The thing is the minutes, so does anybody have any corrections or comments on the minutes? Paul? Two corrections on the first page, second line from the bottom, that should be herometric. Thank you. And the second page about the budget 20 inspections. I think at the end of that paragraph I think it should say that there will be a sizable inspection income and sizable inspection work. Yeah, it's not all free money. You're not sitting around doing that. Okay, are there any other corrections? I have two, down the very bottom on the first page. I think it should be fire headquarters is now in the central fire station rather than are. Thank you. Because there's only one. Great. Okay, and under council on aging, second line, she noted the department has a contract employee to handle intake. This is to avoid confusion. I think you should say something, contract employee to handle intake and add instead of constantly changing volunteers. Right. Well, it's bad just to have consistent messaging, consistent answers. Right. So say something about instead of volunteers. Okay, does anybody else have any changes? Don't forget to check and make sure you have your start off as being in attendance. Okay, do I have a motion? Second. Okay, moved and seconded to accept the minutes as corrected. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Now, before we get started on budgets, on Wednesday, we're going to be hearing the managing budget. Unless you've been out of town for the last two months, you'll know that there's been a select and a recommend or actually have signed a contract with the manager that has a substantial increase. And the addition of an assistant town manager to his budget. We used to have an assistant, we used to have a deputy town manager and an assistant town manager until 2004, 2005, something in that range. And then it was eliminated and there was a vacancy at the time, so it was eliminated for budget cuts. And the manager believes he can justify bringing that position back. So in order to have that, the select one will be here. Dan Dunn representing the board of select one will be here to go through and explain the manager's new contract and why they think it was very important. And the manager will be here to discuss the new position on that. So please look at the materials that Gloria has been sending out and to bring all your questions. Because if we don't get it from this committee, we're certainly going to get it from town meetings. I want to get everything out on the table. The second thing is just the enrollment issue. And one of the enrollment task force, it has been, as you know, meeting fairly regularly. We're meeting again tomorrow night. I invite people to come. It's up in the school committee room. Get there early to get a seat. It has been quite crowded. The issue is exactly when are we going to be able to bring this before the finance committee. Because there's going to be issues involving the middle school. Whether we add an addition to the oddison or whether we take back the Gibbs. So that will be a big topic of discussion, costs, etc. As you're probably aware, the superintendent has already made her recommendation that we should be taking back the Gibbs. You heard some of the discussion when the parents group was here before last week, I think, on that. So that will be a big issue. Tomorrow night, the superintendent and manager are coming back with hopefully being able to have engineering and architectural studies of both options as far as the cost. Whatever happens, that's not going to get done when we go to print with the finance committee report. So what I might try to do is sometime later at the end of March, have some people come in to start reviewing the information that we have to date. Because in all likelihood, this is going to have to be a 7.30 to 8 o'clock type of vote. And obviously, you don't want to be able to absorb all this information and make a decision in a half hour. So I'll try to fit in one of those in either the 28th or the 30th. And then, of course, on top of this is we're going to have to come up with money to build in addition to the oddison or to take back Gibbs for that. Because I think Mr. Boskett has pulled out all the rabbits out of his capital budget that he can have to do the strat. So in all likelihood, this is going to have to be a debt exclusion. And so there'll be a lot of discussions there. There'll be some more discussions on the Thompson. Obviously, the high school, you'll need to appropriate money for a feasibility study to get that process going. And I think those are the means when we have to deal with it. Does anybody have any questions now? We'll take a couple of minutes. They're sort of bugging them. This will be on the special town meeting, right? I think there's an article on the regular town meeting that was put in by the parents' group. But in all likelihood, we'll be dealing with it at the special, in the special town meeting. Now, the special is scheduled for the Wednesday, the 27th of April. We can have all the information. I think what will have to happen is we'll deal with all the other issues in the special town meeting and then we'll adjourn it until probably mid-May, maybe later, to deal with that issue. So that's why I try to, you know, read the advocate look up. I think the meetings at the school committee are being taped. So they should be periodically on the cable TV. Any other questions on the general issue? John. We're still talking about the possibility of reserve funding for the initial studies. I know there was some discussion about that. Right. We'll find out more about this tomorrow night. I mentioned our last meeting. I sort of volunteered you guys with the reserve fund to split the cost with the school committee. And they seemed to think that was fair. And fortunately, we haven't had any snow. So, you know, we haven't had to hit the reserve fund. But remember also, we have the modular classrooms, which my guess is would be about $200,000 for this year, maybe more, $200,000 to $400,000, because a lot of the cost in a modular is up front. So we'll have that to deal with and the manager is working on that to deal with it. Okay, any other questions on that? Okay, why don't we start off with our budgets? And you've done some of the big ones. Why don't we go to the super big one? Public works. And we also have a summary of changes in the handouts that were given. The National Resources Division budget, which starts on page 95. Okay. First to remind people, National Resources is the division that's responsible for open spaces, gardens, the bike path, and any work that requires a cherry picker. If you need to hang holiday lights, it's the National Resources Division. If you need to do anything like that, they step in and handle it. Starting with salaries and wages, the increase is pretty much the ratified salary increase. And a few, I think, increases steps note there. The big noteworthy thing in the National Resources budget this year is a $100,000 increase in the maintenance line, the expense line maintenance, which is contracted services. So that the idea is to spend that additional $100,000 for maintaining existing trees. So pruning, cutting, things like that. You'll see further down in the expense section, tree planting, $40,000 appropriation. That is for planting new trees. So the maintenance line is for the labor, the contracted services for maintaining existing trees, plus other contracted services for dealing with playground repair, baseball field maintenance, things like that. And other than that, the only other noteworthy increase in the expense section of National Resources is a rather significant $5,500 increase in the line item called other purchased services, which is the holiday lights line item. The idea is to purchase new lights, even though we purchased new lights two years ago, to purchase new different types of lighting that make it easier to put up and take down. The idea being ultimately saving on labor costs from what we're doing now, which is hooking these lights around trees that take a phenomenal amount of time for these financial resources workers to do. I understand that some of these new lights were used in East Arlington. There were more hanging lights. They can wrap around poles, go up the street. Again, the idea is to have nice lights that are easy and quick to put up and take down. The other expense I'd like to point out, it's not new. It's the historic sculpture maintenance expense of $5,000. We appropriated $5,000 last year. The idea is to, on a yearly basis, clean and do other maintenance work on the Cyrus Dallan statues in town. There's a hope that eventually, at some point, I'll start building in the Uncle Sam statue as well. But right now, this is the most of the Cyrus Dallan works. So I recommend that we approve the natural resources budget as printed. Okay. Questions? Okay. John. The $100,000 increase for the tree maintenance, is that a one-time or once every so many years sort of thing? And why is it for contracting services rather than having employees do their work? The expertise of handling any tree work, hiring arborists rather than regular natural resources people who don't have that expertise of looking at the tree and figuring out is it diseased, if it is, what to do with it? Do we cut it down? Do we prune it? What do we do with it? I think there's been historically some of that work in that line item. But right now, there's a belief that there is a three-year backlog of tree work that needs to be done. So the idea is to try to catch up with that much larger appropriation that's coming in here. So that and that may not necessarily continue? Right. Or maybe to reduce some or something like that. I'm not expecting that this will be just $100,000 going forward every year. Okay. Brian? Same question, so it's answered.   So I'm glad they're doing that differently. The $9,000 increase was spent. In other supplies, that is for materials. For mulch, material for playing fields, field work. The general landscaping. Okay, Peter? Which is the holiday lights? It's other purchase services, five, two, three, six. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? Any questions? Okay, so you're making a motion for $1,420,291? Yes. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so the next is the maintenance of town fields. This is DPW splits the cost with parks and rec. Parks and rec takes user fees and puts in at least $50,000. In fact, I think they probably put in more than that. We have in the last seven, the DPW has in the last several years put in $40,000 towards the field work. There was an increase this year and last year to try to approach matching parks and rec. Parks and rec had been for more recently putting in at least $50,000 towards field maintenance costs. So there's an increase from $2,000 to $10,000. It's the same amount we pledged last year. So Tom and I recommend that we approve $50,000 for this. Question. I'm sorry. Question here. Christine, did the stadium seating at the pipeline field come up? No. You have to know who's responsible. I do not. I can find out. I'll tell you that this is the Department of Public Works. Department of Recreation. And there's also some problems with that. In addition to the corporate condition, it's very expensive to remediate, but it's also historic. We're talking the stands. Okay, are there any other questions? Okay, do you have a motion for $50,000? Second. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous? 3, 7, 16. Okay. The next budget is the town engineer budget. And that is, we have a new budget sheet that we've talked about, talking about the personal changes. You'll note that there is essentially no difference in the salaries and wages line item in this budget. And that's because we have, there are four employees in that department and two have already or about two. The one is retiring. The senior engineer is retiring. And the other senior engineer is being promoted to the Highways Division. We can talk about that in a few minutes. So there are going to be two vacancies in the town engineer department. And there's a plan of reorganizing that department going forward. And in the meantime, it is essentially being level funded for this year. That's the news with the salary section of that budget. There is, as far as expenses are concerned, there is a $5,000 reduction in contracts, contracted services, which is, involves, includes surveying, mapping, things of that nature that we have to hire out of performance. It fluctuates based on the project that is anticipated. So other than $5,000 reduction in that expense, it's the same budget as of last year. So with that, I recommend, Tom and I recommend approval of the town engineer division budget of $125,610. Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay. Questions? John? Yeah, could you just, once again, what were the changes in the salaries? There are essentially no changes in the salaries. I understand the change, I'm sorry, the change from what the original salary versus what we are now seeing, which is basically no change from. What's happening is there are four employees in that division. There are two leading. And then the idea is that that division will be reorganized somehow going forward. And in the meantime, it's just going to be essentially level funded. Lento and Kelly. Kelly is moving through the highways. Lento is retiring. Okay, well. So is it that they're going to hire people to replace them, but they'll be at a lower salary because they're new? Right now, there is consideration of instead of two senior engineers having one junior engineer. I'm sorry. Instead of two senior engineers and a junior engineer looking towards getting an assistant town engineer and two junior engineers. Okay. Are there any other questions? Dean? I think I asked this already. Kind of bubble it, but if we're reducing the salaries, don't we have to reduce the water to RASA? Right. Right. If we're reducing the salary at one, don't you have to reduce it proportionally? My guess is that they start off with a split of the water and sewer as minor modifications get put forward. I don't think we're going to see that because every time we make a change, you have to redo virtually a good percentage of the budgets. But it could be a question for the manager on one side. I think I've got an answer in this room. I'm sorry? I said I think Ian, do we have the answer to be last year? Because I think they did something similar to this last year where they changed it midway. I mean, if I remember correctly, they take, it's based on a percentage for each thing. And so that percentage for here wouldn't, you know, it's based on the water and sewer budget, not on the engineering budget. So I wouldn't think it would change because you have to provide the same services. But, you know, Grant, if you want to look into that. Yeah, we'll do whatever we can to show up there. Okay, is there any other, any other questions on the town engineer? Okay, we've got a move in seconded for 125, 610. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Favorable action. The unanimous 3-7-16. Okay. The next budget on page 100 is public works administration. This is the division that oversees all the other divisions and provides support for the other divisions. There really is not much difference in this year's budget from last year's, other than the ratified salary increase. So we recommend approval of the public works division budget as printed. Is there a second to that? Second. Okay. Questions? Paul? That is quite a significant change in the offset. Yes. You can see we no longer are getting the bed-fit offset that we had before. And there is reduction in the recycling. Actually, there's no reduction in that. It is the water and sewer offset and we don't get the bed-fit offset. What happened to bed-fit? We still have it. It would be in facilities. We don't have it. So we don't have the agreement with bed-fit? We don't have the agreement. We're not sharing an energy. Okay, other questions? So, on the offset, especially in the structure that I made in this discussion, I ended up finding a email I had with Andrew on this last year. And it's actually really funny because the situation I had just gone over with the change. When I asked this last year, he said that trying to figure out two things. He recognized last year the risk, like when you change a member of the current year budget, I had to change the offsets. So, if he realized last year that the FY17 offsets are based on the FY16 budget, not the FY17 budget, because he realized that if you tried to figure out the 17 budget, 17 would cost problems. It sort of applies in this scenario as well, when you look at last year's drop in question through this year. And then if the other budget were to ask the question, if you change this out, if you change this, you wouldn't change it next year.  Once in a while. Yes. Okay, are there any other questions on the public works? Okay. Motion has been made and seconded for 230,054. All those in favor, can say aye. Aye. Opposed? unanimous? 3, 7, 16. Did we vote on town engineer? Yes. Yes. The next budget is highway salaries, and what you should be looking at is the one we got this afternoon. Has had some vacancies, one of which is going to be filled by Kelly moving from engineering over to highways. He will be the supervisor of highway. That results in a slight change in longevity, but otherwise there's not anything else significant in the salary section of highways. I'm going to expenses. I'm sorry, what's Kelly's position now? Kelly will be the supervisor of highways. The supervisor placed the operations manager who left. As for expenses in the highway division, the major change from this year over the last year is a $30,000 reduction in auto gas and oil, line item 5213, and that is predominantly because of the decreased cost of gasoline. So we recommend approval of the highways division budget as printed. $1,604194. Is there a second? It's 1611836. The one that's out the minute is. I got $19640. The one I'm looking at, which is the one I got this afternoon, the salary and wage line is 1179048. That's the original. Right, exactly. The only difference in the highways division is a change in longevity. From 12384 longevity is 13167. Okay. This is the one that we just got handed out. It came today. The bottom line is $1,611,836. The PDF went out late this afternoon and had a step number. The salary number is $1,179,048. 1179048. And then longevity is 13,167. That's incorrect. When I was looking at this today, that number was long. And I confirmed that with Sandy. So the one that I got this afternoon, I can't remember who it was this afternoon, is the original salary number, but with an increase in longevity. The only difference between the most recent this afternoon budget and the original budget is the longevity line. And so the total for salaries is 97036. And the expenses is the same. And the highway total is 1611,836. Okay. So we zap this. Okay. So your motion is $1,611,836. Yes. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Questions? Special. Okay. Motion has been seconded for $1,611,836 on salary expenses. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? The unanimous. Okay. The next budget is snow and ice. We paid $104. We're adding $75,000 over what we had budgeted for last year. Some of you might remember that a couple of years ago, we thought it prudent to bump this budget up to somewhere around 75 to 80% of our rolling tenure average of snow and ice removal. So I did some calculations. And if we were to appropriate $921,000 as printed in the budget book, we would be about 72, 73% of our 10-year average. See, you think last year we bumped that up to the house? It did. Although in those 10 years, we had a low year, two low years. Okay. So you're making a motion for $921,000? Yes. Okay. Any discussion? Yeah, I guess a few questions. Where are we year-to-date again? I missed that to be in. Where are we year-to-date with snow and ice? Where are we year-to-date? Yeah. Good questions. I don't have it. Tom, do you know? Seven? I think at that point, I did know the number. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Are we addition? Yeah. What do we got left of it? It wasn't much. When I was talking to the manager today, he just said they're redoing it, but it's about, we're not in deficit yet. No, we're not in deficit yet. I think the last figure I have is $725,000. So my second question, trying to get my air in position, snow and ice is really, it's two miles, right? It's more than appropriate in the general fund, plus the amount for whatever we run over.  Yeah. The manager puts $500 in the five-year plan under one of the line items. I can't remember which one. There's $500,000 in there for current year deficits. Right. So I'm just pointing this out, which is if we're not projected to run a deficit this year, we would actually be able to true this budget up to the rest of the number that we've been targeting without messing around with anything. Because we're going to budget next year, $921,000 plus $500,000. We're actually not budgeting $900,000. We're budgeting $1.42 million. So if we actually don't run over the $9.846 this year, then we could actually roll the $500 portion of it and just be done trying to up this amount. I think we will, you know... I'm just pointing out that it's there. Not on wood, but yeah, if you take the $500,000 out, that means we can put in $500,000 more into the one term, the override stabilization fund, which will help push the deficit back or the override back. But yeah, that's a good point. And it's actually three points because then you're throwing the reserve fund, which is meant for that. Okay, are there any other questions? Hopefully now we have a jinxed it and it'll be a blizzard if you don't want to. Okay, so motion is made and seconded for $921,000. All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous? 3, 7, 16. Okay. The next budget is the highway motor equipment repair division budget. The town maintains about 150 vehicles and this is the budget that takes care of that. Their supervisor of that department has recently retired and the DCW director is hoping that replacing, filling that position, he'll be able to consider making some changes in how the division is managed so that with the hope of getting some efficiencies in that department. Historically, the expenses have fluctuated widely. This year there's a slight increase in supplies, the supply line item budget, which includes materials, parts and fluids and a small increase in training and a small increase in maintenance expenses. Otherwise, there's not much else to report going on that division. So we recommend approval of the highway motor equipment repair division budget as printed. Second? Second. Okay. Discussion? Questions? Paul? So on that other supplies line for the current fiscal year, budget significantly less than the actuals from the previous two years. Are we staying within that budget? I don't know, I didn't ask where we are right now. Historically, it's an underfunded. Tell us something about our equipment. Okay. I think we can go ahead with the budget, but could you ask that question and find out what we're doing on other supplies this year? Okay. Other questions? Yeah. Just in passing in the capital plan this year, we're increasing the life, useful life of some of the most of these reinforcements because the town actually uses them longer than the statutory useful life, which you're allowed to do, provided that the force likely supports. And that's mostly because of the work that these people do. Okay. Any other discussion or comments or questions? Okay. All those in favor? All have 390,649. Can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Next. The next budget is cemeteries. Cemetery division. And other than the ratified wage increase, there is no difference between this budget this year and last year. So you recommend approval of the cemetery division budget as part. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Questions? Could you Christine check with Rich Viscay and get me the balances of the perpetual care? I have that. Oh. Okay. The balance in perpetual care is $5,920,996. It's $5,920,996. And Watson Braves is $393,346. $393,346. Okay. Great. Now, so we can take this $150,000 offset. Are you taking much from capital? Do you remember? Yeah. I'll wait and check that one. Vote on that article. Okay. So you recommend you $253,360. Yes. Okay. Any further discussion? Questions? Is there a second to that? Yes. I see. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? unanimous? 3,716. The next budget is solid based on page 108. Increases that you see contractual increases. So we recommend approval of the solid waste division budget as part. Second. Okay. Any questions? Peter? Christine, did he mention are those figures in the existing contract, the annual increase, are there any problems? It is in the existing. Okay. So we had a, as this waste collection coordinator in the budget, I saw a couple of lines back. The recycling coordinator? We still have that. So isn't this actually done by the contract? The recycling coordinator due since they wrote these. Last year? Yeah. So, coordinating the collection, the recycling day, whatever it's called. Outreach to businesses to make sure that they're part of the recycling requirements, being looking for grant money. I don't know that. You set up a monthly collection day or not stuff that you can't recycle the curb. The state purges that a little. I think she's also a watchdog. I just want to make sure the contract makes sure it takes the complaints. Do you know if the tonnage that's collected during the recycling days is measured? Is there any way of determining how much waste is being diverted from the paid flow? The curve-sized stuff is much measured, yes. The things that the recycling coordinator coordinates. The savvy pickups. Well, when they, they'd have to get a wage slip. So they would know. Do you think that we would have a record of how much? That'd be interesting to know how much waste is potentially being diverted from the regular stream. It would definitely have a record of that. I think the interesting thing is what the solid waste collection tonnage has been, like over the last five or six years just. Yeah, I don't have that. I can bring that if you want. Okay, that'd be great. Just for our information. For information to be able to take charge. Is there any information regarding whether or not the contractor is making money on the recycling? I've read that prices for the recycling, you know, the recycling theory has dropped dramatically. The thing is the price of petroleum is going down so low that now all of a sudden new products are as cheap as recycled products. Okay, so if you could find that out. Okay, is there any other questions? Okay, so Peter and Christine will get that information. Motion to remain seconded for $3,479,480. All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? unanimous $3,716. Budget is street lighting on page 117. Budget is slightly reduced from last year's budget. We recommend approval of the street lighting budget as amended.  Is that like in the last year or two? Last year. I think it's all done for the last three years. I was just looking at the huge difference between $14,000 and $15,000 growing from $97,000 to $66,000. I mean, that's good. Yes, sir. When I joined the finance committee, it was about $250,000. When I joined the finance committee, the number was about $250,000 a year. So looking while $97,000 or $90,000 doesn't seem like a lot. It was like $250,000 at one point. Oh, no. I realize that. I'm just wondering if the new lighting was finished a couple of years ago, why the big drop of $14,000 to $15,000? You're right. This has been a huge success story. Oh, well. Okay. So you're recommending $110,000? Yes. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? The unanimous, 716. Okay. The next budget is traffic signals on the next page. It's slightly reduced from last year's budget again because of a drop in energy costs. So we recommend approval of the traffic signal budget of $60,000. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Questions? All right. All those in favor of $60,000 for this budget, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? The unanimous, 3,716. And the last budget is facilities on page 113. 113. The next page. And that is because there are four positions being added to facilities. Not four positions created, but four positions being moved into facilities. One position, a custodian is being moved from the police department to the facilities department. And there are, I think, I believe there are two custodians being moved through the library to facilities. And I thought there was a fourth. Yes. The administrative assistant has been moved to facilities. Probably DPW. From the town manager. So that explains the leap in the salary and wage line in the facilities budget. There is an increase in the maintenance line, expense line for peers and maintenance. Correct me. But I think much of this is custodial plus virus system testing and maintenance. Yes. That's the. I believe you're right. Reason in the large increase in that maintenance line. It was a fight and testing. Yes. Where's this operation based on? This school. It's the media center in that area in the high school. Okay question. Yes. I don't know. I mean, eventually the idea is to move everyone into one department. But there are contracts that need to be worked out by the school side. Right. On the salary detail. The director of facilities and energy project manager are half. No. Half time? No. The director that's an error. The director of facilities is a full time position. And the energy project manager is intended to be a full time position as well. Okay. Thank you. The administrative assistant. Is that full time? Is it full time? Okay. Okay. So the. The energy manager, um, was that what we were getting the bedford offset for this year? But that is that that's a vacant position. It's currently vacant. The idea is to eventually fill it. But it won't be a shared position with that. Do you have an idea of what happened? The relationship between, I don't know. Other than, and Tommy correct me. I think the idea is that there will be more work within our intent to warrant a full-count position. The whole department is kind of slow. It's getting together. It's not complete. What they want, what they don't have hasn't all come together yet. It's going to take a little while. To get everything under one roof, that's what we wanted to do. Can't just happen overnight. Point out about the expenses and facilities. There is a large increase in training. And that is including access to certification, record management training, and payments for school dues, which is the software that the school is using right now, and managing facilities on the school side. The solar panels that have been going in, are they under the management of this department? They should be. It may be a little bit early, but are they collecting data in terms of what results we are seeing from the solar panels? I know that that's the goal of the, one of the goals of the facilities department is to be efficient in delivering the services and measuring whether we are being efficient or if not. I had a similar question. I was kind of curious as to why the energy went up when the solar panels got down and we were supposed to be getting, the output of those panels were being priced at less than the resources, basic service rate. So I would have thought we were seeing a decrease in energy costs. This is for energy costs throughout the town's buildings, not necessarily those with solar panels. I just noticed that electricity, energy costs are going down in all the other departments. I would have thought it would go down even more in facilities given that energy prices have come down and we've got the solar panels on now. I don't think they have a positive reading yet. I would expect more next year. It's been cloudy. You also have to remember that even if the energy costs are decreasing if the usage of the building is increasing, which they are, particularly the schools, so their lights are on longer fuel heating needed. So it's not a direct correlation between decreasing energy costs. You have to factor in the usage of the buildings. When Tom and I met with the director she was talking to us about how pressed she is with how much these buildings are being used, which is putting the stress on custodial work because it's no longer do you have one custodian who can work from eight to three that you now can custodial help for after hours and at night, which is when buildings also have to be heatable. We have opened these schools up to the public now. They use just as much as night as they do in the day. And we have not increased our maintenance. It's incredible. We have two custodians that just can't keep it up. Okay, other questions? Questions, discussion? This is the big new budget. Okay, so you're recommending 578.095. Second? Second. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? unanimous? 3, 7, 16. Do it for you or? Thank you very much. I know that's a big complex budget. Okay, who else would like to jump in with the budget? Okay, I'm going to go to the select list budget. It's on page 25, section 2325. There's going to be an adjustment on the select list total figure. Peter and I have met with the select list office personnel on a more than one occasion the last couple of weeks. If you turn to the salary structure for the select list, there's been an adjustment to go down to the line with principal clerk and typist. That's a .51 position. And when you go over to the step in that position, that's on the paper it says step seven, but it should be step six. That's presently it's now a shared position. It's 18 hours in the select list office and I'm 17 hours in the zoning office. That's the principal clerk typist? Yes. For a total of 35 hours. I will defer to Peter on the adjustments in that particular position if there's questions. It's just a percentage of the rate for office grade three, step six. So what's the 23728 changes to something? That's right. 22036. 22036. Any change of the step, the 620? On the step? Step one. Step six. The dollar amount for that position is step itself. I'll need to get that. What happened was there was a transceiving error. I think it is 620. Thank you. I can look that up for you if you need it. We'll apply whatever it says by 18 over 35. Okay. Also in the selections budget, you'll notice under salaries and wages, the 2017 request, you'll notice it's $90,000. That's due to the number of elections that we're going to have in this cycle in the 2017 period. More elections now? On the selections budget, I went on back to that. Elections. Right. Why don't we take this one at a time? Dealing with the page 25. Okay, sir, are there any questions? The new figure for the selection total would be 249.737. The 5100 salaries and wages line. How much was that again? The 5100 salary and wages line would be 247.306. 249.306. Salaries and wages line. 228.887. Which gives us a selection total of 249.737. 249.737. That's the selection total? Yes. Okay, the expenses stay the same. Okay, so salaries and wages are 247. 306. Yes. No. Salary and wages 247.306. The total is 249.737. Okay, what's the? 228.887. Okay, questions? Okay, so you're recommending the 249.737? Second. Second. Okay, discussion? Questions? Okay, all those in favor of that 249.737, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? unanimous? Okay, elections. Elections, there's going to be a number of elections compared to our last cycle. So there's an increase to $90,000. So you'll have a presidential. That $90,000 is basically election workers, right? Yes, the elections. That among other expenses. Okay, so you've got two 90,000s here. So the 90,5219, that's for poor workers. Yes, all the cost of the day, right? Okay, what's the 90,500? Right, I got it, 5100. Could it be what? Could it be non-police workers and then police workers? Does some details please come under? Yeah, the breakdown is... I mean, you've got next year presidential. We have fewer elections. We have 17 and we get 15. In this election cycle, the primary is in this fiscal year, the generals in next. In fiscal 15, the primary would have been in September and the general would have been in November. For the state election. Right, so if you look at 15, it's a benchmark. It should not exceed 15. No, there are three elections next fiscal year. The September primary... Wait, hold on a whole election year. No, 17. So I'm just comparing 15 and 17. So what more elections are happening in 17 that didn't happen in 15? There's more elections in 17 than there are in 15, correct? But what though? In 17, 2017... There are two. There's a September primary. No, there's not. For state, how state senate and state rep, there's a September primary. There's a November election and then the town election. Right, which is comparable to 15. In 15, we had a September primary, governor's election in November, and the town election in the spring. And then we also have another election as well. What they call early voting is another... That's that $10,000 thing you see here. I just don't understand why it's that much higher. What, the early voting? No, just the whole 90,000... 90,000, you know, twice, salaries and wages versus 38, and then 90,000 under election officers, you know, versus 30. I have a question for Dan on Wednesday. Yeah, there was an increase in the salaries of all the poll workers. Which makes sense, because they're probably catching the three-year minimum wage increase on the way out, and they probably missed it on the first year, so they've got to double it this year. But this might get over-doubled. If we went three elections across the poll workers alone, it would be 56,385. It's $895 times 21 times three. The printed budget is quite different from the... It always is. That's why we waited to... That was our deadline for the first time. And we talked about the $10,000. That's for an election that we don't know that much about yet. I like the question if there were three elections in fiscal 2015 and three elections in fiscal 2017, why is there such a large increase? Yeah, the personnel services that we appropriated fiscal 15 is 34,480. Right. Going to 90,000 seems... I don't know. I guess perhaps if you could go back and see if we can get some extra information because salaries and wages... First of all, what is that? You're going from 38,000 to 90,000. And that poll workers are going from 35,000 to 90,000. It just seems like it doesn't match. If you could revisit that, I think we'd appreciate it. Okay, do you have any other budget statement? Well, we can still go forward on the printing of the channel reports. That's on page 29. That's the same as it has been. That's $2,500 2017 request. Yep. Not the same as it has been for the last few years. Right. Okay, so your recommendation is $3,500? Yes. And is there a second? Second. Is there any questions or discussions? Okay, all those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous. Now how about the audit? That's on page 28. There's an increase of $6,000 and according to the Comptroller I presented a letter from the Comptroller to Alan tonight explaining the increase in the $6,000 and they're looking to be a certain certification that the town wants to qualify for and in doing so there's an increase to do with that type of audit. Okay, any questions? Why do we need this clarification? There's a letter that I just received that I passed on to Alan from the Comptroller explaining that the new type of certification that the town is really interested in getting.  The audit has increased by $5,000 due to the increased costs of having the independent auditors to provide the town with an audit that will comply with government finance officers association, comprehensive annual financial reporting, CAFR, model of financial reporting. CAFR is a thorough and detailed presentation of the state of the town's financial conditions reports on the town's activities, balances. It's a much thicker report. I said the town is trying to reach up and have a higher level of financial reporting, which is not a bad objective. He said $5,000, we've got a $6,000 in here. It might be $5,000 for that and then $1,000 inflation. I think it is. Any questions or discussions? Okay, the motion has been made and seconded for $63,000 for the financial audit. Tell them we expect to give copies of it. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? Any enemies? Okay, do you have any others? Not at this time, no. Anybody else have budgets? I have an update on inspections. I think over the weekend. Remember the original page of 139 and the only change is in the 500 line remember they had a supervisor of wires was retiring and they were going to replace them and the salary yet to be determined. They've now determined that that salary is $21,793 less than the original salary, so that accounts for the reduction in 17 requests from $440,218 to $418,425. That's the only line item that's changed. So I recommend approval of the updated. That's good. So where in the salary details does it change happen? It's the wire inspector that's the second figure. Around $66 instead of $86. Whatever $21,793. $64. Yeah, I need a number. Minus $21. Okay, so otherwise we've already passed this budget, so that's the only change. Okay, so you're recommending $418 to $425? Yes. Right, the second? Okay, is there any discussion? Okay, all those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? unanimous? Okay, other people? Okay, so let's, this is when I started embarrassing people. Okay, uh, committee is done. Now, the second. So I've been, David's going to get back on just that one section of elections. Manager we're going to be doing on Wednesday, Human Resource, IT, uh, treasurer. We're meeting with them this week so we can present it next week. Okay, so you're talking Monday? Probably. Postage? Monday? Okay, assessors? We're also meeting with them, I'll be there next week. So it'll be Monday? I can't speak for him, but legal. Good legal. You're right, legal is done, town clerk is done, registrar is done, parking. That's also through the Charter's office Monday.  Do you have a date on rental properties? I thought we had done that. Do you have a date marked down? I don't have that one. Do you have a date? We're going to the minutes. The redevelopment was 229, sorry that was not done. It's not in the minutes. Okay, this is on page 85. Okay, so you're looking for a total of 206,048. Okay, do I have a second? Okay. Any... That's just for gifts. Pretty much the same as last year. Okay, is there any questions or discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? So that was just the gifts. Do we have a parameter? Okay, parameter 15,000. Is that your recommendation? Do I have a second? Second. Any questions or discussion? So there's no... Is the energy now being paid by the tenants? Is that why there's no more energy from last year and this year? Probably moving facilities. I believe they negotiated all the contracts that way. Okay, are there any other questions? Okay, recommendation 15,000, parameter expenses. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? unanimous? That's it. Look at the top of the next page. Okay, good thing you're here. Okay, $5,000 for maintenance down in library expenses. Is there any other recommendation here? Yes. Okay, is there any questions? Oh, is there a second? Second. Is there any questions or discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Is that it, Paul? I think so. Insurance? Okay, so that would probably be something we take out in the last... reserve fund. What are the sewer? Okay, well basically we have Wednesday and Monday and then the next day after March 16th is the school department. That's pretty much an all night session. 21st is capital planning committee. That pretty much takes the night. March 23rd is the capital ladle thing the whole night. So the last two nights we have are March 28th and March 30th. Recreation? We're meeting with Joe on Friday so we can do it on Monday. Monday. Okay, I think what I'm going to do is I think what I'm going to do is there's been a school group that wanted to come in and talk to us. Do you have any sense of other cameras to do anything? Okay, I'll try to fit that in. So is there any other business? Any other questions? Overdrawing? A little bit.


Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whichever the case may be. I'm James Randy. Oh, incidentally, that's a phrase with which I used to open my radio program back in 1967-68 on WOR Radio. Hey, I can still do the station break. This is radio station WOR AM and FM New York. See? I'd like to spend a couple of minutes discussing some comments that have been made following my most recent video. Now please don't suppose that I'll be discussing in detail every comment that you folks offer, but a couple of misunderstandings here should be addressed. First, I'm quite well aware of Theta waves, believe me. One commenter said that I, quote, refused to believe anything outside the realms of immediate possibility, unquote, which has quite a ring to it, but it's quite false. His added jab, saying he is a very frightened man, could not be more wrong either. I think the implication here is that I'm scared of the truth. Another commenter told me that, quote, Theta waves are emitted in brain states that occur during dreaming, immediately prior to sleep, during hypnosis, etc., etc. Yes, I'm aware of that too. Thank you. And I've never doubted their existence, but I felt sure that the young lady I was discussing might have been throwing the term around a little loosely. One chap asked if I knew that President Obama is a devout Catholic. Well, come on, I'm well aware of that. It would have been hard not to know it with the rather intense campaign that's just been waged. We have to face a hard fact here. It's a widely known fact that no politician at this point in history can be elected to office in the United States without invoking a deity. I don't know, nor does anyone else know, just how seriously our president takes his religious connections. Nor do I really care. I'm only interested that the man runs our government on a rational basis, brings us back the respect that we lost during the last eight years, and stays honest. Don't ever entertain the notion that I don't trust or like religious people. After all, I'm surrounded as we all are by believers in deities of various sorts, and it's something we have to handle. I should mention as well that this Theta healing nonsense is eligible for the JRAS million dollar prize, which should have been evident to everyone because it's a woo-woo claim. But as always, we don't go after these people. They have to come to us by making out the application, et cetera, et cetera. Another commenter suggested that I don't like my job, but that I do a good job of hiding that fact. Au contraire, I love what I'm doing. I try to do it well, and I spend literally seven days a week at it. One chap from Argentina had a very good question indeed about homeopathy. He asked, what about the delusions, the low delusions, like 3x or 6x? That means one part in 1,000 and one part in one million, respectively, so you'll know. Well, medicines at those delusions are just not homeopathic. They may claim to be, as Zycam does, but they are not. Homeopathic remedies are used at much, much higher delusions, I can assure you. My reader goes on to ask, one part in 1,000 is not that much, or is it? Well, this depends entirely upon what the substance is. If it's arsenic compound or strickenin', well, we should talk. Another commenter says that he or she has a lady friend who has been unable to receive a response from the JRAF about trying the million-dollar challenge. I get claims like this every now and then. I investigate them, and it turns out that the named person has made no application or has never contacted the JRAF in any way. Commenter, check your facts. That just doesn't happen.  Yes, that's true, and let me explain the difference.  I've seen that happen too. Being uneducated is something that we at the JRAF try to remedy. Thank you. I hope that my comment on the citizens of Utah wasn't taken as being mean or unkind. However, when I think of a certain small proportion of those citizens who based their entire lives and philosophies on words written on mysteriously vanished golden plates dug up by a convicted con man, I have to think that there may not be much hope for that part of the population. On another matter, my horoscope was drawn up by somebody who probably actually believed in his art. Today, we're going to have a look at the horoscope of James Randi, the world famous professional skeptic and former magician, and see if astrologically he is qualified to be these things. This nutcase uses both traditional astrology, Chinese astrology, a completely different non-science, and numerology. In other words, he takes no chances. Somewhere in this nonsense, he'll happen upon some characteristics or facts that are actually true, and he'll consider that to be a major victory. But let's take a brief look at the characteristics that he found. According to his scientific examination of my horoscope, he finds that there are some major features and characteristics which I can strongly associate with my real personality. I must admit, really. For example, he cites aggressive self-confidence. He says I'm practical and realistic. Yes, pragmatic. Uh-huh. I'm a hard-edged realist. Oh, yes. I am combat-ready and tough as nails. These planets, which are in acute conflict, define a person who is combat-ready, and with the earth platform is as tough as nails. He warns that I have a risk of exaggerating what's wrong and says that my planet Neptune indicates my interest in illusion, misdirection, truth, and religion. Really. He mentions my aptitude for technology, science, and performing in front of audiences. Now, that's amazing, I must say. But hold on, folks. He really got off to a rather bad start and seems not to have any idea of my actual birth date. He has me 20 days away in the wrong sign, and my original name has a much different numerological value, though I've been told that those who change their names also change their futures because of the different number value they thus assumed. Really. So obviously, from that point on, by using the wrong birth date, even if astrology, Chinese or not, or numerology had any validity, he was doomed. Bear in mind, of course, that he had all kinds of biographical material to reference, so maybe he did more reading than he did astrological or numerological research. What do you think? No, this magical divination applies to someone born on August 27, 1928. Not to me. Another surprising thing here is that astrologers have told us for centuries now that you have to have the exact time and date of the person's birth in order to cast an accurate horoscope. That sometimes, difference of minutes will make a lot of difference in the quality and contents of the horoscope. Twins, as a matter of fact, born from the same mother, obviously, born a few minutes apart can have totally different futures. Gee, if he didn't even have the time of my birth, which I could have given him had I been asked, and he didn't have the correct date, he was off by 20 days, I think he's in deep trouble. Of course, with his own skills and misdirection, perhaps we need to ask how much he is using these skills to convey an honest-looking position. I must tell you about a little gimmick that I've had going for years now. First, when some starry-eyed telephone operator working for a bank or some other confidential service asks me for some sort of secret information or data point that specifically identifies me, I'm often asked by my mother's maiden name. I can argue that this information is easily available from biographical dictionaries or other sources that provide it, but instead, I give a different name to each of these folks for a very special reason. You see, when I'm being given a reading, if I hear one of these names come up as part of the divination being provided, I immediately know from what source it was obtained, since I keep a list of those names and the connected organizations to which I provided them. Tricky? Oh yeah. In closing, I'd like to mention that we've been very gratified to know of the splendid response you've given to these video presentations. It's good to know that you enjoy them and we hope that you're able to take something away with you. That's why we do them, and we have lots of subjects that we're preparing to present to you. I'm James Randy, and I thank you for watching.


Okay, welcome everyone. So I'm going to talk about K3D, free 3D modeling and animation package. Starting with a small overview of my presentation, I'll first introduce what K3D is about. Next I'll show how to use a standard plugin in K3D. The main chapter of this presentation is actually to show you how to write your own plugin. And finally we will see how to use this new plugin and then I will end with a conclusion, which is of course that K3D is amazing. So what is K3D? It's a free 3D modeling and animation package, which was written by Tim Shad. He started the project around 1992. K3D does modeling and animation for the actual rendering. It relies on external rendering engines, such as XS, which implements the Pixar-Renderman interface. Renderman engines are supported out of the box and we also have some plugins for some non-renderman engines. It has a very modular design, which means basically everything is a plugin, including user interface. Different plugins interact with each other through a fairly unique visual programming system, which allows you to make a sort of a tree, which interconnects different nodes. So how do we use a standard plugin? We start from the create menu, which is basically a big menu containing all the plugins available. In this case we will import an alias wavefront object, so we go to the mesh reader category and choose the alias wavefront loader plugin. Once we have chosen this plugin, we get to see the properties panel, which actually shows all the inputs and parameters for the plugin chosen. Most importantly here, of course, the file name. Once we go on to set the file name, the object gets loaded and is shown in the viewport. Now we're going to apply an additional modifier, which is done by right-clicking the model. We get again all the plugins that can be used as a modifier, and in this case we apply the subdivision surface modifier, which creates an interactive, smoothed version of the object we imported. So next onto the important part, which is actually how to create new plugins.  So you basically just start off in a new directory, which can be external to the K3D source tree. The first thing you have to define is a CMake file. So the CMake file simply contains two calls to pre-defined CMake macros and basically define the name of the plugin until the build system where to find our new plugin. Next is a module.cpp file, which will contain the actual code of our new plugin. It can contain one or more classes, which for a plugin in the document should all inherit from the K3D iNode interface. In this class we can define different so-called properties, which will actually store the data for the plugin and which will also allow inputs, and parameters to be set. Finally, we also need to define a factory class, which will be used to instantiate new instances of our plugin. As an example, I will show you how to create a simple mirror tool, which will mirror points along one or more components. So the first thing we have to do is to declare our interface we will be using. Since we will be deforming mesh points, we will be flipping components of each point in the mesh. I chose to use mesh deformation modifier here, which permits to easily do this action on the mesh. So we declare a class, which inherits from our base class, which is part of the SDK, and type the base class for convenience. Next, we have to define some parameters to our new plugin. In this case, I will define three Boolean parameters, which specify if the points should be mirrored along the x, y, and z I have only shown the x component here because the others are exactly the same. In order to declare a property, we call the K3DDataMacro, which actually is a shortcut to an otherwise complicated template declaration of a series of nested template arguments, which in fact define different policy classes. So the first argument is a type of the property, Boolean in this case. Next, the policy about the property name. The name is important because it will be used in scripting and for serialization to file. In this case, we choose that the name should not be possible to change. In case our Boolean value changes, we want to emit a change signal. So we specify the change signal policy. When modified, we want to be able to undo our changes. So we simply specify with undo, so it will be taken into account in the standard undo redo system in K3D. Local storage means that the Boolean value is actually stored inside the property. It's not referred to by a pointer or anything like that. No constraint means we don't constrain a property value in case of a Boolean that would not be very useful. But in case of a double or integer value, it is useful to be able to define constraints so we can limit the values to a certain range. Property is going to be writable, obviously, otherwise, we won't be able to change it. With serialization means that the property will automatically get saved into the K3D document file if we specify with serialization. Okay, so this is the basic declaration of our new class for the plugin. Next, we have to implement the constructor for our class, which always takes two arguments, one for the factory to create the plugin and one for the document it will be part of. We simply pass those on to our base class. Next, we have to initialize our three properties. Again, I'm only showing one of them. The owner is the container of the property. Obviously, in this case, this will be our new plugin itself, so we use this pointer. Next, we initialize the name and for the X component, I use mirror underscore X. This can be referred to in the Python scripting later on and will also be saved into the file. The label is what will be shown in the user interface. It's mirror X, a little prettier than the name. Next, we initiate the description, which is shown in the tooltip once it shows up in user interface and we give an initial value of true. Constructor body, then, has to take into account that we have to update the mesh if the property changes, so we simply connect to the 6C++ change signal that is emitted by our new property. Next, the important part, in fact, the real code of our plugin. Since we inherited from the mesh deformation modifier, we get to implement the on deform mesh modifier, which has as arguments all the inputs for the mesh, including the list of input points and the list of output points we have to store to. So in this case, of course, the met is extremely simple. We simply loop over all the points and if the corresponding property is set, we flip the component and we store the points in the output area. The important part of this code is the pipeline value here. So our mirror X here is a property, which means that it can have an internal value, but it can also be connected through the user interface to another input. Specifying pipeline value here means that we want the final result of all the connections that are made to establish the value of our property, which is a very powerful tool, obviously. So the last thing we have to do is to take care of plug-in registration. In order to do this, we define a factory. This contains an interface list, which is used to keep track of what capabilities each plug-in has. In this case, it's both a mesh source and a mesh sync, because it can take mesh data as inputs and outputs new mesh data. We also have to give it a unique ID. There's a small tool based on LibQUID that generates a 64-bit unique ID for each plug-in, which is used to recover the plug-ins from documents. We give it a name, a description that will again be the tooltip, a category, and we mark it as experimental if we're not entirely sure that it already works completely in the way it's supposed to. Finally, we call the registration macro, which actually sets an entry point to the module, since it will be compiled as a shared object. We have to give an entry point for DLOpen to load the module into K3D. Okay, so now how can we use a new plug-in? Again, we go to the create menu. After we have rebuilt K3D, our external plug-in will be shown in the deformation category, which we entered on the previous slides. See here the deformation category and the different names. They immediately and automatically show up in the user interface. It's marked as experimental, as requested. Again, after creation, the properties panel shows up, and we find our three properties, as we declared, also automatically taken into the user interface, with the first one set default true, the other is default false. Now, nothing is happening yet. We still have our previously loaded mesh, but it's unaltered, because we haven't set the input yet. In order to do that, as you can see, there's no possibility to enter a value or anything. We have to click the connect button. So, if we click the connect button next to the property, we can connect to our original mesh, and once this is done, the mesh gets updated, and we get our two twins immediately integrated into the pipeline. So, if we modify part of the original mesh on the left, the mesh on the right changes along with it interactively. So, as you can see, the modular design of K3D makes it very easy to get started writing your own code. You don't have to worry too much about the framework and everything. It's very easy to dive right in and to write a plugin that does what you want to do. There's plenty of opportunity there. We are not at all feature complete yet, so currently most tools are based on modeling. There's still a lot of work to do. For instance, in the texturing department, NURBS modeling and so on is not fully supported yet. All the basic components are there in the SDK, just waiting for someone to write plugins on top of them. For instance, to allow modifying NURBS objects, UV parameters, physics integration, deformation bones, those are all things you will find in competing open source packages, such as Blender, but which are not yet integrated into K3D. The framework is there, and for the moment we are working hard on finalizing our modeling system, and then we will move on to the animation functionality, but there's plenty of opportunity for improvements. If you want more information, you can visit our website or subscribe to our mailing list. We will also likely hopefully take part again in the summer of code this year, so if you're a student and you're interested in participating, we should have some more news on that pretty soon. Okay, thank you for your attention. I'll be down there for questions if you have any. Thank you.


17 September every year is marked as World Cleanup Day and as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark the day, conversations are being directed and redirected towards citizens paying more attention to their environment and making every day a World Cleanup Day. Briefing journalists in Lagos, the president of the Clearing Professionals Association of Nigeria, Dr. Tunde Iyer, submitted that poor community hygiene is a huge contributor to infant mortality. He however stressed the need for more citizens' participation and government advocacy to the public to make every day a Cleanup Day. We just have a very dirty environment. Unfortunately, you may be as clean as clean is. If your environment is dirty, then it affects all of us. And we can see it in the number of our young people that are dying. So one of the reasons why we believe that the clean and hygiene sector needs to take a little bit more center stage is that it's a lot cheaper to keep our environments clean and avoid children from falling sick, being out of school because of sick days or even dying from communicable diseases just by ensuring that every day is World Cleanup Day. Ensuring that your personal space is clean and the immediate perimeter of your space is clean. If we are all committed to that as citizens, then we also might have something to hold our government more accountable to. The program director Inara George calls for constant education of the public on how to manage their waste. It's not just having us as stakeholders. We need to educate these people on the waste being generated. Again, we are setting up an institution to professionalize the entire cleaning system whereby we will train people. So this is just saying education. You need to understand the waste being generated and how to dispose of it within your day to day activities. Because, yes, you will engage cleaning services from morning through evening, but what happens at night? How do you dispose at night? How do you keep ready to be properly disposed? How do you separate your waste?


Our next speaker is Dr. Patrick Newman, and I mentioned earlier how much of an honor it is to work at the Institute. One of the most rewarding aspects of it is seeing, you know, not only being able to have the opportunity to learn from great scholars like Dr. Salerno and Dr. Bellarezzo, but seeing the new generation of Austrian scholars rise. We have tremendous talents really all around the world now that have gone through our academic programs, and Dr. Patrick Newman is certainly one of them. He is a fellow of the Mises Institute, an assistant teaching professor of economics at the University of Tampa. He is the editor of Murray Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty, the New Republic, 1784 to 1791. He was able to interpret all of Rothbard's writings, which, if you haven't been to the Institute and seen the archives and seen some of those notes, will give you a great appreciation for the size of that task. He is also an editor of the Progressive Era. In his own work, he is the author of Chronyism, Liberty vs. Power in Early America, 1607 to 1849, and he is working on a sequel to that, dealing with liberty and power in the rise of the corporate estate. So our next speaker, Dr. Patrick Newman. Hello, everyone. It's great to be here. I'm so glad you're here. I want to thank the Schrader family for hosting this event, because it's so great to have events in Tampa and in the greater Tampa Bay area, and it's so great to see so many people here at these events, to see people supporting the Mises Institute, to see people who wake up and they say, it's Saturday morning. I'm going to a conference on monetary policy. That's how we really know we're a special group here, so it's a bravo to everyone. So the title of my talk is the redistributive effects of monetary policy, and this is what I want to discuss, especially in reference to over the past couple of years. So I want to start with an opening quote by Murray Rothbard from, what has government done to our money? Inflation confers no general social benefit. Instead, it redistributes the wealth in favor of the first comers and at the expense of the laggards in the race. Inflation is, in effect, a race, to see who can get the new money earliest. I think this is a great quote, and this is really what I want to emphasize today. Inflation traditionally is defined as an increase in prices. Rothbard defines inflation, in my opinion, correctly as an increase in the money supply that causes the rise in prices. And unfortunately, Austrians have lost that definitional battle, so this is why sometimes we talk about monetary inflation, in-price inflation, but we can't lose sight of this fact. To be fair, not all increases in prices are caused by increases in the money supply. You can get decreases in the supply of goods, and this is of course what a lot of people spoke about in COVID, but no one really talks about the money supply. Yeah, there are some monetarists, but it's really the Austrians who only still talk about the money supply, and no one really blames the Federal Reserve for inflation. Inflation is always something that the Fed has to combat. It's always this independent entity that the Federal Reserve has to tackle. It's never something that the Federal Reserve directly causes. So today I want to talk about why inflation is a hidden tax that redistributes wealth from the late receivers of the money to the early receivers of the money. And I also want to talk about who have been some of these real-world winners and losers from the Fed's massive money printing during and after COVID. So just to go through some basic statistics that we'll get into more. From the end of 2019, the before times, hopefully we all remember those days, to mid-2022, the Fed increased the money supply by $6 trillion. The Fed in the banking system that it controls increased the money supply by $6 trillion. That's about 40%. It's a 40% increase in the money spites, massive. Huge increase over the past two, you know, during those two years roughly. And this increased the demand for goods and services overall spending by 17%. In prices of consumer goods and services rose by 14% during this time period. And it hasn't ended. The money supply has declined. But people are still spending away their enormous excess cash balances. Just this Tuesday, the Consumer Price Index, the CPI, came in hotter than expected at 3.1% year over year. So we're not back to the highly-vaunted at 2% inflation target, not just yet, at least according to the CPI. In the spooked markets, since 2019, up till the present day, consumer prices have risen by 20%. Another way of putting it is your life is now 20% more expensive, right? Some prices have risen more. Some prices have risen less. Food costs are up 26%. That includes food at the grocery store. That includes food at restaurants. Housing costs are up 22%. Okay, so new homeowners, they've of course had to postpone their purchases. Utilities are up 31%. Gas prices are starting to increase again. Car prices have increased 26%. Now according to Paul Krugman, food, gas, cars, rent, none of that matters. But for your average person, they certainly feel the pinch of inflation. And everywhere we see, prices keep going up, up, up, up through hidden fees, smaller product sizes, higher insurance costs, you have to pay more to get the same quality at a restaurant. We've all seen this. This is the hidden stealth inflation. Now you might say, well, has an inflation, at least judging by the CPI gone down from it's high of 9% in mid 2022? And we haven't entered a recession yet. We can talk about some factors that the economy's deteriorating, but still there's no recession aren't we headed for a soft landing? Plenty of people are working and so on. So why are people complaining? Consumer sentiment's low. People still have on average a sour view of the economy and of their own living situation. And this is a surprise pundits who, you know, they talk about the end of inflation and why inflation isn't that big of a deal. The reality is it's people are complaining because we all know that a big redistribution has happened.    Nominal salaries have gone up, but prices have also gone up and it hasn't been equal. Some of us are richer while others of us are poorer. For the Austrian economists, inflation, this monetary expansion causes short term and long term adjustments. Money is never neutral, as Ludwig von Mises always emphasized again and again. For many mainstream economists, money is not neutral in the short run, but in the long run everything's fine. But for the Austrian economists, it's short term disruptions and long term disruptions. And that's because only Austrian economists really analyze this monetary adjustment process in a step-by-step fashion, tracing out how an increase in the money supply affects prices, wages, incomes, and profits unevenly. So let's return to our opening quote by Murray Rothbard. Why does money printing redistribute income and why is it a race to get the new money first? Because those are the people who benefit. When the government increases the money supply, say through a central bank that engages in credit expansion, it engages in open market purchases, buys bonds, and so on, not everybody gets the new money at the same time. Instead, it's injected into a particular sector of the economy first. When the Fed buys government bonds from a bond dealer, the bond dealers get the new money first. When a bank makes loans to a borrower, those borrowers get the new money first.  These individuals, those businesses, and so on, they get to live it up. Their income has gone up, and so will their spending. An individual will take out a loan to buy a new house, or a car manufacturer will take out a loan to expand their production facilities, and so on. As they spend the new money on goods, the demand for those goods increases, and that pushes prices up. The money is injected in one sector of the economy first. So the incomes of the early receivers increase more than the rise in prices, or the initial rise in prices. They're pushing up prices, but it's not enough, or it's less than the rise in their income. So we say as Austrian economists that their real income, their income adjusted for the rise in prices, goes up. So these are the individuals who benefit. But the story doesn't end there. The money keeps filtering, it keeps getting spent, it percolates throughout the economy, from the early receivers to the middle receivers. Today maybe the workers who are building the new house, or a rubber company that the car company is now buying more tires from, or something like that, they get more income for their products, and so they are also going to increase the demand for the goods and services that they desire. And this increases overall demand for goods and services further, and that drives up prices. And overall, we could say that the incomes of the middle receivers increase roughly the same as how much prices have been rising. So their real income remains the same, it's a wash. The early receivers are benefiting, the middle receivers, they kind of break even. So who suffers? Well, it's the late receivers, the people who get the money last. And they've had to pay higher prices during all this time. They might not get a raise for several years, but they still have to go to the grocery store, pay a higher price. They have to pay higher prices at the gas station. They have to pay higher utility prices, higher rent, and so on. We can think of this generally as teachers, the elderly, the homeless, others on fixed incomes, and so on. Their incomes increase less than the rising prices. So who are the winners? Well, the winners are those people who receive the new money first, as Murray Rothbard mentioned. And as well as the people who are now producing the goods that society is spending more of their money on. We can think of this as the banks and the bond dealers that work with the Fed. These are generally the politically connected financial elites. We think of Wall Street and their various clientele and so on. And so who are the winners? I mean, we just went through the winners. Who are the losers? Well, the losers are the people who receive the new money last, and those people who are producing the goods that society now values last, and they're spending their money less on. And generally, this is the middle class and the poor. So now we see why people don't like inflation. And that's because inflation is a hidden tax. Rather than the government just raising taxes, they printed money. The effects, though, a redistribution of resources and incomes and so on, it's still the same. People know they've been fleeced, but they just don't know the specific process. You have to take an economics course for that and really you have to take a good economics course for that. And those are in short supply, unfortunately. So there's a great quote by a former Fed chairman way back in the day, William McChesney-Martin, and he said that inflation is a thief in the night. It's a great quote. It's a thief in the night.  You know something's been stolen from you, but you don't know who did it. Now, I think a more accurate quote is the Federal Reserve is the thief in the night. But it still captures the fact that there's been this redistribution. People are poorer because of inflation. So these are the so-called canteon effects, as Professor De Lorenzo had mentioned, our earlier speaker. These are the relative changes in prices and production, and it benefits the early receivers at the expense of the late receivers. This is the tax that everybody knows exists, but no one really knows how it works. So now what I want to do is I want to show this empirically. Having these redistributive changes can be tough because most of the government's statistics are highly aggregated, and that you might say is by design or by the macroeconomic theories. Frederick Hayek, F.A. Hayek, in a scathing review of a Keynes book, he once said, Mr. Keynes' aggregates conceal the most fundamental mechanisms of change. It's a very Austrian, it's a hard-hitting quote. It's a very Austrian point. The aggregates often conceal the relative price in production adjustments, right? All the various changes going on, especially looking at credit expansion and so on. It doesn't make sense to just look at the price level, so to speak, or just look at aggregate incomes, so on. And the government really doesn't keep a lot of the, quote, Austrian statistics, such as how changes in the money supply move from one group to another. Maybe it's because they don't want to implicate themselves, but we'll give them a more charitable interpretation. All right, so with that being said, let's try to look at how the monetary expansion and the resultant rise in prices has redistributed income post-COVID, right? So remember, from 2019 to 2022, the Federal Reserve and the banking system increased the money to buy by $6 trillion. There's going to be a quiz on this at the end, so hopefully everyone's taking notes, right? So who got that $6 trillion? It wasn't me. I don't have anywhere near $6 trillion. And where that $6 trillion end up, right? Well, one recipient, and this might come as a shock to my current audience, one recipient was Uncle Sam. The federal government got a large portion of that new money, right? Uncle Sam's cash balance at the Federal Reserve increased by $1.5 trillion through the first quarter of 2021, all right, $1.5 trillion. Up to that time, that was roughly 40% of the increase in the money supply, right? Now, it can get a little bit hazy because the government has sort of clouded how exactly I got that money, then how it spent it. But we all know that during this time period, the government was, there were multiple stimulus checks, certain individuals could get more than $3,000. There was the Paycheck Protection Program to make loans to struggling small businesses that really just went to large corporations and very wealthy partnerships of doctors and lawyers and so on. And everything else that the government spends their money on, right? Now, why do I mention the first quarter of 2021? Well, unfortunately, as Joe Salerno has pointed out in a January 2021 Mises Wire article, the government stopped tracking the federal government's cash balance at the Federal Reserve. The last date was the first quarter of 2021. And a couple of economists wrote that they said, well, this might give the impression that the Federal Reserve is financing the government's deficit. OK, all right, maybe there is a connection there, right? So fortunately, there's other data. As Jonathan Newman, so another fellow at the Institute, we're not related, but we are intellectually, right? In a February 2024 Mises Wire article, so this is relatively brand new, he looked at the relationship between the money supply in the net worth of the wealthiest, right? And in saying that historically, over at least 30 years, there's been a relationship to this. So I found this was a great article and I wanted to look at the data a little bit more. So the Federal Reserve does release quarterly distributional financial accounts. Again, there's going to be a quiz on this, hopefully everyone's going to know. And it shows changes in the balance sheets of America's ultra-wealthiest, wealthy middle class and poor, right? So the richest 1%, right, in terms of either income or wealth, how they break it down into both, then the next 10%, right? Then you get the middle class, then you got the bottom 50% and so on. And just as Austrian economists and just also general economic knowledge, we know that there's a lot of flaws with income statistics, right? There's income mobility is really more important. Do people move from the brackets from poor to rich? And we also know that the rich getting more wealth or more relative wealth isn't per se a bad thing, right? You can make a lot of money by producing goods and services that people value, right? We would say that those individuals should get relatively more money. And there are a lot of hardworking, high earning individuals and families, right, that are producing goods that society values tremendously, right? So driven by the market, these changes are good. But of course, what we want to look at is driven by the government. Are individuals getting special privileges or certain groups getting subsidies? We could say in this, in our case study right now, from the Federal Reserve's credit expansion. Something that is also very interesting digging through this data, the distributional financial accounts shows changes in the relative shares of money in checking deposits, right? Because that's an asset. People can store their wealth in the form of a checking deposit. It's not a perfect way to measure the distribution of the money supply because of course, people could be selling stocks for money and so on. But I think it's good enough for our purposes, right? And so what do they show? Well, the share of checkable deposits and currency, really checkable deposits of the top 1% wealthiest families increased from 19% of all checking deposits at the end of 2019 to 31% in the first quarter of 2022. Roughly right before the Fed started, you know, stop printing the money, so to speak. So their share of the checking deposits went up by a significant amount, right? On the other hand, the share of the bottom 50% decreased during this time from 10% to 6%. And you might be thinking, well, wait a second, didn't a lot of poor people get stimulus checks and so on? And that is true. But there was also quantitative easing, right? Which generally benefits the wealthiest businesses, the wealthiest banks, the wealthiest individuals, and so on. And that really swamped the getting a $3,000 stimulus check, might be a lot of you aggregated for all of these people. But it's even more money when the Federal Reserve is buying bonds and everything under the sun from all sorts of banks and businesses and so on, right? And so we can see that while at least judging from this, the early recipients were the very wealthy, which generally we can imagine is the politically connected wealthy and elites and so on, right? So then, all right, we can go through the spending process and seeing, you know, how those individuals spent the money. And this is where it gets harder to look at the data because the government doesn't really keep track of this. But we can at least look at how it affected wealth, or sort of our measure of the long term. And once again, there's statistics, you know, there's more than going on than just in the distributional financial accounts. So there's, you know, there's not just monetary policy. But here's a recent article from December 2023 from USA Today that is using these distributional financial accounts. Here's the title, right? The top 1% of American earners now own more wealth than the entire middle class. And this is a switch that happened during COVID. The top 1% of American earners now own more wealth than the entire middle class, right? So from 2018 to 2023, the share of the middle class wealth, right? So it's above the 20th percent quintile, so not the bottom 20% earners, and then it's below the 80th percent. So it's kind of like the middle, right? The middle of the pack, individuals in terms of how much wealth they have relative to others. Their share of the wealth, the overall net worth, decreased from 26.5% to 25.8%, right? So about a percentage point, and the 1%'s wealth rose from 24.4% to 26.5%. So there's been some changes in the other brackets, but really it's been this flip where the middle class now own relatively less than the top 1%, okay? So from 26.5% to 25.8%, right? A little bit less than a percentage point, the 1%, right? They got that, 24.4% to 26.5%. I thought that's very revealing actually, right?  But it looks as though the change spending patterns in income reallocation as a result of this massive expansion of the money supply have benefited the richest the most, right? And it's especially more skewed for the 0.1%. So the richest of the rich, the crème de la crème, right? The wealthiest of the individuals, right? Okay, so then what's been going on with the poorest Americans? The Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, right? How have they been dealing with the inflation over the past couple years? So I use an article from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, January 2023, some economists at the Federal Reserve wrote one of the good articles, right? And this is quote, high inflation disproportionately hurts low income households, right? That was the title of the article, high inflation disproportionately hurts low income households. And, you know, the article goes through this, it doesn't talk about canteon effects or any of that, but they mentioned things that are true. These families spend more on necessities, so it's harder for them to switch to cheaper substitutes. They're generally already on the cheapest substitute, the cheapest toilet paper, the cheapest chicken, the cheapest, you know, gasoline in town and so on. And nor can they buy in bulk.  And so the higher prices of groceries, toiletries, rent and so on tends to hurt them the most, right? And so this article looks at the Census Bureau's, what's called the Household Pulse Survey, which is a survey of various households according to income and asked them various questions. And one of the questions it asked them was, how stressed are you feeling about inflation? This was in January of 2023. And it said, at least 50% of income earners that earned under $75,000 were feeling stressed by inflation. They were feeling a sense of anxiety about having to pay higher prices, mounting bill payments. And we've seen this in the headlines. We see that credit card debt has gone up, auto loan delinquencies have gone up, and some of that's caused by interest rates, but also a lot of it's just higher prices. Things have gotten more expensive, right? So they're feeling stressed, but the article mentions that just 17% of those who earn $250,000 or more a year are feeling stressed, right? So it seems as though that the poor were feeling much more stressed about their finances as a result of inflation than were the wealthiest America. All right. The study concludes, quote, although low wage earners are currently experiencing higher wage growth than middle and higher wage and salary earners, the household pulse survey results clearly indicate this has not been sufficient to offset the impact of high inflation. And then it has another quote. This is a great quote. The survey results do not support the recent suggestion of Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman, that low income families, quote, have actually been hurt less by inflation than families with high incomes because the wages of the low income households rose faster, right? At least asking the families, they seem to be more stressed about inflation than what some of these aggregate statistics will point out, right? So we can clearly see that inflation affects not everyone equally, that inflation is a little bit more of a thief in the night for some individuals in groups than others, right? So what have we learned today? One, we've learned that mainstream economists don't discuss price inflation correctly, right? They often downplay how price inflation is a result of the Fed's money printing, right? That's the first thing. The second thing is we've learned that mainstream economists fail to analyze how changes in the money supply affect different individuals and businesses. First, both temporarily and permanently altering spending patterns, right? Inflation really does create winners and losers. And those who receive the new money first are the winners, and those who receive the new money last are the losers. Inflation really is the hidden tax, right? And the third thing we've learned is that the Fed's money printing during COVID has definitely created those winners and losers. The most well-off, at least it appears, have gotten most of the new money, or at least the most connected, the politically connected well-off, financially connected.  But we see that there's clearly been this redistribution, and this explains why there's a lot of people still upset at inflation. Their cost of living's gone up 20%, and more people are feeling the pinch than others. So to reiterate what Rothbard said to conclude, just to reemphasize this quote from what his government done her money, inflation confers no general social benefit. Instead, it redistributes the wealth in favor of the first-comers and at the expense of the laggards in the race. And inflation is, in effect, a race, to see who can get the new money earlier. So I think with that, I will conclude. Thank you so much.