2025-03-26 School Board Budget Workshop

001are we on streaming okay we're on all right good evening well oh sorry good evening Welcome to our um ms8 15 School Board Workshop where we'll be focused on our budget process tonight and bear with me actually in learning about the new mics I have been caught out and don't have my um agenda up thank you Harry oh you have a written one for you know I love paper um all right so we are going to call this meeting to order um Lauren is out sick tonight I do oh here's Missy so otherwise everyone's accounted for we have a quorum let you get to your seat um and as with all of our meetings Let's uh start with the Pledge of Allegiance States America to the for it stands one nation Li and justice for

002thank you uh upcoming meetings we have a bunch related to our budget work so we'll have our Workshop tonight April 9th will be the finance committee meeting so the work uh and discussion we have tonight will send back to that finance committee at 6:30 in the high school library on April 9th um at that point that committee will likely vote on a final budget that they would forward back to us at the full board April 16th we'll have a business meeting at penel and gray at 6:30 where we will hopefully ourselves uh vote on the final budget and then the town meeting budget validation will happen on May 22nd at 6:30 here in the cafetorium space uh please note that is a Thursday usually we do our work on a Wednesday so that's a change

003um and that's it for upcoming meetings I would ask for comments from the audience um ask your question first yeah um are we not meeting on the second which is the first Wednesday of the month um we must be this just has meetings related to the budget okay so when I say upcoming meetings these were related to budget meetings we will as ever have a business meeting on the first Wednesday of April okay sorry all right I get it and uh public comment um bear with me I'm going to join I'm gonna find you with the mobile mic so we'll start and you can pass it good good evening my name is Julie frck I'm from New Gloucester I have two grandchildren one of whom is in uh prek and one of whom will be

004entering the system in a couple years so I really appreciate the opportunity just make a few comments um first of all I just wanted to commend the staff for a really very thorough thoughtful comprehensive easy to understand presentation that was done I thought at just the right level it was high level enough so I could follow it but in enough detail that I could you know understand some of what went behind it so I really really appreciated that a lot um there were I'd say three or four things that kind of stood out to me that I would just kind of note and hope that you might reconsider or think about um the first was related to the ASL program and I know that that was with a lot of regret that there was a

005proposal to eliminate the as SL program um but I also know that it's one of the more popular programs it makes you on new gluster unique once these programs leave you don't really get them back it's hard to build them back up and um I certainly don't know the process of trying to recruit but I would think that trying to recruit when you know you have a known position in the immediate future may result in different things than recruiting for something that might be available in the future so I'm not suggesting that it wasn't done with a lot of due diligence but I just caution eliminating that if you don't absolutely have to because it is so popular it is unique it's a great skill for the kids so that was one thing that stood

006out the other was the um elimination of the summer school and again the suggestion that you'd know better if you eliminated it but I don't think it would take much to hypothesize that if you eliminate it the kids actually will not do as well because that's why they're being um offered this program and for the little ones to be able to backslide so early in the educational system it's really hard to catch up and they lose their confidence and their opinion of themselves and it's in the long term to me I think shortsighted to try and eliminate uh summer school and I understand there staffing issues and and whatever but I think holding strong on that would be very important um just sort of a short-term investment for a long-term um education for the kids

007the third area um which I would just note is just the Ed Tech question in terms of um increasing all the hours to 35 hours again um you know there's a lot of competition for staff and W uh employees these days and it's not just a matter of wages but it's a matter of hours and to the extent that that can be equalized in my understanding that that was maybe not going to happen this year um again I could be wrong about any of these things but that's kind of a high level thing so again trying to provide Equity among an important level of Staff in terms of the hours that people have um to me again just makes sense in terms of um as as employers of of um your staff and then the

008fourth thing um it wasn't clear to me from your health insurance increase whether that was totally going to be borne by the district or whether in fact it would have a trickle down effect on the employees by virtue of them having to share uh a greater cost so to the extent that it's being borne by the district and not the employees being asked um to um take on that burden I applaud that because I've seen in under instances where there's a 3% increase given and it's basically taken away when you ask employees to to contribute more to their health insurance so I wasn't exactly sure about that but I applaud you if in fact um you're not going to be asking the employees to assume a greater share um of their cost for the health

009insurance um so those are just the four things that stood out for me I appreciated the the um thoughtfulness that went into it I think we're you know compared to the other districts absolutely holding the line but it's easy to slip back and not be able to catch up over time and so to to be able to maintain services at a level that seems reasonable relative the number of students I think is really important um so those are the four things to just stood out to me thank you thank you U do you want to just pass it do we have more public comment we can pass pass the Hot Potato so we don't have questions today but we do have public comments so you can you can give us your input or your thoughts

010um hi my name is Sue Fuller I'm from Gray and I just have a few questions I I brought the budget from last year that was adopted and I since you're not answering but I'll I'll just tell you my some thoughts um last year in speech services it was 65,000 put in and I was wondering how much of that has been spent um and then also last year that was brand new and then they also put special needs in 35,000 contracted services and cost center 040 they also put private tuition outside placement 98,000 and that was all new last year and then they put in 100,000 in cost center 030 uh private tuition and let's see what else I get here and then they put 100,000 in cost center 310 outside placement and then um

011this went from 15,000 to 105 and I was just wondering if they spent all their Hardware related to the uh device refresh and then I was also wondering um you have IB I believe at the high school and you also have a budget for GT and I was wondering if you need a GT if you have IB and then I also want to make a comment about um the budget how you run the budget you have it budget to budget to budget there's no actual figures there um there should be one year of actual figures um oh one year of actual figures instead of just budget to budget to budget so I was wondering if we could make a change there and then the other change I'd like to see is on each one of

012these cost centers you start start off with guidance counselors well guidance counselors is kind of at the end of the budget what what is the most expensive line in the school budget is teacher salaries so you should really start with teacher salaries so the most expensive line in each cost center so I was wondering if anything could be changed can I ask you a quick question no I just want to know what she's referring to what document is she referring to the budget documents that you use each year oh this is the expense for last mon no this is the adopted budget from last year I printed it off and I was just hoping I do budget at my school district and um and it's really easy and clear and and it's nice if you

013had some actual expenditures because it appears that you're budgeting from budget to budget to budget and you've got to look at your actual cost and budget and a percentage over actual cost um and not budget to budget because this is getting really out of hand we're not a big school department and having two years of over a $2 million increase is a lot for the people and all that tuition that I was talking about I was wondering um how much of that has been spent um I'm also wondering instead of doing like line by line by line why don't we set up a contingency for tuition uh private tuition for special ed and if students come in you can transfer the board can authorize a transfer from the contingency into the Schoolboard budget that way

014this money if it didn't get spent you can spend it any way you want on anything so this way we would have a contingency fund with some money in it that will always be sitting there and ready to roll if you need it for tuition because uh you can move 5% from um from the 11 cost centers so it's just I just have concerns because there was so many big lines put in last year and I've asked for a copy of the expense report I I emailed um the school this week um so I didn't know when I would be getting it so I could um go over and examine things and myself so that's all I have to say oh I do have one more question health insurance um you budget at 10% and

015I was wondering on health insurance um you get a a letter of experience from Anthem I was just wondering if your experience was more than what you paid in was it the same was it under what you paid in I was just curious about that too thank you thank you anybody else all right thanks moving moving forward in our agenda we will uh take up old business first with a presentation of Staffing and enrollment um over time thank you everyone um so David is coming around with copies of these slides these will also be posted on the website um tomorrow morning um as well as an additional support document for when we get to um our business items number three under old business um so that's coming around if having that visual of the slides

016is helpful for you great and if it's not that's fine your choice um you good David okay so um item number one uh a question had been posed to us about um enrollment and how enrollment has looked over time that's something we presented as part of our um draft proposal last week that feels like it was about a year ago um and a question was brought um from the committee about what our staffing has looked like over that same time period um so we played around a little bit to try to find some um visuals that helped tell the story best I think it's a little hard when you're looking at those numbers um the chart that is on the left here is enrollment over time that is the chart that was included in the

017original um presentation so it's the same one so you can see here our enrollments going back to 2013 2014 all the way through our predictive for 2526 and 2627 this chart that we've added here on the right is what our staffing has looked like over time this is specific to our um classroom teachers so if you teach English math social study Science World Language music art those sorts of positions it doesn't include like therapeutic Specialists like o s or pts or or that kind of things these are um content Area Teachers whether that's like a second grade classroom teacher or um a World Language teacher here at the high school um this is the number of FTE of those type of Staff we had um in each of the school years going back to 1314

018so you can see that at our high we were at 136.34 um these are FTE or full-time equivalents um I know 44 is a number but we have some people who are you know 7 or some people are 08 and it came out to um 1 36.4 that has steadily decreased as our enrollment has decreased we've tried to be um anticipatory knowing that our student population was kind of going down over time we tried to be thoughtful about how we did our staffing as well so for the coming year what we are um proposing the budget as it is now proposes to have 122.75 equivalence down from that high of 136 uh thank you for this question what does this like did you can you do the math for me what is is the ratio

019like it's I see that they're both going down but what does this mean in terms of our you know overall are they going down at the same rate or on a sec yeah so there's a lot of different ways you can kind of calculate that you can calculate it as um percent of total you can count count it as percent of um staff to student you can calculate it as um you know staff per student ratio so I ran six different sets of numbers um using different ways that you can kind of measure that proportionality it was pretty steady over time um so when you look year to year it means a little bit of fluctuation but basically that that ratio of the number of sort of instructional teachers we have to enrollment has remained

020about steady across this time period that we looked at Sam in very basic terms we have decreased our staff by 10% and our students by 11% all right thank you seems pretty close can you I just want to make a note you said generally speaking staff 10% down students 11% down yep okay okay does does anyone have any questions or feedback about this piece of information before we move on I'm I'm not sure how to um ask this except um with all the other positions teaching positions like um the um guidance counselors and stuff is that all included that is not that's not so that additional staff um would that fit into this picture at all because don't we have a lot of additional staff it's a great question Fran and and we spent a

021lot of time trying to be thoughtful about what to include and what not to include we did um at this time decide to stick to um instructional teachers and we did that because so many of these other positions are not enrollment dependent so the number of Occupational therapists we have are based on the number of children that we have with IEPs that need those occupational therap Services um so they're not enrollment based they're student need based and so if we are looking at are we right sizing our staff based on our enrollment then looking at those instructional teachers is the most appropriate way to answer that question and this is in keeping with the chart feels most in keeping with the chart that you show us with its classroom teachers right per students per class

022trying to hit that instructional goal correct okay anyone else you have to get so close to this thing it's so awkward okay so let's move into fund balance capital reserve so um there have been a number of questions um we've discussed here at the board around this piece so we thought it was important to test take a little time in this workshop and dig in a little bit so our general fund draft fund balance as of June 30 2024 was 7,180 238 it's important to note that that is still a draft number until our Auditors confirm that we are correct about that it is considered a draft number and we are still waiting for our final report from our Auditors so everything we're talking about here will not be officially finalized until we have that

023official sign off from the auditor so please put that um please keep that in mind when you look at a um total fund balance there are three types of funds that represented in that number committed assigned and unassigned so we're going to talk a little bit about what that means so our draft unassigned amount is is 2,329 515 um funds that are unassigned are those that are within the school district for general purposes um generally speaking if you think about it kind of like the business World sense it's our operating expenses it's our cushion um so the example we use here is um if a a payment from the state of Maine were to be delayed or a payment from the towns which is you know where our Revenue comes from if there were to

024be a glitch of some kind and that payment was delayed we still have to make a payroll of about $800,000 um so having a cushion of 2.3 million it I know it does sound like a lot of money um but realistically we do need to be carrying a certain amount of money to make sure that we have operational funds should something go wrong um there is a statute that limits the percent that you can have in this unassigned um You Might Recall we've talked about this a little bit at the board you might recall that that number that percent went up during covid they allowed us to um carry a little bit more in that unassigned um that statute has Dro back down to 5% um and based on how we have um spent we

025should we're going to be within that 5% um just fine because of the contribution that we've done to um to our expenses in the current year so we will be within that 5% as we get to the end of the year we then have the draft assigned um amount and assigned balances are those that were set aside for a specific purpose but didn't necessarily require like official board action or vote um in this particular case it includes the 1.5 million that the board approved last year to use for the revenue of this current school year so 1.5 million of that amount is that uh the remaining um represents amounts that are um uh assigned for different reasons so um I thought I had examples in here but I just remembered I took them out um

026so assign for other reasons so um like the plants and funds would be an example of that um we've got some money from an opioid settle settlement that's another example where we've been given these funds they are not time limited to the fiscal year like other sources of revenue are but they are for a specific purpose we can't just go use them for anything we want we have to use them for the purpose that they were delineated um in addition to that assigned that number represents FY 24 expenses that as of June 30 20124 hadn't been paid out yet um so we had made the purchase a lot of times we'd even received whatever is we'd ordered or whatever it was but we hadn't received the invoice to make the payment yet so there's a

027certain amount of that 2.1 million that was already assigned to expenses we just hadn't received the we just hadn't made the payment yet then we get into the draft committed um and committed funds in the capital in the in the fund balance are um put to a specific Purpose By formal action of the board um in this case um and I'm sorry my plants and an opioid example was not for the other one it was for this one that's why I'm confused I apologize um so committed funds are fund balances reserved for by formal action of the board so for example the board has formally moved funds into a capital reserve account that is to be used for Capital funds um and then the other funds are those Revenue sources that have an intended purpose

028like the planson and the opioid settlement and so we've been talking a little bit about capital reserve and we will um extend this conversation much more we can talk about a little bit in our Workshop if we want but it's really um deep work of the finance committee and the facilities committee over the next couple of weeks um but we've been talking about using our capital reserve um to to move forward some investment in our facilities so our capital reserve right now stands at 2.4 million a little bit over uh what we're proposing in next year's budget is that we would increase our facilities investment by $50,000 that would bring the local investment in facilities to $200,000 and that we would use 300,000 of capital reserve so we we're proposing we would put about a

029half million into the um maintenance and upkeep of our facilities next year we're then kind of looking out five years ultimately we think getting to about a $400,000 per year investment in the upkeep of our buildings would be um a good investment for us so we're looking at slowly increasing the local budget over time to meet that need using the capital reserve to um to fill the Gap until we get to a place where we where we are steady over time um that still leaves a capital reserve of 1.7 almost 1.8 million that we could consider for bigger projects again that would be um as part of a board conversation of what we use those funds for so that is as I said we're going to I'm sure Finance needs to get deep into it

030facilities will'll need to get deep into it um but I did promise I'd bring back more information about that um and so that's where where we are in our best recommendation for the capital reserve so to sorry so to be clear in how we read this is so fiscal year 2025 50,000 plus 200 plus 300 so you're saying the the No No I am realizing that that slide has an error because it would be fiscal year 26 I'm one year off on all of these can you can we update on that on the slide and we will correct it when we post it so to start with 26 starting with the coming school year which is actually fiscal year 26 so the fif so how folks read this is the $50,000 is what we're proposing

031we increase from what we did previously correct which was 150 leading us to a budget of two proposed budget of 200,000 and we're saying in addition to that we should invest 300,000 from capital reserve for a total use for the year towards facilities of 500,000 leaving us with that still the capital reserve little over 2.1 million in the capital reserve questions on this go um what is the um capital reserve use going to be for where is the D Mar for you mean the capital reserve in total or what we're proposing to bring into use I'm sorry I couldn't hear you capital reserve um use 300,000 okay was that what is that ear marked for yeah so that's the part that will be um will need to be the conversation at facilities we have some

032ideas about what we would like to prioritize for Investments you know we have a project list we've been working with in facilities for uh most of the school year so um I think there's some discussion to be had about which ones are most important and which ones are most impactful um so we haven't necessarily finalized that list but essentially it would be air marked to address the the facilities list of up of upkeep and upgrades we need to do Penny sorry yeah go ahead did you have more I have one more question go um do you have any idea when the audit will be ready um did we file for an extension at all or we were we filed for and were approved for an extension I think we reported that at Finance um earlier

033this year and it was approved by the state I shared that out with the finance committee also yep that's the original but what about the upcoming audit do we have to do another extension we have not hit our new deadline yet nope we're still yep we're okay so far uh so uh I appreciate that we're talking about the capital reserve um I think this maybe doesn't go big enough with the capital reserve um you know one of the things that we talked about when we put the largest portion of this we put a million dollars in this uh two years ago I think it was with the um kind of money that we still had available to us with the with the covid you know we were able to kind of pay for some things

034and put this ahead with the idea that we were laying seed money for the bond project right so we knew there would be a lot of impact we put through such a large Bond so one of the ideas that we had is we would sock some money away in our capital reserve and then we would ease the pain of the new Bond payments so it wouldn't be such a 0o to 60 kind of situation um I would suggest if we are in you know uh there's some things that we can't avoid like a you know if we're really going to have our health insurance go up 17% that's like $750,000 which is a huge amount of money that we can't do anything about we've contracted the teachers that sort of thing um we did pass

035uh a bond this year and one thing I would suggest that we consider is that we use capital reserve to pay for that first year of bond payments so that first year of bond is kind of eased in and doesn't hit our sort of local contribution right away so I and I actually support this 300,000 as well um you know 2.4 million is a healthy amount when we're talking about you know the earliest we could possibly get another Bond question on the ballot would probably be June 26 by which point you know who knows what the situation will be so if we were to take 300,000 to add to our facilities budget and then I think our bond payments for this first year 350k something like that it's basically 1% of the budget in Broad

036terms I would I would propose that we take that extra 350,000 out of the capital reserve and that would drop the impact of our budget increase by about 1% and I think it is to the spirit of what we you know said we were putting the money in the capital reserve for um and I think that leaves us with a healthy enough balance we'd still be at 2.8 2.75 I mean 1.8 1.75 which you know is a lot of money um and I would hope if we're not going to put forward you know a significant bond package in the future that we would hear proposals for can we spend $500,000 to expand our field space can we expend $500,000 to expand you know the Arts and Music Space that we've been told is insufficient so

037um that's kind of my thoughts on the capital reserve as well I you know I I think we should get creative in how we deploy it this year uh thanks Sam I actually uh agree um I had like a whole thoughtful thing prepared but I'm just going to say ditto to Sam um before we get into that I think that's a great kickoff to to the discussion we want to have is there more to this piece chander are we free to have stop here and have like a you know kick this around so not to this piece but in the next round of questions and feedback I have an updated figure for you would you like to see that before you start kicking stuff around sure yeah let's go ahead and get all the information

038and then we'll have our thing before we move on does anyone have any like clarifying or fact-based questions for this piece okay yeah let's get all our get all of our in information to us and then we can um talk okay so since I last saw you we have gone back to the drawing board as I shared with you um last time actually let me back up I'm not going to go over anything we've already gone over in meetings so I'm not going to walk you through our whole process I'm just going to give you an update of what we've done since last week so um if folks have questions about that like we have it all listed on our website there's a video you can watch if you really want to listen to me

039talk for an hour about this um good on you uh the the presentation is also there if you just choose to read it I am not offended um so this is just the update of the work we have done um since last week so we have continued to do our line by line review of multi-year spending um and continue to make just little reductions that are appropriate to spending um it these come out as Cuts but I think it's a cut that is aligned to um more in line with what we have been spending and I think that's really important um to point out we aren't reducing Services we aren't saying we're going to do less of that we're saying we've been doing less of that for a while why don't we make our budget

040reflect that so there's been a lot of um I wouldn't say a lot but there's been some um changes there the other piece is reporting back on um what I shared with you in a couple of meetings which is that we've asked um special services to kind of go back to the drawing board and build what I call a zerobase staffing right so if you you have no Staffing here are your IEPs what is it that you need to meet the requirements that we need to for all for all of the children who have IEPs based on that work and then you know Consulting with myself talking with the principles a little bit um and then also reflecting on the fact that we generally run between 8 and 10 unfilled edte positions pretty much since

041I've been here where they R you know whe the location changes the people change people come on board and leave but sometimes I think we got down as low as four at one point I think we were high as 15 but we tend to run between eight and 10 unfilled positions so it was a really big question of how are we meeting kids needs with these unfilled positions and and what does that tell us about when we're building our budget based on that work in addition to the one FTE or full-time equivalent edtech that was already in our figures we believe that um we'll be fine to meet meet services and meet need with four fewer and so that has been taken out um since we last met so in taking out those additional Ed

042teexs um you know aligning our budget with spending um in tuition and and just to clarify we talk about tuition two different ways and I think it gets confusing there's tuition for us to send children to special purpose private schools and then there is college tuition that is a contract benefit in um all of our employee contracts so in this case the tuition I'm referring to is the contract benefit um to many of our employees it has been underutilized for a number of years we were kind of waiting for the pandemic to settle out to make sure that really was a trend um and because we are obligated to pay for it whether it is budgeted or not um so we didn't want to do it prematurely but in this case the tuition reduction is

043referring to college courses and So based on that um those changes that we've made we're down to 2 million $250,500 increase which would be a 6.76 increase over the current Year's budget in the new breakout which will look a little different than perhaps you saw before um I've changed this blue section to say salary changes before that said contractual changes because we were considering just what was required in the FTE it's not quite so clean anymore uh as we talked about I think at our previous meeting we saved about $25,000 by moving um some things out of some title funding and some things into some local entitlement funding um what that does means is that the the little piece of the pie here that used to say uh out of District placement tuition is gone

044because that's not an increase anymore because we've moved that into local entitlement funding but we had positions that were in local entitlement that we've moved into local budget additionally those reduced FTE are in that salary figure as well so that 3.06% represents our contractual um raises increases step increases it also reflects on the FTE we' we've reduced and it reflects the FTE we've moved out of different sources so it's sort of salary changes and it's a lot of different changes of the 6.76% that represents just a little bit over 3% of of that increase health insurance which right now we still have not you know received any we wouldn't expect it by now but hopefully soon um we have budgeted that at 12% we were told it could be as high as 17 so we

045have budgeted 12 uh that represents 1.8% of the 6.76 the needs that we've identified and been over a few times um Those ads that we're putting in the cellular radios and some of that sort of thing that represents 77% of the 6.76 and then the air quality work those payments is about 1 0.12% of the 6.76% should I pause here for a second I just threw a lot of numbers at you in a very short period of time I I I have a question on um the salaries did you was your that because we know we've had some transition different teachers and they're not at the same level the new newly HDE on at the same level of the ones who have left and so when you came up with this figure did you do

046the actual that you plan on spending or are you using you know last year we we include retirements in that in that figure so so if someone retires yeah and they're like top of the scale we don't put that that top of the scale position in next year's budget we put um what tends to be an average on on boarding which is a lower amount okay in the total budget it tends particularly when you don't have very many retirees which we don't have very many retirees this year um the payouts that we have as part of our contract tends not to hit the bottom line as a savings in the first year um but as far as that salary number that salary number um is using a a predictive approximation of what we think a

047new teacher coming on board would cost not the one who has retired okay any other questions on this piece press on I did bring um back a couple of graphs just so you could see how that new number plays out this is again our budget increase history over time um with 6.76% proposed in 2526 that brings that 10-year average to 3.99% and then this is our regional data again with our figures updated um and then two other school districts updated today so I updated those numbers in here as well most are still um they're still in their budget process just like we are um so you can see where we're still you know playing out towards the lower end um and again this chart is built from left to right the lowest investors and students

048to the higher invest highest investors per student this gives you um the budget summary again this you've seen this data before it's that Propst 2526 that has changed to reflect the new um the new increase and then this is how it would play out across the um split between the two towns so if you're looking at different versions of this presentation make sure you always look at the most recent one because those are the numbers that are going to be the most accurate in up to date I have a question y on the regional data um Windam had budget is is much higher because they built a new school correct how come their cost per student wasn't absorbed than that or did that or was that a lot lower so the cost it's up that

049amount so the cost per student is from the 2324 school year which is the most recent data published by the main Department of Education doesn't happen in there the 14% is based on what they are proposing for next year and as a resident of Windam I should definitely know this but I believe to be true that of that 14% 6% is their middle school bond I think it it might be 8% it might be 8% please don't quote me on that I'm being a bad citizen there's some chance that this is disinformation so people should check this but I believe when the mdoe calculates per student spend they don't include Deb load um they only include uh local contribution spends in a single year so because I think that's more apples to apples in terms

050of what the individual district is spending um and so that it tends to even it out so that you don't have those wild swings I think that's true I think that takes me to the end of that data I do have do you mind if can we go back two slides uh I just wanted to also just draw attention where you know we haven't talked really about the revenue side but it's on this slide there's some things that we you know are proposed that um you know are still changeable on the revenue side as well Ed 279 is not but um you know this proposes a $500,000 reduction in what we roll over and I I would just like to put a pin in that as something that we discuss um to make sure we

051as a board have thought about what that decision means I'm not sure I followed you I'm sorry yep so look at the line uh fund balance in in the revenue side right y so each year if we remembering back to the balances that we have in our bank accounts right each year we decide how much of that unassigned balance to roll over into the coming budget to offset uh Revenue that we need to come up with right and so last year the budget we knew that this 9% uh rule was changing down to five and so we ratchet it up how much we rolled over to 1.5 million um and to you know to address uh I I've heard comments before you have to kind look at what you're spending you know to um figure

052out what you're going do we never know what our finals are when we go into this right you know we're always doing this in the middle of our spend year um and this is how we kind of address it as a board is we take that unassigned balance decide how large it is decide how what much we want it to be at the end of the year so if we go uh you know we have a year where there's 20 unfulfilled positions instead of 10 and we have an extra M of the kitty we roll that over to account for that right um and so you know we did we knew we needed to get under nine and now you know we're probably going to be right around five we might decide because the law

053used to be three we might decide we want to kick in another 250,000 from that rollover U we have tended to be uh I would say cautious as a district in terms of you know being right at the height of that number which you know I think that's good we've been risk averse as a district and what we didn't want to happen is exactly what Chana pointed out we can't hit payroll because some snafu happened I might suggest that right now with uh money from governments uh sometimes going missing at times um you know maybe we would want to you know stay that cautious nature you don't know what might not be coming or what but uh I think we should look at that number you know maybe it's 1.25 instead of one or whatever

054it is but that that is a dial that we can turn and I think the board should have a discussion about how much tolerance for risk we have in the size of our unassign balance thank you all right and any more questions on that data update before we move into Athletics all right let's do that so there are just um three more before I turn it over to all of you there are three questions that we received either at our last Workshop meeting or um through Gary since then one is about Athletics data one is about C year radios and then the third is about Middle School mathematics um so I did work with with um Nate to look at some Athletics data we've provided you um with a with a sheet there what you'll

055find on that sheet is a list of all the athletic teams from 2324 just kidding David's coming around with it right now um this also is already posted on our website if you prefer a digital copy um the so this is 23 24 we did that because we had an entire year of expenditures we don't have the entire year of expenditures for 2425 yet because we still have one season of athletic to go um so from 23 24 what you'll see is every sport listed including all of the expenses associated with that sport whether that's the coach stipend the equipment the fees the supplies whatever it is um and then also the enrollment count of who participated um in that athletic activity we as an administration had some thoughts on this um I would say

056that at this time we do not support cuts to the athletic program I don't think it's the right move at this time um we believe we've made a number of improvements within our budget to improve the bottom line as well as um working to um take care of our field and um schedule appropriately make sure schools get first pass um so that we have addressed many of those capacity issues um clearly not all otherwise we wouldn't have had a bond is it perfect absolutely not um but we think we think we can offer this list that we are proposing safe in appropriately for students um if we are press to make Cuts if that's something that the board um is insistent that we do what we would most likely want to do is look at

057those programs as you can see on the list that that impact the fewest number of students so we would look at those smallest participating groups and that is um probably the tactic that we would use um to reduce to reduce Athletics cost if we were pressed to do so this also doesn't include Middle School athet this does not include Middle School athletics that's correct I didn't hear that question I'm sorry uh did it include Middle School athletics this is just High School okay High SCH oh you know it' be help I think for me to be helpful would be um the number of stiens in that total dollar number we got that last week is that in that other that other the other document says which ones are funded and which ones not yeah so

058you could look at last week's document and and look at the 23 24 column and that would tell you how many stipend are in each of those Sports yeah does that have a total or do we need to add those up because we just a total count you mean right like are you talking about this one that just is like filled unfilled filled unfilled you just get a number yeah how much is The Middle School athletics impact the the budget so this is a roughly $400,000 budget for high school correct correct and this doesn't have athletic director in this is just the person yes this does not include the athletic director or the um athletic director secretary right so do you know off the top of your head what will be a more accurate representation

059of our districtwide Athletics budget I would have to depend on my director of finance and business manager to put something together for us for that perhaps we could move on and circle back before the end of the meeting yeah just seeing as tonight's the night we really need to get into the discussion like these are the kind of things that are important to know um or as we're deciding what do we want to put Capital expenditures on if we're going to keep a full Sports budget then do you know then are some of those funds need to prioritize other um programs or co-curriculars that don't have much budget um okay does anyone have um but I'm doing the thing I said not to do does uh anyone have any sort of fact Clarity questions on

060the Athletics data just have a question what you just ask our folks over here at the other table to provide uh did we ask for Middle School included in that yes yes and that includes the a the ad liaison consistent ad that works out of that building so that would be just Athletics not curricular we're only asking Athletics it would be just Athletics okay okay I I have a question does um I'm sorry just really quick quote follow does that include I we have sens there also for um Club sport we don't call it Club sport what am I thinking of intermural don't we have any do we have stip yeah those are that's in the stien list that you have well I'm just asking that that that be included in estimate for middle school

061to me that's part of the program also it should be part it should be yes yeah unless we're making differentiate those come out of the same lines okay all right thank you you're welcome FR yeah um do we um have a trend of you know uh you like cross country used to be a very popular sport and now like there's 13 kids in that um not cross country yeah that was a very popular sport also I was thinking of the uh noric ski that you know so over the years that there more uh participants than others and this happen B uh 23 24's um participation that's one question second question is on the sheriff's department we're paying 8,400 for the winter season and you know they have a contract so is this an addition to

062the contract that we pay um is this a different program so okay sorry I'm afraid I'm I've already lost your first question and your second question let me start with the sheriff's one and then can you repeat your first question again because I I already lost it um so the sheriff's department we have an a school resource officer we have a contract for that and then we contract with the sheriff's department to provide police coverage at certain athletic events those are two separate entities and then your first question was oh enrollment in sports over time so I did not bring that data with you the data as it's presented to you um does not exist and is not terribly easy to pull I pulled um Nathan and his secretary for two full days to put

063this together um because they have to go through it's it lives in in one line item so they have to go through literally payroll by payroll um to pull it out separately so it was it was quite a lot of work um so I did not ask him to do more than one year um we could bring you enrollment over time what I will tell you is that enrollment over time is what we are constantly looking at and in The Proposal we have brought forward to you if you refer back to the document from last week we are proposing to add to sports that is based on enrollment and kids who are interested in the sport we are we areep proposing to eliminate two stiens and that is because enrollment has gone down and we

064do that as you look through sort of like filled and unfilled brought into the budget come out of the budget uh we are constantly doing that every single year we're looking at what are students interested in what are they motivated to participate in and we are um removing and adding positions to the budget based on that I I this is a good report um it gives you a clear picture for someone who you know isn't involved it it you know actual kids in sports so uh it's a good picture of what's going on thank you and that's a huge thank you to Cindy hoam and Nathan because it we tried to just pull it from our financial statements it would make sense to me probably Jens a few other people um but to make it

065something that was really digestible for the public um was quite a bit of work and I would suggest then we continue it I hear that it's work but I want to be really transparent about things that are big spends in our district and you know I think knowing what the usage is and what we're spending on things is is pretty reasonable um information to look for Gary I I just think if we're going to pull any kind of year-to-year comparison on participant numbers that we just worry about total because the sport sport offerings have changed so much in the last eight years eight to 10 years I Spring Track outdoor track used to be 90 kids but we didn't have lacrosse boty frisbee you know that was what everyone did if they were not playing

066baseball or softball so um that has changed over time and there's so many offerings now that it's really easy to look down here and see outdoor track 36 and think oh why it's because this you know 50 kids doing other things now so I just say if we're going to do that over year over year that for me personally I think we really only I only need to know the total yeah can I make a suggestion um so you know I think this was Lely my question and I it's very possible that I did not word my question perfectly um more what I was concerned about is that Topline number right uh is the uh Athletics portion of the budget RIT large growing at the same rate as the budget as a whole faster or

067slower right so you know if you took four straight years of everything we spent on Athletics which should be pretty easy to pull because that's a line you should be able to just say these line items you know uh has Athletics gone from 7% of the budget to 9% of the budget I I that's a question that we we rarely get like an Athletics number right we see these individual things and this is a great picture of what the High School athletic budget is but more my question was if we take how much we spend as On Athletics as a district as a district over the last three years is it growing is it about the same because we've added you know just since I've been here we've added ultimate we've haded Esports we've haded

068Middle School lacrosse we've haded actually Vice varsity lacrosse since I've been on the board um volleyball volleyball volleyball you know at some point it does get to be a a larger number uh I just don't think we've ever said as a board we're comfortable with Athletics being 10% of what we spend let's try to keep it there right uh or I I I think that's a conversation I've never heard of us really have in 10 years and that was more of what I was trying to get at is you know our we starting to get to the point where it's just a little bit tipsy in that direction you know we um we I you know when we eliminated Latin or when we eliminated SL we said oh a district our size doesn't really have

069four World languages doesn't really have three languages does a district our size have every single one of these Sports all the way down to Middle School lacrosse I don't really know the answer it it seems like we've done a good job again this is a thing I support right like I want all of our kids on our campus as much as possible but when I'm making that argument to the public you know I want to be able to say Hey you know it's growing at the same rate when you look at how fast our health insurance costs our sports are growing at 7% but our health insurance cost is 177% like Athletics is not a driver of the budget but I can't I don't have a way to make that argument Y is what I'm

070trying to get at and going along with that I what we talked about earlier it's really useful to see how many teachers versus how many students and is that keeping pace we have the total um participants in athletics I agree I don't care to nitpick that oh there's not enough kids doing Golf and we're offering golf but do we have 200 kids a season playing a thing and we're spending X number of dollars in that's you know keeping or Sports budget has gone up but hey we have increased 15% participation which means we're keeping these kids at school they're on academic contracts they're motivated to to do well in school so they can stay on the team they're here until 5:00 at night you know it tell it tells that story so I apologize I

071missed the question that's all right and I won't lie Nathan and I watched the video four times to make sure we really understood the question and we're going to give you the data you wanted so very disappointed I didn't give you what I also like this data but yeah this is great this is great this this is great data because you know I think you know if I asked a taxpayer hey do you want to spend about you know 500 bucks a kid to do outdoor track that seems like pretty good value to me you know they're out there a ton if you look at the spend per hour of those kids enjoying our facilities really good right and that gives us that information I just think you know we don't have that 30,000 foot

072view sometimes yeah the other sort of anecdotal piece I'll add to the conversation um and this sort of Loops co-curricular in too so I apologize that it is conflating a couple things that we weren't talking about um but we do we do look at that participation over time yes we have added sports but we also have reduce what we filled um once they are in schedule B they are in schedule B and it becomes something you know are we filling it as a proposal on the budget or not so you'll see across that document that we have we have reduced many also um so I think that's important to point out and it's about being really responsive to kids um and I think something that's that um stie and Nathan look at a lot is

073not just the the numbers of kids that are participating but who are these kids so when we're deciding to you know we might leave a co-curricular that's a little smaller than we want it because it's the only thing that those seven kids do versus another club that has seven kids but those kids are also in nine other clubs and they're having a hard time scheduling meetings because the kids are in nine other clubs um what we know about Athletics and co-curricular is it's a really important part of uh the of the school experience for a lot of kids that's their motivation to be here and that's their motivation to do well um and I hope we're creating caring environments that make kids welcome but Sports is going to be a motivator for some kids co-curricular

074is going to be a motivator for some kids so it's really important that when we're looking at that total picture it is about those counts and making sure that we have strong participation but it's also making sure that those groups of kids that have nothing else were not taking away that one thing they have yeah agreed and I think we're asking for this or I'm asking for this in order to understand and defend the usage of the budget similarly to the Staffing so what are our stiens how many per kids oh our stiens have gone up but the participation has gone up or this one's low but we're not going to give up that stien money we're going to make sure we put it into a co-curricular that that kids want and you know that

075we can keep those offerings so um I appreciate it any other questions about these numbers before we move into cellular radios yeah yeah I've got a question I was looking at the uh uh stien cost per participant served and a couple a couple of them jumped out at me and I uh I think I might know the answer to these but I wanted to confirm like uh in the girls basketball it's $657 per participant served is that because they just have a JV in a varsity and whereas the boys basketball it's uh uh the it's about $400 per participant serve they 41 parti participants whereas girls have 22 do they have like a a freshman team and a freshman JV what's what's what's the what's the answer yeah the teams are bigger um and anytime

076you have more participants that's going to put that per participation per participant rate down a little bit um we do and it changes year toe so you know don't quote me on this when we have really big numbers we might have a varsity a JV and what we call a first team which is um generally for um ninth graders or freshmen who may not be able to to make the JV or varsity team but we want to they give them an experience if our numbers indicate it we might do that our girls basketball numbers have been a little lower than our boys basketball numbers um in the current year at least so the same is true with baseball and softball uh baseball has 36 that's that's uh that's two teams basically so I assume it's

077a JV University and uh we're softball basically they don't have a JV is that what I'm assuming yes yeah I believe if you look on the typen list you'll see there is JV as again it's it's there's contract and then there's what we fill and so in our contract some of those positions exist we just don't fill them if we don't have the numbers um to indicate it and also remember those first team coaches their stien is much smaller right so like the head coach of the um boys and girls basketball team might make the same and then that first team coach gets like a thousand bucks or something so you serve another like 12 kids with you know you know a much smaller number thank you I have um I have a question I'm

078not sure what um Hudl is what is that that's down at the bottom right yeah sorry I don't in order to have this up here I can't look at what you're looking at um is there an extra $8,000 H huddle is the little communication platform that we use to I just want to make sure we're it's a communication platform that we use um in our Athletics program so that we can um communicate with the kids communicate with the kids we try not to have the coaches texting kids on personal devices so they always communicate through an app so that the district can monitor and yeah and one other question on the trainer what could go wrong with that is that for All Sports I'm sorry yeah was did I interrupt no okay uh on the

079trainer um is that for all sports or is that specifically for a particular team or that's the athletic trainer that uh drives around the fields and takes care of the kids if they get hurt they serve all the sports all sports oh well it should be called something else then sounds like professionals they have trainers so that's what I think that is it's literally called the athletic training profession it's the it's medical support yeah it's a actual master degree level job all right let's move on to radios yeah professional n uh so cellular radio so we um we brought it's hard to have hard data on this on these things but uh we brought some um a little bit back for you so we uh tried out some cellular radios we put them on four

080buses on routes that we know we tend we tend not to be able to reach these buses so we picked the for worst that we knew of um and we gave them the um we gave them uh the new cellular radios to try uh feedback from the bus drivers is that they experienc really clear service through the majority of the route there are still some dead spots we live in gry and New Gloucester um I my mother is in Raymond so every time I go down Egypt Road I make sure I'm not on the phone right um so it did have some still a few areas here and there but the areas were much smaller and they were smaller than they were for people's cell phones so there are even places where like the phone

081may not work but the radio still seem to be so that's that's very exciting um drivers reported clear Communication in some places with all schools from one location uh that has not been the case in the past usually um once a bus gotten a certain distance away from a school that school couldn't reach that bus anymore and we would end up doing a relay system where that bus would you know the school would call a bus that's halfway and that bus would call the bus and it was you know terribly efficient so in this case they were able no matter where they were they were able to reach all five schools which was very exciting um the the um they kept just say crystal clear is the word they keep using it was crystal clear

082so um I think they're very excited about it our current plan is to replace the existing radios on all of those buses that line item in our budget is to replace all of the radios on all of our buses with the cellular radios and I just had to add as the last minute was the last minute ad because the principales just kept saying that um they were they were just so pleased with it that what a vast Improvement it was for um for them when we were doing the trial awesome it should be significant significant Improvement great question Cole uh just to clarify these are for all of our buses and are we I'm assuming our vans have them too is that are they included or not I don't that's a great question I don't

083know the answer to David is nodding yes okay I assumed yes but I had a moment of oh my gosh I guess I should double check that um yes all Vans all School Vans all school buses great any other questions about that so just that's basically an $188,000 spend to get that happiness just to put a yeah and to get that amount of safety safety yeah that amount of safety I know my kids are 45 minute bu rides and that scares me if that can't bus can't be reached great uh math all right we had a a question coming about middle school math and um the purpose of the investment so I'm stealing Kristen's Thunder a little bit because um we went over this at the 39 curriculum meeting and it will be moving forward

084to the full school board on April 2nd so please act surprised and delighted when I share some of this information with you that person will be following up with um and so the middle school math investment we um the market out there for instructional materials in general but particular particularly math is primarily a consumable license model gone are the days where you can buy a math textbook and you use the textbook and the kid writes their name in the front of it and it goes to the next kid the next year and they write there it's very hard to find that in the market now um instead what is out there is a is a consumable so a workbook model um with an online digital license so under these um under these contracts essentially you

085enter into a a usually a 3 five or seven year most companies are 3 five or seven you enter in a contract with the um with the company that buys you we usually support fiveyear contracts um that buys you five years of access to the online resources for every teacher and every student in your school whether that population goes up or down and it buys you a shipment of consumables every year um for the kids so and again and it's if you end up with more students they send you more workbooks if you end up with fewer they send you fewer although that sometimes they still send us more and we end up with extra but we try to work with them to send fewer so it's a it's a consumable model with an annual

086shipment of materials so the current product that we have been using at the middle school was called myMath we adopted that in 2016 uh we've been using it since then we learned a few years ago that myMath was being discontinued um so we even if we wanted to renew it we couldn't um they are no longer support in that product um we were able to negotiate a couple of one-year extensions because at um at the time as we were doing deep work in um what is really working what does good math instruction look like um how do we find materials that are going to address the specific needs of our kids how do we move um instruction forward in mathematics we weren't happy with what we were finding we hadn't come to a conclusion that

087we were confident about and and I will not stand in front of the board and ask you to make a big investment in materials that I am not confident is going to address some of the needs um so we we have been through multiple years of process you'll hear more about that at the board but you can look up at our website anytime we have a very delineated system of how we review these materials including multiple years of piloting um and we are we would are moving forward with a request to allocate the funds in next year's budget to purchase um in this case it's a product by hmh which I cannot pronounce well the three names so I'm just going to call it hmh it's three people's names um and the product is called

088into maath we currently use the same company's product for literacy at this school so we have worked with them in the past um and essentially our one-year extension with my maath ends on ends on June 30 so if we do not make an investment in math materials there will not be materials to teach with next year so whether it is into maath or whether it is something else unless we make an investment there will not be instructional material so at the end of the day that's sort of you know sort of the big thing I I did push them hard um for a long time to make sure we're getting the right thing that's going to move our students forward um but essentially we we need to make an investment because our product is being

089discontinued and so we need a new one questions BR um so I was at the presentation of uh of that meeting and um afterwards I I well first of all the first math program lasted nine years this is for five years correct Y correct our original contract with my math was not for nine years our original contract was for five years and we've had it we've been able to it okay so my question is uh um and what if is the question What if after a couple years with all the research and everything everyone's done and you know and it and it's fine but in they in a couple years they find out n that really doesn't fit us it's not working do we get a refund or no Ah that's what I was wondering

090okay if if we were to get into it and they and what they had promised and what was in the contract turned out to not be what we were receiving then yes we would have an Avenue to go after them for breach of contract but if it's just you know we we don't like the pictures on the covers they're too juvenile for middle schoolers like no that's that wouldn't be a reason we would be able to go after them it would have to be breach of contract okay thank you any other questions on the need or cost of the math okay press on that is all I have other than just a reminder of where we are in the process the work months of work we start this started in November and all of these

091docu all of these meetings are up here are on our budget website please go look at it it has every document that we have presented talked about looked at every presentation One-Stop shop please take a look at it um we are currently in our draft budget presentations and as Penny shared at the beginning of the meeting um Finance committies coming up on the 9th at which point um that budget will belong to the finance committee then moved forward to the board our validation meeting and our referendum and now I turn it over to you can I ask one clarifying question before you turn it over with the health insurance 1.8% increase that you have in this proposal that's at that's still at the 10 10% or have you put it up higher than that's at

09212% 12 okay there is some chance it doesn't come in at 12 there is a chance you know I like that you aim high I'm not complaining about that but just 12% is a huge number it sure is all right so with our clarifying questions asked and answered to the best degree possible David do you have an Athletics number for us so toal cost can you hear me okay yes so the total cost that we're budgeting for 2026 Athletics is 910,000 MHM 459 so that's and is that a significant difference from last year or pretty much the same so 2025 budget was 876 292 and then 2024 is 864 047 so that's both middle school and high school okay great thanks say the first number again that you just told us yeah the 2026 budget

093910 459 thank you David you're welcome aren't you glad that we gave you something fun to do tonight don't want to have you here for nothing that is the number I was looking for thank you David that is awesome what's the increase so uh basically the uh Athletics budget that 910 number is right around 3% of our overall spend and and uh that is a you know a $40,000 increase on an $876,000 budget is uh like 5% so that's you know basically in keep exactly the same as what we've been doing so it that's exactly what we're looking for and the year before a $133,000 increase uh in the course of a $31 million budget is nothing you know rounding eror y okay thank you thank you that's terrific so how I'd like to structure

094discussion we I think we have three correct me if I'm wrong um sort of three main things to talk about opinions reactions ideas on the overall the budget as a whole uh the cap philosophy or use of capital reserve and then the revenue side R you know Revenue rollover fund balance those three pieces so um I'd love to hear from everybody and and to stay organized I'd love to take these topics in turn um I'm certainly open to suggestion on the order is there an order that makes sense Sam seasoned well um they do all kind of talk to each other a little bit but I think the I would be I have like a proposal in mind that I'm willing to wait on or whatever but I think usually at this point we usually

095go to like are we cut you know we is there a number that we want to hit percentage wise right so right now this proposal in terms of an increase can we put that slide back up there the new number 6.7 was 6.7 um you know which because what the hand out doesn't match anymore which would be you know the highest increase there's a new hand going back all the way to 2014 you know in recorded history um so you know one of the things that we sort of talk about is as a board is there number that we would like to be or we would like or we think that would pass or you know that sort of thing um and then sometimes we say it doesn't matter because you know this is the

096way it is but you know Top Line right like you know if they were sitting here presenting a zero% increase I don't think any of us would be like let's dial into those cellular radios right like we' be like yep that makes a ton of sense right um if we think you know this number right here is good I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time going into like you know nickel and dimes and the couches if we're all comfortable with this increase okay so that's helpful so let's actually do a I'm being too picky then let's do a first pass and sort of reactions thoughts you've been holding how you feel about the material we've had to date um and rather than popcorn I want to hear from everybody so let's Teresa

097you want to start well this is my first Go Round And I been going through the all the budget processes and everything and I you talk right into that thing sorry better um I I'm so far I'm pleased with where we're at I don't think there's anything jumping out at me that's crazy again this is my first go around with all an needy gritty so I'm gonna I might have a question after I hear other people's questions but for right now I don't have anything to start us with not a problem okay Sam um I would like us to get get under 5% um and I think it's pretty doable if we uh take the bond payments from the capital fund and we increase our roll over by $250,000 uh I think we get under

0985% or really close to it you know if the if we did those basic things you know and we increased the revenue side a little bit with you know pushing off the uh pay to play or phasing that or something um I think there's a way to get under 5% in overall increase um and I don't think it would be that painful so to be clear you're talking about doing that on the some of the revenue side not suggesting further cuts to the proposed budget or you saying get there however you have to get there I mean get there however you you know like I'm saying you know I would 100% support this if it was 4.99% increase I think that would be you know slam dunk in this environment um and I'm just saying

099you know I would leave it to the finance committee how they want to do that but I think if we look at um you know addressing the capital needs with the capital budget in the way that's been proposed uh paying for the debt first year of the debt payments um and rolling over uh you know 250,000 instead of uh I mean another 250,000 so it's 1.25 instead of one you know just my back of the envelope maths as we pretty much get there um and you know I think I would have a really easy time saying that would be the smallest increase in the last three years smallest increase really in the postco era um in this environment I think that's responsible and I would 100% support it thank you Jim yeah my point is

100uh similar to Sam's and that I'm looking at the U the graph of the uh the recent changes over the last 15 years or so and it's an ever increasing uh uh increase uh since uh the 2122 budget it's the next year was 3.61 the next year was 5.98 the next year was 6.48 and now we're at 6.76 I just think that that is disheartening to the residents of gray that look at that and say you know they don't want the trend I understand that uh uh if we didn't include the bond it would be 5.64% increase so it would be you know that's that's something that I do have to take into account but uh uh I just I think the the citizens of gry new glosser look at that and it's gets a

101little scary that uh okay what is it going to be higher next year and I I think if we were to knock it down it would send a uh a good signal that uh we're that we're not looking at uh increases in the costs as far as I can see thanks Sharon is that good you can you can bend it down there you go is that better um so I certainly appreciate appreciate the administration really working with us I've seen the numbers come down um clearly taking it very seriously I guess I had in my mind 6.5 around 6% maybe we're really close I'm very open-minded at the next Finance meeting to talk about what we can do as far as moving the capital whether it's covering the bond or how we have to work

102it but um I still think that maybe we can bring it down a little bit but um if we couldn't if it stayed at this percentage I would support it Adam um I like the idea of covering the first year of bond payments on our own that would take one in 1.12 out of it um that would get us pretty close um I think the ad admin did a good job not adding obviously anything in there we've got like three4 of percent of needs um so I don't know what cuts we can make to that um it's worth a look at I would um I would support pulling a little more out of the capital reserve and adding it to the use on the facilities um an extra 50 this year um I don't know

103how far that's going to get us before we add in the other 300 so um I think the step increases a good idea for the facilities budget um we pushed a lot of things off to question to and now that we're here um we've kicked the can down the road on a lot of things and that would at least um it's there's more than one pressing project that we need to work on um that initial seed bunny uh from the capital reserve would probably jump start that a little bit better um that's pretty much all I had um I was happy to see the number come down to 6.76 thought that was a great place to be I'm not happy with that number still feels high but acknowledging that that includes the bond payment gets

104us down you know roughly 5 and a half 5.64 I don't think that's a bad number um I can I hadn't thought about taking that Bond payment out of Reserve I think that is a great idea U hadn't occurred to me to do that I don't know why but it hadn't well we haven't used that capital budget in like eight years no but and and your point that that was why we put some of it there was to use and why not and cushion the blow in this first leas this first year I mean knowing that come next year we're going to have to find the money for it but for the moment in a tough year it gets us down five and a half um I'm concerned with going any lower that we're going

105to be getting into programs and people and we're no longer going to be providing what we want to provide so I don't I can't if anything I'd like to see if we get down to five and a half if we couldn't maybe put a little bit more towards something out of capital reserve in order to restore something like the ittech salary line or something like you know there are things that we've pushed off already a year that I'm bothered that we had to push it off um all to make a number that uh as much as it may be distasteful I'm not sure it's not necessary uh did Jim's point about it growing every year I think yeah it is going to grow every year I mean n 90% of our of our expense is

106contracting service and all our folks expect raises we expect raises ourselves in our own lives three at least 3% so assume it's going to go 3% every year he's just saying the rate of increase is grown the rate no I'm saying but it will because the base number is grows every year so is in two years it's going to be knocking on 10 10% is that what I mean is that where we're going that's that's my question no but I think I think we can rely on it being five or six right that's what we're saying should be five or six every year but so five six seven like we are I think we're going to have to find ways to maintain our facilities and do some stuff and at some point we're going to

107run out reserve and we're going to have to find the money we can't not do things right um so I suspect I hate to say it but I think yeah it will be going up somewhat because I don't know how to stop it from going up in that sense I mean we can't reduce staff we're not going to reduce looks like our numbers of students are flat for the most part we're going to be looking at 1800 roughly forever the way the numbers look down uh if anything they might go up if we have a development or two maybe come to time who knows so um I guess I'm good I'm good with the number I I would love to be under five but I don't think we're going to get there um without like

108I said cutting into we're we're down to people and programs and I think they've done a great job to get us down to this number without getting into people in programs uh so I guess I'm good and I but i' like to cons I would like to consider Sam's suggestion about paying paying that initial Bond payment um without having to put it in local budget thanks Gary um I think I'm of pretty similar mind I feel a little more generous perhaps in my look back of the budget increase history we do have we're moving up we have some some ups and downs if you look 2016 to 2020 we hovered around 4% % Co hit we didn't spend anything and now we're climbing out of that hole and we're around 5 6% I would love

109to see us be flat to Jim's point to show you know that we can hold um even if we came in um at 6% that would still be less than last year and keep us our our threee pretty flat around 6% um I really don't support cutting into NE we're looking at a proposed budget where needs are less than 1% of this um I just am not going to support uh you know cutting the things that the district is saying that we need to to serve the kids I think we're seeing a lot of responsible data here uh student headcount is down people keep bringing that up in the community and guess what our staff headcount is down at exactly the same rate um our we're pushing hard on Sports numbers and we're hearing that

110that's you know tracking pretty pretty stable um and it's a small percentage of our budget so um I do support if we look at you know our regional data this proposed increase that we're looking at tonight is now the lowest on this chart so now we're adding less to our budget than Poland Regional High School is and then we look at our spendest neighbor uh gy you know they're looking at adding $3.7 million so we're we see that we're in line with our neighbors to some degree this is the cost of providing an education um I want to do it as responsibly as possible but I want to keep doing it um I support Sam's idea of using that capital reserve up into a point if you know the community voted this Bond forward and

111we're doing the work if I don't want to you I don't want to cover that at the expense of not doing other improvements so if we can take the sting out for a year fine but I still want to see us using that money to ren do some things that are visible for the kids that we know are inadequate and we and we have yet we're not solving so get some work into this stage area renovate a locker room you know what are some some Investments we can make um that the kids see the benefit of along the way can we look at some of that fund balance um I appreciate that we're conservative um but we if we're if we're going to be conservative in our increase in I don't think we always want

112to be matching conservative and how much money we hang on to do we need to ride the absolute outer limit of the amount we can hang on to by law um you know what do we actually need to hang on to and can we forward some of that and revenue back to our taxpayer or you know offset the B um so those are my um initial thoughts Cole so I'm probably going to EO a lot what's already been said but um you know after last year what we experienced with the budget um I knew that obviously we had the tech teack against us this year so I was hoping obviously for around 3% but I'm also a realist so I knew that wasn't going to happen so uh in the back of my mind I

113was thinking somewhere as around five but obviously I have an open mind um and you know we hear from the community um every now and then and I know as a board we support um our staff a lot and obviously one of the biggest increases we always see in our budgets right is salaries so we contract that um so we know we have that uh so but it's always one you know the biggest part so I'm hoping our health insurance comes down a little bit um obviously the salaries we have to pay um and again I don't think that we're um I don't think a lot of the the needs this year are out of order I I believe they're fairly conservative um and as far as the you know I do like Sam's idea

114um I think I think that is a very smart way to do that the one thing I will say is you know we can budget and Capital Improvements and things like that we also talk about a bond um either way you slice that is still a taxpayer paying it right so either they're going to pay it through the bond or we're going to pay it when we do Capital Improvements it's it's going to increase no matter what so again I I don't think that I don't think this is completely out of line I I think this is a pretty responsible budget um again I think that I feel as though if we can keep it around 5% I think that I think that we should have a very easy time passing it hopefully it's hard

115to be the end of the table um I was surprised at the lower the low number for facilities because in facilities we know what we're missing and we know what our students need we know what our buildings need and for years people have been complaining about not about issues that they see it's all visible like Penny said we need to put money into things that our kids can see and appreciate and use every day um so I was expecting that number to be higher to be honest especially since we failed at the bond and uh those things are do not go away um they still need to be done and US pushing them put kicking the can down the road is not helping our students so I like the more the 500,000 going into facilities

116I don't know how far that will get us because everything is so darn expensive um and I'm okay with Sam's suggestion um to bring our number down a little bit because leveling off is I think reasonable ask um without continuing to go up like Jim said you know every year um this is a tough economic time right now um we don't know where things are going to land um so I like coming down a little bit I would support you know even 5 and a half% somewhere around there to come down at least that much so we're the graph isn't going like this um but I would love to see more money pulled out there's no reason why we need $2 million in a reserve yes we do need a rainy day fund but we

117need so many improvements to our buildings that I would love to see that money go into that um and not affect the taxpayers to get that done B well um we increase the budget every year by not small numbers by large numbers $2 million to me is a large number and it's roughly what I am doing is looking through the line items although it's not the board's responsibility uh just for me personally to get a hold of what's being spent and how it's being spent and what's left over and we seem to get money left over every year and um so to throw a percentage for me I would not be able to do that I'd have to look and see if there were other areas of savings I'm going to give one small example

118which is the uh board contingency and I looked at that I says what in the world is the board contingency we have a lawyers we have insurance we have all these other accounts and that's $84,000 sitting there did we use it last I don't remember I left my paper at home I don't remember if we used it last year or not but point being if it's not being used we shouldn't have it in this year's budget so that's what I'm looking at and then I can get a better handle on what the budget should be it certainly should be lower but how much I don't know so I can't throw it a percentage myself personally um I want to look at it more um I which I've I've done and um so um I'll bring

119that um my suggestions at the next uh finance committee meeting yeah I was actually just GNA say Let's uh invite Dr Turner to speak now that she's heard our thoughts do I press it no it's on okay great sorry these are brand new for folks who are watching at home we just got them we're still learning um so a couple of things I want to make sure are are clear as you're having your conversations one is really important is that delineation between expense right and revenue so we we can entertain a conversation about moving about using capital reserve to cover the bond payments in the coming school year but that will not change that 6.76% because the expense is an expense the expenses are going up by 6.76% that would change whether wherever the revenue

120is coming from no the so the rollover is different than taking money out of the capital reserve if you take money out of the capital reserve then you don't need to spend that money on The Debt Service okay I'm sorry I missed that you were talking about capital reserve I apologize right and so then there's also I'm saying another way to help the taxpayers is to roll 250,000 extra over the expense side but I'm talking about full you would reduce our expenses 1 Point whatever 17% if we pay that out of the capital reserve instead of out of the general fund okay thank you that's helpful um so the other piece I would want to make sure we're clear about um related to the same piece uh same topic is um this coming year is

121a part of what the bond is going to cost us annually next year it will cost us more um so if we do opt to take that out of our expenses for the current year it will reappear next year and the number will be higher um so I think something to consider is while it represents 1.17 this year and then next year it's going to you know if if we were to leave it in it would be 1.17 and then maybe and I don't know the number so don't quote me here but it be another small percentage instead next year we'll be here with a 3 or 4% representation that's just um for our air quality project so um I I I don't have a huge opinion one way or the other I think I

122can make arguments both way I need to think about it more but I just want to make sure eyes wide open as you're making um these thoughts is that it it solves a challenge in the current year um but it it's a problem that's then delayed because this this will get bigger in the coming year because the bond payments are higher next like next fiscal year in fiscal year 27 see totally agreed with that right and so uh a you know we really shouldn't think about future years because we don't have the ability to tie the hands of future boards but um this is also um a contract year is going to be coming up for the teachers and we U the contract had big increases for the teachers coming out of covid because uh

123their inflation was 8% and we really felt like we needed to reward them and we were way behind our neighbors I think there is some uh chance that the next teacher contract will not have as big annual increases in terms of salary increase so I think this year is a good year to hedge on um those debt payments because I do think it'll smooth out a little bit with salary increases in the future that's put uh I did want to make that point uh because it's true right like we got to pay the debt payments next year too but and you heard Diane talk about this a lot right is we wanted to ease into those debt payments so that it wasn't because our debt load was so low um to you know any increase

124in debt is going to be felt larger than a lot of districts um and so you know that I really feel like the capital reserve was meant to sort of soften that pain uh so two so two other things I just kind of want to make sure in your brains while we're talking about this another is around um that you know rollover fund and the amount we're using for that um we you know yes we can't tie the hands of future boards but I would encourage us to have sort of long-term thinking about some of this work um I think you know an incremental trying to get to a place where um we're not planning on multiple millions of left over funds every year um which is a very cross way to talk about it

125but um funds every year is really important because we have had a lot of unfilled positions over time but we have been working to reduce those unfilled positions when we um don't need them we're working very hard to be um sensitive to our spending there could come a point where we don't have 1.2 million available to roll over and then that becomes a really um it it hits hard and so um as we were looking at you know trying to get down to number you we're trying to kind of not just think about next year but think about future years as well um which then also gets to the point about the percent increase over time um it's why I included that 10year percent increase um because I think it's important to look at like

126what has happened in our economy over the 10 over the 10 years and what was our response as a school district um while it it is appearing to um increase over time I think that is a um rebound reaction from years where we kept it very very low um when you talk about delaying expenses this is how it happens right we move expenses down the line we have years that are higher what we've tried to do in this budget and I've talked about in a lot of different places is we're trying to get to a place where we're not 85% one year and 6% the next and then 1% and then 8% and then we we we want to stop this all over the all over the place and we want to get to um

127a steady um a more steady place we aren't having really reactive budgets um um and the work that we're doing around um around bus replacement is a great example we want to get on a schedule so that it is a constant cost every year and it's not 200,000 up this year and $200,000 the next um so I I think I would just kind of encourage folks to think about that rate over time and think about um uh how we use our capital reserve how we're using our um fund balance all those sorts of things to to get to a place where um we can be fairly steady and and hopefully less reactive so as I said I I'm not necessarily against um anything that's been brought up I'm I'm more than willing to engage in

128the conversation more I think it's great ideas I'm I'm sensitive to the impact that these budgets have but I just want to make sure also that you're um you have those thoughts in your brain so they're not just swimming in mind um and I would invite us to keep our eye on the you know the work that's been done here the open the door number you know was has hovered around a 6.5% increase and then when looking at the needs of the district it bumped us to nearly an 11% we are back down to 6% in change which in some ways reads as we've essentially eliminated the room for them to add any needs whatsoever to serve 1800 kids so um for for us to keep saying okay we'll now make it five you know

129I do want to be realistic about what we're that we understand what we're asking for when we say that fan yeah I I heard that um some I heard that some districts have budget um committees um has this District ever thought about something like that where you know people would go through the budget and then present something to the finance committee um I I just heard about it and I was you know having a chance to you know go in any more depth than hearing about it so I don't know maybe you all who have been here a while know or have discussed this in the past I don't know I wouldn't know what that looks like um we always I consider the finance committee to be the budget committee so I don't I don't

130know what the difference would be they have both most some the schools that had the budget uh committee also has the finance committee they have both what does the finance committee do then I can get more information yeah yeah we're always happy to look at more information um so now we've gone around uh opening up to popcorning as you know have has has folks said that Teresa not to put you on the spot but you passed have you anyone inspired whatever I was gonna think about people have already said so I don't have anything extra to add to it Jim yeah I guess I do want to uh be speak up it's another person that supports a more uh aggressive use of the um of the reserve funds that we've got because correct me if

131I'm wrong but where did those come from the rolls they they came from taxpayers right so we're holding on to taxpayers money that we took from them and we we're not really using them is uh is is probably as prudently as they could have used them we're just what where are they just sitting in a uh some kind of a low bearing interest account uh yeah I me it's like a money market yeah so okay they're in a money market account so uh you know they're that's money that's been taken from them that they don't have any use for and we're just kind of putting it in a in a a very low interest bearing account that's not really doing them any good so it needs to be utilized uh to try to keep any

132tax increases down uh and you know of course and but cover the uh you know the ex the contingencies that we might have if uh you know checks were late from Augusta or what have you so I appreciate that but I do think we've been overly conservative uh in in in using those funds I do think you know Chan's Point's a good one right is if we went from you know if we got this budget like really nailed in right this year um and we've got you know our we've only got like 100k left in the bank next year there will not be 1.25 million to roll over right so that makes the the raise that we're asking for the town jump significantly um but you know so and this again Diane wanted us to

133be very prudent with that she always very much resistant she last last year we did 1.5 and she was very resistant to that you know I I think it's about risk tolerance fundamentally right um I I think people have we have to get to a place where we're not rolling over a million dollars a year that that seems like a bad idea um and so you know when are we going to bite that bullet uh I think you know to avoid the largest increase we've had in 10 years might be a good time to bite that bullet maybe then we have to Grapple with it again next year um but but you know I I think it is just sort of philosop I've had a philosophical objection I have had this basic conversation every year

134to you know what amounts to rolling over between one and 1.5 million every year of taxpayer money and I I just don't think that's right I I you know I I don't think it's like some atrocity or anything but I I would like to get to a place where we're not rolling over that we you know that's bad budgeting to be off by half a percent or whatever you know or whatever that ends up being 5% um so just you know just a Phil philosophical objection you know we we should try to get there and I think easing into it is the right way to do it um and it's up to you know the finance committee looks at it and says 1 million is the way to ease into it I trust the finance

135committee I just want to make sure we've had that robust discussion and we we have a great story to tell on why we made that choice sure I will say my one concern is that are we just delaying the pain though like so we could cover it this year but again that money once we've spent it it's we're not going to get that million dollars back I mean for two years in that 10-year budget we had low increases because we got a lot of stiens I don't know is if we're going to be getting all that that's not going to happen again so it's just I might my one concern always has been is and I'm happy to have the conversation at finances are we just delaying the pain are we can help this year

136but will we be able to help next year when there's a full year and it's going to be more then again we're going to have that bump up but it's I mean we can predict all we want we don't really know what's going to happen in the future but it could look next year's budget take money from the taxpayer we're just sitting on it I guess I don't I don't like the word take but I mean it's it's there it but we want to be careful with it too there could be tough years coming I I don't think food's going to get cheaper next year I don't I mean nothing's going to get cheaper so while I'm happy to help out with this year I just like guess I'm just putting that pin in that

137we it could make next year's number look and I don't know how much we can help cushion that uh Adam I think there's two kind of conversations happening at the same time one is do we need to balance that highend subset of that is do we want to take some out and put it someplace so the question is do we think that we need a smaller number to pass this year would we better would we be better off taking or using the extra funds somewhere else when the taxpayers have already agreed to fund the bond the payments I don't think the public was assuming that we were going to cover the first year I like the idea of easing into it um the moral part of or what you're talking about is not just sitting

138on it and putting it to use at least it's being used well it's also two different funds just to be clear right like the to cover the bond payments I'm talking about taking money from the capital fund the rollover I'm talking taken from the unassigned fund okay yeah got it that's it ad I don't mean to put you on the spot but I want to make sure your point is clear you described a thing but how do you you feel about the thing I think we did a recount on a percentage close to this last year um it would seem like we would have to be lower to avoid that situation okay uh I just want to Echo a little bit and I know it's we've we've we've talked about this in past years and

139this is definitely not my strong suit when I'm like well just fix it with this and Sam's like no you can't do that um you know we have we have our budget and we have our fund balance and we have our capital reserve and there may be a scenario in which we have a slightly higher increase but we have lessened the tax burden you know in the revenue side and that's something we have to communicate really clearly to folks hey we have a 6% budget but we are tring up this fund balance a little bit so the impact to the the taxpayer is you know is is going to be less or we're going to soften the blow of this facilities project with capital reserve you know I just think we want to explain we

140want to make sure so far I think the story's been told really clearly how we got here what we're spending on what our options are and so I just think we want um the voters to to really understand um how it's going to the increase yes and how does it affect their their tax bill because they might not go hand in hand um one more thought Sam and I agree um with the general feeling of not sitting on things we need to keep what we need but I don't want to sit on it either return it to the taxpayers or use it use it in our facilities I I'll try to I'll try to pass this budget fine no problem and use that money on our facilities because we've been told save up your money

141and and pay for things you need we've been told no on the bond okay we have a bunch of money maybe we pay for some of the things we need with it and this is going to be the increase so you know I'm I'm open to finance's recommendation there it's the sitting on it part that that gets me Sam do you had a yeah I just want to build on your point about how we describe the increase right um because we've largely been talking about expense side increase right I talked a little bit about Revenue with moving stuff with the rollover um when you talk about percentage increase right it's percentage of the of the whole right so our expense increase is going to go up a certain amount that's on a $32 million nut

142right the then we look at Revenue there's a narrative from the state oh hey we continue to fund education at 55% right well when you look at the increase in our 279 it does not keep up with our expense increase right so that means we have to ask on a percentage basis more from the local portion right so when you hear your legislator going out there and saying oh look we have continued to fund education at 55% they mean 55% of the essential programs and services Ed 279 formula contribution for the entire State for the entire state right so that is not keeping up with any of our costs the EPS formula is not even close to how any District's cost goes up right so you've got the legislature telling everybody oh look the state

143funds are keeping up we're continuing to pay 55% but in reality they're paying a smaller and smaller portion of everybody's budget because they're only talking about essential programs and services formula which we all know does not actually fund any school in the district there I mean any school in the state there's no District in the whole state that exists on EPS formula so you know we the local people need to be advocating to the legislature right if you don't want your property taxes to continue to go up at a higher and higher rate you have to ask our state legislature to be honest in in the way that they are funding education because local you know we're not making any more property in our in our town right you know the way we should be

144funding our schools is by you know growing our economy right growing you know if we increase the amount of corporate profits right then we can tax those and bring them back but if we're going to continue to rely on our property taxes more and more and more we're going to be continuing to struggle to pass budgets right so there there's a bigger portion to this that I would like to look at and when you see oh our local contribution has gone up at a higher rate than our expense budget that's why is because the revenue that we're getting from other sources isn't keeping up um and I just feel like we need to get that out there we can Advocate to our state representatives our state senators U but they come back and say oh

145look job done 55% just like last year and that's just it's absolutely disingenuous do we know what the actual percentage is if it's not 55 you we know what that is well it's 55% of the EPS uh I don't know if anybody can add up what the future budget of next year 45 right it's only 45% for gray right 45% for us right I mean if you look at the way the revenues have gone up right they're giving us in Ed 279 an extra $360,000 that's only that's less than a maybe it's exactly a 3% increase on what they gave us last year our expenses going up only by 3% no right that just our salaries alone increases our expenses by 3% so the state's like oh yeah we're still funding you at 55% just

146completely not true and we have decreasing enrollment and increasing property value right which is the formula that's going to keep beating us so we're going to get less actually less we're going to get less and less you know go look at the city of Portland if I was a city of Portland you know they only pay like 177% of the Portland budget because the Portland you know property is so valuable well great lucky for the Portland taxpayers um and for us right so as our property gets more valuable great you know place next door and be sold for 500 Grand just means we're going to have more and more responsibility for our local budget BR that was uh the point I was going to bring up the um we compare ourselves to the other towns

147in our area of where we where we sit you know uh comparison but what we don't consider is that for instance vmet and yamat I have those massive ocean properties they pay a bigger portion of the school budget than FR and row and people like me in this town so this that's the big divide here so we try to build our budget based on what the other communities are doing somewhat and yet you know we end up with with you know um the putting more of a burden because the revenue isn't the same as the other communities it it's not exact but it's it's an idea that we have to keep in mind that's all I'm saying I got one last thing I guess I'm looking at the uh the breakout of the increase and

148we've talked about salaries the bond and needs but we haven't said anything about health insurance now doesn't affect this budget but uh I've I've worked in the dreaded private sector all my life and uh the uh the amount of health insurance that the is borne by the employee is uh much more than it is for the public sector and I'm just saying that looking forward looking down the road 5 10 15 years this model is UN un unsustainable uh the employee is going to have in the public sector is going to have to pay a higher percentage of their own health insurance just like us in the in the public in the private sector so uh doesn't affect this budget but starting the negotiations early Jim I'm not sure that's actually go Jim I'm not

149starting negotiations I'm just I'm just stating a fact of sustainability that I'm looking forward to you joining me in support for universal healthcare so we don't have to have discussions but I do think it's important to point out that these increases in health insurance um we do have um collective bargaining agreements for the majority of our employees and then our non-bargaining employees the the contracts are similar and so the percentage of employer paid versus employee paid are set in those contracts so that is not something that I get to play with in my budget um that is handed to us and and only handled as the negotiations table Y and and speaking globally yeah and it did come up earlier you know how that's portioned out set by contract and so the the district will

150bear some of the increase in the employee will bear some of the increased as you know as negotiated in the the contract and our contracts are all um available online if people want to take a look at those and cross your fingers if that comes in at 8% instead of 12% that's like1 120,000 we're not going to say that again because we said that last time and it came in way higher than we thought so just heex on on that statement um yeah that would be nice I do want to say that I agree with Fran I mean we're we're trying to hit a number or say this number feels good there isn't a there is not a percent that feels good to me I want to say that to the finance committee what I

151want is a story that we can defend that we've met the kids needs that we're responsible with the money and that we're fair with what we hang on to and what we invest in and whatever that percent is at the end of the day that we can go out in the community and feel good about that story if that's 10% fine if that's 3% fine I think picking a number is a a dangerous game other than you know saying it would be nice to you know kind of be able to level off I think it's fair to say but yeah I think just heading for a specific Target number is is not responsible anyone else I want to have the last words uh Dr Turner have we said anything so outrageous that you're like I

152cannot believe they've asked us to do this no the only thing um I would just want to reiterate is the process by which we've built this budget um we do provide you information about area communities because that is generally information it's actually one of the first things I usually get asked is okay but what are other communities doing so we do include that as part of our package to you but I think we've been extremely transparent about our process for building this budget and how we've gotten to the numbers we have presented so far so I would just really encourage us to continue to encourage to uh talk to our public talk to people go see all the information is there um we have posted literally everything there's probably more than people want um but

153if you have questions about what is the process and how did we get there it is all laid out for you um in where we have been so far and I just really encourage people to get involved yes uh echoing that for folks watching at home there's a website purely dedicated to the budget process um for us we will uh to reiterate this will go back to finance committee that meeting is open to the public uh we'll have the board return to the full board in April and that budget validation meeting in May which we um encourage as many uh residents to come to uh as possible it's a long night but it's one of the most direct ways you can participate um in your community and you get to vote with your little colored

154cards what's more fun than that um and thank you to the folks who came tonight um who didn't have to be here to sit through this with us are we done we're done Mo wej second you got me Jam tonight sorry game on I expect you at the next negoti