as we do to Public Schools which means if you have to live um more than a mile from the high school to get bus bus service to the high school we'd have to apply the same criteria to Immaculate high school we couldn't we couldn't make the non-public school students walk more or make their runs any longer you have to do the same thing and the way it works is if the non-public school could be a private school or a parochial school if they have more than 50 percent of their students residents of Connecticut then the following year that the city or board has to provide transportation and sometimes
043border communities like ourselves the schools will have a number of kids from Westchester or maybe Putnam I'm not sure so they have to file with the state once a year uh their enrollments and we look at them and that that decides but um so uh I'll get to that in a second the public school budget line that by far is our biggest one that's um 6.5 million and the reason uh that's not going up uh 3.5 percent is really uh an accounting adjustment in previous years and I'm going to show you an offset in a minute we also have to budget uh kids who decide to go to abbotek or kids that go to the voag program uh currently at chapak but what we had been doing up until uh last year was showing the
044budget for the Abbott Tech kids in the high school budget location 10. so next year it won't be there but we've moved the money for Abbott Tech into here because the way it works in the morning they're really not separate buses we may have a separate runs maybe for the for Habitat but or for even for shafog when those buses are done they come back then they might do a Middle School uh then to an elementary school and we're paying one price per day per boss and what what our transportation coordinator Kelly Watson does is she'll you know do whatever is most efficient depending where the bus is and where the next uh kids lived and school start and all that kind of stuff so it's really really all the same and I think it
045was a a throwback to years before that it was shown separately I think uh Ken if you just scroll down to the fourth page for a second I think I included it is there one more is there one more page now I'll put um I'm sorry I put that in the email uh what I'm going to show you is the line item budget thank you it's actually if you want to write it down it's on page 34. that's a page in a high school budget and you'll see um last year it was 350 000. uh I think that was too much uh based on the configuration and the network of roots uh but you'll see Zero on that line for next year I call it an offset but it's up in this line right here
046so that that's what that is uh then going down the non-public I said uh we're predicting the same uh level of service uh next year meaning the same number of buses for them next year is we have this year um and just applying the 3.5 incidentally they also get uh a number of early dismissals uh like we have they may have uh themselves having exams or shortened days so they get they get um you know what we get um but no change in the level of service for next year and then uh finally special ed and special ed has a lot of different things going on uh Ken if you can scroll down um let me just don't go this fish and we'll go back this gives you an example of all the different things
047that go on um with our kids because the programs are um they're not as typical as you might might be for um regular busing we have type 2 buses we have 32 of those those are yellow uh a 16 passenger buses we have seven uh wheelchair lift fans in place those are those are also yellow but we have a lot of other uh items in there different programs uh that go on uh you can see uh we have Pre-K uh midday runs in there we have monitors on those on the special ed buses we have monitors with the preschool kids when they come back and forth and what we did uh last year was We reset everything meaning we looked at exactly what we were doing and counted everything and asked different questions uh so
048we're this is from last year's budget but we took the same uh level of service so to speak and there may is there another sheet below that can yeah here's some more of what they do uh the Summers the Wheelchairs and monitors but uh it's those last uh two items that are very uh they've surprised they shouldn't have surprised us but what they are um those are the white bands you see with the sign on top says carrying school children and off they go we use those for out of District placements and what we do every year in April we put them out to bid for competitive bid and we might have six or seven or eight different uh vendors come in and bid anywhere from one run and we'll say okay we need uh
049we're gonna have one bus that goes up to Hartford every day at American School for the Deaf uh someone might just bid that one run or maybe if we have something that goes down the Giant Steps in Wilton and they'd bid two runs but or some other company might bid a combination but we did find uh as we asked uh these bidders uh we asked them to give us a price per day for 180 days but they have to pay for the fuel so those prices started to inch up a little we think they're gonna inch up a little more next year because the fuel prices are higher than they were uh last time we bid uh so if you want to go could you go back up uh Ken to the one uh go
050up one Higher um so this the special ed is up and let me just walk you through the math if you take what we spent last year our actual I'm sorry the um the budget that 5318 5 million three eighteen and you were to add uh three and a half percent you'd come to five million 504 994. uh but what we have is we've had to add since last year when we did the budget we've had to add three runs so they're not in the budget for this year and uh Kelly expects three more out of District placements uh next year um so we've added uh six buses over last year's six fans should say over last year I used a price of 320 dollars a day for those 180 days it's about 57 000
051um and we put in six of those plus an increment for the increase in fuel uh to bring us up to the the higher number so let me uh before I finish let me just show a couple of the pages that I had sent here if you scroll down this I had put in just to give you a insight um there's a regulated a non-public uh 83 full-size buses there for 180 days summer school we we had 10 buses we have early releases whether it's for parent conferences or just half days uh or snow we have those late buses we have as well in there and then uh the non-public schools you can see we allocate 14 buses to that budget line and they have their early releases as I mentioned yeah so I think
052that's what I have on Transportation I'm happy to answer any questions on on that or back on the utilities or anything you'd like um anything the committee would like John a quick question about the transportation the bossing um you were and maybe I'm maybe I missed something so forgive me if I'm asking something you answered I just didn't hear it um but you were talking about you know the the busing for the Danbury public schools and then other non-public schools when those routes are set up are they do the buses go to and drop off DHS students and then drop off students at the other schools or vice versa so that the same bus that is being used for students at different schools or these independent routes uh their uh my understanding is they're pretty
053much independent Roots uh I wanna validate that with Kelly Watson or with the plus company tomorrow um but I'm pretty sure it's the same bus that would do three routes and I I will I do know on the with some of the parochial schools uh we will combine Our Roots like uh if there's two or three of those uh they'll share buses the parochial elementary schools but I'll uh I'll double check that um John going off script a little bit uh when you mentioned summer school yeah I noticed in the book last year we had like 93 000 for teachers for summer school and a 23-24 budget it's a zero line item on the line I assume you moved it in to where um yeah it's funny we're just talking about that uh this afternoon
054in cabinet there um even though it's January we're already making plans um there were a number of uh grants last year that we uh discovered could help pay for summer school busing I uh I don't want to say uh assuredly that it was the Ida Grant I think it's a different grant that Kelly uh finds she can charge summer school off to and the same with our regular Ed transportation we think the program we offered uh was related is related to the pandemic it's to make up for learning laws to regular AG kids so um we think that that uh Esser Grant can certainly pay to make up learning laws for regular Ed summer school there's a lot going on in in summer school I'm I'm not expert enough at the different components yet um
055so I'll uh maybe as we get further into the workshops um I can help a little bit John so thank you for dying here yeah my our our eligible schools um for at least the last four or five years um the the heaviest burden in terms of budget that's um Finance summer school has been Title One um and so our parents do not pay for summer school and our K-5 grades uh and then the same is also true of Middle School um and so K5 we have uh primarily use Title 1 funds to support those students in need of not remediation but uh because they didn't they didn't meet the state cut score in reading and so previously we were required to invite in kindergarten through three students that has been extended through from K-5
056so the 93 000 number was really just a very small number and a very big issue and budget item for us from Staffing to supplies to Transportation uh the majority of summer school has been budgeted over the years and last year through title one uh what John is saying is true also with Esser funding we we applied some Essa fundings last year as well because the fourth and fifth grade invitations was something it was a new budget item for us and so we had Title 1 and Esser also helping to pay for that expense so but you know when when the answer monies dry up primarily it will be title one that is paying for those uh Title One eligible schools which is pretty much all of our schools K-8 thank you um I see
057so the these figures for transportation and busing this is what's currently going on and you're going to use that going forward uh well correct so take the um let's just look at them the Six Million 152 and the 1 million 19. um Ken could you just go up a page um hopefully they match yeah so there they are on the the left there the current year and that's what we projected forward and it's what it's saying is we're budgeting the same uh service level which means the same number of buses we're not cutting um you know they're going to be crowded again but we're not adding at this point same number but but it's going to cost almost a half a million dollars more for the same service right and most well it's the contract
058increase of three and a half percent which you know in hindsight that looks pretty good some of the transportation bids that are coming in are just uh they're awful awfully High uh but and also the other reason this line is high is that offset I told you you'll see on page 34 uh where the Abbott Tech buses are now on this line where before they were in Dan's budget Mr Russo uh please excuse me for a moment just want to confirm that Zoom user is um who that is I believe it's Michelle but I don't want to assume Michelle could you give us a photo yes it is me all right all right great I had said hello earlier okay all right so we're all set thank you thank you okay um so I also
059uh again what we'd like to do uh Thursday night is continue with um diving into lines uh particularly the salary lines the new positions uh maybe the answer a little bit here from the high school and then we'll also do some of the other areas of the budget if there's you know something in particular you could mention it or we could maybe talk about the ones that we think are changing or or so from uh this year and uh because we'll have another session even after uh Thursday I think maybe we have two more after that so that that sounds like a plan to you well done sir well done okay all right and if if I may be um a little bit bald if if you do have some questions already on the line
060items and you want to send them in to Eddie and I uh we'll have the answers ready that could it might make things go faster Thursday night uh but you don't have to we're we're going to come in trying to answer anything that gets asked that evening but if there are some maybe we could get started on sure thank you thank you John it seems like what I've noticed so far is a lot of items have moved to other places um like we do we discuss counselors yeah you know now you know how can you have three counselors I mean and it turns out there was you have moved them to other line items and um yeah are you talking about the new positions that we requested Mr Russo well there was one line I
061existing no it's the existing ones we had a line right at the beginning um I I think I'll I I don't have a um a general answer for that would apply to all or even most of those without looking at them individually um and we had to discussed this earlier today and I just it's a general propensity with Isaac Suspect with with other line items that I I did not understand when I went through this yeah I I would add um we're trying to give uh gradually uh to give the principals um more decision making with their allotment and what that means is you may have a principle that one year uh decides that you know the they need to replace more library books than they normally would for whatever reason any devotes a larger
062share to that but the next year the library is in good shape um maybe he wants to do something in the kindergarten classrooms for the kindergarten teachers it's a little different so um the fact that the principal's budget is different from one year to the next um you know I I'd be surprised if they were the same well my surprise is one of the principals put a budget in for supplies that was up 300 percent and I just but I assume that you've looked at this and and we could discuss this today you know it Thursday or another time it's just I just found some again items moved possibly to other places the right three counselors it but yep I understand okay thank you okay any other questions folks okay Teresa John I just want
063to say that I really appreciate the work uh that you're trying to do on behalf of the district for you know fuel cost savings um I think that's a something that's near and dear to everybody's heart right now um and watching those ever Source numbers add up so quickly so the thoughtfulness you're putting into that I really appreciate thank you chick is great to work I I like calling him yeah I asked him uh I asked him yesterday is because he locked in our electricity like he did I mean who would have thought that was coming I said to him chase you do night nice savings again I said uh do you have any football scores You can predict for me uh I also think very highly check Volpe yeah years ago we used to
064meet at expect discount at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning discuss our shopping strategies I mean the man is all in yeah yeah you said it better than I could thank you all foreign any other questions I just wanted to make a comment real quick just I want to say thank you Al and Kate and everybody guys are doing a great job on the finance committee um and John you're thank you for answering the questions as best as you can and um on Thursday I'd love to get in um more more detail but just had a quick question do we get confirmation I know the invite was sent out to council members and the mayor Kevin did we get confirmation is any any other council members attending I we can find out from Kara um
065I don't know I don't know if we have any confirmation yet okay yeah she sent the which I found uh she sent the invitation out today so it's only a two-day notice did you after the meeting on Wednesday when we said we were going to invite them did you reach out to anybody directly or we just sent the formal invitation I did not reach out to anyone directly just Kara we talked about in debrief afterwards okay oh yeah if you could find out some confirmation if anybody's coming that would be great yeah I think what she'll do is um I know she spoke with Lindsay so I don't know if it was just sent out directly um or we can do an invite which would probably be even easier folks are going to accept to
066be able to come but I'll I'll speak with her we'll try to nail down who's coming who's not coming okay great thank you and uh not to be redundled but well I guess I'm going to be redundant that's a 5.4 mil in salaries and five million in salary and benefit increasing definitely flexed uh the number of all including our the new hires that that we would like to hire yeah uh no that is no um that's just the uh existing staff I think we called it budgeted positions um because that that line we took all the people that were working right from here and just said okay right December 6th um but then we we put in all the vacant positions we have we ex trying to fill them and expect to film that the
067the line year the other line is uh the new positions we're requesting I I just felt if we isolated that um it would be very easy to say how much we ask them for who are they and then we can bring in uh the explanations um on Thursday right the the salaries and benefits line missed so that on that paper you just displayed is just contractual obligations to move up the line for next year you know we have we have 2 000 employees in this district and that's the cost of doing business um so you know we we have negotiated contracts that we have to honor um and that that that's why you're seeing that five million dollar number that is before we add new staff to the system right and I do see your
068your total number is below the the rate of inflation sir again well well done yeah questions any other questions Teresa um back about those uh the story in the paper about those tutors are eligible for benefits will that increase our line for next year yeah that that's being that's still being explored Theresa I'll ask John to jump in here in a second um our tutors um my understanding is years ago they had appealed to this the decision it was decided um I believe this was a city decision that the tutors were not eligible for a pension um that was appealed um and then they won the appeal um and so the impact of that appeal is I we don't know all the details yet uh we have folks from our office going over to the
069city to better understand what this means in terms of impact we don't know if this is you know a one year um deal and we just have to address you know address and make sure tutors in our pension it's now moving forward if this is retroactive but we have to go back three years six years we don't know the specifics yet um but but there has already been an agreed upon um kind of pension res resolution if you will that the city has my belief secured as late as as late as last year maybe it's been two years now um and so something is in place now for all of our staff um in terms of contributions and assuming the tutors will now be eligible they can also jump in on that plan but but
070in terms of impact I don't think that's been determined yet uh John do you have any different or additional information yeah uh well in addition uh if you remember I I put up a page I should I'll dig it out again it showed the city budget the different departments police fire and so on well down the list was a line that just said uh employee benefits it was it was a big one might have been the biggest one on the list um that is where the city budgets all of uh all of the contributions and All the Monies that are needed to keep the Pension funds solvent including uh for our current non-certified people that we have here that have been in the pension plan for many many years so were we to be asked
071to begin to finance uh the pension contributions for one particular subgroup of a group that would be a departure from a long-standing practice uh here in the in the city um so we'll have to see how that goes but be very different I'm not sure what the arguments would be made why we should pick that up so yeah the other thing is uh you know when you when you have a lawsuit like that that it starts um the insurance company's accountants they'll want you to reserve something uh set it aside in case you lose um and even the second year if they felt things weren't definitely going their way uh the right thing to have done would have been to reserve some more money uh in case you lost so I'm hoping that they've put
072something aside for this day that remains to be seen but we'll keep watching thank you anyone else Mr Spang Eddie Mr Wilson any closing remarks if all questions so I I will just um just want to add one more thing to Teresa's question um we we were kind of caught by surprise by the news in the paper ourselves and started to scramble and trying to understand what this means for us um Teresa I think indirectly certainly it could impact us as a district but directly to John's point it should not um it should not be our responsibility because the pension is provided by the city however indirectly it could um and so obviously I hope it doesn't because you know we have our own needs in the right now um you know in terms of
073serving kids kids and children and families of Danbury but we will know some more specifics um I think in the coming the coming weeks for sure particularly since we have a meeting I believe scheduled next week thank you folks in cooperation counseling no problem you're welcome so Mr Russo looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday um to dig in a little deeper on during our workshop and um I'm confident we'll be able to answer the many questions that might need to be answered that night so we can continue to move forward with the proposal proposed budget we look forward to being there Mr Wilson thank you sir thank you look at John's smile all right any other questions final remarks I'll entertaining motion Teresa that we adjourn the meeting the motion to adjourn second done
074all in favor aye aye aye ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your time your your attendance and and all your questions that we brought forward tonight and I look forward to seeing everyone again on Thursday well I look forward to seeing every