Hello, how's everything going? So I just Just want to run so you're gonna get to see my hair grow in just a second. There's nothing in it So that's gonna be super exciting for you. Um, yeah, so we're starting just oh, it's 10. Let's do it Okay, so this is what I am on today Um So in the first video in this series, we just set up a learn a monoripo. I have my questions here And we set up one package in here, which is the avatar package now there are tests There's a test set up in here, but it's not It's not doing anything yet. It doesn't even like require any test packages or anything So this is all set up by learn a create So what I want to do today is I actually want to get Just one test going and I communicated earlier that I want to try and use Cypress for this because I'd like to use real browsers The reason for that is just because all this stuff is visual visual Elements, and I don't really want to take a chance. So I Want to be able to test in real browsers This seems like the tool that people like to do that with so I thought I'd give it a try I have played with it, but it was already set up. So I've never set it up personally So we're gonna do that. We are gonna do that So let's see what we got going on Okay, so nope don't watch that video Okay, so first we need to get started So how it works? Docs so first we install it and as we've done with All of our stuff so far that's gonna be in the root of the project where I'm at here right now so You know installs like press Cypress I am Cypress Okay, we're gonna install cypress. See who yet. It's already growing. It's growing out this way Get all of this internal or this VS code Terminal it's super handy Love it. I haven't really built a workflow around it yet, but it is nice in demonstrations like this Hold on just a second. Well, first thing I'm learning is that this takes a good while to get set up So that's exciting Yeah, okay, cool. So we got version 3.1.1 set up. Let's see root requires a peer of react 16.6.3, but none installed you must install peer dependencies yourself Okay, so we're in the root project. I was I'm pretty sure See package Jason in the root. Oh, so we have it Installed as a peer dependency, but we also need to install it as a dependence a dev dependency Huh, interesting. Okay Let's see if we can get away with it for now and Then if we have if we have a problem, we'll we'll come back to that. Okay, cool So we have all that everything's unzipped and installed now. How do we start using it? So In a nutshell next generation front-end testing tooling built for the modern web. We rest the key pain points Developers and QA engineers face when testing modern applications. So set up tests for a test run tests And debug tests. Okay, so set up tests Save Cypress. Oh, I didn't save it as a dev dependency. I always do that. Sorry. I'll fix it in a little bit so it's Showing us a video about exactly what we just did Okay, plus more and missed it because I was saying that we already did this I can Open Cypress by running node modules bin Cypress open. Okay. Oops. This is cool How do you get started we've added some folders an example test your project try running the tests in the examples folder or Add your own test file and Cypress slash integration Okay, okay, so it looks like maybe it added it here. Oh Okay, cool Cypress right there Okay, so it added a bunch of tests we'll see how this works with the setup that I have now Looks like they may be kind of like external to the project so That'll be that'll be interesting to kind of figure out. Maybe we'll just leave them there Maybe they stay there and we'll figure the rest out Or just kind of import them from the packages directly. Um, I don't know. We'll see. Okay, so What do we have here? So we have the name of our project which got inferred Log in. I'm assuming that's like the paid stuff See we have tests Runs you have no recorded runs. Okay, cool. So it'll record and some Runs of this for me. We have some configuration Though you can change Lovely and then different environments, I'm sure that there's a way to customize that via config file or something So let's see.  We're gonna see what what happens rescue oh Totally unrelated to anything we're doing here. All right, so it looks like it's going through a bunch of actions I'm just validating that they all happened Really cool. So we don't have any failing yet. So it seems like maybe Maybe we don't need to react stuff Yet, I don't know. We'll see Man, this is like super elaborate It's honestly when I When I install stuff like this, I feel a little bit overwhelmed when it sets up so much stuff for me Because it feels like it's already a thing and sometimes I have hard a hard time coming into a project It's already like super established and set up I'm assuming that all of these can just go away. I'm gonna let this finish running though It might take a second. I'm a saline. Yes Kind of freaked out here. Oh, maybe it's testing something By freaking out Always hard to know Okay, so I can see in my terminal it's running all these tests so I can see them That they're running in the background and passing which is great Let's look at how some of these are set up. So in fixtures. We have examples. This is just an object data We have a profile objects. These are just things that we can use To set up some of our tests reusable data integration Okay, examples, so it looks like these are the actual tests that are being run. Let me look at the other folders first Plugins we don't have any plugins right now But nice to know that they're available. We can go to plugins guide cypress.io plugins guide We don't have any in there right now, so I don't have to worry about that all specs My image. I'm not sure what that is. So that's an open question for me Support commands This example commands that js shows you how to create various custom commands import commands.js using ES 25. Okay, cool Okay, so it doesn't really look like there's anything in here for us the bulk of what we're looking at is this this bad boy right here I don't know if you can hear my kids screaming in the background, but It's exciting. Um Okay, let's see what we got. Okay, that whole thing ran. I don't know if Okay, can I show it to snapshots while tests are running? I Think that that's Good, okay, so I assume we can close this I'm assuming that we'll have one run in tests now. No It's like maybe it's still going Of that last one is is is super long apparently and I probably interrupted it Okay Clients I disconnected cannot continue running tests. Okay, that's fine Okay, cool. So let's see so actions I just want to see what the shape of these tests kind of look like so context is like the big Sorry, I still got that cough going on Context is that big block? In which we would run all of these tests so context so before each we're going to visit Looks like this is the big object where all of these functions get called through Visit and we're gonna visit this URL That's really nice. They have this handy document for Directing with elements It's really nice that they they link you directly to Where you would need to go to understand all that I'm feeling a little bit better about the fact that they have so many damn tests set up Already Okay Okay Might be a little in over my head, but that's not news to you So, um, let's see what we Can do Where is this set up? I'm wondering is this just something that we get? Okay, so it's navigating to this page which is not in our project That's helpful information. So I guess I could navigate it to Local hosts or something like that for my local setup Okay, cool. Now I'm now I'm tracking a little bit key differences installing Cypress writing your first test that is Exactly where I'm at right now. Let's fix that dev dependency thing Well, we are at it Okay, so Okay, so we installed Cypress and we saw this now where it's testing The that integration test stuff on Cypress. So we got that Still yarn add, okay direct download not worry about that. Okay, so I think we're fine Isn't npm been okay Adding npm scripts. Yeah, sure. Let's let's open. Let's do this. So I don't have to do I always I always forget how to do this so Let's add a nice script for it Oh My gosh cannot type today Okay, so if I kill this I should be able to say npm run Cypress open and I can call that command whatever it is that I would like to Cool, perfect. I wonder so it looks like I can run these Just a small set of these tests Perfect, this is really cool. Okay, I'm gonna let that go Okay, so see all I tools Advanced definitely not advanced. So I'm not going to think about that installing binaries Okay I'm done with installing writing your first test How to start testing a new project in Cypress what passing and feeling tests look like testing web Navigation Dom courying and writing assertions. Okay, cool. Perfect. Um, I Don't know if this audio is gonna come through for you Okay, I'm going to assume that all this is echoed down here, so I don't want to watch a video So create a sample JS file. Okay, so now that we know that we can run individual tests We can make a new file for this Create or watch Cypress update our list of specs. Okay Okay, so I got Cypress over here I'm going to take this and I'm gonna move it over here Now it said What did it say? Okay, so I'm gonna put this in Cypress integration Okay, so it has examples. I'm gonna put it right in the root of this Perfect, okay Once we've created that file we should see that Cypress see the Cypress test runner immediately display it in the list of integration tests Oh Fancy awesome Very cool. This is amazing Okay, so no tests were found This is the default blank page test your web application Start your app server see why visit Your app begin with tests So now this is a little bit of a bummer because I don't actually have a server set up for my tests for my For my code yet. So this might be where we end up spending a bulk of our time. It's all right So let's see see why visit man. They're really nailing it Oh my gosh nailing with the documentation Okay, cool. So visit a remote URL and yes, we can use localhost excellent Okay, no, I just want to try I just want to get my hands dirty with this a little bit So We're gonna just put this in here see what happens. Whoa cool ran it again URL is not defined. Okay, cool outside Uncaught cypress error cannot call see why visit outside a running test It usually happens when you accidentally write commands outside of an it cool. Let's open up one of these examples So this is an it okay excellent All right now I didn't capture that it just seemed to visit the URL so I'm not really sure Okay, cool. Let's let's go back to the docs Once we visited that file, we should see that cypress test were immediately displayed as a list of integration tests Cypress monitors our spec files for any changes automatically. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool Cypress opens the test in a browser. It's Cool. Okay. We have this experience. I should not jump ahead. Oh Hold on a second one second Okay So Sorry about that real life happening right now We're a simple test now. It's time to write our first test. We're going to write our first passing tests Great save Okay, cool. We did see it auto loading in real time. Let's uh Just copy and paste with the guy. I ain't too proud to do that. What I do here does not do much my first test Okay, so in terms of like what it looks like so we have a describe block and that gives it this That that is the drop-down. So we've got the drop-down as described In each one we have a test does not do much. No commands were issued for this test. Okay. Cool. No problem Cool, so we got that going once you save the file, you should see the browser reload although it doesn't do anything useful As our first passing test now, I don't see the passing part of that. So I'm not sure why Fluke accident displays a message about being the default page on the right-hand side. Okay Now let's write our first failing test. Okay. Um, that should be pretty easy. I don't need to copy and paste that I'm just going to change this to false and Okay, cool Awesome shows the assertions right there perfect. I think I probably get them in my console too. Uh, no Not so kind It's fine Cypress provides a nice test runner that gives you a visual structure Sweets, okay. Yep. We saw that What are you describe it and expect all of these functions come from bundled tools I'm curious what those are the cypress bakes in Describe and it come from mocha. Okay, cool expect comes from Chi great Cypress builds on these popular tools and frameworks that you hopefully already have some familiarity with knowledge up. Okay Second check out our cypress ES lint plugin Okay, so this would just help me with certain things Okay, a solid test generally covers three phases set up the application state take an action make an assertion about the resulting application state, okay Might also see the phases given given when then arrange act assert, okay Today, we'll take a narrow view of these steps and map them cleanly to cypress commands Visit a web page. Okay. That's what I was trying to do perfect Query for an element Interactor the element and assert about its content Okay, so let's copy this though. We already know generally This CY visit command is going to visit a URL in this case. They give they've given us the URL. Okay, cool So it visits great Save the file and switch back. Okay, cool. So you see that kitchen sink test is green Blue padding to show that it passed. Okay. Nice some really nice visual affordances. I'm seeing So only test you only test apps you control All this guide we are testing our example application You shouldn't test applications. You don't control. Why? Well, because why would you do that? This is brutal got a little coldness screw me up So now that we've got a page loading. We need to take some action on it. Okay? So there is a contains Command and so we can say that it should contain the word type. Okay, let's put that in there Okay, awesome. Before we add another command, let's get this back to your passing in place. Okay, um contains oh, so Saying that if you want to see it fail, you can change it to oops Which it does not. Okay, cool. Perfect. Perfect click an element so We can append a click on to that. I want to click like we found and No, this is going to be like just kind of like mimicking this might be a little bit more that I need right now But eventually I will need to kind of click Try some like Kind of hover behavior and some clicking behavior and just make sure that everything Everything works Okay, cool. So let's just let's just continue through this doc. Oh, it's gonna fail because I still have hype You type I'm gonna hide these examples because they're stressing me out Let's see So make an assertion. This is what all comes down to like if you haven't test This is this is not right. How do I reload this? Stop running run all tests again. There we go Okay, so Yes, whoa. Oh crazy So as I hover over these I can see I can see each like a snapshot of everything that's happening So clever hover over this it visits that Contains finds the thing highlights it There's a click action. I can see the page loading. We get a new URL. Yeah, that's awesome Let's make an assertion. Okay. So everything comes down to assertions like if we just do stuff and test But I want to assert anything or return failures like we're just doing nothing So it all kind of comes down to this we need to do this in the very end. So Let's make an assertion about something on the new page we clicked into perhaps We would like to make sure the new URLs is is the expected URL We can do that by looking up the URL and changing the assertion to it. We should Okay, cool. So we've got our contains and we click we click the object that we found with contains Should be new URL. So let's see. So Where's this URL command do oh Probably just fetches the URL Yeah, so see why URL grab the URL I should include This some URI Okay, so we've got the new URL. We grab the URL. I don't know if there's like a visual indication of that and then it will Show us the URL and yeah, cool. Perfect Uh, great. So that's the actual URL and then the line that we expected it to I'm curious what this pin thing does Printed output to your If I rerun this didn't do shit Tell me Tell me what I'm doing wrong Let's see Any more commands and assertions type So get an input type into it and verify that the value okay, so type Sorry, I immediately thought of like type as in like interface types, but no, this is saying Literally the verb type this Into a field Should have value. Okay, so it looks like in addition to these functions. There's also these string APIs So I'll need to look into those have value fake email address, okay Now one thing that okay, so so this all is very good I'm trying to think about what my next action step is in in terms of my application Some of the things that I need to know is it right now is I want to get some of the properties so I Want to Don't get back in my thing. Okay, so I have this component, right? And it applies this class And that class Has these stylings on it Now I would want to make sure I think if I'm thinking about this, right? I would want to basically load that up. I would want to use it I would want to render it on a page and with the CSS and I want to make sure that the output of that Was like circular looking and then obviously as I add more functionality to this You know be fine or I would test that individually, but like basically I would maybe give it a width and a height and Make sure that it is that width and height and test it Test that it's circular So I need to see if there are APIs for How I would get those like elements and actually check the styles on those Okay, so it looks to me like I need to set up testing your app Okay, so I need to set up a development server It's talking about why here I'm not gonna go into that because I know why See if it gives me any information on Okay It does not So what's gonna be the best way for me to set up a simple server for right now Okay, right now. I'm going to Just just brute force it. It's not gonna be clever. It's not gonna be sweet. It's just gonna be a thing I'm just gonna set it up so I can test I can test that it worked Let's see. So what I need is I'm gonna do this In the root of my project, I'm just going to make a new file called index dot each TML This is where all of you drop off because you're like this guy is dumb. Why am I watching my why am I watching this video? Let's see react.js.org It's got to be a Just static HTML version There we go. Okay, I'm gonna paste that here You can hear my kids playing but man, they're allowed right now I Have two very loud kids Okay, it's cool. So we got all this setup Now I'm gonna do something Oops, how do I get a new terminal in this thing? This is something you have to Google every time This is so embarrassing right now So humiliating. I hope that you're laughing.    Okay, cool. So hello world Man, this is it's only gonna get worse.  This is this is the best stream yet people best stream yet See calm. All right, um, and what was it? It was consent avatar Okay, so that is our JS Okay, and then we're going to Honestly, I don't even remember how to link a style sheet. I think it's like link, right? CSS Style sheet We're gonna get our style sheet from here There we go. Cool. Perfect Actually, don't even know if this component works. Oh my gosh Avatar source Let's see Kitten placeholder Yep, we'll just grab Grab that Halt equals maybe cute cat See that works Why not? Oh and get the CGS version probably I think it's like that Okay, let's now get back out. Let's go into lib See what we have MGS UMD. I did do that hmm Okay, inline babel oh inline babel transform That's weird that they so you don't use this in production. Okay, um, but it should still work It was working a second ago Missing slash. It's always a motherfucking missing slashes Avatar is not defined lowercase Let's look at this package It's already 1040, so I'm probably gonna call it quits soon if I cannot get this thing Working export as a default You know what I probably need to give it. I probably need to configure it to have a name Okay, well, I have a CSS file It's just getting worse and worse So what it takes sometimes It's like maybe is he getting linked. Ah Yes, but I need to add the class Okay, cool perfect. So let's see in my test now Sample test, uh, I'm gonna visit the URL Change this to kit and sync So unnecessary Um, let's see. So ht. Oh, it's on the same port Whoo, really seen me struggle today folks. Um Port 8001 8001 I think I give the argument wrong I think I just give it as a Let's run this again Okay, so we get that man. It's a tough tough day today So test runs guides command module api debugging parallel stubs screenshots and videos that I want To let's see if they're Let's see if in here in our examples they have any so we have actions aliasing files cypress local storage um miscellaneous clicking things but navigation spies utilities viewport spec window Okay, I'm not totally sure Where to go from here Let's see if there's any plugins Browser fi cucumber watch See expect element to have style. So let's open up both of these I'm gonna get the element height and width is it possible to have CSS Okay, okay, so I need to remember that these are chai What chai assertions, right? So Only use assertions as we should That's documented here Gotcha, so this is where those um assertions come into place So I'm gonna say should have css. It's a little confusing, but okay. Gotcha Um You have a direct element reference. That's when you use expect Okay Yeah, huh So I can take the element Oh weird, okay Okay, best practices. Um selecting elements. Perfect. This is exactly what I need. I use data attributes to provide context. Um, okay perfect That's exactly what I wanted to do. Anyway, so I'm glad that they told me to do that. Uh, so Let me say Just data cy Data cy equals first Trouble name don't care. Um, okay, so we got our first avatar test Um, and how do we get it? So we just say get Okay, so in our sample spec, we're going to try to get that element And we don't have any assertions so nothing's gonna happen Uh, I just want to get it timed out trying to expect to find elements No no Was it first avatar test Perfect. Okay. So it got it. Uh, now I just need to um, kind of expect some of those properties on it Um I think that's where I go back I'm gonna go back to here Say have css What was it? Again, I don't know if these have to be in that css style or if I can just do them like that Or the JavaScript style or if I can just do them like that we will find out Oh my gosh. Whoa crazy. Okay.  Uh, so this really isn't a huge success yet because I've just Loaded up the style sheet in a static html file and whatever. Um, but we are Moving in the right direction. Um, this is what I will be Using um to get um to to do that kind of test Um So yeah, so I'm assuming at this point that I'll probably create some type of global documentation for all of these So each component isn't going to have documentation itself. Um, maybe I don't know. Maybe I'll write the read me in the file and aggregate them all together. I'm not really sure yet but That I would have some global documentation and then I would test the global documentation with these assertions In which case it's totally fine that cypress is living it through in my project I don't need to actually go in and and test each individual thing Um, man, uh, this was rough Uh, if if you stuck around, I thank you for sticking around Um, I hope that it was at all valuable to see me struggle through all of this Um, but I learned a lot about cypress. So that is good for me Yeah, so anyway, uh, if you have any questions, uh, hit me up in uh, comments or, uh, ask me on twitter at chaintastic Uh, happy to chat with you about, um What we learned today. Anyway, thanks peace and love


We will now begin the ceremony for the signing of the agreement concerning the relationship between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration. I now invite the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Director General of the International Organization for Migration to the table. This is an important moment as we ensure the United Nations system is fully integrated to advance a comprehensive and coordinated response for the implementation of the New York Declaration and address the dire situation of the migrant and refugee communities. I now give the floor to Mr. William Lacey Swing, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration. Mr. Secretary General, Ambassador Thompson, President of the 71st Session of the General Assembly, Mr. Likatov, President of the 70th Session of the General Assembly, your Excellencies, Heads of States and Government, Excellencies, Ministers, Members of the Diplomatic Correlation, gentlemen. The signature of this historic agreement brings the leading global migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, IOM, into the United Nations and culminates a 65-year relationship with the UN. So for the very first time in 71 years, the United Nations now has a UN migration agency. This is a singular honor for our organization, and I believe a genuine success for migrants in particular, but also for member states and indeed for this summit. On behalf of IOM's 10,000 colleagues in some 500 duty stations on all five continents, I wish to thank the Secretary General, the Deputy Secretary General, the Presidents of the 71st and 70th General Assemblies, as well as IOM's 165 member states and the 193 member states of the United Nations who are assembled here today. Thank you for this bold and visionary decision. There are three developments that have brought us to this landmark moment today, and these are my three points. First of all, global migration trends, secondly, fortuitous timing, and thirdly, trust built on a half-century of cooperation. First point is that migration has become a mega-trend of our century. We live in a world on the move. There have never been so many people in movement, unprecedented human mobility. One billion of our seven billion world are migrants, one in every seven of us, a migrant, and we're the 244 million international migrants to constitute themselves as a country. They would have a population slightly smaller than Indonesia's and slightly larger than Brazil's. They would have a gross domestic product roughly that of a small to medium-sized European country and far exceed all foreign aid. Now, driving migration are, of course, demography, disasters, the digital revolution, distant shrinking technology, north-south disparities, and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, as a result of these driving forces, a record number of people are uprooted, forced to move. Refugees, internally displaced persons, victims of trafficking, unaccompanied minors, and climate change threatens yet a further 75 million living just one meter above sea level. So we're facing also a series that I have not seen in my lifetime of unprecedented simultaneous complex and protracted crises and humanitarian emergencies in an arc of instability that stretches from the western bulge of Africa to the Himalayas. Worse still, there is little prospect that I see to resolve any of these crises in the short to medium term. Widespread, growing anti-migrant sentiment and policies have led to the cruel irony that those fleeing terrorism and fleeing armed conflict are themselves now accused of terrorism and criminality in the public mind of many. Besides the challenges of disasters, we face the demographic challenge of a global north and demographic deficit and a global south with a turgid rate of job creation facing demographic surplus. So our thesis is that migration is inevitable in this century owing to the drivers that I mentioned, necessary if our economies and societies are to flourish, and highly desirable if we have responsible and humane migration policies. To do this, we have to change the toxic public narrative now in migration and learn to manage inexorably growing ethnic, cultural, social and religious diversity. Second point, we live with an evolving migratory landscape. The timing for such an agreement today proved to be fortuitous. Global concerns, especially in Europe, led to a series of major agreements in 2015, a watershed year, agreements that gave the UN for the first time an explicit official migration mandate, and as a non-UN member, this made a more formal IOM association with the UN in the interest of both institutions. These agreements, of course, are the Sendai DRR framework, the SDGs of September, and the Paris Climate Change Declaration of December. And also had a prominent place on the agenda of the World Humanitarian Summit. We're gathered here today at an historic summit, the first ever to assemble heads of state from around the world to address the questions of refugees and migrants. I'm very grateful to the co-facilitators and others who took part in this important New York Declaration. Timing therefore became a critical element in the decision of our IOM member states to seek formal association with the UN. Let me just say, thirdly and final point, we are actually formalizing an old relationship. Many people long thought that IOM was already in the UN. We've done everything together. We cooperate with all agencies. And we've built up a level of trust that made the negotiations fairly straightforward. We were born after all together with our traditional partner UNHCR in 1951 to bring Europeans ravaged by the Second World War to safe shores and new lives. Since then, we've collaborated so closely that we have continued to think of ourselves as UN in many ways. Together with UNHCR, we have brought at least 6 million people, refugees, to safe shores. Through our negotiations, therefore, trust became a precious commodity. We will continue to keep our member states fully and regularly informed. We will continue to insist on being cost-effective with our business model, where 97 percent of our 10,000 people are overseas, and we're out of a budget of 1.5 billion. We will use less than 50 million to run the organization. We will also continue to offer quick delivery, the same sort of openness that allowed us to come to consensus on this agreement. Let me just conclude by saying that these three elements made the agreement possible. Global trends, decade-long trust, and fortuitous timing. The positive nature of the agreement underscores that migration is not so much an issue to be resolved or a problem to be solved, it is a human reality that together we all have to manage and to do that we have to be both responsible and humane. This can be a defining moment for human mobility, beginning with this summit. Thank you.


If you want to make more money as an insurance agent and you want to understand the numbers behind making 400k, then keep watching this video. We just had a recent YouTube comment. Someone said, how would I make $400,000 as a life insurance agent? So I'm going to walk you through this. I've done videos on 100k. I've done videos on a million bucks. I don't think I've ever addressed $400,000, which is a good amount of money. 100k is $8,000 per week. That's 50 weeks. I'm giving you two weeks vacation. So how would you do that? Well, the first thing you need to think about is, yes, it's $8,000 per week. But what is your average commission per cell? I want you to think through what is your average commission per cell? There's a lot of different life insurance products. I'm going to use a thousand bucks for simplicity. And for a lot of people that may be high, some people that may be low. I'm going to use, for general math sake, to keep it really simple, I'm going to use a thousand bucks per cell. And I'm going to keep it very, very simple. So if you take $400,000 divided by $1,000, you need 400 policies. Now this doesn't account for people not paying their first payment, or charge back, or canceling later. But again, we're going to keep it very simple, and then you can do the math and add some of these extra things in later. So $400,000 divided by $1,000, a commission per policy, that's $400 policies, all right? $400 policies divided by 50 weeks is $8 apps per week. Now again, I'm going to be very conservative and say that you need 16 sits per week to get 8 cells, all right? That's extremely conservative, because that's a 50% close rate, and that doesn't even account for the fact that some, maybe a double cell or a couple cell or, you know, you get maybe three or four apps out of a home. We're just going to assume that you close half and then you only get one. Ultra conservative, most salespeople are doing a little better than this, okay? But in this example, 16 sits 8 cells, okay? How many people do you need to sit with, how many people do you need to set appointments with to get that many sits? Well, to be conservative, typically about two thirds, but I'm going to use 60%, okay? If 60% actually keep the appointment, then you need about 27 appointments, 26 and two thirds per week. So then you've got to figure out, well, how can I set 27 appointments per week? And I want you to wrap your mind around that, sort of think about that and how you believe that you could set 27 appointments per week, because if the math, if the math is in this example, I need to set 27 and to sit with 16 to sell 8 to do this, then how do you get to this number, okay? So let's just say that out of every 27 appointments that you set, okay? Let's just say that half the people you talk to book an appointment, okay? And I think that's very conservative as well, okay? So in that case, you need to speak to 54 people, okay? And let's just say that you get a hold of about 60% of those individuals, okay? And I'm using crazy conservative numbers. These are not real, but you need 90 dials per week of a combination of new and aged leads, okay? If you can get all 90 from new leads, more power to you, okay? But in this example, with ultra conservative numbers to equal 400k, you would need 90 dials or maybe this is leads because maybe you have to dial more than once, okay? Because 60% is not going to be the immediate answer rate, but maybe after three dials, maybe you do get a 60% answer rate, okay? You talk to that many people. Sometimes you can talk to more, okay? So I feel like I'm being ultra conservative. Speak to 54, set 27 appointments, sit with 16 and sell 8, okay? 8 times 1,000 is 8,000 bucks, 8,000 equals 400k per week, all right? Now, the things that this doesn't account for that you need to think through really quick, okay? The things you need to think through is, yes, we know the numbers of what you need to do, okay? Maybe you need about 90 leads to call on. Now again, they don't all have to be brand new every single week. You could say, well, I need about 50 leads a week, 60 leads a week, whatever. I can continue to repeat those calls, because let's just say you had 50 leads one week, 50 leads the next week, 50 leads, 50 leads, just say five weeks in a row.  That means 50, you can't set anymore, but even if they said no before, so you still have 200 leads that you can call, okay? Continuously over the course of the next several weeks. So that's where the main things to think about, okay? The main things to think about is, yes, yes, you need to do the math so that you can actually know your numbers, but the things that hurt people is they typically don't buy enough leads, because if you don't have enough leads, you're not going to talk to enough people. If you don't talk to enough people, you're not going to set enough appointments. You don't set enough appointments, you're not going to set enough people, you're not going to set enough people, you're not going to make enough sales, you're not going to make enough sales, you're not going to make enough money, right? Most people don't buy enough leads. The third step after buying enough leads is that most people aren't consistent with several things. I'm talking about consistency. I'm talking about consistency in actual marketing, right? I need leads every single week and I need to be consistent about it or it's never going to work. Okay, so marketing. I need to be consistent with the amount of money I spend. I need to be consistent with it. I can't buy what leads one week. Buy leads three weeks later and expect to have consistent results. It's impossible. It doesn't work. That's the recipe for disaster and why 92% of interest agents fail. Okay, the next thing is you gotta be consistent about your schedule. You gotta be consistent about the time that you put in. You gotta be consistent about the dials. You gotta be consistent about your script. You gotta be consistent. If you have an appointment center, you gotta be consistent with your appointment center. You need to think through. This is the main things that can hurt people. Everyone can do this. Everyone can do this at least once. Most agents never do this. They are not consistent enough over the course of a long period of time and when you're trying to hit 400k like this, the key is long obedience in the same direction which is consistency because 400k even though it sounds like a ton of money over the course of a whole year. It's only $100,000 per quarter. Let's just do the math and say it's only $35,000 per month or it's about $8,000 per week and work day wise or just over that. It's about $1,200 per day. When you start doing the math and you break it down like this, it doesn't seem as big and as complex. Anyone can make 400k. If they do the math, they have enough marketing and they're consistent about it week in and week out. I was a new agent not too long ago. I started as an intern calling on the phone book before I knew you're not really supposed to be doing that. I feel like I get and understand new struggling insurance agents. Most people in our business are not the dude making seven figures rolling in it and traveling the world. Most of the people in our industry are struggling. Some even have part-time jobs. I want to be the guy that they can go to to really learn some knowledge and really help them. I was very fortunate. I earned $117,361.13 in my first eight months. And I thought if I can do that, working for one company, selling one product, I can probably help some other people too. If you love this, I got a video you have to watch. It's how to sell life insurance. It's amazing and it's right there. See you there. They say life insurance is the hardest product to sell in the insurance industry. If you think so, I can make it real easy if you keep watching this video. So I'm going to teach you how to sell life insurance. My name is Cody Askins.


just because I can't see anybody when it's up yeah I can see it Lane do we do we have to call the meeting to order or is it just I just take it I think it's just you know what time we start what time we end which I can I can record so it is all right so it is just a few folks here tonight and so this presentation we're going to do for the purpose of the fact that it will be up on Orca media for others to watch prior to the vote on March 1st and the purpose of tonight's meeting is really to provide information to the voters of our three communities about the proposed budget we've created to fund the 2022-23 school year ahead of that March 1st vote that's coming up really quick we are running this meeting in a hybrid format tonight and so if people do log in a little bit later please recognize that it creates a little bit of challenges sometimes in our ability to interact but I'll do my best to answer any questions that come up as they arise in terms of our overall budget goals when we were developing this budget to serve next year prior to COVID the primary goal when it came to budget budgets was reaching what is called a level service budget one that increases just enough each year to main our current programs and initiatives and we were actually quite successful until COVID hit as folks can probably imagine so this budget is designed to allow us to adapt to the new needs that were created by COVID in the form of unfinished learning and a whole new host of trauma related issues we are encountering in students that impute learning it is also designed to allow us to go after all of the board's ends for those of you in the community ends are basically the goals the district has for our students and our focus has been on student performance and math English science and adaptability this budget will allow us to also begin working on social studies life skills in the arts lastly and through the creation of this budget we want to make sure that we are balancing our increases and spending against any new revenues that we receive so that the voters tax rates remain stable predictable and change slowly over time in this slide we are only looking at the expense side of the budget because this is what voters vote upon we have significant revenues to offset most of the new expenses which will be evident when we review how this budget will impact next year's tax rates for our three towns we are looking at an increase in spending of one million dollars for next year about half of which is due to new staff to support the ends work an increasing population in the elementary schools the expansion of the preschool program and the need to address the impact of COVID which will be ongoing for some time the other half of the increase is mandatory to meet our legal and contractual obligations under the master agreements with the staff and balance the impact of Act 173 on the district for those of you that are in the know Act 173 is a change in how special education is funded the funding that we get from the state to support our special education services as stated earlier half of the increase on the expense side of the budget is due to increases in staff and support of achieving the board's goals for our students these are the personnel positions that we are looking for these increases are all in terms of personnel and the first thing that we are looking for is an assistant superintendent because if we want to be serious about improving academics and programming for our students then this position is essential the main duties for this individual would center on curriculum development implementation student performance data analysis student support systems creating and implementing a K to 12 staff professional development plan grant management and tying all of those pieces together so that they support one another as a cohesive district wide learning plan this person would also serve as the district's equity coordinator and lastly in fulfillment of the succession planning required under executive limitation one of the board's policies this person would also be in a position to immediately take over all of my functions in case I am incapacitated in terms of the two preschool positions it'll probably help if I provide the community with some background the district we recognize the important role that early education plays in the future academic success of its students and recently created a full-time free preschool program for all four-year-olds try saying that three times fast in the district while maintaining its part-time program for three-year-olds this is a large program with significant regulatory requirements that needs a part-time coordinator to oversee things to ensure that we remain in compliance in addition the coordinator is charged with expanding our part-time three-year-old program over the next few years the teacher already exists but right now they're being funded by a grant and we'd like to move them into the regular budget that preschool teacher because this is permanent changes to our program we are looking for a technical support specialist this is a person to help our it problem to support the information and technology in and to support the creation of a new website and the ability to maintain it in-house right now our website was built on an old proprietary system and we cannot control it ourselves we have an outside agent that does that and it would be nice to bring that website in-house so that we can keep it up the speed up the date at a moment's notice as needed we are also looking to increase time for the two librarians the librarian at our two small librarians that are two small-school brain tree in Brookfield and this is to provide the additional time that those librarians need to better support the digital literacy curriculum that we're developing in the teachers academic programming those librarians will often connect with the teachers about what they're teaching and the projects that they have with the students and help them enhance their lesson plans and this is also to provide additional preparation and team time to the elementary teachers there is a lot of work going on in math and science and ELA and those teachers need time together to be able to do that work increasing the time for the librarians allows this because when the students are with the librarians the teachers have time to meet we are also looking for a classroom teacher for Randolph elementary school and this is to increase this is to accommodate increased enrollment the school itself is at a six-year high in terms of enrollment and in fact the district is also at a six-year high at the elementary level in terms of new enrollments and most of those enrollments are happening in grades K to 4 so they will be with us for some while the COVID pandemic really kind of shed a light on the fact that we do need some additional time for a school nurse right now our school nurses shared between the tech center and RUHS it would be nice to have some dedicated time just for the technical center and lastly in terms of this discretionary spending we are looking for a new math teacher to be able to hire new math teacher at RUHS at the high school and this is to decrease class sizes and to provide additional support to struggling learners because we want to be able to ensure that all students are able to gain foundational knowledge in mathematics that's going to support them in the next stage of their lives so the first part of our discussion is about local taxes and what this budget is going to do the second part of the discussion will focus in a little bit more on the surplus funds that we generated last year and our request to the voters in terms of allocating those funds to future purposes local taxes it's important to remember are controlled by two factors one that's within the district's control and one that is not the orange southwest school district's budget is within our control because we exert that control by balancing what we spend relative to the revenues that we generate if your tax rates were only based on the school side of the equation your rates next year with this budget would go down by about seven cents per hundred dollars of assessed value or about two hundred dollars for the year for an average price home in this area average price being two hundred eighty one thousand dollars on the school side of things yes we are proposing a one million dollar increase in spending but that increases more than balanced by growth in our generation of revenue what is out of our control is what's called the common level of appraisal and it's a factor that the state uses as part of its tax formula in simple terms if the values of homes in your town have gone up over the past year then the CLA will change so that you pay more in taxes right the value of your home goes up so you pay a little bit more in taxes because of that added value CLA has to do with the change in the value of real estate in the town it has nothing to do with the schools and what we are spending using Brookfield as an example based on real estate sales in Brookfield last year the state has determined that Brookfield residents are only paying ninety six point six nine percent of the taxes they should because real estate values went up last year while the town's assessment has not changed in that same time expected impact by town if you take a look and this is based upon the average home values in this slide does take both factors into account school impact and CLA to provide what your next year's tax rates would be if this budget is approved we spent some time examining the twenty twenty two twenty three proposed district budget this potential impact on your taxes and that's the first thing that will require a vote on the school ballot and this is the impact right so what you're looking at is brain tree the value of your homes actually decreased a little bit I think you were just assessed about a year ago so relative to that assessment relative to the cost of what houses were going for last year the value of your homes went down a little bit so your taxes are going to go down as well so what you should see on an average price home of two hundred eighty one thousand dollars is you should see your total taxes on the school taxes go down by two hundred and sixteen dollars for Brookfield you should see your taxes go down by nine dollars and Randolph for the entire year you actually had the largest increase in the value of your homes three pounds your taxes will go up by eighty two dollars for the year now like I said this is about the taxes but to make sure that folks are well informed when they go out to vote we also need to talk about the other items on the ballot and these have to do with the use of surplus funds so it's important to understand what surplus funds are what what reserve funds are surplus is what's left over at the end of a fiscal year reserve funds are surplus monies that have been set aside into an account for a specific use in the future you as the voters in March can approve the movement of surplus money into reserve accounts in terms of our surplus during the last school year all the districts around the state use the first round of federal grant money that came in to help us cover the additional costs we experienced due to COVID and we use that grant money to offset those costs but there was enough leftover that we were able to also offset a lot of our normal expenses because of this we have just over two million dollars to allocate in surplus funds and in terms of my recommendations one million dollars of that two million will go to reducing the burden on taxpayers it will be split into three equal amounts to be used over the next three budget years to reduce taxes I'm asking the voters to allocate the remainder last one million into our various reserve accounts as there are some needs on the horizon that we should plan for which will be explained in a slider last year we created a plan to use the previous year surplus funds to reduce the tax burden on our taxpayers for the next three years this chart shows how that was broken down we use 826,000 of it to support this current year's budget and set aside the remainder to support the following two years in equal installments of $413,000 each I am recommending that the second one million of our two million dollar surplus be split into three equal amounts and use to support the next three district budgets so you see that there right 2022 the first third of that million would be used to help offset people's taxes the second year it would be used to offset people's taxes and the third I apologize I'm letting a new person into the meeting so I am recommending just that that a million of the current surplus be split into three equal amounts and use to support the next three district budgets it makes sense to lessen the tax burden as much as possible in these uncertain times since we don't know when the impact of COVID will decrease or when federal monies will dry up it makes sense to carry this support as far into the future as possible as opposed to doing it all in a single year lastly spreading it out like this means we should not have a cliff here a sudden end to this subsidized support that we've created which could have a large impact on the budget all at once hopefully the education fund will increase as the economy improves to balance the need for these subsidizations in the future in terms of how I would like to allocate the remainder of the surplus funds this is what this chart explains in this slide you can see the reserve funds that exist and how much they currently contain the last column represents my request to the voters on how to distribute the remaining surplus monies across these accounts and this would be done by voting yes on ballot articles 10 through 16 if we start off with the first line there vehicle and bus that's the transportation fund the transportation fund is currently pretty large we've got a lot of money in there and we typically use less than a hundred thousand per year of it we use it primarily to replace our buses to make sure that none of our buses are more than seven years old and we also use it to replace our fleet vehicles when they've kind of aged out of their useful life so at this point in time I'm not recommending adding any more to that second line down building and maintenance which is called our facilities reserve fund we actually have a huge unknown coming our way in terms of the required PCB testing that was mandated by the legislature last year any facility that was built or renovated prior to 1979 is likely affected and we have two buildings that fall into that category this amount is to ensure we have what we need for remediation if necessary in terms of the legal fund is folks that haven't been watching the news lately there is an exodus going on from the teaching profession after three years of COVID and the potential exposure faced every day by staff working in closed quarters within schools this means that the quality of the candidate pool will likely decrease which will result in more human resources issues that must be managed often with the help of legal counsel in terms of the special education reserve fund the change in the special education law which affects funding goes into effect next year based on their current formula that the state gave us this district will lose $200,000 it would normally receive the current legislature may change the formula further meaning that we may suffer an even more negative financial impact after our budget is finalized in the March first vote goes through we need to have some reserve funds on hand to cover this unknown additionally once enacted the district receives a set amount to provide these services each year if a student should move into our town with severe needs after the start of the year we may not have what we need to cover the costs of their services so having funding in this reserve account to cover this unknown is a wise choice in terms of the operations fund this account houses the money is needed to reduce the tax burden for the next three years three hundred and thirty three thousand has already been rolled into reducing next year's budget leaving six hundred and sixty six thousand that needs to be allocated to substance subsidize the twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four as part of the operations fund allocation I'm also requesting that the voters approve an additional two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to support three important issues that's where that nine sixteen comes from it's the six sixty six the subsidized taxes and another two hundred and fifteen excuse me two hundred and fifty to support these initiatives the first initiative is that a few years back probably about five years ago now the state had moved to have all districts use the same financial software to make the data exchange between their main computer systems a little bit easier the software that they chose has been a bit of a failure the districts that are using it it is not been all that useful and so the state is at the point where it's got to make some decisions about whether it's going to continue moving forward with that software or if it's going to turn around which I believe is the more likely case and say hey districts do what you want as long as it communicates well your software communicates well with the state systems the problem with this is is that when the state was going to mandate we all use the same software they were going to provide us with that software for free if they change their mind this legislative session we may have to provide the software on our own that's a part of what that 250,000 would go towards the second initiative that that 250,000 would go towards is for the creation of a new district website that is on an in-house platform that we can manage ourselves like I said we have a website it's a darn good website I'm very appreciative of the people that have managed it over these years but it is managed by an outside agency and it'll be a lot easier if we can just do it ourselves hopefully it'll be a system that's easy enough that the teachers want to maintain websites related to their classes that have links to it they can do just that and then the last piece of that 250,000 the last initiative is for the creation of an archival database to digitize our extensive collection of records both employment records and student student records that have piled up over the years and we have to keep a lot of those into perpetuity so we literally have rooms that are filled with file cabinets that could be used for other things that are taken up to house all this paper and we'd like to get a system in place where we can digitize it and then people can actually find it quite easily by searching using that software so in summary these are our requests to the voters for the allocation of surplus funds and those allocations can only happen if folks vote yes on articles 10 through 16 I do want to personally thank our communities for their support over the past several years and the positive impact that that support is had on our students if you have budget questions I think we had one person log in who's not not a board member the board members are certainly welcome to ask questions as well but if you have a budget question that it's not answered tonight or something comes up a little bit later all you have to do is shoot me an email and please don't hesitate to do that I am happy to respond to the questions that you have. So let me shut down here for a second. Let me check to see if anybody has any questions. Any moment to switch out of presentation? I do have a question if you can hear me. I can hear you Kevin. Yeah I'm sorry I'm on the road and I apologize I had a meeting up in Montpelier it took me a long time to get on Google so hopefully you can hear the question and I am moving so if it cuts off my apologies. First of all I want to thank you Lane for your work as superintendent and thank the board members for their work it's a tough job especially during COVID in all the work you're doing. The second point I want to say clearly is my question comes as a taxpayer and citizen of Randolph and not as my working position within the education agency so in that given that I want to ask this with this context my understanding is the overall budget is increased by about nine hundred thousand dollars for the SQ and that you've got everything you can to maintain or decrease costs and expense in the face of a lot of additional expenses with COVID etc. My question though that I did not see I saw title one funds and other federal funds there at something like eight hundred sixty thousand dollars but what I didn't see in the budget all with the vast amount of federal funds coming into emergency acts that are going into the SQ. So my question is I understand that those federal emergency funds which are in the millions cannot be used to offset taxes however in some communities some tax increases are going to come forth based on this proposed budget. Given that the state of Maine for example has proposed during COVID and during a loss of economic times like this challenging time is to prevent tax increases in all of its state because of the federal influx of funds I'm wondering why maybe I'm missing something here some of those federal funds can't be directed towards things that are allowable and are lying items in the budget such as instruction, behavioral resources etc etc that would allow you to present a budget that's cost neutral in this difficult economic time. Thank you for taking my question. Yeah no our budget actually on the on the school side of things not only is cost neutral but we actually cut the cost by seven cents per hundred dollars of assessed value. What has to go into the mixes you probably well know is the CLA has an impact as well and that's kind of out of our control. In terms of the actual federal funding that has come in a lot of our surplus that we are pumping or hoping that the voters are going to vote so that we can pump a million of it back into subsidizing taxes came from the SR1 funds. A lot of that money was used to cover the initial costs of responding to COVID the additional supplies a lot of the HVAC work to make sure the ventilation was good but we were also given directions by the state to try to use it for as much of our costs as we could that were above and beyond that and we did that and so that's one of the reasons why we have such a large surplus at the end of this year and again I'm recommending that a million of that go back in to offset people's taxes for the next three years. The other million like a we talked about for a little while was to have the second million go into reserve funds because we do have a lot of upcoming expenses that we want to be prepared for and make sure that we can handle and a lot of them are kind of semi unknowns like we don't know what's going to happen when the PCB testing occurs we've got two buildings that are in the age range that it's quite possible that you know we might get some hits there and we want to be prepared with reserve funds from that surplus to be able to cover the remediation of that. SR2 funds we have used primarily for instruction this year a lot of it was mental health services we're doing a lot of after-school tutoring for students that we've identified need the extra help because of unfinished learning there have been additional supports in terms of interventionist also during the day to help students get caught up so that was SR2. SR3 which we are in the process of completing the communications process for that is going to be used at this point in time to continue with a lot of those new hires that we did to support you know the educational programming to support students last year so we've got a pretty good plan out there I actually for the other question that you had if I'm trying to remember them all in terms of the federal funding that came in through SR1 to an SR3 ARP I talked with our business manager about it because we do have the title one funds that show up within the regular budget she did some checking and said that it's not required to have the ARP SR funds or any of the SR funds kind of reported in that that budget as a whole I think it gets a little confusing to the taxpayers to have it there because you know it's one thing if we're showing that you know we're actually it's we got a 21 million dollar budget but only you know 16 17 million of it are we actually asking for from the taxpayers because the remainder of that 21 million is the grant funds that come in and so sometimes if they see that that 21 million of this larger amount they get a little confused about where that's coming from so I think I touched on most in a very brief format but I'm happy to talk in more detail if you'd like I would like to a little bit but I don't need to take up your reading time with that if you can still hear me oh yeah it's just like it's just us okay yeah the as a taxpayer you know I am seeing a significant tax increase again I guess that's due to the state CLA operation going into the state system but what I always are what I was trying to articulate is there's a state like Maine that I had lived in before I moved here which is working through that process to make sure a town so not to absorb local taxpayers don't have to absorb tax increases during a time of COVID yet yet I'm just picking on me irrationally but individually there are plenty of taxpayers the district are going to pay more money right now in a very tough economic time because of the ways that the state funding operation works so I guess my sense is listening to you it sounds like you've worked very hard at this with your board but that the issue more lies in with the way the tax the state redistributes the funding and not so much what the town is doing locally to maintain operations respond to COVID and to keep the budget as affordable as possible yeah that's not correct yeah so there's a you've got the school tax and you've got the town tax they're separate I'm only talking on the school tax side of things and like I said the parts that are within our control there were actually we everything was cut across the three towns next year because our revenues were so great even though that we did increase our expense side of things to try to cope with COVID and some of the new issues that we're seeing because of it and some of the initiatives that we had that were long-standing anyway in terms of improving academic outcomes for students our revenues have increased significantly so in terms of just the school side of things like I said it's about a seven percent decrease for hundred dollars of assessed value of a home now if you're in Randolph I live in Randolph as well you're looking like I said on the average price home of 281,000 you're looking at an 82 dollar for the entire year increase why is that happening because the values of our homes over the last year have gone up significantly probably by at least 10 percent and so you know because the values of our homes are worth more we end up paying more in taxes to cover that that change in the real estate market and that's the cl a piece it's very it's complicated i'm talking about it in incredibly simplistic terms but that's where the primary increases what was your what was your you know i appreciate this very much and i'm sorry i only went on but what was your turnout on the meeting last week your informational meeting by just out of curiosity not not much i think i had about five people three of them were in faculty folks part of the reason i think for that is because we actually we do a pretty good job of communicating pretty much everything that i've said tonight came out both in the annual report but it's also i sent out a series of communications on on the budget so everything we talked about tonight went out in a series of two communications the first one talked specifically about tax rates and the overall budget and then the second communication that came out a couple of days later talked about the surplus and how it would be nice to allocate them into reserve funds for future use so i think what i've seen happen over the course of my time here is that the more that we do the communications online and send out the community messages the fewer and fewer people i end up seeing at the at the at the meetings in the open forums well that makes sense and i appreciate that i don't think i was on that list so i wrote to you and asked get on that list of whether it's a community email list i submitted it to the uh the orange uh southwest district email site and i also wrote you an email asking to get on those perfect lists so i can get those emails i've been i've been tentative in the back in the past and i've had kids in the system who've asked me not to ever get involved in anything to do with randall so i've stayed out of it but um i am interested in what goes on in the town and now that they're grown up and in college in california one went off to london for a while and he's back and Cleveland with a job that makes more money than i make now i'm able to uh participate a little bit more so that i appreciate your taking the time and i do appreciate your work and again the work of an and others on the board of what they're doing in the town i just was curious because maybe i misread some articles in the herald but it seemed to indicate that people ran off with paying an increase in taxes and it was all and only due to the school budget that nothing could do with the town so i may have misread that um but i understand what you're saying about the 82 dollars that that definitely confirms what i saw online this afternoon when i looked at it it was hard to find the budget online i i found it through the brain tree school uh uh site i found that information so i appreciate what you're saying makes sense and i appreciate the work you're doing at the school so thank you yeah no i appreciate that i'll i'll check for your email tomorrow morning i'll shoot you the communications it may take uh i'll let tina know and the information tech department um they'll get you connected so that you're you're getting the broadband emails and communications when they come out it may take them a data to get it get it set up but you should be set up very shortly but yeah it's why it's a good point it's just people need to remember their their your taxes your overall taxes come from two additional sources you've got the town tax their process is completely separate from the school we're two completely separate entities the larger tax burden you guys pay obviously is is from the school side um but our process is completely separate from theirs okay yeah whatever okay i i i understand that what i'm understanding and taking away from this is that whatever increases i'm facing which were been somewhat significant over the last several years as a taxpayer who lives at brand center are more attributable to the town than they are to the school system and some are due to the whole state school system overall which i understand that as well that well let's go ahead we've we've um we've actually asked the town for right up until i'd have to go back and look two three years ago we actually asked the town for some pretty significant increases um and one of the reasons was because um the mentality around budgets changed a little bit um when i came in i think it's five years ago now four years ago somewhere in there um the previous superintendent who is an incredibly brilliant man um i mean he he was here and his purpose um in my understanding the board brought him in for was to keep budgets incredibly low and he did a very good job of that um but we talked about at the time um that if you keep the budgets too low it's kind of like compound interest in reverse so you actually things are increasing faster than your budgets are just in terms of you know the additional monies that we pay to the teachers under their contracts um cost of living increases um inflation things like that and so over the course of 10 years and we did an analysis i shared with the community at the time um they were actually losing ground overall and so they were in this cycle of having to cut programs having to cut staff to keep up with trying to maintain these these these level budgets and so the community stepped up to the plate for uh actually it was two years the first year they gave us an 11 increase to counteract all those years of very tight budgets the second year it was going to be level service but we got hit with the health care negotiations with the state when the health care state took over the health care negotiations took it out of the hands of the districts some districts benefit benefited from that some districts got hurt we got hurt bad so you know we were looking at a half million to three three quarters of a million in impact that we were going to have to supply from the taxpayers with that change at that point in time so those were two two significant increases and the reason that they were and then after those two years we were doing what was called level service just increasing things enough to keep all the things that we had without having to give anything up no and i but comb it's not that makes a lot of go ahead i'm sorry i didn't want to interrupt you go ahead did you finish but no i was going to share that i had a lot of respect for your predecessor but i think he sometimes lost sight and this is with due respect to him of the value of education and the importance of keeping the top teachers and respecting the community as much as you did in trying to just keep the budget stable which you've just articulated some reasons why that can work in the opposite way over time so i i want i want people to know including your board members whoever's on that i am very pro education my life is turned from a prior career into education and i don't want my remarks about taxes being misunderstood about what i think about the value of education is because i think it's extraordinarily probably the most important thing we do in the state so i asked it though and i just from a perspective of having been there and i don't mind sharing this publicly with your board members that our taxes have gone up by over three times or 350 percent in the 19 years we've been here and i don't think and this is not school alone we have not seen a 350 percent increase in services or value including inflation and everything else so it's it's very expensive to live in vermont we're seeing young people leave because of that as far as the reason i got interested in the legislature etc etc so those are my overall remarks i completely understand what you said about the town budget being distinct from the state from the school budget and distinct from the state school budget and a lot of that's not in your control so my remarks are indicative of are you using the monies that you just described the sr1 the sr2 the american recovery act plan money valuable or not it sounds like you're fixed hard on doing that appropriately for our students and i again i thank you for your services and the board's services as well i just wanted to be clear about how much we were facing it sounds like it's not significant and that you're working hard you're also putting aside some money for as i understand what you just described and i read to put away a million dollars over three years to try to keep taxes under control as expenses indefinitely amount and i also want to appreciate thank you for i get off because i know it's been a bear i deliberately do not work in this particular district because i live here so i work in several other work with several other districts across the state but i think that you guys have done a great job in a very very difficult time with the disease which no one ever anticipated would go into its full second through second year entering a third almost as we sit here so i commend you for that so thank you all for your time i appreciate it i think i understand that i'll look forward to reading your correspondence and i know i can send you an email if i have any further questions before the town meeting correct oh yeah no i appreciate that i appreciate you being here tonight um because the uh just the communication is awesome um it my first couple of years that i was here you know we'd have our open forums we'd have 30 people in the audience you know and the topics were always tough ones but i actually find that kind of fun because it gets you thinking about things that you wouldn't normally think about and so i'm hoping that once things subside a bit um and people are a little bit more free and moving around a little bit more that we're able to return um to that that kind of closeness and those kind of discussions so i enjoyed this tonight with you well i appreciate you and i want you to know that i've checked with my management because i said i i want to go to the meeting but if you tell me i can't and they said oh absolutely as long as you say you're not working for the agency your comments don't represent agency policy one of the directors told me i'm going to be attending my own town meeting and i'm going to be asking them what they're doing with the millions of dollars that we're giving them so we were kind of laughing on the phone together um but i don't know what you're doing because i'm not reviewing i'm not one of the people reviewing your r best or your s or one or two and i and i deliberately don't talk to those people because that would be not right it would be interference in a way that it's not appropriate so i tried to just approach this call as someone who loves education and wants to be supportive in my town but wants to learn a little bit more about what's happening so i appreciate your time on the call i hope i made it slightly more interesting than just meeting with your astute board members who are fine people and in terms of the um the asset funding and what it's been spent on and not um one of the requirements for s or three is a spending plan so my hope is is that by the end of uh next week after folks are back from vacation um we're in the process of creating a section of the website that is specifically devoted to that and so everything will be laid out um in those plans to show you know what we spent it on how much we spent and what the plans are for the the art art funds um for the coming two years so all right well i wish you well with that i'm sure you'll you'll think about that with your board carefully and make some some good decisions for your students appreciate hey you take care yep you too thank you again for letting me participate yep have a good night yep you too bye bye so in in chelsea unless you either of you have questions um we would be closing the meeting at i don't know what do you got i got 644 i have 646 okay well well done lane thank you very much you too i i appreciate hopefully you get some time to relax this week all right you too take care