001attending today's noontime financial update and well finance subcommittee meeting uh we have a few items on the agenda let's start with our monthly report update is where we are i know uh eddie was going to join us but i think i might as well start and then he can pick up i'm familiar with the report um i just i don't have it to share though he had had that if people have it um can they look at it or i can just talk about it um well sorry we can uh let's see i can leave you not leave you but uh see if i can bring it up okay i mean i can't share it but we all got emails on the agenda and but not being uh too computer savvy i can't uh chew
002gum and walk straight with a computer and but i do have okay go ahead john all right um so the report is uh through his expenditures encumbrances through the end of may and um the unencumbered balance uh at this point or if nothing changed is 98 we do have the graduation expenses you know for the middle schools and for the high school uh would likely come out of that they could be as high as uh seventy eight thousand dollars we're we're hoping they're less uh but so we don't expect uh any encumbered unencumbered balance at the end of the year and let me say that that's very different than the last two years uh the last two years uh pretty good size amounts were unspent at the end of the year but we attributed those
003uh to the fact that we didn't have school all year long in 1920 we closed in march and a lot of things didn't happen so i think it was 2.4 million went back to the city uh that year mostly from transportation and not having buses things like that and then uh last year meaning through uh there was a 2.8 million dollar return or unencumbered balances at june 30th and uh we attributed that to the same thing to the pandemic and the fact that we uh started the year uh hybrid and really um didn't get everything going until till mid-year but there were transportation budgets that weren't used because we didn't run the buses and same with health insurance people stayed away from the doctor but this year is different this year we had a tight
004very tight budget to begin with and we had a full year of face-to-face and all the programs and services so i think one one way to look at it is um yeah we did what we set out to do and there really isn't we don't expect there'll be any money uh left at the end of the year and you can see that in the report and uh eddie uh points out that we uh we're still keeping our eye on uh health insurance uh because as as you know we're self-insured meaning we we pay the claims for employees who've gone to the uh doctor or whatever they're doing um and we can't um there's a little bit of a lag there uh we don't really see first of all we don't see what you know much
005about the um what you know ails people we're just seeing the banking part of it where the claims are are being paid but they're they're kind of hard they've been hard to predict um in a pandemic year like this it just um it still has not been a normal year i think in the medical profession so we're we're keeping our eye on that um and that's why we uh not ready to say there would be money left um when when we shut down later this month um so that's uh that's the budget in what's going on uh there's attached to the report um is a letter from me to the city's uh finance director we attached that uh because it came we talked about it at our board meeting i think was kate brought it
006up so i if there are no questions on the budget um or the grants we had our usual grant pages there for you um i i'd like to find a minute to talk about that too john i have one quick question please yes um do you and you anticipate finishing the year either at a net zero or a positive do you do you don't do you not anticipate finishing in a negative i just want to be clear about that um i see eddie's joined us uh i it it you know it all come down to health insurance claims you know we're sorry guys having a little difficulty but um yeah just like john mentioned the health insurance claim um i can go through the the quick uh agenda not agenda i'm sorry my monthly report
007let me just share it real quickly so you guys can see it on your screen um yeah i went through the highlight i think were the highlights of it um already and we're talking about the unencumbered balance right well if anybody hasn't gotten look maybe you could bring the screen up so we could all be on the same page as far as the the monthly report and also are we going to finish it near a near zero balance without that extra 2.4 million dollars from um there was a possible dispute with the city from our on our budget different budgets no it's it's the same one the 2.4 million uh remember a year ago that was part of our operating plan that's what brought our budget up to a 139 million from 137 you see
008it right on the cover of eddie's report um it wasn't until february though that we um heard what i heard from the city finance director that that wasn't um automatic that we had to request that and only for certain reasons uh so i put together uh i think i shared that with the committee when it was going on we did put a request together and uh we found out that um just this month that request was approved and that the 2.4 million will would be added to our 139 million uh this week or next week or added to our to bring us up to 139. uh david saint hillary uh apologized that he hadn't answered it sooner um but that's that's all taken care of now so mr russo i know you had asked the
009question about the um the reserve monies and and i know john just said this i just wanted to restate it a different way and that is the 137 which was our operating budget uh we planned on the 139 and so for the entire year we were budgeting at 139 um and so we the the monies that you see with the projected 98 000 um at the end of the year is with the 139 number in mind uh so we budgeted against that reserve the entire year and kate um john and eddie eddie why are you trying to pull this up if to kate's questions about ending the near in the negative can you please walk kate and then also the committee through the plan if we do experience that spike um and claims um as
010as which is possibly it could happen so what what is the plan if you could talk everyone through that hey do you want me to answer them yeah i'm still having trouble sharing it well i have two screens and it's not grabbing from the second screen not even the first one so give me a quick sec sorry about that guys well the um the plan would be and i i've spoken with the city finance director about this uh possibility uh we talked about 10 days ago i alerted him to the fact that we were watching it closely we were really not in a position to predict and i asked him what would be the procedure if the claims continued to be high and exceeded our appropriation and and and pushed our budget in and i
011also asked about the timing of that i said when would you need to know that because we really won't know that ourselves uh probably until the uh first week or two in july when the the final junes come in um so one of the things we're going to get to at our our next agenda item is a look at the reserves that the city has uh currently uh for us and um one of those uh at least one of those reserves is specifically targeted for health insurance now it's you call it sort of a corridor when you are a self-insured employer like ourselves uh you're required to keep and reserve at least a month's worth of claims and uh we have that and a little more that's that's been on the city books for some
012time now uh so that that would be the first place we'd go to look because that's what it's for that's why it's there we would uh draw down on those uh reserves with the city finance director said and you know he's been consistent on these uh this he said well make sure you you've used all your other money first and there's no grants you can use and that kind of thing which is fine and that's that's how we'll do it but that was part of the conditions the other uh choice is the amount that we returned in june now the and that's on the letter i'll get to in a minute that's the 2.8 million that we'd like to get added to this year's budget uh but if we have to use some of that
013first for health insurance claims the way it's been designated on the city books is a very much a general amount unlike in prior years i'll explain that when we look at it so that that would be also part of the plan but i'd like i'd like that to be plan b if we could uh questions okay just a quick clarifying question john you've said that we need to keep at least a month's worth of uh health insurance claims in reserves is that calculated as like an average over the course of the the 12 months or how how did it mean how do what i've seen um the correspondence i've seen is that that's a recommendation that comes from our broker consultant uh gallagher uh the the city likes that in writing from them uh so
014i i'll find out i i don't know exactly but i can find out today and let you know how they do that it's a a concept that's not um unique to to dan marie it's uh it's powerful accounting gatsby's and all that stuff so that's kind of fun i'm trying to get a handle on you know what we have in our reserves currently versus what we should have in our reserves you know in anticipation of those numbers so it would help to just get that information thank you yep uh other questions or could we talk all you think about the letter that's attached i i think it's kind of important uh i don't know if you can put that up ed but it's a letter that i wrote on may 9th to the the city
015finance director and um it really was because we were getting ready to set our budget for next year and distribute the cuts that were we had to absorb and what i did was if you can you put that up at all or sorry john sorry everyone i'm just having trouble i'm actually cara's here trying to help me but i emailed it to cara um casimiro to see if she could share it i can't even see you guys to be honest i i just i hear you but i can't see you so um what the letter says is that there um it goes back to the city council meeting and the mayor's budget and says um it it it highlights that there were three component parts of the uh what the city was um identifying as
016uh school resources uh the first part was the 4.4 million 64 000 added to our operating budget that brought us from to 141 and that's what you voted on uh the other night um you'll you'll see that when we get to that agenda item oh there it is um this will be the third page uh said that yep let's pull it up here almost yeah it'd be the last page actually now i think about it so i don't know why thank you what thank you kara thank you john thank you everyone for being patient can you go to page 10 ed uh cara is sharing it can you go to page uh 10 um care that is the the last page there it is okay so uh there it is may 9th um which we
017have not gotten an answer by uh by the way but um i said because we're getting ready to adopt the budget um could you help clarify uh something and you'll see there uh numbers one two and three that's right from the mayor's budget book this is what the city council voted the first one there and increase in our funding brought us up to 141 million then uh there's the the 2.8 million what they describe as future non-recurring of budget needs that's the return from last june that that's our unencumbered balances last year um and the third piece was uh they believed or their uh i should say they're describing our increase in alliance fund money as money that's going to the board of education i won't we're not here to talk about that one but
018grants are separate they're not part of the 141 million you'll you'll see in a minute they're off budget we have an alliance grant of 17 million comes from the state of connecticut it was going up to 19 million most of that is to pay for increases and things like that for people that are already there off budget so it wasn't 9.3 million coming to the board of ed um nor was the 2.8 million coming to the border that um but anyway as you can see i i took an excerpt from the mayor's uh budget book where they said pursuant to a mutual understanding between the city and us that we could uh designate the remaining 2.8 million from last year but he says for non-recurring budgetary needs if needed so there was my question in
019the next paragraph could he clarify how we get these monies and if it was a mutual understanding under there's a connecticut statute that allows cities to reserve unencumbered balances it's 10-248 a so i said if that's how this mutual understanding was arrived at could we talk about it again because it permits city councils or town finance boards to decide exactly how specific this should be um different places take different views it seems here that what they're saying is the uh agreement here was to use it only for non-recurring things and i'm i was inferring maybe we could open the door and and use it for our operating budget uh but and then i ended ended the memo so we're we're still waiting for an answer on this um and that's why uh when we adopted
020the budget uh the other night we did it at 141 million because we don't have this uh non-recurring money uh allocated and and the way the the city manages us if you will is uh through our bank account we have a bank account from which we pay our payrolls and we pay our our bills and all of that and what they're they'll do is they'll put only 141 million in there it'll you know come and you know a couple times a month they spread it out but we won't get 143.8 million so if we plan to spend it we wouldn't be able to pay our bills uh come june that's why i i thought it best that we not uh adopt that spending plan and the programs and services in the event this money uh
021was not released for those reasons so that's um that's the other part of it happy to answer questions on that so it's also part of our our next agenda item questions move on go ahead um so john i you gave us a bunch of documentation this morning and i noticed that that 2.8 wasn't applied um but just doing some quick math if we do take that 2.8 out of the existing reserve funding that we have um that's going to drop us down to under nine million is that right about 8.5 well the the of course it's the city the city has the money so we wouldn't really we could request it i think is the way and if they granted it it would raise our our budget to um 143.8 million and yes there would
022be less reserve to use for other purposes you are correct okay i just want to make sure everyone understands where that money is coming from and what that leaves us but the reserves the reserves are not 9.3 million this is just what the mayor's book said but as i mentioned the alliance grant has nothing to do with the school budget it shouldn't be there honestly it's it's um i'm i'm just to clarify john i'm looking at the second page of the document you said it sent us this morning which has just the reserves breakdown it doesn't include alliance dollars in there correct correct okay it just happens to be close in total that's a coincidence okay so the total you're showing there on there is ten point uh approximately 10.4 million right i was hoping
023to walk uh for the second agenda item i want to walk through some of those documents if we're finished with this report you could go to that or your choice it's you know i'm going to share it to kara so share i'm going to send it to carousel uh cara cashier john okay or maybe i could share it cara just sent it to you okay i might be able to do it too okay can people see this no can you see my screen still looking at you jeff okay um see here sorry just takes a minute to come through the network it's the network's a little slow today so should we should have it any second here it is i i have it up i i mean i have my uh screen i just can't
024share it for some reason same here there it is okay all right so if you um these are the questions um it came in you just go to that for a second if you can um go to the second page cara thank you and if you could turn it sideways sorry this is the same list a little tricky hold on yeah or if anyone who has their email at home that would be good too um okay all right that's it okay so this is uh can you hear me okay yeah okay so this is the sheet that um we looked at last fall if remember this came from the city finance director and it was the breakdown of our reserves and you'll see at the top there that the important uh concept to me was
025they divided that into four categories so when i asked for that money in march i had to find reasons in each of those four categories that were non-recurring unexpected and in a memo i did that and that is the the money that was released um or i was told is being released uh this week so at the bottom oh and then that this the middle section those are those um other reserves and if you look in the middle the 2.1 million that's the the ibnr that's that corridor that's the health insurance amount i was talking about um and you can see some other more uh hard-coded reserves and then the total at the time was just under 10 million dollars so you if you look that and you see it says held on the city
026books so just in pencil there i lowered it you know the money that was released brought us down to 7.5 million but if you add what we contributed at the end of june the 2.8 million it brings us up to 10.3 million so i think kate those were your first questions for reserve funds held by the city what is the balance as of 7 122 after allocation moved to 2.8 well we could subtract that and we talked about the required recommended balance of reserves so did i did i answer that or questions on that so just to be clear john that seven seven and a half is closer to the number we're looking at once we have approval from the city on that 2.8 that we're looking for for the 2020 22 23 budget that's
027correct that's correct but it's you know it's in these categories so you see like 40 000 as a lap board of ed lap reserve elapsed his liability and auto policy um and then there's a part for workers comp and things like that so this is what i'd like to talk to them about is you know could we have some of these things relaxed a little bit so john just to go back for a second and make sure i understand this the remainder that seven and a half those are all designated category funds that we have to that we have to hold but uh i don't know you know i i honestly i know that the health insurance when you're self-insured you have to keep a reserve uh for i thought it was one month's claims
028but the others i i honestly don't know how they were arrived at a city council under this 10-248-a can decide those things it's like a house rule but there are also things that maybe were just set up as as good business maybe there was they had reason to um maybe they thought it would make sense to have a workers comp reserve or something like that again this is their balance sheet it's their decisions hopefully they consult with us a little bit but we've still don't have much to say yep excuse me john yes okay i apologize i realize i'm 29 minutes since the meeting but is there any chance that you could put together uh minutes for this meeting oh i got it i got it sorry i'm at work at the moment outside i
029really i got it out thank you theresa didn't want to thank you thank you um i do have one one question to clarify um the 2.4 release for the 2122 that's the one you just gotta okay to spend and that's what we based on uh 139 thousand dollar under 39 million dollar budget correct right and the way yes and the balance um from the initial covet year of 2021 is 28 or 2.8 million that's the second no that's the second covert year oh okay 2.4 was the first the 1920 year that was in march of 2020 that we were shut down right okay thank you okay all right okay so um kate the next uh set of questions have to do with the um the cares act the sr2 and the sr3 funds those are
030the um three coronavirus uh relief grants so what um what you asked was the original amount of the grant and the expiration date of each grant the grants balances and some other things so um in my as you look through the uh package the next thing i uh i'm sorry but i included the alliance grant award letter in there um when you uh get these grants you get a formal award letter and that the second letter is the um sr2 rant if you could put that up um you can see it's 11 million 168 000. that that should um also appear on eddie's grant report and you can see the uh the award period right up above there um it it ends in september of 23. what they mean is you your expenditures your encumbrances
031through june you can pay during the summer of 23. but that's um that's the 11.8 million and you can see for all intensive purposes uh there's one more year to go with that grant if you then uh go down to the next one you'll see uh what we call s or three uh that's uh 25 million dollars and you can see it goes for uh another year uh up until september of 24. the one uh the cares act which i just i should have included i'll hold it up it's in pink um that was 2.2 million and it it expires september 30th of 22 or this month we've we've spent all of that so those are the three uh grants and the glass for the grant and the expiration date uh the balances the the
032grant balances of 6 30 22 we don't have yet we have a few big things to go this month uh particularly what we call the final teacher balloon payment uh teachers can you know there they work 10 months but if they want to try and set aside some money for the following summer we hold back their pay and we give them a big check for the rest of their contract later this week so there's some big payroll about to go through i think eddie we thought it might be a 15 million dollar payroll on friday um so there's you know benefits and things like that with it so we don't have the june 30th uh balances but we do have um you know the balances through may so i think if you want to look
033at those i sent it to caracara can you share that um esser one two and three uh created it this morning so you guys can take a look of um what was budgeted what has been expended year to date what's encumbered and what the um end balance is as of may 31st um as john mentioned there is a big payroll on this month uh i'm sorry this week it's the final payroll the most important payroll of the year um which up to five to six pay uh paychecks per teacher the balloon payments which is uh 15 15 16 million dollars we'll know the exact amount um once the report is run tomorrow morning and um john and i will take a look at it and make sure you know uh you know dotting our eyes
034crossing our teeth to make sure everyone is in there um it should be did you get it i don't know if you got it carob might be page nine reporter eight no i didn't uh send it out i actually created it this morning i wanted to just to share with the committee so they can take a look at each line in them so these are um you know your 100 lines are your salaries 200 are your benefits 300 are you know service three four five hundred you're like property professional purchasing services uh then equipment line and it breaks it down by each grant so you see s or two in the description i didn't manipulate the system too much because i grabbed it from tyler to show exactly what the number looked like as of
035uh may 31st um so if you could see this and i can share with the committee i just didn't know if it would get there on time but i'll email it to um the committee so you guys could have it part of your document uh the packet and you'll see negative numbers i know those one questions there so for uh for example if you look at that social security 5200 line for the cares act which is the first one we went over budgeted on that that about ninety thousand dollars which we're rolling over to sr3 to cover that balance um i had mentioned it probably the last two finance committee meetings same thing if you look at the 289 the supply line for cares act there wasn't a budget created that when um we submitted
036it to the state so you know we did use the money we uh we did buy supplies but if you go all the way down um once you total this amount for all the esters there's more than enough money it's just once you get into the detail of each line some lines are in the negative some are in the positives very similar to what we've been doing the last few months and kind of uh transferring from grants to grants if it's allowable in the esser grants it's a lot more allowable for sr1 2 and 3. so very similar to alliance where you can do alliance uh a priority school is another one but other than that those are the really only two grants we can do uh transfers hey can i just ask a quick
037question here um those sr3 funds that are in the system did you guys only put the dollar amounts in that that were discussed as far as we're going to take x number of dollars for the for the 20 uh 21 22 school year and then you know divide the other section of this into the 20 20 22 23 school year or is is this does this reflect all of the esser funding here it reflects all the esr funding but for 2223 we need to read our resubmit an updated sr3 plan in order to move certain line items from line items in sr3 to cover those so the itemization here covers two school years or one two two school years thank you you look at our monthly report uh for the sr2 and the sr3 you'll
038see the same amount that matches the award letter so you'll see for sr3 25 million dollars as a budget but we're not spending a corset all down in the first year in in these expenditures are things that have occurred since the grants were approved in the fall okay all right and then uh so following up on eddie's question if you go down um the next question you asked was for an itemization of expenses that will be covered by the grant in and i included the alliance grant in the next group of papers you'll see that i sent you but this is the application that we send uh to the state of connecticut that gets approved and if you look at i don't know if i'm getting ahead of you cara but you'll see uh for
039each grant uh uh first you see a summary of the line items i i don't know if you can go back carry to my um care if you click that additional financial uh it's that tab at the bottom i'm looking at i can barely see if you click on that additional right at your bottom whatever additional finance get that one thank god so if you go down i think i'm probably on page eight seven or eight so there it is yeah it just passed so this is uh this happens to be our alliance grants the same thing for every grant they'll show you how they've approved you're spending it but as you go down a little more for everything we want to do we have to show if you went to page nine for example
040cara or ten you can see um the itemization of expenses that we we plan to do in the grant now for the um the esser grant uh if you were to continue i gave you all the alliance um the esr i think um begins let me just see there'll be another purple page that'll begin on page 24. um i think this is important um to know that the uh the very first page you know you'll see what the state uh allows you to use the s or monies for it was same with the alliance but um you know they remind you and they what you do is as you look for example at page 26 or 27 um maybe we'll go to 27. um that's a good page we we said we were going to
041hire 14 fte teachers for expanded campus for the school year if you look down student behavior specialists 13 elementary schools three in the middle school so these ideas all had to be approved by the state of connecticut they had depart state ed department they did it but what these were if you look at the amounts those were the amounts we would spend in this case over two years so um it's hard to see but you know the idea the sr2 grant was to hire these teachers uh pay him this year and next year and that's the amount of money that it was approved um so you can we have to do that for for every grant um so if you want to know what what we were planning to do itemized this is where you
042would look and then as you go down you'll see the same thing for the sr3 that begins on page 54. and you can see the different uses uh there and whatever i'm going to make it dizzy for a second cara and john can we stop for a second um there there was a of something to cast there was a the other one john and eddie the presentation when it gave the breakdown um at the conclusion of our budgetary process where that 9.3 million was on the screen can we find out when and put that one back up ed can you find that one and so we can get that one back up here that was that one pager where it gave the breakdown and it was like a nine i think it was like a
0439.3 million piece um and and i'll kind of speak to what's on the screen right now okay cara if you can share that i'm sorry kevin that's uh page number two is the one that you should go all the way back up to this file that's the correct file and it should be page number two that that page right there that's the one kevin's talking about no not this one it was the other it was the other one where theresa was asking clarification on the number there was a different one that she was asking about i think it was theresa and she was the letter that was submitted to uh to the city right right and i think the letter was explaining something to us is it this one eddie no it is um it
044should be that how many do you have four tabs i can only see four tabs of yours there should be uh yeah let me see if i could find the first one okay and so well well what cara is looking for for eddie and john i just want to share those documents that we were scrolling through fast is um representative of the presentations some members of this team courtney carrick kelly and i and mead when we made our presentations in the budgetary budget process for these federal funds coming in and so as part of that process we were anticipating um challenges uh with learning loss social emotional challenges and rachel kate to begin with al you might recall miss cooper you might recall us saying we're going to need an increase in guidance counselors we're
045going to need an increase of social workers we're going to need an increase of interventionists and so we were doing we were presenting those on pretty power points but what you saw in this submission to the state was to take all that information and actually submit it line by line what those positions would be what their purpose would be et cetera and we spread that over a three-year grant in essa ii and so3 and then cares uh you know for those first two years um when i when and i'm just summarizing what john and eddie have talked about um and and essentially given the shortcoming from the city we are now moved to revisit our three-year plan of so3 um and and frankly accelerate the last two years of that grant and make it a
046two-year grant instead of a three-year grant uh that's how we're planning to make up some of those monies but i wanted to get to the i think it's at the end of this document i'm not positive final page on this document but i i also yep this is the one so i also recall the moment um with city council uh when there were questions and and frankly i think there was you know i think some folks left confused well the the the district asked for a 12 point um you know a little bit over 12 million and we're only three million dollars off um and what's what's not accurate about that statement is yes we did get four million from the city but our ask was specifically for the operating budget and so when john
047said alliance is not supposed to be part of the operating budget and i just want to hammer home that point right so the 2.4 million was not part of our ask from the city we were already anticipating the 2.4 million dollar increase as part of our grants um the 2.8 million dollars from our reserves we were already anticipating and you guys might recall and i can i i i'm happy to also present something that reported reported out previously we anticipated an increase in claims for the 22-23 school year specifically health insurance claims in which we had eligible uh monies and reserves specifically for that purpose so that's what the 2.8 was for and so that it was not counted as our ass from the city because in our eyes we already had that money in
048the bank the 2.4 million from alliance was not in operating ask that's a grant separate from the ask from the city and so when john continued to say we have an 11 million dollar shortfall the number still remains we receive 4 million dollars from the city which obviously we're grateful for but it still fell 11 million dollars short of the 152 million we were saying we were needing the 2.8 and a 2.4 that are in this number right here that was separate and apart from our ass from the city the city as part of their presentation grouped them all together and said we're giving you 9.3 and again we already had 2.8 million dollars in the bank and we had already anticipated we will ask for that 2.8 million and apply it to the anticipated
049increase in insurance claims we had already anticipated the 2.4 from alliance in fact and as part of our presentation we said 1.3 million we would apply through grants for our for our um for our requirement to provide a new reading program next year right the other million dollar is quite frankly simply just in salaries alone for budgetary obligations so the 2.4 million dollar increase we're getting from alliance obviously we're happy about but it was already spoken for just between the salaries that are already in already in alliance the other million dollars is for the new literacy program that we're required to implement so our 2.4 and 2.8 you take those two out it's 4.1 million and again john continues to try to hammer home hey there's an 11 million dollar gap and so we're filling
050that 11 million dollar gap with accelerating so3 funds instead of spreading that over three years our our implementation plan is to implement is to spread it out over two years and so i just want to clarify some of those things one i want to clarify this page because it was i don't want to suggest it's inaccurate but these are not two and three on that you're looking at on your screen was not part of our operational ask our operational ask that we did receive is 4.1 the other two we already anticipated as part of our budget so i i just want to be clear about those things and i there may be some questions about those things i'm happy to answer them if we can so uh kevin i also in our um second piece
051of information at the back uh there's a chart that shows the grants um and also the numbers i think is the very last page someone wants to see it visually so that is also a page in there from the uh mayor's budget showing exactly what you just described i'm sorry which document john the additional uh finance material tab right there cara thank you um i think it's the last one of the last pages [Music] yeah yeah there's a graphic those shows the um i think one of the questions asked was um describe the funding sources so in addition to the 141 uh these are the different amounts of our grants next year um the big ones that is and then cara if you went to the next page i'm sorry the the other way um
052yeah so so here are the numbers themselves what they'll look like um and as as kevin pointed out um you see at the the top there is is june 9th of a year ago where we had the sr3 we were planning to spend over three years but now with the budget cut and absorbing that you can see at the bottom part um next the june 8th uh board meeting we decided to go over two years that's how we've absorbed the cuts so you can see nine million dollars would have been uh spent two years from now now we'll spend it next year the reason that's not 11 which is what the cut is is because we have some salary savings we have we get every year that's in in the memorandum i i sent you
053may 20th that's what we think is typical of all the attrition where we hire people at lower steps than the people who are are leaving and then we also will require fewer k5 sections next year just for uh the way the enrollment has come in so that's the difference between the 9 million you see there in the 11 million uh that was cut john can you go back to that um the chart for a second with the grant on it yeah just the page right above it yep yeah um i just want to make sure because my understanding is the alliance dollars we receive are reflected in that 141 million dollar budget uh not at all that's that's what that's why we object uh no um maybe i'm asking the question the wrong way um
054the sr sr2 sr3 cares money title one money that comes in separately from like the main budget that the city gives to us yes and the alliance funding is rolled into the city dollars now it comes in just like the now it comes in just like the s or cares act title one yes it's a it's a grant you saw um i put the application in the package you have we have there are only certain things you can do with it we have to ask the state for permission they approve it and then the money comes and we have to have a separate accounting of that uh you're in reporting if we have a change um that grant is managed by the state ed department just i i think what um the confusion comes is
055because when um when the state of connecticut finances it they finance it out of our state aid and that's how it it gets discussed but but the actual management of the grant it's no different than any other grant we have it's it's not part of the 141. i you know this year i heard someone say uh someone at a city officials say well we don't have to give them the alliance but we are i don't understand that at all it's it's for educational purposes it's it's not for general taxpayer relief whatsoever right in fact i think the history of it is you know it was really designed to be a an equalizer to help districts that didn't have the tax base that some of the more affluent ones did just to level the playing field
056so that our kids would have the same opportunities as anywhere else that's the purpose behind it but it does roll in through with ecs i'm sorry to interrupt but alliance and ecs come together right and it's and and my understanding is the alliances is can be loosely applied to to things and it's not um as restricted as maybe some of the other grants well it maybe carrick um casamaro could help but i think it's it's designed uh for educational initiatives uh and things that are done there i know iris is around carol could you comment on the purpose of the alliance yeah uh sure um so so the alliance grant is typically supposed to supplement um educational initiatives for um high needs students so we we generally um in in so there's i forgot how
057many alliance districts we have now but you'll find them generally in areas where um that are a little bit lower performing more high need students um and and and where there's there's the need so it's intervention reading programs supplementary academic programs for students social emotional supports um you know positions for um leadership positions that support those areas that i just mentioned so it really isn't uh you know to john's point earlier it's not supposed to be a catch-all for for any staff that we need to put in there there there is an allowance for some operational costs in there but primarily it's for supplementation of services other questions okay it's pretty complicated i'll say that much it's not we think sometimes we talk about these things as john is the are the are the uh
058the um is that in this packet i could find it it's pretty straightforward i'll show i'll search this packet i think it's in here for what are you looking for the alliance the list of items for alliance that are intended it's at the very beginning it's probably page three or four it's the the approved application [Music] it'll be right after that here it comes right there it should show the reason the purposes yeah yep okay been around a long time now and kara wasn't it originally used here at uh for kindergarten maybe for more full day or yeah so we we used it before because we had half day k um and we used it to increase to full day credits full day case so we have quite a few of our kindergarten teachers are
059in the grant maybe all of them i have to go back and look okay okay do you think we got all the all the questions yeah the other thing i did i know you asked about some of the um specifics in next year's budget we could maybe do that at our next meeting but i did put the table of contents in that from our budget book that we um submitted to the city and that has some details um it you might recall we have we are going with more of a building based approach this year so and we built it all online so a lot of the decisions as to what we were going to buy were made by the building principles and program people this year certainly get out that information if you'd like
060i certainly appreciate you putting the documentation together i've been at work since 8 this morning so that was a a lot of work to try to go through before the meeting here um but i will in the next uh in the next week go through that uh pretty thoroughly and let you know if i have any questions thank you okay all right does that cover the agenda item now do you think that's what well yeah and as long as we're in session here um where do we stand we submitted the city audit have we submitted them every document they've asked for we have anything outstanding because i i saw a note that needs to be completed by june 30th just to make sure that we're hard to hit that one so i'm gonna send i
061was sorry i can't display my screen um i'm gonna follow up i had two emails i wanted to show you that that are pretty recent um you know we're we're using a professional municipal auditor to help us with this um effort dan pappalardo is his name and uh the first is an email from him to the auditors on sunday morning june 12th where he said i just uploaded two responses from john spang concerning accounts receivable quote as of now i believe this completes the recent open items asked for by your firm i did ask for an outstanding item list from you last week but have not received anything i am not sure if that is good news or bad so here's a professional municipal auditor saying this looks like they've done everything they need to
062do you didn't tell us anymore but then uh monday morning yesterday the field auditor writes back the priority school selection support has not been provided please attach our selections for the title 1 grant i'll send alliance selections by noon and we'll send outstanding items additional requests by the end of the day we also need a batch detail for revenue so it continues we're working on this new stuff as best we can uh but i i think for a professional auditor to think they're finished um i did too but apparently there's more so as of the 13th i've asked for additional information item completely yeah yeah and when they say i'll send the alliance selections by noon um they go into the alliance grant into our reports um look at the detail and they'll ask for
063backup on certain samples they'll they'll be looking to make sure that the things that are in the alliance grant belong there and are in the right year not the the wrong year that what's missing here though is this kind of work the sampling the testing all of that is usually done in the springtime and should have been done in the spring of 2021. when they come back in the fall they're not sampling they're not testing they've they've checked all your systems they come back in the fall to put the report together the the city's annual financial statement but as you can see here they're they're they're doing work that should have been done uh earlier i i don't know why it wasn't i you know this is before my time but it's a very un
064unusual and not standard procedure my my experience okay kara's sharing the letter that uh um john received this sunday if you guys can see that that's a from the auditor that we hired to help us out during this audit yeah it's right there in his um you know as of now so what i might do al is um i i may ask the city finance director to send some of his accountants over here to wrap these things up um you know they don't work fridays maybe they could come here on a friday instead and do it but we just we need more manpower if this is what they want understood sir uh so if you're getting new requests for new info new info as a late of yesterday or monday uh yeah great idea so
065uh the next time i i received some school security nicer and um we we've had a director a chief of security for now for five or six years and and i guess my questions are uh what improvements has he made have we made his in district over since the man's tenure and uh because of the present uptick in violence issues nationwide uh what are we doing to safeguard our students for starting in september because i realize you can't do this overnight but it is an item of concern for me and god forbid the city of danbury has the worst day in the history the last thing i want to do is tell a parent is we didn't want to pay for it all right oh so mr russo i mean that's a loaded question i'll
066see if i can certainly is sir so so one i i'm not sure when rich started uh but i can tell you from when i started in 2018-19 the district at that time was implementing recommendations from a study that had been done post sandy hook in which we were implementing festivals in all of our school which was recommended nationally as kind of best practice to help safeguard our buildings safety advocates were implemented throughout the school district again i think these were recommendations from studies that have been done district-wide um so that that's something that's been in place since and so if you were in this district pre-1819 and you went to our school buildings and so for example if you went to because i think this is one of the schools that had this implemented
067um last um and that's king street primary you go into that building you can no longer enter a door and then you're immediately available to the entire school population you are directed directly to an office which limits um the the access to the entire school community right and so the same is true yes theresa um i appreciate the can we get this in writing can we get a summary um of all this information and give us time to digest it for the next uh our next board meeting sounds very comprehensive and we do want to hear that seriously i think it'll be helpful if i have in writing what you're asking because i'll just ask the question i'm just trying to unpack some of the questions he asked so if you you have it in
068writing and we can certainly respond to it um i think mike in the last meeting gave an update on some of the many upgrades um that were made and are being made right and so if if again if you've been in this district prior to 1819 and you went around our schools that extra layer of um protection from the public was not there so if you go to ace there's a vestibule in which you have to be buzzed in two times the same is true of danbury high school and various buildings across the district again this is an extra layer of protection that's provided the safety advocates is not something that was implemented in the district pre-sandy hook and it was a strategy that was implemented post sandy hook and that is the advocates at
069every building along and i'm assuming the district has uh resource officers uh pre sandy hook and so that that was something that was already in place i i would imagine and then on the upgrades and cameras across district y and so this is right now the second the second round of camera camera implementation there's been a upgrade in my short time here already and we're in the middle of an additional study and received uh recipient of a major grant to upgrade our cameras across the district and so the safety study that's being conducted right now um is not only just recommending more cameras but strategically where they're to be placed we will have an updated security study done which will give us feedback on every school in the school district and and how we can
070make our schools um safer um and so that that is also some information we will have and obviously there will be some next steps accompany with those with those recommendations um and then uh last but not least um and this is the big one we also applied for another grant which is the mutually grant in which um the emergency response and the danbury police department upon invitation will have access to our cameras in all of our schools and so the event of emergency uh the chief of police and emergency management system can have access and strategically can enter our buildings based on what they can see and their cameras uh and so there there are a lot of things going on uh we budgeted i believe 250 000 because that is part of the matching
071grant uh for the mutual league grant but there's a lot of you know a number of different things going on district-wide and then of course the last thing that we've talked about uh which was last week which is about you know as a strategy on the board considering on the idea of armed guards in schools uh to complement the advocates and school resource officers that we already have district-wide so i mean just to kind of recap of since i've been here 1819 what's been going on and then this last year i'm trying to you know because we've been out there competitively applying for grants and finding ways to um leverage additional resources to provide as many upgrades as possible so just just a quick overview but this is really just a recap of what mike
072presented out the last four weeks okay so i noticed that the number of safety advocates in my recollection and let me caption have gone down at danbury high school the number has decreased and uh and as i say these times i'd like personally i would like to see more people more boots on the ground if you would sir but i i understand um there are different strategies strategies to implement such as putting the alarms and buzzers on the doors when they open that there's a notification uh one but all right thank you very much for the update sir that question answered asked and answered you welcome no uh also i received some information uh on salary increase increases uh for exempt personnel is this the forum to discuss that or do we do that in
073executive session okay we need an executive session okay he asked an answer i'm done do we have anything else any other board members any other any other committee members additional questions you're in there fading in and out ms goober [Music] i hear you [Music] and it's very it's very to me can't hear it is it possible to get this all glass from the phone fielder question [Music] we're having a really hard really you know you see we see different numbers we have with the understanding and again we really it's cooper you're not you're not coming through at all i don't know if you can hear us at all and i'm just looking on a second i'm talking to the gladys right now i think there's a delay on her own um gladys i'm going to
074try to um hold you up to the microphone here on my end if you want to say that just a second okay you might have to disconnect she has to mute herself on her you hear me there hang on that's her phone so we're just it really is delayed gladys can you mute yourself yes on that end the video you know i try i try uh to attend as many as these committed me to step i probably can and to me it has seems to be every time the information is different or we don't really understand what we're saying how we're saying and i have to get back to you with additional information and i know at some point that happened but it just seems like especially the uh letter john sent out to davidson
075claire you know it was sent out may tonight and as of now you haven't heard anything from them and and it needs to be a follow-up because you do things business-wise in a business time fashion and i think for us as board members i'm not no financial person i have tried my best to go along and understand what's going on we talked about essa funds we're talking about the uh the operating uh budget we talked about the 2.4 million dollars we talked about the 2.8 million dollars and and there's information out that other people are giving out to other people concerning those numbers that are not true you know the actual information so you know i i just i guess i i need to hear some type of clarification for myself and be able to
076say this is what this board is this committee is putting forth this is what we understand numbers are this is why we are at zero do we know come in june july you're telling me that if we're not the health insurance doesn't come true we're not going to know whether we're uh we have money or we don't have money and and i think we really need to be clear is how we talk to people and how we get this information to people uh because like you know today was a little bit more clear day to me but if i'm confused i can imagine other people that's not even here at the meeting will be confused when they hear this again so it's just clarity and really understanding what we're doing so uh i didn't mean
077to go rather only on this chair but but thank you thank you gladys these are board members subcommittee members any additional questions going twice board members any other board members will be present with any additional questions mr spang do you have a closing statement sir so mr russo if i may before john speaks um i i just want to say to the committee um and some i know that we also have some board members that are also in the meeting um i i need until the next court meeting requested in the last meeting that we will have a presentation update for the 22-23 school year um the the 22-23 school year requires some significant adjustments that finance office is still updating but based on our last report and guidance to the board and that is
078we are looking at accelerating our so3 payments um to address the gap that we did not fill with um the city the city monies uh which we which which is going to require of us a lot of shuffling around our staff to make sure the board can see it and the public can see exactly where where folks are in terms of their payment source um and so what what what we plan to do we will have available for the board packet on friday um detailing uh what 20 kind of forecasting with 2223 looks like and operating uh kind of who's going to be paid out of operating but also what that means for ester 2 and s3 given that keras has now expired ester 2 has one more year left s3 originally planned for two
079more years will now just be for one more year which means the cliff is upon us in one year instead of two at the same time provide a little bit clearer picture on alliance funds how we maximize those and how we've also maximized our other title grants so we will provide that kind of update as part of the presentation request that i had made um in our last board meeting so we will be ready for our next meeting on the 22nd and that information will be available in a packet on friday uh but but i did know that we there was no way we're going to be able to turn that around for the committee meeting in my eyes the committee meeting was for our typical monthly updates i could there was no way i
080could turn all that information around in time before the board meeting on thursday but i i will have it make sure that that information is available for the board as part of friday's packing thank you sir thank you mr eddie could you do us a favor in that itemization that you had put together for the um grants to esser grants um could you send that information to us please yep we'll do thank you so much anyone i'm just speaking of sending information um could i request that if information is sent to committee it be sent to the full board okay thank you and i was also just reminded we will we will need some action on the 22nd regarding the specs uh for danbury career academy um so just the heads up we did get
081our enrollment update um so we're positions us to finalize our ed specs which will require some board action thank you thank you for the update sir i hope by the grace is where we will be prepared to vote on those questions anyone else i have 1 20 1 21 pm i'll take a motion to end this meeting so moved everyone i will see you hopefully this evening and it's in person live meeting mata i'll second it thank you for seconding teresa all in favor