Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. As mayor. Yes. Good morning. Good morning to you. I'm still here. Yes, I'm here. Good. Welcome. Okay. I think we're ready to go, Rafael. Yes. Very well. Good. Good morning everyone. We'll go ahead and start our media. We'll call our meeting to order. for meeting to order. Vice Mayor Fleming and myself will be joining you this morning. Council Member Sorter was unable to meet with us this morning. So we'll go ahead and call it to order. Just as a reminder, because of our current COVID conditions, the COVID world we're living in, we are suspending certain requirements to Brown Act. That's why we're having this meeting by Zoom. Again, just following the public health officers orders. So we will do this as we have in our past meetings. And again, when it comes time to public comment, you'll use your raise hand feature on your Zoom.  And we will use the same process that we have in the past. So with that, do we have any announcements for this morning? Hearing none, we'll move on to our public comments. So again, if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please select the raise hand button. And if you're dialing in via telephone, please use the star nine to raise your hand. And then we will acknowledge yours. Do we have any public comment this morning? I don't want to raise that this time. Okay, let's go ahead and move on with our agenda. We have a number of items this morning. So we'll try to get through them all, so we can get you all back to your television sets and see what's happening out there in the nation. We'll begin with item 4.1. No, we've done that, right? Item 4.2, we have permitted events in public art. Good morning. Hi, good morning, can you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. Good morning, Chair Alvarez, Vice Mayor Fleming and everyone. I have just a very brief update, not really any new information regarding special events since our last meeting, special event permits remain suspended through 2020 at least through the end of the year at least. It's looking like that will go on into 2021 at this point. I did want to bring up one point of information that I get asked a lot from members of the public and other staff members. So I thought I would share here about free speech activities. So free speech activities such as marches and assemblies may not require permits under normal circumstances if COVID wasn't a restriction at this time as long as they don't include event elements such as vendors and stages or jumpy houses, equipment such as that. So there are state guidelines for participating in protests safely during COVID that include wearing masks and keeping six feet apart from others. So I thought I would just share that information since it comes up a lot from the public. No, Bob, sorry, go ahead. Okay, in terms of an arts update, I did want to share that the Imagine Art in Old Courthouse Square project is moving along although it has been delayed a few times by current events. So the last time I gave an update, I shared that there had been five finalists and we were doing outreach to get community input on those five finalists and the selection panel would be making their decision soon. Well, the selection panel has now narrowed down those finalists to two artists and they are now working with those artists directly to ask additional information to clarify design components from each artist before making a final decision. So now our current timeline is looking like there will be an announcement of the selected artists in early December. So I will hopefully be able to share an update again next month. The open and out public art components of open and out are mostly wrapped up with a few installations still in the works and cadence can provide more information when she gives her downtown action organization update. And then I wanted to share very briefly that one of the initiatives we took on an economic development beginning of COVID was building a new website through our Out There campaign called insightoutthere.com and it really has grown over the last few months and continues to be a place for people to connect with local Santa Rosa artists, musicians, retailers, restaurants, breweries, wineries. I encourage you all to check it out if you haven't already and that is my update for today. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Vice Mayor Flamie, do you have any questions? No, I just wanted to say a special thank you on the updates around the requirements for protests. Sure, you're welcome. Thank you. And do we have any comments from members of the public? I see no raised hands at this time. Thank you. Let's move on to downtown action organization. A lot of great things happening downtown. Cadence, can you report out please? Thank you, Chair Alvarez. Good morning, Vice Mayor Fleming. I'm having a little zoom trouble so hopefully this goes smoothly for the next few minutes here. I wanna just start by saying thank you. As Chair Alvarez said, we have a lot of projects happening downtown and it's required a lot of support from city staff and all of the partnerships that we've developed and are working through have just been really supportive, a lot of creative problem solving from city staff, moving quickly to get things done. And I just wanted to share on behalf of everyone in downtown, how much we appreciate that. Really every department we're working with understands the importance of supporting small businesses right now and how special their continued success is to downtown and the city overall. So thank you to everybody. Quick update on open and out. So the program officially wrapped up on October 15th. We did get great feedback from members of the community. Looking forward now to figuring out how we can keep that momentum going, not just in the immediate future, but throughout the year and the coming years as well. As Tara said, we are almost done with installing our art. It's been kind of nice that it's been spread out as much as it has. We've got I think three pieces remaining to be installed. So we'll see two more of those going in by the end of this year and then one going in next April. So kind of excited to see those rolling out and brightening up things downtown. The 600 block has reopened and the 700 block is actually gonna be reopened next week. So all of the restaurants on those two blocks had to reduce their parklets, get permits to operate in the street, but we've been able to come up with solutions for most of them. So again, thanks to the city staff for supporting that effort. Our restaurants to operate right now kind of without being able to operate indoors at all heading toward rainy season. And there's a lot of anxiety, understandably they're really nervous to kind of see how things pan out and what happens in Sonoma County. So that if they can potentially start operating differently, but they're all trying to fortify their parklets, bring in heat, create rain cover. So doing everything we can to help them keep business going as much as possible. With open and out wrapping up, we're transitioning into the chamber's winter light celebration. So I think everyone has probably familiar with it, with the event as it used to be. This year, obviously we are looking at things completely differently. Everything is being created kind of in the same vein as open and out, but really with social distancing in front of mind. So we're not trying to bring people down at one time for a big tree lighting. We'll be doing a little bit of a virtual component and then focusing on creating a fun celebratory family focused atmosphere downtown from November 27th to January 1st. So we're creating a little winter wonderland in Jeju Way. We've got some fun family kind of scavenger hunt type activities downtown. So the little ones can come and kind of look for different things that have been put out for them. We've got a couple of different photo opportunities that people can come and take pictures in front of new art going in. We'll have music during the day, during kind of prime shopping hours on the weekends. And then we're working with Tara and her team to bring elements of the handmade holiday craft fair that's usually at Finley to Courthouse Square. So excited about all of those. I think that it's gonna create a very fun festive atmosphere. And then we're also working on some additional decorations. So we have all of our downtown businesses. We have purchased evergreen swags so they can decorate their doors. We, the engine is red designed some really, really great new street banners that kind of feature downtown Santa Rosa and a holiday theme. So we're really excited to roll those out. And then we're also working on getting some new lighting installed on Fourth Street. So I think all of that is moving forward and looking like it should be done by the time that winter lights officially kicks off. So excited to be having these elements in place to create that festive shopping, dining community atmosphere downtown that we can continue from opening up. I'll give a quick update on our Street Plus team as well. So we are fully staffed, which is great. It's been a struggle for them recently with all the homeless activity downtown. We're really grateful for working with Catholic Charities and hosts that we meet with Kelly and her team and Catholic Charities every week to talk through issues. So that that partnership has been growing and it's really helpful to have their support but the impact to businesses downtown is very hard to combat. Our Street Plus team has shifted their schedule to try and kind of better deal with some of the constant issues that come up but it remains an ongoing problem. Unpleasant interactions for customers, vandalism, overnight activity. It's really making it hard for our small businesses to operate. Many of them feel like it's been getting worse over the past couple of months. And I think our landlords as well who are looking to rent empty spaces, whether it's an office space or restaurant retail, it's been hard when the impacts of that have been so prevalent. So definitely concerning and an ongoing issue that we are trying to deal with but again, appreciate the city's support around that and look forward to kind of future discussions around really trying to change that perception downtown, perception and reality. And then the last thing I wanted to mention is the Isarwa Fountain. So I think it's kind of the way things go right now but we also experienced some delays in getting the project moving as quickly as we thought. No issues have come up, just a couple of COVID related delays. We did finalize all the funding. So a huge thank you to our donors for that, Donna Born and Exchange Bank and the Rotary Clubs kind of stepped in to close that gap. So that's fantastic. And we are still hoping to break ground by the end of the year but I'll look forward to sharing an update hopefully a little bit more of a concrete timeline with all of you at our next meeting as well. I think that's it for me unless there's any questions. Thank you, Kaden, and thank you for your leadership downtown, the coordination that you're doing with everybody. I know it's difficult. There's so many moving parts that make this happen. It's not easy, but you've stuck to it and I think the results have been, from my perspective, amazing for downtown or entire city. So thank you for all you're doing and thanks for all the things that you're planning. A lot of great creativity going into this as we move into the winter months and the holidays. So thank you for that. Vice Mayor Flaming, do you have any questions or comments? I do not. Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you, I appreciate that. Any members of the public wishing to comment on this item? Thank you, Chair Oliveras. There are no brief hands at this time. Give a little more brief second just in case there's a little delay there. And still nothing. Still nothing. Okay, thank you. Then we'll go ahead and we'll move in to our parking program with Kim. Morning, happy to be speaking with you today. I'll try to keep this fairly brief. I know there's a lot on the agenda. So the first thing I wanted to let you know is that we are moving forward with the replacement of the parking equipment in the garages. This has been a long time coming project. The contract of course was awarded and we've got the plan submitted to the building department. So as soon as we get the permit approved we will be moving forward with installation. So we expect that to be soon. The permit has been submitted for probably about a month now and I know they've got quite a backlog. So we're hoping that we'll be beginning our installation in this month. We also have a pretty significant garage repair project that has been awarded and they're gonna be starting work this month as well. That will be in four of the garages. The only garage that doesn't have repair work at this time is the third street garage. So you can expect to see some impacts. The garages will all still be functioning and people will still be able to park. But that's really necessary work to keep water from getting inside the structures which will extend the useful life of them. We're also working on extending the fee reductions, the parking fee reductions that we approved at the end of June that went into effect for July 1st and they're set to expire at the end of the year. So we will be going to council on December 10th to extend some of these fee reductions including the reduction of the value zone, hourly rate to 50 cents an hour, continuing to have free parking in the garages Monday through Friday after five o'clock, free parking in the garages on Sunday and waiving the fees for the temporary parklets that we've been doing as, and then we'll also be continuing the promotion with the passport app that provides for one free session up to $3.15 and the code that you would enter is parkSR if you wanna take advantage of that so we encourage people to use the app. We've seen quite a bit of impacts from COVID. Our revenue is down so far for the first, through October for this fiscal year, it's down 50% year over year which we expected that it would be down. It's slowly recovering for example in July, the revenue was down 60% year over year so we're seeing a creeping trend of improvement but it's slow. Our transactions were down also down 60% in July, they're down 50% in October so same trend. We've seen a 30% reduction in permits and on the enforcement side, we are writing far fewer tickets and we're writing upwards of 50% warnings when citation, I mean they're not citations they're just warnings. So we're giving everybody a one-time warning before they would get a citation. We have set up 19 curbside pickup spaces, the 15 minute zones. We had 79 spaces blocked off due to the street closures of course that will be reduced as the streets reopen and we've got 26 spaces that were blocked due to the temporary parklets. And then the last thing I just wanted to remind people that we have a low wage discounted employee permit that for employees that make $22 and $96 cents an hour or less qualify for a 50% discount on permits at the first street garage and the seventh street garage. And then we also have a very discounted permit for employees who work at night, it's $10 a month, it's good at any garage and it's good from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. So I just wanted to remind people that we're really doing our best to encourage employees to not park on the street and give them really affordable options to do so. And that's all I've got, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much, Kim. Vice Mayor, do you have any questions? I do not, thank you. Thank you, we'll go to our host if there's any raised hands for public comment on this item. Yes, there is one raised hands. We have Bernard Schwartz, Bernard. I'm going to allow you to speak if we all could hold for just one moment. I'm just going to pull up public comment screen, hold on. And Mr. Schwartz, are you able to see the timer? I can. Wonderful, I'll go ahead and start. Okay, Kim, I just had one question, which is that you said when you were going to the extension of the fee reduction, it would include free parking in the garage on Sunday. Currently it's on Saturday and Sunday. Is that going to remain the same? No, we're proposing that we would resume paid parking on Saturday, but continue with the free parking on Sundays. So I'm hoping that there's some opportunity from input from the downtown community because we're still very much impacted and we don't expect that the first quarter is going to be any better than it is now. Have you done any outreach with the action committee or any of the downtown businesses on that proposal? We've been in touch with through cadence, but I have not participated in any of the merchant meetings recently. So no, that has not happened. Of course, the goal here was to provide some balance. We want to continue to support the downtown. We're looking at a projected $1.5 million hit to the parking fund this year. So we're trying to find a way to continue to support the downtown in a meaningful way, but also try to recover some of the revenue that is being lost to the parking fund and understanding that we've got millions of dollars of capital improvement projects that need to be completed and we're trying to find a way to keep a sustainable program. Understood. And we certainly want the parking district to remain strong. At the same time, I know the city would like to maximize whatever sales taxes can come in. So I hope there's room for some further conversation on this and thank you. I'm done now. Thank you, Chair Alvarez. We have an additional person with a raised hand. Julie Montgomery. Julie, I've unmuted you and we will be sharing the screen so you can see your time for public comments. Are you able to see that screen? Yes, I can. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I would just like to echo Bernie's comments. I'm Julie with Kindred Fair Trade on the square and I really hope that the decision or the idea to charge for parking on Saturdays in the garages could be looked at because as Bernie said, I understand that the parking program needs to remain strong, but downtown is struggling, especially as retailers as it is. And we really need to put a lot of effort into making sure that we can make it through this holiday season and having parking in the garages for free on the weekends is going to be key to that. Thank you very much. There are no other hands at this time. Okay. What I wanted to do is there are no other raised hands. I wanted to move back. I made an error in our agenda without a 4.1. I misread that. And as you recall back in September, we did have some glitches with having people be able to comment, et cetera. So I want to go back to that and see if there are any public comments items that we have presented back on September the 3rd at our meeting. As you again, some of you recall we did have a little of a glitch. So I wanted to take this opportunity to see if there's anybody that had public comment on our discussions from back then. I know it was a while ago, but I just wanted to afford that opportunity. Chair Laveras, there are no hands raised at this time. Thank you very much. So with that, we'll move on to item 4.5. We have a Rover Square Association Community. Benefit District, Rafael. Yes, good morning, Chair Olivares and Vice Mayor Fleming. It's a pleasure to hear you and see you. Well, hear you Vice Mayor. And the next item of course is the update on Rover Square Association. And Eileen, I don't know if we have unmuted Christina. Oh, okay. Then moving forward, the association has hired a part-time director. So we're very excited about that. And her name is Christina Wilson. And she has a very impressive resume. She spent some time working at St. Joseph's Health for quite a long time for the foundation as well as for the development department. And she's also done some other consulting work. And we're very delighted that we'll be able to continue working closely with the Rover Square Association as well as with the new director. So Christina, if you'd like to provide us with an update on developments in Rover Square. Sure, thank you. And please call me Chris. First, I wanna acknowledge Cadence and thank you Cadence for the time. We'll be meeting regularly. Cadence has set up such a very good system and program in downtown. And I'm looking forward to doing a lot of collaborating with the Railroad Square District so that we can have a little more blending of the two districts. So looking forward to that. And also with Tara, meeting with Tara and sending me guidelines and things that I can share with the business owners down there. As I'm getting my arms around just the position, I've been spending time really getting acquainted with the business owners and property owners and listening and hearing what their issues are and things that we'd like to be doing. We had a great day and thanks Rafael for all your help and time. We welcomed our new AC hotel that recently opened in Railroad Square District and also Nimble and Finn's ice cream shop that just opened. So if you haven't wondered down there, you really should. And we did a couple of volunteer street cleanings a couple of Monday mornings. Again, thank you Rafael for bringing brooms and bags and picker uppers. So we did street cleaning, but it's also a great way of engaging our board and our business owners down there to let them know, keep us more visible as an association that we're there to support them. So we are working on, just about have completed, we'll be doing a historic walking tour with the Klingons. It'll be going on a number of those beautiful historic buildings down there. So that people can walk around on their own and use their phone and be able to learn more about some of the history in Railroad Square. We've started the process for banner replacement in Railroad Square. And looking at holiday marketing, holiday lighting, really wanting to light up Railroad Square more being limited this year. Of course, we can't do all the creative things that I would love to be doing down there, but we are working on what we can do to create a festive atmosphere. And hopefully then it would even be a link with the winter lights that Kayden's working on downtown to extend the lights and warm and welcome feeling of Railroad Square. There is some talk we're in preliminary planning stages of a possible farmer's market in the spring. So we're looking now at what the process is for certification and the feasibility of doing that. So a lot of projects going on and I'm learning as I'm going again, thank you Raphael for your support and everyone. So looking forward to seeing you and working with you. If anyone has any questions, let me have it. Chris, this is Ernesto, welcome. Welcome to the team and to the committee as well, but look forward to a future report from you and engagement. So thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor, do you have any questions or comments? No, but excited to have the community benefit district back and up and running. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Madam host. There are no raise hands at this time. Okay. One quick last call for any comments on this item. Okay, we have none. So Ravel, if you'd have a little more on that piece of it, we'll go ahead and move on to our banner policy update. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again and good morning everyone. It's great to hear some of you and I recognize some names. So thank you Chris and everybody else is chipping in basically with these very difficult times, especially not just here in Santa Rosa, but throughout our nation and even our world. But I'm here this morning to go very quickly for a second time this year to discuss the banner policy and provide an update regarding that. I'm also in this very brief presentation, going to talk about some of the background related to the banner policy, the purpose and why it's needed. And then I'll walk you through very quickly through the application process and how we got there. I got a very brief presentation, so we're going to go right through it. And then I'll answer any questions. And Tara, feel free to chime in and I don't want to raise this on the call. You do so as well. So next slide please. All right, so in terms of the background, we already have a Santa Rosa zoning code that regulates temporary hanging banners, but it's not related to street pole banners. And then we also have in place the council policy that outlines city advertising policy and guidelines for promoting non-city service on city owned facilities, equipment and social media. But neither of the code or the council policy address a comprehensive street light pole banner policy designed to establish uniform regulations and associated fees for banner placement by non-city entities. The adoption of the street pole banner policy would build this gap. Street light pole banners are typically used for promotional purposes, placemaking and enhancement tool. The city of Santa Rosa has a lot of banners citywide on city owned light poles on an informal basis for programs and projects directly associated with city departments and divisions, as well as for select nonprofit organizations that have worked through the city manager's office. And we now see that the banners policy is needed. So within the city, the demand for banner banner display has generally been driven by the economic development division for seasonal and event related issues. Non-city use of street pole banners include Railroad Square Association, Rose Parade and the Wednesday Night Market to name a few. New requests for banner placements are increasing for such events and organizations such as Sonoma County Pride and the Junior College as well as placemaking desires such as the Sonoma County Museum and Memorial Hospital. The economic development team, staff in coordination with Public Works, Street Maintenance Division were charged with facilitating the locations, hardware purchases, scheduling and installation of banners on street poles. Installation and removal of banners has been performed by Public Works which has also impacted their core services during the last couple of years. Next slide, please. So the purpose with banner interest continuing to rise, mainly from event producers but also from neighborhood groups and nonprofit organizations, the proposed street light pole banner policy is intended to provide a clear and fair process where non has existed. The purpose of the banner policies to establish a program, guidelines and proposed fees for placement of banners on city street light poles in the public right of way. So some of the typical banner uses would be for recognitions, events such as Ironman, Wednesday Night Market, placemaking for our community districts, seasonal historic recognitions, public facilities. Ineligible banner uses, oops. Let's go back one, one. Ineligible banner uses would be, of course, violation of the Center for City Code, violation of the council advertising policy activities not open to the general public, commercial, political, religious content and images or messages inconsistent with these guidelines. So I'm gonna move on real quick, next slide please to how we got to the whole part regarding application process and proposed fees. We did take a look, in our research, we did take a look at various municipalities throughout the Bay Area and did an assessment on and learned that many of the local municipalities already have banner policies or banner programs in place. And there's also fees associated with these services. We learned that many of the municipalities had stepped out completely out of the business of installing banners. However, we did find a few such as the city of San Mateo that still puts up banners by working with the organizations wishing to do so. And then in that table, we also laid out some of the fees associated with banner programs and it ranges between $25 to close to $600 in other municipalities such as the city of Bagiejo. Next slide please. Okay, so here I'm gonna go between these two next slides which is the process and the proposed fees. But basically to exercise quality control and streetlight pull availability, banner requests will be reviewed by city staff via a streetlight pull banner application. The patient seeking to use the street holds for banner placement will apply to review, will apply through scope so we can get the opportunity to review and that would also include dates, fold numbers and artwork content and who will eventually be the installer. Upon approval, the applicant pays the encroachment permit fees to ensure proper documentation and insurance and their designated installer also must submit a traffic plan. Following the installation of the banners, staff will provide an inspection of the installation to ensure proper placement of these banners. So to that end through clear regulations and shifting the responsibility of installation and removal of banners from our street crews to the private sector, the banner program provides an accessible pathway for banner placement in support of placemaking and promoting community activities. The city's role is basically to facilitate the coordination among organizations, minimize the scheduling conflicts and ensure public safety. Banner applications will be available here at City Hall and online. So basically the process will be, the application will include availability, content review and installer documentation for compliance. The permit issuance will again get approved and so forth. And then I think sorry, if you could go back to the previous one, sorry. The traffic control plan will be submitted and then the installation part will include the inspection and maintenance and upkeep. We don't want these banners to fall off and we want to ensure that the zip-type clips are on there as well in the event of major wind storms, et cetera. Next slide please. All right, so then in terms of the fees, we are proposing or we'll be making a presentation to the city council on January 12th to go over these proposed fees. So basically there is an application fee of $45 and then that takes you if we approve all the required documents through the encroachment permit section and the encroachment fee is $128, plus the installer will have to pay a traffic control fee of $147 and then at the end, once those beautiful banners are installed, then we'll go out and make sure that there's an inspection conducted and that ranges between the amount of banners that are installed between 75 to $225. Okay, let's go to the next item. The next slide please. And then these are some of the requirements that you'll see on the proposed application that again will be presented at the city council meeting on January 12th. Next slide please, perfect. Okay, so in terms of the outreach, beyond reviewing the proposed policy and regulations with city staff members from Public Works, Recreation and Parks and others, we focus our outreach and policy development engagement efforts on event organizers such as Wednesday Night Market, Winter Light and Sonoma County Pride. Staff also had the opportunity to meet and make presentations to the Mentor Chamber, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Action Organization back before the pandemic, Reload Square Association, the Museum of Sonoma County and we also had the opportunity to speak to rural area business owners and representatives. From various other organizations and interested parties. Input and concerns were also considered and integrated into the policy as appropriate. And this was based on a prior presentation that we made to this very own committee back in February. So we incorporated those changes as well. The policy has gone through some minor revisions. So at this point, I'd like to ask if there are any questions regarding the banner policy. Thank you, Rafael. Good stuff here. Vice Mayor, do you have any questions on this presentation? I do not. Thank you. And I'll ask our host to check for any raised hands or other public comment on this item. Thank you, Chair Oliver. There are no raised hands at this time. Let's give it a couple of seconds here. Okay, so it looks like we have no public comment on this item. We'll move on to our public safety update, Sergeant Wolfe. Yes, thank you. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Yes. Okay, wonderful. I guess we'll chime in on what Caden's brought up earlier. We are seeing an increase in the homeless population downtown. We've responded to a number of calls for service related to normally either, well, odd behavior. They had a guy in a dress singing show tunes in a tree. We talked down on 4th Street. So we've had some kind of odd calls down there. But there are a number of issues and crimes including thefts and vandalism going on in the downtown corridor. We're working with some of the business owners on 4th Street that are having some repeated issues, probably with the same individual or two. We're trying to address that. We've really been focused on, well, the downtown corridor and the Prince Memorial Greenway have been our primary concerns, but we're still keeping an eye on Fremont Park, Juilliard Park, Comstock Mall. We've been a significant presence at Comstock Mall and we're still seeing some of the daytime loitering, but less of the overnight camping there. The DAO hats off to them. I know we've been involved once or twice with people actively, well, being very aggressive, cussing at them and things like that. So we have placed a number of people in mental health halls and we have made a significant number of arrests in the downtown area, but we're still continuing to see some of the issues. Also City Hall, we've made a couple of arrests out there. Some people that were high on meth and engaging in some bad behaviors and the transit mall. So I guess in general, the downtown has had kind of an influx, almost exclusively homeless related issues. We're doing our best to stay on top of that. I met with the mall recently over concerns with the possible civil unrest with the elections. So the events that have been planned haven't been anything significant that we've been tracking but we expect if there is something significant it might form quickly in reactionary group forms. We do have plans in place to address that. And then finally, for the Railroad Square people, I plan on meeting, I need to speak to, I believe it was Mr. Silver and possibly Mike Montague. I'm gonna try and meet with you guys next week to talk about some of the concerns there and also moving into winter, just some thoughts about the underpasses. And that's it. Great, thank you, Sergeant. Vice Mayor, any questions for the public safety? I do not, thank you. Thank you, and I'll ask our host to see if there's any public comment on this item. Thank you, Chair Olivares. We do have Bernard Schwartz would like to speak. Hold on just one moment. Mr. Schwartz, I have the opportunity to unmute yourself and I will go ahead and share the public comment screen. Mr. Schwartz, are you able to see the screen? I am. If you'd like to proceed. Thank you. I just wanted to mention that the downtown community really appreciates the police presence and we appreciate the challenges that both the street team from the DAO and the police department are facing every day. There has been some talk about boarding up in anticipation of maybe some election protests. Right now, there are a few buildings boarded up, bigger institutions, those of us that are smaller businesses are resisting is frankly, it's a bad look. And I know that we might be late in this but my own personal decision has been to wait and see if something happens. I just wanted to make that comment and again, let you know how much we appreciate the police presence downtown. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bernard. Chair Olivares, there are no additional hands raised at this time. Thank you. Let's move to Dean Hamlin with our parks crew related to maintenance in the Cornell Square area. Good morning. Good morning, Dean. Good to see everybody. Challenging times for sure. Just a few quick notes, update on Fremont Park. PG&E is actually going to come in and gonna update the power source for the entire park which will be for the lighting, water feature and irrigation controller. And then public works electrical section is going to help us out with getting a new power tower and then we'll put in a new controller cabinet. And then we can start moving forward with doing some more turf work once we know that we have water automatically in that park. I just wanted to remind anybody, DAO included if you do any sidewalk washing now going into winter be very, very cognizant of the temperature before sunup could create ice on sidewalks. It's something that we tried to steer away from this time of year unless we absolutely have to because that could create a possible hazard situation. So it's just something to keep in the back of your minds if you are going to use any water that could eventually ice over on the sidewalks. I do want to throw a shout out to our streets graffiti crew. They've been helping us out tremendously in the downtown core. Kind of filling in some gaps. I had one of our long-time employees resigned from the downtown crew. So we're down to three at the moment which just any help that we can get from our street side really is helping out.  Just let him know I was able to order some new can liners. As soon as they get here we have an inventory in the yard. Those are the same cans that are down for street and third and so forth. So if you do find that those cans are missing liners don't hesitate to call us. We keep an inventory here in the yard to pull from just so that it doesn't take too long to get them replaced. Yeah, we're going into irrigation control mode. We're trying to get into a save water mode now. As you know, this time year in Sonoma County temperatures fluctuate, days are shorter. So it becomes quite challenging to monitor water and manage water. So that's a big component of our jobs this time of year as well as starting to do some tree pruning when we can find time to squeeze that in as some of our trees downtown go dormant. So that's definitely on the hit list as well. That's it for me. Thank you, Dave. And thank you for your continued efforts in keeping things maintained and looking sharp downtown and other areas, Fremont Park, especially. I know that's kind of in a recovery mode right now. So thank you for that. Vice Mayor, any questions or comments for on this item? No, thank you very much, Dean. Thank you. Madam Host, do we have any raised hands for comments on this item? Thank you, Chair Alvarez. No, there are no raised hands at this time. Thank you. Let's move to Kelly at Housing and Community Services for an update there. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello, everyone. Just a brief update. I think that Cadence and Sergeant Wolf did a good job of providing a summary with regards to what's happening in the downtown related to homelessness. And Cadence mentioned that we're meeting on a weekly basis between Streets Plus and Host and just want to mention that I appreciate that partnership to improve coordination of our homeless response efforts in the downtown area. And then really, like I said, Cadence and Sergeant Wolf did a great job updating the group on what's going on downtown. My focus or our focus on the programming side of things is on the city's homeless services manager is on the closure of the family program, the safe social distancing program that we set up in response to COVID-19. We're closing that down with the anticipation of winter weather coming in and have worked, of course, with all the individuals there to find them placements prior to the closure. And then also the construction of Sam Jones Hall, you might be aware, we're constructing a new facility. It's a sprung structure in the parking lot at Sam Jones Hall, and that's gonna provide up to 60 beds. And that's to restore capacity that we lost due to social distancing requirements. So back in March, we lost 60 beds at the shelter, and we're taking steps to restore those beds, which we all know are very much in need in our community. So I think that's my update from the homeless services side of things. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Vice Mayor, any questions for Kelly? No. Thank you. Any raised hands for comment on this item? Thank you, Chair Laveras. No, there are no raised hands at this time. Okay. And that's it on our agendized items. We have no matters in committee. There are many department reports of any type, any things that report out on? I see no raised hands at this time. Thank you. And you know what, let me reach out to members of the public if there are any things that they want to check in on more related to future agenda items. Is there anything that you want to bring forward? Want us to explore bringing forward of this committee related to the downtown that you might need for this committee. Chair Laveras, I see no raised hands at this time. Great, thank you. I just want to make sure that people have an opportunity to weigh in to see if there's anything that they needed. So great meeting. Thank you. A lot of good information and a lot of exciting things coming to the downtown as we transition into the holiday season. So I'm really looking forward to that. And I'm looking forward to our next meeting as well. So I'll let you all get back to your screen and check out what those election results are looking like. I know it's a male abider, but we'll see where we go. So thank you all. And with that, our meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.


What's up navigation traders welcome to this week's video update today's Friday, October 11th Hope everybody had a great week of trading before we jump into the alerts and positions I just want to remind you don't forget part 3 of the iron duck option spread series is this coming Tuesday and That is October 15th at 4 p.m. Central time now if you've already registered for part 1 or part 2 You only have to register that one time. You're already ready to go for part 3 We'll send out the link, but it's just navigation trading comm slash iron duck live Which is the same broadcast room that you saw part 1 and part 2 in But part 1 is in the books part 2 is in the books now all we have left is part 3 Which is going to be all about futures including the reverse iron duck so make sure you're there Already I already hearing some really good success stories with the iron duck strategy some some bigger traders Just pulling in some massive profits. So awesome stuff and we're just getting started. So make sure you check that out and by the way, I've gotten a couple of Questions about this in the community when you log in at navigation trading comm all your strategy courses are right here Okay, so you just go down and down at the very bottom is the or close to the bottom is the iron duck option spread So you open that up. We part 1 has already been edited into all these different Sections so it's a little bit more easier to find and go back and reference different parts And then part 2 is still in its full form from just the recording and that'll be split up Next week as well. So that's where you find it. It's all under iron duck option spread If you need to go back and reference Before we jump in the alert, so let's take a look at the community talk about who got caught being hot This week goes to a fellow trade hacker that goes by the name Walter burr Walter's really just jumped in asked a lot of great questions Helping other traders making suggestions just answering questions. It's been awesome. Well, keep up the good work You got caught being hot All right, let's jump into the alerts for the week starting on Monday the 7th So our first alert was an opening trade and we sold a strangle in the British pound in 4 slash 6 B now if you're in this trade or you've been watching the British pound We've had a massive move the last couple days Just I mean this thing is just taken off to the upside now Plot volatility was already decent when we put this on so we're still in our range. It got to about our short strike here But if you look at just the put side the untested side still got some decent premium left in there So we're not ready to roll those puts up quite yet As far as time frame goes we've got 28 days to expiration. So Next Friday will be down to that 21 days to x ray expiration period So if it's still kind of hanging out up there, we'll roll the puts up and potentially roll it out to the next cycle But we'll we'll just kind of play that by ear. Obviously if if it rebounds We could still book a profit before rolling potentially, but we'll see what happens Just going to play the probabilities as we always do Next trade opening trade in SPX. So we put on a new iron duck in this case with eight days to expiration and And so I'll get to I'll get to the I'll get to that here in a second Let's go on to the next one first Next one was a rolling adjusting trade in natty gas. So we rolled one set of our strangles from 20 days to expiration out to 48 kept the strikes the same We're down to 20 days to expiration and so we needed to roll out to the next cycle We had two different sets of nat gases. So I'll go to the platform once we get to the second alert Next one was a closing trade in an SPX iron duck that we had put on This was the very first one that we put on and we ended up just letting this one expire took the beak profit and And and and booked that 160 bucks on that trade At that point we're still holding our SPX with with seven days to expiration. So I'll get to the I'll get to that one here in a second as well Next trade rolling adjusting trade in that gas. So here's the second roll on our nat gas position This one was down to 18 days to expiration that we rolled that out to 46 So now we've got both pieces out in the December what toss calls the December cycle So if we go to natty gas You can see here, but this is kind of both of them put together Remember they share the three strike put because it it is so deep in the money that we went ahead and just share that for both sets and So on the call side, they're very similar to but we've got the 2.3 call and 2.35 call But this is both of them together. So just waiting for some more time to pass waiting for some more theta 2 decay Next trade opening trade. We did a broken wing iron butterfly and We did that in Beyond Meat BYND and we did that with eight days to expiration and I talked about this broken wing iron butterfly strategy at the end of our iron duck part two so if you missed that it's kind of towards the end of part two and And it's just a variation iron duck where we're putting the short strikes at the same strike. So if we go to Beyond a meat It's actually after with the market up huge today Surprisingly beyond meat down over 3% and so when we put this on Price was basically started up in this area somewhere and it's come down. So it's in our Tent area, but we've got how many days do we have now? We've got seven So, you know over the course of the next week, we'll watch this theta decay Hopefully it stays within our range and we'll close this out Shortly before the options expire. So that is the plan in Beyond Meat Now let's go on to the next trade Next one was a closing trade in SPX So this was our other iron duck and and we closed this one today And the reason being is because with the strong movement in the market I mean the price just ran way up the beak and so instead of holding this for another five days we just closed it out took that full beak profit of 145 bucks and And look and look to redeploy that that money into another iron duck, which we did today as well And so now we'll go to the platform We did this with 14 days to expiration with the market running higher implied volatility Contracting if I enter on days like this, I like to typically go a little bit further out so instead of going like seven days out we went 14 days out and And so let's take a look at what that looks like. So if we go to SPX And then this is a trade that I put on from a suggest from a comment in the community So that's not one of our alerts, but I'll talk about that here in a second to actually because it's kind of interesting So this is our SPX iron duck. Let's set our slices back to the break even point 1026 is the expiration here So this is what it looks like So we put this on so it's pretty close to where we put it on see we got a max profit of 650 bucks with a Beak profit of 150 Remember the beak profit is basically the credit you receive minus the width of the call spread So the call spread is five points wide We collected 650 as our max profit. So that's where the 150 comes from 650 minus five equals 150 okay, so that's where that comes from now the other thing I just wanted to point out on SPX here that I had checked initially was One of our members in the community said hey I I was looking at this double calendar spread with the market running up and plot plot volatility Contracting putting on these weekly double calendars just like we teach in the weekly income course now what what this member did was They were basically selling the October 18th and buying the October 21st So a little bit more narrow spread between the different time frames than we then we do However, if you look at this, I mean look how flat the P&L line is Look how big of a a max profit. We've got over a thousand dollars on most parts of this peak And we're only risking, you know a few hundred bucks per contract And so I put this in just to just to watch it so and so I could discuss it today And what happens when you see something like this that looks so so favorable typically what happens is there's I Haven't even looked but there's got to be some type of announcement or something going on next In these further dated options that's going to cause the premium to collapse or contract at least and they're gonna contract Quicker than the front month than the front week and remember when we're when we're putting on these double calendars We're selling the front week because we expect them to contract Faster than the back week and we're putting on the back week because they create that defined risks risk scenario And and but when you see a scenario like this That almost looks too good to be true that typically means it is so if you were to put this on on a stock Right before earnings you're gonna kind of see a very similar type thing and so We'll see what happens. I just put it on to watch it and so I could I kind of answer I could kind of explain it better to this member and to the rest of the community But I just wanted to kind of point that out and and we'll we'll follow that and and post more about that I just want to show you what happens, you know right now and just for reference point You know, we've got so it's right here the seven and the ten Seven days to expiration and ten days to expiration right now You'll see the implied volatility on the seven-day options are right here 14.92% and then ten days out is 13.87 so we'll see what happens to those options and the implied volatility over the next week and And it'll help give you a better idea of of the situation with this with this double calendar All right, so hopefully that's helpful or it will be once you kind of see what happens Next trade closing adjusting trade in KRE so we had two different sets of short strangles on in KRE On this one we booked over 25% of max profit And it was basically almost a straddle and that's why we we took profits earlier on this piece And then we're still holding our other piece. So if we look at KRE You'll see here's the one that we still have on We took off the 52 53 and now we still have the 50 57 prices sitting right here So if we get a little bit more movement up and some more contraction We'll probably book this one next week as well as long as it doesn't run away from us in one direction or another Next trade and final trade of the week is a rolling adjusting trade in Apple So Apple has just been exploding higher and we've got a long put vertical on so we just rolled this To keep that short delta exposure in our portfolio and where we're at right now is that we're at right at about two to one On our short delta versus our theta ratio. So we're in a good position I'll tell you boy. I mean today does not feel good when you have that kind of when you have short delta on and in The market rips higher like it did That does not feel good. Now the good news is It gave up in the very last hour of the trading day gave up over almost about half of the Gains that it had on earlier. So that helped out a little bit. What but when the S&P was at 55 points, that was a little brutal But you got to stay mechanical, you know, again, this is Seems like a little bit of an overreaction as far as how this exploded higher these last few days But we'll see if there's some additional continuation or this thing rolls over and dies We'll be watching that next week So those are all the alerts. Let's take out take a look at some of our other positions I mentioned 6b oil making a big move higher today almost two and a half percent, which is good for the good guys Prices down here, you know, if it was gonna continue running We're gonna have to roll our calls down, but it ripped back higher So we're right back in line with where we need to be just now waiting for some more time to pass and theta to decay Yes, we've got the long put vertical holding for that short delta exposure. I need some downside to get back into range In gold we've got an iron condor pretty well centered here. Let me make this a little bit easier to see stretch this out And so price is pretty well centered here just waiting for some more Time to pass before we do anything there Natty gas I mentioned bonds get a little whip sod and bonds. They're coming back down We came all the way back down into center and now we're heading down towards the lower end of our range You can see it's set a big move with the market ripping higher bonds have gone lower and So that's where we're at on our bond trade if it continues lower or if it rips back up to the upside I'd like to add on to this again. We're still battling back To get back to profits in bonds. So just on in wait and see mode right now Wheat up over 3% today, but still well within range on our iron condor. I Mentioned Apple. I mentioned beyond de This one moved out of our range here. So just looking for some downside to get back into our range on that one And we'll and we'll do something with this next week either roll or close it This is still in October and we're down to what seven days in October. Yeah, so we'll address this one next week DIA we've got two sets of short call verticals One's got three contracts and it moved out of our range here today and then the other one is still within range Just looking for some more downside to benefit those Goldman man, this one was frustrating. I had a I had an order in When one price was kind of down here to exit this and it's it just ripped higher on us Never had a chance to get out again. So just kind of in wait and hold mode See if this can get back. We'll go ahead and roll this one or close it Next week as well because it's in October as well IWM we put on this position for some more short Delta exposure and prices moved up a little bit on us since we put that on So again, just holding this for some short Delta IYR we've got this iron condor it's dead center. Just waiting for some more profit before we do anything there. I Mentioned KRE QQQ Very similar to DIA Just holding these two sets of short call verticals for that short Delta exposure prices right here, you know, well within range I just waiting for some more downside to benefit those SMH now we find ourselves all of a sudden with this at the upper end of the range again and Implied volatility contracting, but we will look to potentially add to this one Early next next week assuming implied volatility stays decent by just adding a another short Strangle kind of centered around the current price This is in November So we've got 35 days in that cycle and then 70 in the next one So we'll probably we'll either do it in November or we'll wait another week before we add to this Wait for these options to get down under the 60-day to expiration range. I Mention SPX SPY. We've got an iron condor here and in SPY and Pretty well centered here And so not quite enough to take off yet But we'll be looking at that next week and then lastly XLK long-put vertical kind of same story Need markets to go down a little bit to get back into range on that piece So those are all the alerts. Those are all the positions. Don't forget Tuesday iron duck part 3 We'll see you then. Have a great weekend


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with our last filler for that baseball mixer It's a top scone baseball hangar box number six big. Thanks to this group We're gonna do the break first And we'll give away those remaining spots at the end of the break with a different dice roll But for the break, we're gonna roll and randomize names and teams three into six nine times each one two three four five six seven eight And ninth and final time nine times for the teams one two three four five Ninth and final time. That's the first part of the list here, and here's the second part of the list Right over there and the mixer itself, of course will be in the next video separate video I Bomb refractor here. It's pretty nice Luis Robert at the very end there all right, so The alabama goes to Nick and the Phillies and let's see who's gonna win those mixer spots All right, so let's gather everybody's names and it's gonna be the top ten After seven lucky seven times. Good luck two and a five one two three four five six and Seventh and final time after seven Already from 11 on down Sad times, but I appreciate everybody giving this a shot. Thank you Happy times though for the top ten Justin Tim Kevin Kevin Mark Oliver Brandon Matt Frank and Jonathan you are all in We'll see you in the next video for the break Jasper's case breaks calm. Bye-bye


but this is what the last budget that we, that the leadership team and the administrators in ourselves have worked really hard, especially the leadership, I guess you think the leadership team, especially in our administrators, because they have put a lot of hours into this budget. Since our merger last year, we have been working hard to develop a shared understanding of equity issues across our schools. So this budget supports our goals. So for our communication with the community, engaging in long-term planning and supports in food, educational and academic outcomes. And I know a lot, most people that are here are familiar with that, so I don't know if you have any questions for that, but what I would say that what I'm most excited about this budget is that it really supports our strong multi-tier system of supports right now and continues the work that we've been doing to really, this budget puts, I'm gonna say the educational outcomes at the forefront of our budget. There's a lot of other things that we wanna be doing, but as our first unified budget, we wanted to make sure that kids are getting the supports that they need before they fall behind. And the kids are getting also the opportunity to exceed if that's where they are. And that our teachers are getting strong, you'll see the numbers, but I try to take a little time to sort of set the tone of that, that our teachers are having enough time to get professional development and also enough time to plan together so that they can teach with intention and really be able to support the kids, meet all the kids where they are. And also that our schools keep providing, we've been investing a lot in being trauma informed, so our teachers are also taking that into account. And this budget supports that work. Board, which you're familiar with. That board will be growing into 15 members. So if you're a resident of Berlin here especially, if you would like to run for the board, please. We can't wait to meet you. As always, we have competing pressures within and across each of our schools, right? And with the state, we have Pat Herden, Asian Quality Contracts Division, federal mandates, facilities mandates, it requires student service, economic pressures and benefits. But I see this budget, besides all that you see there, I really see this budget as investment in our next generation, not just with some expense. And so how do you develop this budget this year? So there's a burden on the business and their service, and our principals get together and they put some draft examples for us. I gotta say that they did a lot of work. I don't even know how they did it because this was the first time that everybody was sort of not just thinking about their own school, but about multiple schools. So they presented three different scenarios to us and this is the last one that we're presenting to you. And then the finance committee, which at the moment is Scott Thompson, Vera Pressure and myself, met in between those meetings to try to make changes or just support the work. We're gonna try and get the board approval tonight and then the voter approval after that. Our student enrollment has stayed pretty steady as you can see, we haven't, we're hoping for that to go up, but I realized if pupils for this year are looking good. So we're about 1,500 right now, or 1,574. Yeah, actual enrollment for next year. So that's really good news. 1,574 students, 3K, liberation. We talked about all of this before and of course, we merged on July 1st, so there has been a lot of work done in this past six months to get a better understanding. The board has been touring every single building. We've been trying to get shifting every month. We have one meeting at E32, one meeting at the school and we take time to go into each facility and try to get, familiarize ourselves with, not just the building, but also the staff if possible. Okay. So, but yeah, thank you. Just shows the differences of the drafts. Yeah, so glad to see you. Do you guys want to talk about just the draft that we're presenting today? Or do you want to talk about the steps how we got here right now? Our budget for 1920, we're presenting 33,154,769,000 dollars. But we had, as you can see, draft one, one A, one B, and draft two, to get to that number. Yeah, the last draft. Most of our budget is around salary and benefits. The increase for this year for salary and benefits, the budget change was 5.43%. The non-salary item, as you can see, is not a large amount, 1,080,408,763 for adjusted budget of 2020. And then we still have that between our, between our schools, and you can see here that the budget changes minus 1.15 because we just finished that up on for U32, which is in our favor. So the combined total expenses for Westbrook Central is 33, for this adjusted 33,854, like we said, for the total budget for 2021 that we're projecting is 35 million for that 130, with 102 cents.  I'm jumping around because I want to get to the questions, if, but if you have any questions, ask them, talk and please feel free. I have one. Yeah. Flora, you just mentioned the U32 bond that retired. Yes. How much did that free up? How much was going into bond payments last year? That freed up 461,000. And was that the lowest of all the years that the bonds go down? Well, that was the $9 million bond. We still have a $3.1 million bond that will be retired within the next two years. Okay, but 461 has gotten, almost half a million has gotten freed up because of that. Is that good? Yes, thank you. Yeah, I'm just curious about some of the staffing changes. Can you talk about what the question was? So, what we were talking about is like, we didn't want to reduce our instructional pie. And definitely we had needs in different schools. So our approach now is we're investing heavily in coaching and trying to have more effort around our schools. So everybody's getting this, not the same but what they need for their students. But we also had some needs in, we're talking about the rest of our schools. We had some needs in Calais. So it's basically some is special education and some is instructional practices. What we believe is making a difference right now. We're putting those enforcing every building. I don't know if you have something to add to that, Deborah? Sure, the board was very interested in having equity as a focus in our budget this year. And we were also focused strongly on student achievement. So one of the things we did was take a look at, we call our support interventionists and supports and coaches that all help students and teachers improve instruction. And there were some needs to equalize some of those positions based on student needs. So we added some positions there. We also saw an increase in some of our special education student needs which required some increased staffing. So as you can see, the salaries have benefited 70% of our budget, but that also is the instructional pie of our budget. So that's where we want to be. If anything is growing, it should be an instruction, not in operation and that hopefully. So transportation services were 4% operational, 3% and special education and tuition, 8% and non-salary, 9% for this particular budget. So here we have the difference between our budget from last year and the budget that we're for this current year, so 19 to 20 and 20 to 21. Really the main difference and it's not a huge is direct instruction, which is what we've been talking about from here we were at 36.5% and we're at 37.4%. Again, that is related to what we believe will be the best for student outcomes. I don't know if you have any other questions. So this is easier because in the pie it's hard to see from, so it's easier to see it here. So direct instruction, the change really from last year is 7.29% of the total budget. Of the total, yeah. So all these percentages are from total budget and special education is 9.70% and then support programs. Do you want me to read each one? No, that's what I'm doing. So it is, like it says here, it's just an expression of each budget area and I see and you guys here and I wanna talk to that a little bit and I know that you guys are, like the strength, the arts is something that we, I believe all in the board and the leadership team and the superintendent and everybody, it's something that we really, really wanna do and something that we believe makes a difference for all students and we know that kids that are involved in music do better in school and it really helps. We were trying to figure out different scenarios and I know we had their number wrong at the beginning and I'm not sure if it's, so we changed that number around so what we were hoping at our last finance meeting, which we haven't read in the minutes since the four yet, we talked about that and we were like, that has to stay at the forefront and Lori and Deborah are here to just confirm that that's what, at least that's four members, that's what we said. We don't wanna lose sight so our little cloud here, not break, our little cloud here, we have foreign language and strengths and we wanted to maybe this year, we've talked about many different scenarios so how can we be more creative, right? Like either do an afterschool program sooner rather than wait but as of this year, we were not able to get that wish list yet. So that's part of the reason that it's not reflected on this, on this project. Lori. Yes. This is large, you want me to just take it from here? Okay. So if you, what am I taking? Sure. The common level of appraisal. Okay, I'll just stop for a break. So we received the latest information from the tax department on the common level of appraisal. Three of our towns had an increase in the common level of appraisal and when you have an increase in the common level of appraisal, it means your tax rate wouldn't be as high. If you have a decrease in your common level of appraisal, it causes a tax rate increase. So the towns that had a favorable change to the common level of appraisal for the purposes of taxes are Berlin, Romney and Dovey, so Wooster and Middlesex. When we set a tax rate, it's not on this particular slide, but we do have the equalized tax rate of $1.79 and 34 cents and that would translate into a four point one cent tax increase if everyone had a common level of appraisal of a hundred percent. So it is one tax rate with one tax increase, but you can see that in Berlin, the tax increase way over to the right is two and a half cents and it's less than the four cents because they had this common level of appraisal that went up. Am I going too fast? So the number on the right, if everyone was at a hundred percent it would have been four point one cents. You can see in the situation of Calis and Ismaelia, their common level of appraisal went down so their tax rate increase is greater than the four point one cents, it's six point one and seven point four. For Middlesex and Wooster, you can see their tax increase is very minimal and in Wooster's case, it's projected to be a reduction because of the common level of appraisal change. Did I cover too much or not enough? I think I wanted to do for your question ahead so it helped me prepare. I think that is part of your question. Yeah, at some point I was going to ask you what the change in the per pupil spending is from year to year. Okay, I think that's all I'm getting at next slide. Okay. So if there's any questions, I can take those. Okay. I would like to see if the per pupil is... Yeah, we have that. And we have it being out of hand now. Yeah. I guess I could just say it. The per pupil equalized spending is four point six one percent if this budget was approved or changed. So do you have the raw figures of how much... Right. For the current year, it's 18,659. Okay. Excuse me, 657. I need three. 18657. It's currently projected at 19,518. And that represents a four point six one percent increase. And do you have the total enrollment figure for the current year? Enrollment for equalized pupils. No, the enrollment. So 15,70 is going to be more. I mean the year before that number that was up on the chart. I don't think we had the year before. I'll just see if I can get out of here. It's only in a photographic position. I do not have it, but I could get it to you? Yeah. What we saw was that the overall total did not change significantly, but what's different is we have more students who are in pre-k and less that are in K to graduation. So from the equalized pupil point of view, that resulted in a change. Right, right. Because those students are weighted and you won't receive appropriate benefit of a pre-k. Can I, instead of asking a question. Yeah. Well, this is a question, but it'll take a second. What I've been trying to figure out is how, if the budget is going up a total of, how much is that again? Five point, four point seven? Three point one, I don't know. Four point six five. Four point six five? Yeah, right there, yeah. We have additional revenues because a lot of the budget increases due to special education. So we would receive reimbursement this coming year for those expenses. Yeah, it seems to me that I thought back in June, you said the U-32 bond was gonna get retired, at least one of them was. So I figured there would be new revenue coming in. There'd be less revenue, less expenditure, half a million dollars. So that opens up a pool of money unless you wanted to readjust the budget because that money is no longer needed to pay a bond off. But even then, I couldn't figure out how, I mean Wooster is kind of a good example. The CLA is always exactly what it should be and the tax is going to basically be the same, go down four tenths of a percent. So I'm trying to figure out why when the budget is increasing somewhat substantially and the spending per pupil is certainly increasing by almost $1,000, why the taxes are not going up more? Because the change in the common level of appraisal was almost 3%. The common level of appraisal for this current year was 97.84 and it's currently for this coming budget 100% 23 times. Right, so. So that's about a five cent tax increase. So if I'm looking at it from the perspective of my town, basically what's happened is probably property values have not risen as quickly as they have in the other towns. So the CLE, which is, I don't know when the last reappraisal was, but it looks like we're still judged to be appraising our houses accurately. The other towns have not been presumably because they haven't been reappraised lately or something else happened. I don't know. You had reappraised or done something back in FY17. It was 104%. Then it went down to 101 and then it's been hovering around 100. Other towns, yeah, it doesn't appear that there's been a reappraisal at least one pillier that I can tell for the last five years. But I'm not sure. Is that an accurate statement? No, but basically houses having been set, you know, they're having been selling for what they are in price. So that's a good moment. Yeah. But I don't believe you had a reappraisal. I don't think we have had a, it's sometimes had a two years ago and I think each one pillier had a two, maybe five years ago. I don't remember the exact. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is it's not the size of the budget. The increase in the budget that drives the tax rate, it's the increase in the per pupil spending. And this is a pretty substantial, it's sort of in line with previous years. We've been going up somewhere between $500 and $1,000 a year, I think, for a number of years in per pupil spending. And this is, these tax rates don't seem to reflect that large of an increase in the per pupil spending. So I'm just trying to figure out where the additional either lack, cutting of expenditures, which doesn't seem to be the case, where the extra revenue is coming from. And it seems you're suggesting it's coming from, changes in the CLA, it's coming from the retirement of the U32 bond, and it's coming from special ed money you hadn't anticipated coming in, but is. Some of the budget increase is special education. We've increased the number of positions there in this budget. So there's a reimbursement increase of over 300,000. When you look at that 500,000 in revenue, that's helping to reduce taxes. 300 and 5,000. Right, I'm trying to figure out where that revenue's coming from. True, that would be coming from the state. The state is also, I'm not sure if you were on the board when we signed up on the new bus contract, but at the time I had mentioned that it would take a two-year lag before we would get the reimbursement for the bus contract. So that's coming in now, it's 133,000. And we're also adjusting our tuition income for 53 students, and increasing our tuition as part of that overall 529,000. I was curious about that specifically, that 53 students is $152,000 is above the current budget? True, we had an increase in tuition as well. So we have more students that we're budgeting for, I think there's three additional students, plus we've increased our... Even with Roxbury students... Out. Moving away from... We have not seen a huge decline in our tuition students. That's really good. That's really good. That's pretty stable. Sorry, if I'm answering all the questions. No, no, you should. You keep pointing to me so I don't mind. Yeah, I'll move on. We want it, yeah. This relates to a question I had as well, which is not a question, but I am wondering how you're thinking about this, the implications of this longer term, because I was really anticipating, oh, we're ending this one bond payment, which is significant. We've been waiting years for this to happen. And it's not really, I mean, it's in here, but we're seeing at least an average, maybe an above average increase overall on average. Does that, do you think there's implications of that for future years in terms of this new union? Yeah, I think that because this is the first year that we're doing a budget all together, and for our desire to sort of have equity around our schools and invest in what we were seeing that was starting to work to reduce the treatment gap. So we are not a guest estimate, but we're putting all our ducks right there, right? So because we want that to, we want to continue to support our work because we're seeing that it's working, right? So that it needed more people, right? And that's what is expensive. I think the thing we missed in our slide is that we didn't share that health insurance is also projected to go up on those 13%. And we also have an estimate in here for negotiations. So if you look at it in total, $1.1 million is in that $1.8 million for benefits and salaries. Yeah, and that's built in, you have no options. True, sorry, we didn't put that in the slide, I apologize, we should have probably. And that was really good news because a lot of this weeks were hit with that 12% increase of health insurance and we had planned. And so it was that, it didn't, it was the zero, but we were waiting that day at our meeting like if it's gonna really hit us and we're like, no, it's neutral, right? That's what we had. So we were somewhat lucky. We did have another budget with that larger. In Grisbelle, we're trying to negotiate that being fiscally responsible and we're ready hearing from some people that 3.19 is large. So we're here to take input, right? So there's something that you think should be different, please talk to us. Board, can you imagine equity just a moment ago? Can you speak to the board's current thinking about how you're going to be measuring equity across especially the elementary schools? I mean, what, you said something about outcomes, I think in an earlier slide, but that's sort of one thing. What I wrote here, and this is mostly because as a board, we haven't defined yet what equity means. This is something that we're, the other thing that you have to remember is that six-month-old board, the seven-month-old, six-month-old board that's trying to pull it together. We've been doing a lot of our own professional development work, our book, equity from the classroom, from the board to the classroom. So we've been doing a lot of work, but to tell you that we already figured out, I think the leadership team has a better idea of what equity means around the schools. But to me, this budget is like an affirmation of our desire to have better outcomes for all kids. And that's what we were trying to concentrate. So I know that that doesn't define what equity is because there's too many explanations, but my favorite one is that we build, and this is not something from all the board because we haven't yet had that conversation. I don't wanna speak for the entire board that I believe that all kids can learn, right? So if we believe that all kids can learn, we need to put the supports in place to make sure that all kids can learn and exceed wherever you are, so meet them where you are and not, and not just do, not sacrifice our belief on having the best outcomes and sacrifice an experience because we, every single one of our communities is slightly a different step back. So like I said, I'm not, you know, we are not, and Jonathan's gonna please feel free to, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to look at equity, right? There's equity in opportunities to the different schools.  There's a lot of different ways of looking at it. I think, you know, I'm not on the finance committee, but I think that what, you know, what Florence, Scott, and Vera have done, with Lori's input and the rest of the leadership team, is a focus on equity in outcomes, right? The, with the investment in special education, right, and the services and improving instruction, right, is our attempt to try and make, you know, those outcomes more equitable and provide the services where they're needed. So in other words, you mean the outcomes, performance of students is more equal across schools? It's more about the supports, really, so it's more about the, so like I said, we know that if we do interventions when they're needed at a school, so if a kid gets a shot in the arm on math or in reading for six weeks, he's not gonna fall behind and become, you know, especially if he's gonna get he or she or is gonna get what they need. Yeah. You know, that is an investment that saves money at the end. We know that if we invest in professional development and have the teachers have time to plan and teach, you know, and teach with, I call it teach with intention or do the differentiated teaching, it takes coaching to get that. You know, we know that teachers need that time on their schedule and they need the professional development and the coaching and that costs money, whether we, you know, like we need the people in place. So that is a strong sort of multi-tier of supports. And then, you know, and it's about student driven, right? So it's not just putting more people in every building because you have two than I need two, then you have three. It's not about coming or taking from here to there because you have more. It's about if any of the principals wanted to speak to that and give different examples. I want to follow up with this because I think I must be missing something. When I hear equity of outcomes, it says to me, you can achieve that anytime the outcomes across the, let's say the five elementary schools are more or less the same. And that's fine if everybody's outcomes are high, but you can also achieve equity of outcomes if everybody's outcomes are low. Well, certainly no, we're aiming for high expectations. And how are high expectations defined? Well, back in October, not to dissuade you from having a more detailed explanation, but we did share with the board when we met at East Montpelier a detailed review of our achievement, looking at the assessments that were occurred over the prior year. And we established the fact that there were certain grade levels or schools across the system where we had some disparities where our achievement was not up to par and at that point that the board and leadership team took again that to task and said, well, in order to improve our outcomes, what inputs or changes do we need to accomplish? So it is based on data and it's essentially looking at and using more supports into the system. We do have supports currently, but we felt that more supports were required. The other additional piece that has been mentioned is that we've seen an increase in our number of students with special education needs and those students require more intensive services. And while we do receive some reimbursement, there are some of those costs which we need to take on as local schools and communities. So these are really student driven changes to our budget. So would it be fair for me to think that really what you're talking about is equity of support and intervention as opposed to really equity of outcome? Our goal is to achieve equity of outcomes by adding additional supports, professional development and as I mentioned in other areas. So yes, that's our goal. Equity of high outcomes. So some means to the end equity in improving our outcomes across our schools. Thank you. You're welcome. With the standard being our student learning outcomes, right? We want all students to be able to achieve those. Yes, our standard is our goal or our belief that all children are with the proper supports. You mentioned that the other two goals were long-term planning and communication. Any thoughts on how the budget supports those two? But long-term planning, we have work happening this summer at our different buildings. We have been, we develop a spreadsheet. We hire a flagric sign to help us sort of prioritize what that means as far as long-term planning for capital for all our buildings. And then as far as engagement, we've been, we had those two people, five meetings around the different schools to try to engage people in the sprint and on search. We had one big meeting at U32 to find out what our community values. So we have big goals. And we're hoping, we engage with the back with Deborah Wolf and my friends from the Central Education, like trying to create a partnership. So we have how we're gonna measure that. As I know you're in monitoring. I don't, we haven't set that yet, but we have been working hard at reaching out to our community. I mean, we're not on the, we're not in the budget. Or, you know, an elementary string teacher isn't been included in the budget. And I guess I would just, you know, to, since I'm here and I'll voice that, you know, 16 years ago the district hired and started a string program. And in that program has been mostly supported by one or two of the elementaries because of particular staffing. And that staffing has changed. And now there is one school providing instruction for a string program that is a successful string program and part of our music education program. And so it was our feeling that now is prime as we're merging to talk about this from an equity standpoint. And if we believe in this program for our school, the way it's going to survive is by having students be instructed before the seventh grade year. We wanna provide equal access to the strings program at U32 for all the kids in our district. Not just those who go to the school where they have a string program or for those kids who have money and time to go to private lessons. You know, there's an expectation that kids arrive at the instrumental programs in U32 with some experience playing their instruments. And the way most kids get that is through their school lesson programs. And at four out of the five schools you can't take lessons free of charge through the school on a stringed instrument the same way you put on a saxophone or a clarinet. So I mean, there's a real issue of inequity there. And you know, you mentioned that it's studying a string instrument and improve math and reading. But I mean, beyond that, there's research that improves empathy and group communication and self-esteem and so many things that would give a kid a head start. And by the way, I've got some copies of our proposal here so some people would like to look it over and not too many, but I'll run the answer later. I think that there is consensus on the board. Like, I don't think there's any dissent, but that is something that we wanna do. We just, this year, this budget cycle we haven't found the way to do it. I mean, I would like to see that extended, before fourth grade too, for obvious reasons, Michael. I'm really, really hopeful that we'll be able to get to that perhaps next year. This year with the increase in insurance, the special education mandates, I mean, those are not nice to have, right? That's a must have, that's my law. There's a lot going on. I think Lori did, and everyone else in the central office has done a great job bringing the total number down to a place that we hope is palatable for the community and the people who will support it. Please don't think that the fact that we haven't included that doesn't mean that there isn't support for it. Absolutely. Thank you, I appreciate that. And I would just, I do need to add that the numbers in the high school program are dropping, and next semester there are six kids in the ensemble, and that's been a trend. So I guess in closing, I appreciate the support and the idea that it's not off the table for a future or a long term. And I would invite conversations about creative ways to offer these. We've had generous donations from local instrument dealers to give us instruments for free. We have the staffing already built into our district, so please, we're happy to talk about creative ways to get this thing going even before it can show up, I guess, in an overall budget. And I think there's interest, not just from the board, but from our administrator, you know, from our principal leaders to have it. You look at, we had this wonderful district elementary school music day in B32, and on the stage there were, I would say, over 100 kids in the band. And there were 13 elementary string students, and I think 12 of them were from Worcester. So I mean, we just like to- From the middle school. From the school that has the instruction. The school that has the instruction, you had 12 groupers, so it was good. Thank you for that. I know I'm sorry, I'm walking in halfway through the movie, but what interests me about this is that most of the budget from what I gathered seems to have been developed sort of by the leadership. And this particular initiative is kind of coming up from the ground. I think we need to try to find a way in our budget to have room for something like that, even if it's on a very small scale. Like we kind of, I don't know, and even if it's out of the fund balance, I mean, how much are we talking about if I might ask for a three-day or week position? I was told that 54,000 with the bet is including benefits. 54,000 if it's- They would include that bet includes benefits. That includes benefits. Three days. For three days. Okay. 54,000, I mean, it's not a lot. I wonder if it might be possible. Lori will probably throw something at me for this. But to carve out some section of the fund balance that the board can have authority over as a kind of internal grant issuing or seed money for piloting, what seemed like worthy initiatives that are generated from the ground up just so that it keeps the, it seems to me it keeps the whole system aired in a way so that it doesn't feel quite so top down, I guess. Yeah, and I think to that I just want to say that I would, that like having a daughter that has completely benefited and was like maybe the one string player from East Mobile that moved to and had to go through the years trying to figure out which class another takes so she can stay in the orchestra. I totally support this. But I want it to be like real, right? I don't want it just to add it at the end because we need the buying and the scheduling power. So what does this do? I'm looking at you guys. What does this exactly do to your schedule? So I'm more interested in making it a reality. I said, well, maybe because of where we are in budgeting right now, maybe we should get together and look at this. What does this look for after school this year and how do we integrate it into the schedule for next year? I don't know. I'm looking at, I would need to like throw, the budget that we built today is not, to me not built top down, it is built student. Yeah, I don't know. So this is the reality of our students right now, our student population or where we're trying to invest. And I don't want to just put strings and then never have the time, you know what I mean, we never have the time for it to happen. It was the same with Spanish. We're going to run up some simple schedules of how this might play out that we would be happy to share. Yeah, so you guys. I could come in on the conversation that we've had the leadership team. We had a, as you know, our first budget was level service and then we came back and said, here are the additions we'd like. And we also looked at the strings program along with elementary foreign language and a variety of other projects and services that we either had to incorporate or felt were important. And our leadership team had much discussion about them and we actually prioritized them. We shared that prioritization with you. I think it was back in December, November, December. And our thinking was that there was also a question of not just scheduling but time in the student day. And our priority was to increase the supports for academic time at this point, but we were committed to looking at it in the future time. In particular, if we could really look at our student day at the elementary level and also plan for the curriculum and the supports that begin for a new program that was going to be offered district-wide. So does that capture what we discussed? Please, anyone want to jump in? That's the principle of this whole task program. There we are, Graham. Right. And having, you know, I credit a lot of my point as having actually been a violinist. So I totally bought in there was the, there, with strings in our foreign language, what we talked about is the difference of doing something and doing something well. And so figuring out how are we going to do this well? You know, one of my big hesitations about an after-school program is then any family who has a parent who's working, who doesn't have transportation, that student is excluded from it. But just thinking, I mean, I'm really interested to see your proposal and talk about how we implement it. And maybe if you thought of something that's actually easier than what we're thinking, but it's also this issue of looking at the five elementary schools and looking at our days and how we have our time and that we're all structured a little bit differently is we could certainly do a string program next year. And we probably do world language next year, but we wouldn't do them well. And so that's sort of the hesitation about it and saying, okay, we've got the timeline for the budget. The budget has to happen when the budget has to happen. Let's take a breath and say, okay, we're committed to these two things. But we're committed to doing them really well. Which I recognize is easy for me to say because I have you. So somebody who has dealt with school budgets for a number of years, I gotta tell you, especially at U32, the yearly bond payment was something we looked at. And we always said, boy, if we didn't have to spend this money paying back that bond, what could we do? And I think we all look forward to the time when the bond was paid off. And lo and behold, it's happened, which is great. I think people are gonna wonder, now that we have $461,000 that's not going to the bond, what has the school done with that money it was spending? What has it added? What new opportunity has it given to kids? And I would suggest that you take some amount of money from that $461,000 that has gone somewhere in the budget, maybe take $100,000 out and start an enterprise fund. It could be used to start new initiatives like the expansion of the strings program. And maybe word language the next year. But I think a lot of people are gonna be, if they start looking at this budget and they realize how much money is not being paid in the U32 bond anymore, they're gonna wonder where that money went. And it would be good if you could say something really positive about what you've been able to do now that some of that money has been freed up. I mean, I'll tell you, we've heard exactly the opposite. In another meeting where people have, I forget who it was that said, I hope you don't treat this, that the fact you don't have to pay this bond as a honeypot that you can now go in and take things off your wish list. I mean, we're not paying that bond back to the budget, it's still going up, 4. whatever. And the bottom line is going up 3.09%. There are tough decisions to make. And again, I'm not on the finance committee, but I support the focus on the classroom instruction and the special ed services, to try to close that gap, to try to provide the education to the vulnerable and those kids who are not being as well served as they should. I mean, I completely support the strings program. I would sign my kit up for it yesterday. So I hope that when the voters look at the budget, I hope that, I totally understand where you're coming from. But there's a bottom line component. And we have to put this thing up for a vote. Right, but you've absorbed almost half a million dollars into the budget as essentially revenue. I mean, that money is going to be buying something. And I... But it's not revenue. It's not revenue. It's not revenue. It's just money. You're right, it's an avoided expenditure. So it essentially acts, it's $461,000. You no longer have to pay. It's like when your car payments are done and all of a sudden you have, you're no longer paying $225 a month. But your health insurance went off. But there's the other six. The cost of living went off. That's absolutely true. But you wanna realize that when you get into that thinking, you're never going to be able to justify the funding of a strings program. And I would think if there's ever a time that you could justify it, it's when you have $461,000 that no longer has to be paid. So when we looked at the data of the gap that's there and it's not the list here, and you guys speak about what equity looks like. To me, equity looks like looking at all of our programs and that definitely includes the arts and music because that lower tier, that's the important part for them to be able to focus their energy and take pride in things that they may otherwise struggle with. But that gap is there. And when you talk about those kids that can go to a strings program, I can afford it. That's what we need to invest in right now with the academics because those kids that can get the academics need that extra support. And we need to support our teachers right now to support that. But in looking at what our programs are and what we want them to be, that wish list is so important but we need to make sure that the academics are supported as well. And I do think that making sure that the arts is high, high, high on the agenda is absolutely a focus of this board. Let me just say, I think Al was making a really good point that in terms of your sales pitch to the townspeople, this $460,000 is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to either reduce expenses or to reinvest in, what I hear, you chose to reinvest. And if you look at the staffing changes and academic program staffing changes, it's almost entirely a match to that 460. You chose to put that money into what I heard as supporting teachers and students. And in the programs that already exist, the academics, the things that we think are the most important. So I think you just want to draw that connection for folks. It's important. Yeah, we were hoping to have something, and I was about to talk about this, have a little token to give to the community, but it's just like we were not able to quite get there, but what we have you here, we are gonna work on that certain programs and the foreign language. It's not something that we're gonna not, it's something that we believe in and hopefully it can be more cross-curricular too, so that it can not be such competitive with the schedule, but we were, I feel terrible that we were not able to do it today, but feel confident that this really supports our team and our students the best for next year. I wonder if we should take a break and be prepared for our next meeting. And I don't think I introduced myself before. We jumped right in. I'm Deborah Taylor, the superintendent, and thank you for coming. You are welcome to stay. The first item in our agenda will be the budget. So we're gonna keep this conversation going. And we have carrot cake. And there's plenty of carrot cake. I made it yourself. I'm gonna go back. Yeah. We have our carrot cake.