Well, welcome, actually it's a steering committee meeting. All right, so we are welcoming you to the joint meeting of the city council and the school board just ahead of town meeting day. And as my fearless leader, Helen really, our fearless leader is out of town, I will be the acting chair. So we start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And Kate, would you like to read us some of that? Great for you to do so. All right, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, I have to say that having been in the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia last weekend for a conference, saying the pledge. You cannot hear us? Sorry. I was just saying that having been to Philadelphia last weekend, the birthplace of the Republic, it's actually has a different meeting tonight for me to say the pledge. So I'm going to hand it over to Jesse Baker, who's going to give instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. And she's also going to review our technology options for those of you who are online. So thank you for those who are here in person. Thank you for joining us. If there's an emergency tonight in this room, you can go out to the rear of the auditorium, either to the left or right, and then turn left or right to get outside, likely the way you came in. For those participating remotely, if you would like to speak during any item on the agenda, please indicate that you'd like to speak in the chat or turn your camera on, and the chair will call on you. Otherwise, we are not monitoring the chat for content. I would also encourage everyone to keep our conversation civil and our questions productive, and we'll have a lovely debate tonight. Thank you. All right. And the next item on the agenda is the agenda review. So if there are any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of agenda items, this is the time to make that request. All right. And seeing none, we will move on to number four. And this is time for comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. So if you would like to say something, bring something up, bring something to people's attention here, you may do so online. And I'm guessing Jennifer Carpenter, are you here to say something? Yes. Hi. Welcome. Thank you very much. When would you like me to speak? You can speak right now. We hear you loud and clear. Thank you very much for the opportunity. My name is Jennifer Carpenter, and I'm out here today as a volunteer with Let's Grow Kids. I just wanted to say something about solving our childcare crisis. I think this is one of the top priority issues in the state of Vermont. And I think this issue is right up there with affordable housing and sustainable wages to make Vermont more affordable in order to attract and retain working families. We need childcare in order for Vermont to grow and thrive. And we need quality child care in Vermont as it is essentially to the healthy development of children. And it also enables the state of Vermont to thrive through a stable workforce. I'm really excited about the fact that we have passed Act 76. And I'm really, really hoping to see Vermont deliver on those promises. And I really want to thank my legislators, Representative Lalon, Senator Ginny Lyons, Senator Chittenden, and Senator Rahm Hinsdale for having for having supported the Act 76. And basically, we've already seen signs of success in implementing this Act 76. Many programs have already increased capacity and have increased wages for staff. And starting next month in April 2024, more families will become eligible for childcare financial assistance. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what Act 76, the Act 76 come to full fruition. It's the act is supposed to expand, create more slots in childcare programs. It is supposed to increase wages for childcare workers in order to attract and retain a high quality workforce. It is also supposed to expand financial assistance eligibility for Vermont families. So almost 7,450 families in Vermont will become eligible this year, which is a huge impact. And also, it is supposed to increase access for children with special needs. So that means that there will be more opportunities for children with special needs to afford the equipment that they need, any special equipment in childcare facilities, and also to have one-on-one aid support. So I'm a big fan of Act 76. And I'm really excited to see that develop this year. Great. Thank you for that very positive comment. And I also heard a request for continued commitment. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else wish to address the steering committee here tonight? We will then continue on. This is the main presentation starting with the city budget, but followed by the, of course, other ballot items. I'm sorry. I'll try speaking more closely to the microphone. All right. So we're going to start with the main presentation, which will include both budgets, both the city and the school budgets, but also the other ballot items. And we're going to start with the city. And that starts with our city manager, Jesse Baker. Great. Thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you to the school board for joining us. And of course, to the city council for supporting this budget to send to the voters. So I have the extreme privilege of being able to present this budget to the community tonight, but it's after a lot of hard work from our entire leadership team, as well as the city council who really dove into this budget during the months of December and January and made it their own and approved it to go to the ballot. So tonight I have with me Martha Machar, our finance director at the back of the room, Stephen Locke, our deputy city manager, Colin McNeil, our city attorney, Tom DiPetro, our public works director. And we're going to share some of this presentation tonight. So to start our proposed FY 25 citywide budget is about $65 million. You can see here how that's broken out across different funds. The general fund, which makes up the a little more than half of our municipal budget is the fund that we use to pay for general government services, police fire, most of public works, and your core government services. The rest sit in our special funds and in our enterprise funds or our drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater funds that are paid for exclusively through the rate payers. So of the $65 million, it's important to note that only $21 million of those dollars are proposed to be raised by property taxes. So the budget is on, interesting, it's progressing on my screen, not progressing on that screen. Hold on a second. Steve, you want to jump on just in case this doesn't work for me? Where Tom, are you on? Oh, please. It's telling me I'm not connected to the internet, which is why it's not advancing my slide. So just give me a second. Can I use your computer for a second? I know it's not going on. Yeah, I've been trying to do that. Oh, weird. You can't, I can do it, I think offers. Sure. I don't have to connect. I can just do it through my phone. Well, this will be fun, folks. You can get off of go to meeting if you want. Oh, you know what? This may not. I just want to make sure that works. This isn't going to work because I don't have, I'm on with sharing privileges. It says connected security. Oh, hey. Yeah, now you got it. Are you connected? Yeah. It does it from time to time. I'm not present or organized. There's no longer having technical problems. Okay, we're back up and running. Well, somebody knock on wood to make sure I can stay back up and running. Well, I've got your computer. Okay, so we were talking about the citywide budget. So the city budget is presented to the tax, to the, the voters tomorrow until meeting day accomplishes three primary goals. One, it maintains our commitment to our current level of service delivery offered by the city. Specifically, it makes investments in public safety. For example, completes the standing up of our second ambulance and adds a highway position to maintain our growing infrastructure. It increases our investment in sidewalks maintenance. It adds a part-time library position and increases our contribution to our housing trust fund. In addition to that, it continues our investment in school safety. With this budget, we are reinstating a youth services sergeant position that will primarily work with the school district and the, and the police department to ensure that our children and families are best served. It includes 50% of the funding for the crossing guards around our school buildings and also allocates $100,000 in our capital improvement plan to anticipated school safety needs on Dorset Street at the middle school and high school campus. And finally, it takes the first significant financial action to implement the city's adopted climate action plan. Specifically in this budget, it allocates $190,000 for to fund staffing capacity to support the work of implementing the climate action plan including leveraging external funds into the city addressing policy needs and facilitating change across our community. And it also includes some allocation of ARPA dollars or American Rescue Plan Act dollars for the one-time cost associated with implementing that climate action plan in the next fiscal year. It's always important to note the assumptions that we have made, the city staff has have made in developing this budget. So we are assuming pretty significant increases in our grand list, which is the total assessed value of all of our properties in the city. And both our both our citywide grand list as well as our TIF grand list, which is in our tax increment financing district in our city center. We are also anticipating a 7% increase in our local options tax. Those revenues have performed very strongly coming out of the pandemic. So we're comfortable with that increase. And of course includes our contractual obligations with our three bargaining units for a 2.8% COLA and associated step increases, the implementation of the new child care contribution payroll tax that was approved by the legislature last session for a total of about $48,000 that we are adding to our budget. We are seeing extreme health rate health insurance increases as our most sectors of our society. So we have built that into our our assumptions as well as increases in our property and liability insurance. So all of those numbers lead us to a proposed FY 25 general fund budget of $35 million with $21 million of that to be raised by property taxes that are we are very fortunate on the city side that the formula to come up with the municipal tax rate is very straightforward. It is the revenues we need to raise over the grand list. So when you do that calculation, it results in a 5.8% increase in the tax rate for the average condo owner in the city that equates to about an $85 annual increase for next year and for the average homeowner $125 annual increase for next year if this budget is to pass. I do want to note here that we don't provide that number for commercial properties because they vary so widely in their assessed value that it would be not a meaningful number. Not a meaningful number. I do want to note though if you remember back to that first slide before I had my wi-fi issue, we talked about the whole city budget. I think it's important to note because our utility rate payers and our property taxpayers are indeed the same folks. Thank you that with our proposed or with our utility rates as the council has pre has established across our stormwater sewer and water utilities is anticipated that the average homeowner will pay about $64 more next year. Those cost drivers are really staffing costs related to that health insurance and COLA as I previously mentioned as well as capital cost for the capital projects we are implementing or have planned.  So you will see in this chart it is primarily public works police and fire and then administration which is the backbone organizations that keep our city running like finance, HR, IT, legal, my office, etc. So with that I will pause and we will go into the next agenda item which is our bond vote unless you would like me to do something. No, please continue. Tom, come on down. Good evening everybody, you hear me okay? Great. So I'm Tom DiPetro, director of public works and I just have a couple of slides on a bond vote question that everybody will see on the ballot tomorrow. This relates to construction of a additional water tank on Dorset Street. It is construction of an additional 2.1 million gallon tank. It's a welded steel tank. It is going to look very similar to the existing one and you can see on the screen here a photo of the existing tank and this was going to be going right next to it or is proposed to go right next to it. So a very quick overview of our water system for folks that may not be familiar. We work with the Champlain Water District who also functions as our water department. So the Champlain Water District draws water from the lake in Shelburne Bay, treats it and pumps it around their service area so that water gets pumped up from down on Queen City Park Road all around the city but specifically to our tank and from there the city sells it to our residents and businesses. So South Burlington is divided into two service areas. There's the main service area which is basically everything west of Spear Street and then the high service area which is everything generally east of Spear Street. This tank will be constructed in the high service area to provide more water in that location. A couple of things to note about the project. So the tank has been sized so that it'll serve South Burlington for the foreseeable future so we should not need to add any additional water in the high service area for 50 or more years by engineers calculations. It allows us to meet some regulatory requirements so we get our water like I said from the water district and they can always pump more up the hill as we need it but there are regulatory requirements that say we have to have so much storage in the city and I'll get to that in a second in a little more detail and also additional storage will is there in case we need it for an emergency. So if there's a pump or pipe failure like some folks may have recall happened on Christmas Day or if we are doing some firefighting activities or other activities that might draw a lot of water there'll be more water available to us. One of the important things it does it provides some redundancy so in the future if we have this second tank we'll be able to take one tank offline so we can conduct some maintenance whatever that might be and still serve the city with all the water it needs. Just one note this is about the volume of water required to serve South Burlington it's not going to do anything to change pressure that is dictated predominantly by elevation and so since this tank will be very similar to the existing one it's not going to do anything to change pressures throughout the city. So I mentioned sort of a regulatory driver for this project this pie chart represents the 2.1 million gallons that are in the existing tank so you can see in the large blue portion there about 1.4 million gallons per day are what we currently use in the city the other large portion about half a million gallons per day is the allocated capacity so that means if you are building a new home or a business or whatever it might be we allocate you a certain amount of water to make sure it's there for your needs and so that allocated the allocation is part of what we account for we have a small allocation through an agreement with the town of Shelburne we provide them some water and then there's a fire flow demand is the red piece of the pie that's 42,000 gallons our proximity and relationship with CWD is great for us it allows that piece of the pie to be a lot smaller that would otherwise need to be and then our excess capacity of about 42,000 gallons which is again really driving this we get to about 90 usage we're required to move forward by state law move forward with construction of additional storage probably difficult to see but the proposed project again same site and it's going to be just right next to the existing tank so the new tank is with the diagonal circle with the diagonal lines in it 53 foot diameter tank same height 127 feet high as the other one again similar capacity as the existing tank project cost summary so the overall cost of the project is really in construction and you can see how that breaks out here for a total project cost of about 5.7 million dollars I'll note that we've already received a half million dollar grant to support this project and over the next couple of weeks we'll be working to apply for another million dollar grant through the northern borders program the catalyst program so we're excited for that opportunity and we would hear back about some initial applications in April if we're invited to submit in the next round so that's something we're working on now to help support the project impacts on rates at those project costs so Martha Machara our finance director and I had looked into some financing rates not too long ago we put this presentation together and so this is sort of a summary of what you'll see we we're looking at a 30 year loan at about four and a half percent which makes our annual payment about 350 thousand dollars that would mean that water rates increased by four dollars and 82 cents per a thousand cubic feet of water so your average residents in the city would see about a 38 40 dollar let's call it increase in their water bill over the course of a year and again just to note the values on this slide represent kind of a worst case scenario so they don't factor in any reductions or grants we already have or may receive in the future more wi-fi issues i think the next slide is about regional rates so i'll talk about that so um south burlington has kept our rates very low uh all of our utility rates are quite low um i don't know if they're certainly for the water we may be the lowest in the state but we're certainly the lowest in the region uh similarly with wastewater project schedule so we are submitting permit applications right now um and then pending the outcome of the bond vote we will be into we're doing final engineering right now as well but we'll finish that up and we will bid the project out either oh so we can have construction begin in the fall or more than likely we're going to decide to do just our construction in the spring that'll impact when we have to make our first loan payment so we don't have to make that loan payment this fiscal year we can make one in the future fiscal year so uh strategically that might make more sense for us to do so thanks all for your patience she's getting back online i think there we go how many computers can you actually sexually reassuring right we always talk about human error but technology just means there's more technology error that's all is that coming is that coming back up for you guys tell me tv it's appearing on for online there's plenty of room here for more computers acres i'm saying it's back up now for me all right hey folks online are you able to hear us was that you guys it's so interesting because i'm on mine jesse's back on how are you guys looking back there now you're good you're back up hesitant to do anything so this is very interesting guys this has never happened like this all right are we back well let's just go from there if that is working tom so this is where i believe tom was yeah just to recap this is the slide i was referring to of comparison of the regional water rates south brilington there on the left like i said we're lowest in the region and then the next slide is the summary of the project schedule so again pending the outcome of bond vote tomorrow we'll be finishing up engineering ready to advertise for bids late summer and then lastly just an example of the bond language that you will see tomorrow relatively simple yes vote is in support of the construction of the tank and no would be otherwise that's it thank you so we are prepared to move on to our charter ballot item but i can stop there if others have questions or comments on the bond vote yeah that makes sense yes so anybody who would like to ask a question this is a good time i'm going to just speak up i'm going to follow jesse's example here if you'd like to ask questions please come up to the podium here make sure that the microphone is on and we are here and ready to answer any questions same for people online if you have questions can we see tell me to be can you minimize the yeah thank you there we go so usually we ask people to show on the camera and jennifer carpenter that your camera is on so if you have a question you can certainly ask it now i have no questions for right now thank you thank you all right well i do not see a rush to the podium and if the question comes up later we can certainly answer a question at a later time so i think this is a good time to move on to the charter change language great thank you so about almost three years ago 18 months ago the city council asked the charter commission committee to convene to talk about governance structures we have several members of our charter committee in the room right now thank you wendell and elizabeth for being here i think those of folks who are here so as part of that effort we did a they did a review of governance structures in the city and recommended to the council a series of recommendations the council then did their own conversation about these proposals and chose to move forward to the voters a potential charter change that would increase the school board by two members so up to a total of seven members so it's adding one four-year seat and one year three-year seat to the school board i should step back and say a municipal charter in vermont is the community's constitution it outlines how we govern ourselves how we organize ourselves and how we lead as a community in vermont because we are how our constitution is set up municipalities are what's called instruments of the state so our charter has to be approved by the local voters if approved then sent to the legislature they then take it up and contemplate the change being proposed if they pass it it then goes to the governor's desk and becomes state statute so this charter change to increase the school board by two members if the community chooses to move that forward tomorrow on town meeting day it would then go to the legislature and the governor so potentially it has the potentially it could go into effect for 2025 or 2026 depending on how quickly it goes through the state to process so all of those words to or that simple concept of adding two positions to the to the school board results in ballot language that looks like this a very long ballot item basically showing the voters what is being changed in the document of our charter so all of these words say we're going to add those two positions one four-year seat and one three-year seat thank you for correcting me any questions on that so with that i will wrap up our city side of the presentation by just reminding folks that the polls are open from 7 a.m to 7 p.m tomorrow um on this agenda or on this presentation that's linked off of the council agenda for those participating remotely or for those in the room you can click on the city website or the school website where all this information is presented including our city budget and city school budget books and our annual reports and while i have the mic on a fun note post technology issues i want to do a quick plug for illuminate vermont which is our annual street festival on market street this year will be the weekend right before the eclipse from five to nine we'll be closing down market street there will be food trucks and music and artisans and please come out and enjoy enjoy the city enjoy the community and connect with your neighbors thank you thank you jesse all right so we're going to be moving on to item number eight and we're going to have the presentation of the fiscal year 25 school budget as well as their ballot items we have our superintendent violet nickles who's here and i believe with some technology we're gonna thank you so much megan um all right good i have screen sharing ability now yep uh now it's asking me for lots of security and privacy modifications here authenticating entering password thanks for bearing with me i bet you all didn't think this would be the theme of the evening huh now i have to restart to apply screen sharing permission changes my apologies thank you for your patience everybody yeah thanks uh oh did we lose it again um i'm just going to grab them off the agenda all right all right we're in business all right good evening everyone um my name is violet nickles i'm the superintendent of the south burlington school district and um i want to thank you all for being here tonight um particularly those of you in the room who have um really stuck with us through a lot of conversations about the budget this year um and those who have asked good questions and supported us in a truly unprecedented um budget uh year where we've had a lot of traumatic changes uh tonight's conversation is not in fact going to be about legislation um and in fact i'd like to to thank some of our legislators who are in the room so shout out to emily and to brian noah and martin really appreciate your support through all of these changes many others i'm getting smiles in the room but appreciate all of the communication around just the budget changes it's been helpful to know that as a community we've been able to share information on um what's been a pretty complex um budget season with uh with law impacting percentages that have been brought to the community um just within the last few weeks so thank you um for the support on that and um with that you know jesse recently said um that that the the formula is pretty cut and dry on the city side so for those of you who haven't been closely following this conversation i have to now say that ours is not as linear on the school side and there are a lot of different factors that make up the school budget and um so uh for those of you who are new to hearing about ed funding um i have to give my apologies in advance in that it's not um one factor over another which is budget over grand list yes so we have a few more factors and i'll detail those as we as we uh go through the slides and jesse thank you for running these so tonight isn't going to be about um legislation that's impacted the budget tonight i want to be really um clear with the community about what this proposed budget is offering um for our students and our staff and our community and um i'll start us off by talking about um some of the highlights what are the features so we have been recovering from several years of um pandemic imposed challenges associated with education this year we're really critically committed to focusing on academic rigor and one important component of that is a focus on early literacy we have been piloting literacy programs and are hoping hoping to implement a structured literacy curriculum which is a research-based approach uh in this fall with the with the passage of this budget um i'm really excited about this we know that the greatest um indicator of success for students uh is the ability to read and to do so before third grade so this is really important for all of our students and certainly impacts our community community positively as well uh with this um literacy program we have a number of professional support staff to um help roll out the curriculum and to uh help us teach our students in ways that are research-based which is really important we've also got important school safety enhancements that are included in this budget i'd like to thank i don't see uh chief Burke in the room this evening but i would like to thank the south burlington police department for their support they've performed a number of safety audits on our schools and have given some great suggestions on how we can focus on school safety so school safety is always our top priority followed second by education i know some are surprised to hear that from the school superintendent but we must always first and foremost keep our students and our staff safe so this is really critically important um and uh a part of this budget uh focusing on academic rigor um and looking at following the law right so we have multi-tiered systems of supports which are consistent with act 173 this is legislation that is designed to um create equitable and accessible learning situations for all of our students so um you know we must be in compliance with that and um finally there is um on the ballot tomorrow a question that will ask the community to allocate a 2022 surplus of 2.27 million dollars to go to our construction maintenance reserve fund so that we can be thinking about um putting less money on the community later on as i'm mindful of big bonds right yet we have a significant backlog of facilities issues that need to be addressed so what can you expect to see tomorrow if you haven't already filled out an absentee ballot we have a 71.2 million dollar budget that will be brought forward to voters this is about 13 uh 0.9 percent higher than the fiscal year 24 budget which is the budget that we're currently in um if you are only looking at the budget side um and excluding a 1.9 million dollar addition um that was added to the budget um due to the provisions of act 127 language which is no longer applicable um so that's a a longer a more technical way of saying at the time it made sense for the school board to consider um investing in facilities in our school budget um given that there was a tax cap in place however um about what a week ago this law changed with h850 um and so i wanted to be finger pointing i wanted to just draw your attention to that so you could understand that distinction um so with the passage of h850 we're looking at a 23.25 percent homestead tax rate increase from fiscal year 24 um and again this would have been 18.26 percent under the prior language of act 127 which changed a week ago so i want to be clear on that i know it's been um you know folks have been trying to keep up with the changes and i i think transparency is really important around you know how that change came to be so um looking at some of the expenditures and some of the revenues um very similar to what the city discussed as far as uh impacts of our three collective bargaining agreements modest inflation this year as compared to last um health insurance costs are a significant increase in our budget this year um with about 12 percent um of an additional increase and uh i think it's important to note that health care at the school level is negotiated at a statewide level so this is not something where the district is able to renegotiate or to lower um this near 12 percent increase for fiscal year 25 interestingly enough um on the facilities side this last bullet here under expenditures is the principal and interest payments on our zems which are the additions um directly to my left at marcott elementary here um and also at orchard um which um thanks to you all we implemented um to address some uh enrollment issues that we were having at the time um although um i'm going to now walk us over to the revenue side because we're seeing um a um it's anticipated that we were to receive about a 91 percent um recoup of these fees but we're actually exceeding that at its current rate so um this is a factor this this principal and interest is something that um is almost breaking even at this point for the fiscal year 25 budget um we do have this um previous surplus from the fiscal year 22 budget so that would be the 2021 2022 school budget um this was a heavy pandemic year for us and so a lot of this is um services and professional development supports for students that weren't realized um due to the just the limitations of in person uh in virtual conditions at the time so the state factors are um i think really um explanations for some of the significant changes in our funding um we had the tax commissioner's letter on december 1st this announced a yield that's changed um many times uh recently we did just get a um a modest change in the yield last week which was a slight adjustment so bringing the tax rate down to closer to a 23 percent than 23.25 again we do expect this factor to change it is um not finalized until the end of the session typically in june um the common level of appraisal is something that um has had a pretty big impact on the school district's budget and i've got a slide later on where i'm going to show you some historic tax rates and i'm also going to show you uh together with the tax rates the common level of appraisal so that you can um see firsthand how the factors impact the budget so i won't get into that now um and in fact that's the next slide if you would kindly advance thanks so much so um i don't know how well you can see this in the back i want to i'll draw your attention to this uh blue line which depicts uh historical tax rate so we're seeing a lot of numbers here near a dollar six right and i want to say i mean you see that is the rate here too for the proposed fiscal year 25 budget so it's at a dollar 66 so not it's not in disalignment with historic tax rates but i also want to show you this common level of appraisal line which is these it's these red bars and the common level of appraisal last year um and the last so for fiscal year 22 23 24 it was pretty high right we had reappraisal in fiscal year 22 it's a three-year rolling average and you see we also had a ensuing tax rate of about a dollar 32 keep in mind we had an influx of significant um dollars associated with um the pandemic relief funds so esser the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds so those are some of the impacts you're seeing here but this year with a tax rate of a dollar 66 so again i'll draw your attention to many of the rates between 2015 and 2021 right before we got the influx of pandemic relief dollars those were consistent tax rates this year with the cla dropping to about 82 percent um we went overnight from um having a conversation at the school board level of a five percent increase in homestead tax rates um to that 8.26 percent that we'd been talking about up until last week so this was a factor that had the most significant impact on the school's budget and um you know there's a lot of reasons for this i we live in a really desirable community hopefully with you know some increased development we'll be able to um alleviate some of the housing crunch that we're seeing which is driving up um you know costs given just simple supply and demand right so um this is a factor that we'll be watching closely uh the lower the cla gets the higher the homestead tax rate will be for our community um on the education side and um i want to talk to you about some of the incremental increases now as we move forward in our conversation um we are a business of people it's what we do we support people educate people in in the form of our students and it takes um educators and staff to do that so about 80 percent of our budget um goes to a combination of salaries wages and then insurance again with a significant nearly 12 percent increase in those benefits for fiscal year 25 so with a proposed 8.6 million dollar increase from fiscal year 25 you can see that a majority of this is due to salaries and wages which were negotiated um and all three of our um collective bargaining unions have now settled um and there are um our teachers union and our support staff union are in year two of a three-year contract so they'll open negotiations in the fall our administrators have just settled in fact the board ratified that agreement on february 21st and that is a um that's more of a rolling um negotiation but that's slated to be three years as well so um another you know i'll draw your attention to a few other components here we have debt services enhanced school safety as we discussed this being um a critical place of investment i i'll bring your attention to to a couple of pieces of legislation most notably act 29 which has provisions for school safety and um this is noteworthy because we've never had legislation around school safety before and um one of the proposed additions that we would implement here are um is a visitor management software um which would greatly increase security so you know we right now um we know that that's a critical need so that's one one potential project that is um representative of this uh sliver here um so we'll switch gears to talk about the second ballot question that you'll see tomorrow if you have not already voted already so in addition to the uh first question that you'll see on the school side um you'll see a second question which is the option to allocate the fiscal year 22 surplus of 2.27 million dollars to um our capital reserve fund so um the uh again in in the when the board made this decision to bring forward this question to the community there was a tax cap in place with um previous act 127 language and what that tax cap did is it provided a band for expenditures so between 64 million and 71 and a half million there would be only one tax rate which would be 18.26 so you the taxpayer the community would have seen no benefit to allocating this money as revenue it would have been um there would have been no reduction in the tax rate however the community was able to realize a benefit at that time if allocated toward our i'm going to call it a savings account of sorts so um money to put forward toward um a potential new high school or middle school down the road which we know are needed since then the law has changed and the tax cap has been removed this question remains on the ballot um however the rules have changed so um with the modification of act 127 the community could uh and and um decide to if if the community voted no on this then the board would have the option to uh reconsider this question and the only other option on the table which is option one here um would be to apply it as revenue which would lower the tax rate so you know getting back to what does this budget um give our students give our staff and give our community um we have really made significant efforts to reduce employees associated with pandemic relief funds which expire september 30th of 2024 um last year we went through the painstaking task of reducing by 21.5 um fte's fte being a full-time equivalent so 40 hours a week and uh this year with increasing enrollment um we are able to add district-wide only a 0.6 fte so that is about one halftime employee so um it's about 30 hours uh 25 hours of work for one person district-wide and uh with this we were able to really think about some of our model deliveries uh special education thinking about how we can have our most highly qualified staff working with students who have the greatest levels of support this is in alignment with act 172 legislation pertaining to uh laws around special education students uh also as i i mentioned earlier but i i feel it's important to mention again this is prioritizing an elementary literacy program uh specialist to support that program and work with students um as well as supporting our growing population of multi-lingual students and we are prioritizing student-facing positions so this means the people who are most highly qualified working with our students directly what does this look like by school um you see uh this this model change where we are rolling over um the the final ESSER positions the elementary and secondary um really funds that we discussed these federal dollars which propped up education and the bleak pandemic years um so we're rolling over some positions those are the health and wellness positions um health and wellness standards are required by law to be taught in our schools and we're also finding that there's a strong connection between health and wellness education and social emotional learning mental health so um you see a lot of modifications here around special ed um with um fewer para educator positions and more special educator positions so that would be the difference between licensed and non-licensed staff um and again that's in alignment with act 173 so you have a total of 0.6 FTEs district-wide between the additions um and the modifications there so with that um that concludes my presentation uh Jesse thank you for um advancing the slides for me and again my apologies on the technical difficulty uh happy to take any questions or comments at this time thanks thank you very much Violet so this is again time for members of the audience both here in person as well as online to address um the superintendent or the city manager or any of us um about which you have heard tonight I'm just hoping everybody knows what the CLA is which is yeah common level of appraisal is the difference between um what homes are appraised for and what they're selling for um and so um it's um based on a three-year rolling average and um that feature is intentional to create consistency right so we don't typically and historically we didn't see those dips that we saw this year and again there are a lot of factors that have uh contributed contributed to the the significant dip in CLA um this year in south burlington again I mean we're seeing a lot of growth which is a good thing and you know typically growth and an increase in housing will help level out this number um but as you know we've discussed there's a housing crunch and with supply and demand I think you know we're seeing um and I know the council is working to address some of the um the both the supply issues with the plan developments um as well as some of the affordability issues happy to take additional questions on that if further explanation is helpful and I think it's important too for people to understand that in fact we're paying less property taxes than we should be because our homes are worth more than their assessed value so I think I think that's important for people to understand all right well thank you very much Megan Megan could I ask a quick question oh yes please do I'm over here Megan I'm waiting oh Larry I'm sorry so thank you for that I think um I think you hit on some very um confusing topics for people to understand in terms of how ed is financed and paid for I'm hoping the school budget passes tomorrow and I'm wondering if when it does pass does that have any ramifications on current state thinking yeah so thank you so much Larry for your support um as always and I I have to say too I mean the council has been so supportive this is what the third fourth conversation we've had together around this so I appreciate the ability to keep you all updated um I I can share um I can share a little bit about what I know and then you know I wouldn't I don't want to put any of our legislators on the spot but I you know I can share what I know from a school side um which is that I know of two districts who have decided to modify or postpone um the um their original budgets um the reason I think that's significant is because most schools uh most districts decided to move forward right so that is a pretty powerful statement I think um you know anecdotally there's been a lot of really good media coverage on school budgets I think that's a good thing because I think it's helped our community be informed um and I think there's been really honest communication from our legislators and um you know from those at the state level around some of the changes I think that uh with that coverage um you know it's been expressed to me that there are some who are heading to the polls um with a bit of trepidation you know I certainly understand that you know I've been public position and on this very stage multiple times providing different um homestead tax rate increases right and so I think we're talking about a really complicated formula and I think um you know there are those I would put myself in this category and no one will be surprised I will always approve a school budget right so I know what my like that is it always um and I know others fall into that category they've expressed it I've also heard from others who have a variety of concerns and I I certainly understand those um but I do think um you know Larry to answer your question I don't have a good answer but what I can say is that um the Chittenden county schools which are most significantly impacted negatively by the CLA have all chosen to move forward with budgets great I'm sorry that's a it's not a complete answer but I don't know as far as all right Brian's coming to uh to speak from the state side thanks Brian so please state your name for minutes yep uh Brian Minier Chittenden 11 uh state representative that's everybody west of Dorset and north of Swift um so I can answer some of what you're asking about um I think there's broad consensus in the state house that the way we're funding education is unsustainable um in the short term we're looking at new sources of revenue but this is mostly going to come not through my education committee but through ways and means and we've been taking testimony with them um in terms of where that revenue comes from you could look at a sugary beverages tax you could look at a tax on the cloud you could look at disaggregating second homes from businesses and try to put a tax on second homes vacation homes um one that I'm enamored of and I'm not sure that's true for the whole state house is just getting property out of there um the property market is so volatile and for an older person whose asset is going way up in value and is on a fixed income you know having a house that's worth a lot isn't putting money in their pocket to pay their taxes um so I hope that we will get away from the property portion into a strict um income uh funding mechanism but all this stuff takes time I think as hard as this year is next year is not going to be much better um and so one thing we're trying to do in education which I can speak more to is uh we're trying to revive the state level funding of um school construction and within that model we hope to incentivize for instance right sizing schools um I don't know if that ultimately means consolidation in more rural schools I think it probably has to that will have to be of course coordinated with the local population and I'm hopeful that at least some will be able to be convinced that by doing that right sizing not only do you save on your property tax well on your education taxes um but you also end up with better offerings in your schools um the efficiencies of scale provide that and and but these are all these are all medium to long term and you know do they pass what does it look like I don't know but but those are ideas that we've been putting forward some of which we talked about in our legislative forum last week and for anybody who wants to hear more about them or offer ideas or talk about it in person we do this every fourth Monday of the month the library um and we would love to see people show up to it and I'm if there are more questions I'm happy to sit here for a sec but that's that's pretty much what I got thank you representative Minier I do have a question let's just say that I too I'm going to vote in favor of the school budget and I do encourage people too I think our schools are our greatest asset that is what makes this community a thriving and a prosperous community and it makes certain that we also are a community with that's investing in its young people in its future so I I really do encourage a yes vote let's just say that there are a number of school budgets that do not pass what will the state legislature I know this is a huge question for one one representative to answer but are you prepared to respond I guess I'm not sure of the question if the school budgets fail presumably the local school boards will put forth a different budget and see if folks will pass that one I don't know how much I can say about the state perspective what would you be looking for well we've been hearing about you know loss of arts music foreign language sports teams I mean the list goes on and on about what that could mean I mean correct and without other revenue under the current model there is nothing for the state to do about that anything that can be done would be one year or two minimum and that's for the sort of more short term looking for other sources of revenue the longer term I think we have to talk about just restructuring how we finance education but yeah no that I don't think there's a cavalry coming if the if the vote fails thank you yep and before I go thank you for all the years of service I missed the gathering to congratulate the other day so thank you thank you representative manier I'd like to oh yes please just add a couple of demographic factors that haven't been mentioned yet this evening as we think about where South Burlington sits in the larger statewide landscape about 60 percent of South Burlington last time I checked my numbers is eligible for the income sensitivity tax credit so the tax rates that you're seeing presented tonight are not factoring in a tax credit that about 60 percent of the majority of South Burlington residents are eligible for and we do have the factors in Act 127 have different weights depending on what type of students you have in your district and we do have about 30 percent of our students are eligible for free or reduced lunch um and so as we think about our community and we think about um we hear language about wealthy towns and poorer towns I just want us to think more broadly about ways that we have more um connections with our neighbors in other states outside excuse me other cities outside of Jenin County and across the state we're really I do see our education challenges and spending issues as a statewide issue we all have the um same health insurance rate increases and there's really a need for um a statewide response to these local challenges please state your name for the purpose of the minutes I'm Kathleen Easton I'm a resident of the city of South Burlington and you know I I do love it here in Vermont the small state in the northeast region of our nation and one of the things I've come to enjoy in respect is because our state population is so small and our city population is only about 21,000 we tend to know our neighbors um maybe better than larger towns and I think we tend to be willing to listen to each other and hear different points of view so I I hesitate to make remarks tonight because what I say may be perceived as being offensive and that's not my intent um basically I I look at all of this and I've gone to many different hearings and I wonder how do we come to this position we talk about wanting our state to be clean green and clean to be economically prosperous to provide opportunities for our youth to grow and prosper to create a place where people will want to live and to be able to afford to live so how is it that we find ourselves gathered for a meeting to discuss runaway budgets and tax levels that seem to have no ceilings I've listened to the city of South Burlington school district budget presentations now about six times I think that's probably a record I watched the school board members nod to each other's if they understood the convoluted financial calculations which will dramatically raise our taxes and I've even seen them laugh to each other and talk about taking the road show out to the public to somehow attempt to convince hardworking people that this budget is worthy of support and I think the most app visual that the board came up with in their budget presentation was that takeoff on that work of art the screen depicting a nightmare's image in addition to the budget presentations I watched the video of numerous Vermont school superintendents trying to make their cases to the state legislators explaining that their districts are facing financial ruin and taxation revolts so many of them and others tried to make the case that the recent laws and proposals that have so dramatically impacted local expenditures were well intended and that the actions of legislators had unintended consequences and as a just a person out here I wonder now how can that be they come from wide ranging backgrounds they're surely capable individuals they have competent staffers they have access to all kinds of data and calculation tools and yet now they say oh no what happened so I guess personally I believe that the people who represent us especially at the state have a fiduciary responsibility to look out for what is happening in that in the state and not just try to put in a fix that's kind of post haste and in a hurry and I don't know how permanent it will be and meanwhile the taxpayers I just read some statistic that almost 60 percent of adults live paycheck to paycheck and almost 60 percent of Americans do not have enough savings to handle a $1,000 emergency without borrowing and you look at the credit cards and everybody is getting maxed out on that so when when you try to present this these budgets to citizens and they're trying to get a grip on them and then you look at single family houses that are going up here that are 800,000 that in order just to get into it you have 200,000 and that's for the down payment the closing costs and fees and if you want to continue to live there you better have $6,000 a month but no you could buy a duplex instead and that will only cost you maybe 500 to $750,000 and with that all the tax implications so I personally I'm telling you I don't know what the answer is I don't know what it is but I think that there's a tension in our state in our community between those who want to espouse certain agendas whether it's a very green agenda and they want to make that the forefront but to me having been an educator education is important we have to find a way to support it but we also as Violet Nichols has said literacy proficiency is one of the greatest indicators of success so I think schools start to better be more transparent about the test results and how they're going to deal with these things so whether I can support this budget or not I don't know but I think that somehow going forward people better figure out how to make this whole system work or people won't want to live in Vermont so thank you very much thank you miss Easton Wendell sorry your mic is on oh push the button in the middle okay sorry about that I got it close to me but Wendell Coleman I live up by the radio stations and I would like to point out what I think is a structural problem in South Burlington schools and as far as I know every other school in the state the overwhelming amount of salaries go to the top earning people already which makes it very hard for young teachers to get into the system those high paid teachers are going to be leaving we don't know exactly when but they're going to retire and we're not in a good position to recruit furthermore in my 70 plus years experience with school systems from a long room school to as a student to chief negotiator teacher public and private longtime school board member I have never felt that I saw any statistical connection at least any very significant one that showed that long-serving teachers were better educators than much shorter serving teachers it's about knowledge and even more it's about personality and I think until we change that dynamic we're going to have serious problems with our schools thank you thank you very much mr Coleman usually I'm online so I don't come in person Emily Krasnow representative for Chittenden nine I just want to acknowledge that um there the assertion that many of us are in Montpelier and not aware of how painful this could be for many folks in my district I've been having conversations every day with people who are seniors and struggling folks who come into the food shelf that I see um trying to figure out how they're going to make things work when their income doesn't go up since I am a new legislator like many of my colleagues I was not there during the initial conversations but have spent along with my colleagues every single day in Montpelier trying to look for solutions to this extremely complex and terrifying situation so while it may seem like sometimes we're just like this is how it's going to be we're sorry I can tell you that every day I am up all night trying to figure out how to make this work for my neighbors and I plan to to run again and to go back and to have it be a top priority at the minute that we are back next session because if we don't come up with a sustainable solution to this I'll continue to see people I care about who I've lived next door to for over 18 years have to leave and those people can't afford to just roll with things and and make things work and I want my neighbors to be able to age in place and live in Vermont as long as they want and not have to worry about those financial implications I do understand what it's like working paycheck to paycheck and not having a savings my neighbors understand that and I'm making a commitment here on record that I will not just let that go and please hold me accountable next year to find long-term sustainable solutions to lift up everyone here in South Burlington that that needs it most thank you representative Krasnoff you might have to press the button I'm Richard Cassidy a long time resident of South Burlington and long ago I served 12 years on the school board I have a deep intellectual commitment to the importance of of education and a deep emotional commitment to our school district because I worked hard to try and make it be as as good a district as I could I'm I'm I am going to vote for the budget tomorrow I've never not voted for one I'm deeply worried that this budget will fail and I I rise to to ask this question in hopes that it might bring some some of our residents who were on the fence in your direction and that is this if the budget fails what do you anticipate you will have to do to get a budget that you think will have a reasonable chance to pass thank you so much I appreciate you being here so this is a question that our administrative team and I have spent a significant amount of time considering every reduction is not without a negative consequence mostly to our students right who we work to support should the budget not pass tomorrow the board will be considering options the very next day at our school board meeting those will look at largely tax rates that have a variety of options as far as how low the tax rate goes and what that would mean for cuts to programming one piece of the new language in h850 is that South Burlington as well as a number of districts are receiving additional monies as sort of a rep reparation for the modification of the per pupil what you would know is equalized pupil spending right which is no longer a factor in the ed funding formula and so we're getting tim is it five or six pennies for fiscal year six pennies if you'll have to forgive me the number was in discussion the so six pennies for fiscal year 25 that would be reduced by 20 percent every year through fiscal year 29 so that actually provides a little bit of relief even though the tax cap has been removed so you know with that there are a number of options that the board will be considering we you know we're in a position where without this six penny reparation we were talking about significant cuts to the tune of maybe even 8.6 million dollars to get to the current fiscal year 24 budget it seems to me and again I don't know what the board will decide on Wednesday but if we're talking maybe three million dollars of cuts we have you know a few options we could ask the voters to reconsider the 2.27 million dollar surplus to apply that as revenue which would drive down that homestead tax rate increase the there was 1.9 million dollars that was added to the facility's maintenance reserve that money is another area where funds were allocated toward resources and again this is sort of robbing peter to pay paul because you know I also don't want to be in a position where I'm asking the community for a you know 200 million dollar bond right like our neighbors are in burlington so you know I do think it's prudent to advise the board to consider some sort of annual investment in long-term facilities but I think that 2.27 million dollars and the 1.9 are two levers where the board could make some changes to drive down costs as I shared earlier though our greatest year-on-year expense is staffing and if we know that we're going to have probably I mean in jesse's slides we saw an estimated 2% increase in home costs so I can expect the CLA to be driven down further next year and then we'll have four cents for operations instead of the six so I think that the board has to consider looking at staffing reductions this year and so I think it's likely that the board would consider a mix of it should should we need to you know make these decisions it would likely be a mix of facilities and staffing reductions the staffing reductions you know depending on where the board goes could be pretty traumatic impacting things like everything from the arts to athletics languages AP classes it is my hope that with the six cent you know reparation that we don't have to get to that point which was really a realistic possibility when we were first looking at cap removal without that additional provision to account for the equalized pupil change so that is some I think a silver lining in this so it'll it'll you know the answer to your question is it's not clear at this moment but I will say it'll be a mix of programmatic staffing and facilities reductions to get down to a budget should the budget not pass on the school side tomorrow you know I think my interest would be really trying to bring forward a budget that the community could support on a second run um looking at the increase on year and year expenses um you know something below 10 seems like a 10 percent um increase on expenditures seems like something you know a gold standard that we always seek to achieve um however you know we are looking at about a 10 percent you know increase um year on year for staffing alone right so we wouldn't be able to achieve that without staffing reductions I hope to utilize attrition should we need to however with three unions the staff who have who will be rift potentially and who have job rights and recall rights are would be looking at the teachers most recently hired and so we couldn't realize the benefits of attrition and a one-to-one sort of nature um and um you know of course certain positions will always need filling right um so I guess the answer to your question is that should the budget not pass the community should expect to see um likely modifications in the investment of facilities which would cover everything from um future savings to current um you know school safety upgrades um to looking at staffing across the board um certainly from educators classroom teachers larger class sizes um administrative support staff reductions um my recommendation um should the recommendation come to unfortunately if it comes to fruition it would it would be across the board it wouldn't impact one category um solely so happy to talk more to rich of helpful but um the answer is we don't know yet unfortunately well thank you superintendent Nichols I appreciate your effort thanks thank you mr. Cassidy anybody else like to make a comment or ask a question including online if you put on your camera or I know that livia has a green microphone there's also caller online or that's you got it all right and julia if anybody online would like to make a comment all right I don't see anybody else who would like to make a comment um so that concludes the the presentation part of this meeting uh we are now going to adjourn and there's going to be um a debate team nope so um there have been many opportunities to hear from the candidates over the past several weeks and a month uh the south burlington high school debate team did a remarkable candidate forum here in this room a few weeks ago um so we really wanted to highlight their work so for those um for those of you at home who have the agenda in front of you there are links on that agenda for you to click directly to watch that forum um and for those in the room please go home and find that link and click on it and watch that candidate forum um we will leave it at that for tonight thank you all right very good Megan I moved to adjourn very good is there a second I thank you don't forget to vote tomorrow 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at your district