Hi, everyone. So this is a little talk on Calc, which is my very first open source project. This was done as part of the season of KDE 2021. Hi, everyone. I'm Rohan Ashokan. I'm a student developer from India. I'm really sorry the slides are pretty messed up. I think it's possibly something from the conversion. Yes, I'm a student developer from India. I'm currently a web developer too, and I'm working on a game startup. So it always started when I actually wanted to get into open source. Open source was something really alluring to me, and I wanted to jump in naturally. So the only piece of open source software that I was using back then was KDE Plasma. And naturally I wanted to do something for KDE. So I jumped in and the first thing I started doing was setting up the environment. And it took me around three months. I was on a Cali OS back then. I guess it wasn't the right OS for development. It took me a really long time to set it up. And once I set up, I started working on this issue that was bugging me since the beginning and was possibly one of the reasons why I wanted to come into open source. This was a search bar in Dolphin. I tried asking around. I tried looking into the code. It was pretty overwhelming. I was a complete newbie back then. I didn't know what to do or what to start. And it was pretty overwhelming. And at the end, I ended up forgetting about it. And then came Season of KDE. This was something for beginners.  I was all in for doing something with Season of KDE. So I worked on this project called Calc. Calc is an open source cross-platform calculator application that is built using the KDE origami framework. It has its focus on power and being lightweighted. So it's really user-friendly in that sense. And back then, the calculator had a basic calculation model, you know, additions, subtractions and all that, including a few scientific functions like time, cost, and the like. So what I wanted to do was add up to this already existing arsenal of scientific functions and also bring in an entirely new binary calculation module. So I call this thing the programming mode wherein you can add binary numbers or subtract binary numbers or do operations with binary numbers in general. And also, I wanted to see the converted output surface. So let's say I type in 1001 in binary. I should be able to see it in decimal or octal or hexadecimal for that matter. And I also wanted to introduce a new feature called the date calculation module. So it's really common that, I mean, I can't calculate dates practically speaking. If you ask me, what's the difference between two dates, that's really hard for me. And I tend to use a calculator. So I wanted to see how a date calculation module would fit into an application like Calc wherein Calc was focused on power and the end user friendliness. So my first course of action was adding to the scientific calculations module. To put it into perspective, the code base of Calc was really small.  And there was some parser files. So at the most, it'll be a dozen files and it wasn't much code. But then back then, being a newbie, I wasn't able to understand much. I felt overwhelmed by the code and it was pretty bad. I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what to do. So I went and talked to my mentor, Hanya. She helped me out and she pointed out to a few PRs and those actually helped me a lot. And I figured out how to add some features, add some functions to this. And that was my very first merge request with KDE and open source in general. So I guess you can see that. So my next course of action was obviously building the binary calculation module. Compared to the previous feature, this was something, this was a massive overtaking for me, undertaking for me. And that's because it was a completely new mold and it required completely different parsers and different ways that I should flow the data. Initially, when I started working on it, it wasn't very easy to figure out where I should add, where I should change, where I should update. I didn't have that understanding of the code base. And yeah, I ended up taking an entire month, digging around, searching for things and still not understanding the code base. And then I realized that I had a mentor and I could talk to her and figure out what I should do, obviously. So I went ahead and talked to her and surprise, surprise, it took only three days and I was done with the calculator module. That was a huge realization for me. One month of digging around on my own and figuring out nothing. But then three days, I just talked to a mentor and three days it was done. So these are some revised pictures of the calculator module as it stands today. And at the right, you can see some calculations being made. And I guess in this version, the optimal conversion wasn't being done and it was only binary decimal and hexadecimal. We did a couple of operations, but the binary calculator module is currently limited to only two numbers. So you can add two numbers or subtract two numbers, but more than two numbers, currently it's not possible. That was a design decision considering that the calculator is very lightweight. And the next thing we faced was someone actually pointed out that we were using a C++ data type. The project was based in C++. So we were naturally using a C++ data type which had non-infinite precision. So the precision was limited. There was a limit to how big the numbers could get or how small the numbers could get. So possibly over 10.24 or 10.20 or something. I wouldn't be able to calculate with that version of the calculator. So we had to port to an infinite precision calculations in the back end. So we used something called K number, which is part of the KDE API. And during this time, I was able to form a complete understanding of the calc module after all this time. This was when I actually was able to form a full picture. This is because K number required changes in every single aspect of the program. And because of that, I was able to piece together a full image of how the data flow happened within the program. And this was pretty important going on because I was designing a new date calculation module. And on planning about it, there were pretty much three operations that I wanted to build. These were finding a difference between two dates. So given a date in the future and given today's date, I want to find how many days are between these two. This feature would be able to do it. And next was, let's say you have a given date. That is, let's say, 21st of this month. And I want to know what the date would be 20 days from then. So that would be the use of that feature, the add a number of days to the given date. And the subtract a number of days from the given days is essentially, let's say, 30 of this month. And I want 20 days before that. That would give me a date that is 20 days before some given date. That was a core idea. And I started building up some UI for this. This was pretty straightforward. And I used some models and calculators from the KGAMI framework and QT. We actually did not push this to the current version. That's because we were not sure if this would stood the user base, essentially, because tag focuses on simplicity and ease of use. We were not sure if this date module would really fit in with that theme. Obviously, it depends on the community now. If you guys need it, we'll be ready to build it up. And out of all of this, my takeaways were quite a lot because this was my very first experience with open source and it caught me a lot. And I'll just put it out there. So maybe someone who is planning to get into or is scared of getting into open source could use it. So the very first thing I faced was being scared of a code base which put out that open source journey for a long time. And there's nothing to be scared of it because when we renew these, we don't understand how code works, how data flow works and all that. So what one needs to do is just pick up a feature that you want to implement and start from there instead of starting by learning the code base or something like that. Starting from what feature you want to build and then seeing where that leads you is possibly the best way to learn about a code base. And the next thing I understood from the full experience was you really need to talk to people and because they obviously have worked with the code base before and they know quite a lot and they'll be at least able to point you in the right direction. And for that reason, you really need to talk in this case with other people.  Most of my doubts still seem stupid to me, but those might not, that might not be the same way other people look at it. So they might be able to help you with the doubt and worst case, what might happen? There's nothing that could happen out of it. So the other thing that I learned was, especially from that experience with the binary calculator, I spent an entire month trying to figure out what to do is that you have to look at what to do yourself, but then you have to maintain that balance of communicating with others and doing your own work. That is very important and open source because the code bases are really huge over here. That is something I learned out of this. And thank you, everyone who has been directly or indirectly part of this journey and helping me with it. And thank you. That is my talk.


Hi everybody, Joe for jaskiescasebrakes.com and now coming at you coming on you at you with the 2020 leaf Superlative sports 10. It's my Monday folks. My words are all jumbled 2020 leaf superlative sports 10 box case break random hit break number one It's mouthful We're gonna open up all 10 boxes first type in the hits and then randomize your names. I'm not coming on to you Arthur That's not what I wanted to say. It's the wrong idea Whatever hit you match up with is the one you get not trying to get fresh folks There's all the people who bought their teams straight up There are the people who won spots If this if this week is gonna start out like this And there you go 2020 All right. All right. All right, so Here's the case right here. So once again big thanks to all these people right here for getting to it Whether you bought spots straight up and congrats again if you won spots, we're gonna open this And we're gonna see what's inside And obviously this is since random hits are really good because if there's a multi auto card Which I saw a lot of on the cell sheet. I don't do we don't share it with anybody Share it with nobody It's all yours. All right So we'll start like this go down start then second column and then go down that way. All right Look at this. Good luck everybody First of all in a random hit break we want all the hits to look excellent First one is wow good start dual relic dual auto Alan Iverson Steph Curry That's pretty nice. What are you number? I don't see a numb Oh bottom left corner or bottom. Yeah bottom left hand corner one out of two That's a good start Next up. Wow is a triple auto Jim tome a Reggie Jackson and Billy Williams Three out of four another train whistle. Oh, and there's more on the back Orlando Sepeda Wade Boggs now in trample. That's pretty cool And we might have to get some more of this as well 116 and next up another multi auto right here Tommy LaSorta whitey-herzog Tony LaRusso Bobby Cox They're not on the other side, but four great managers here six out of ten and Then we got yeah, I don't know what what what? Truvelle means, but there's Muhammad Ali and there's Mike trout a two out of two two color dual relic Mike Tyson that is not trout. He wouldn't be on this. That doesn't make sense Mike Tyson game use memorabilia I was like my brain was like, why would Mike trout be on there? I just saw M and a T and I was like trout two great players Muhammad Ali the greatest Mike trout the greatest. Oh Boss man in the back saying Joe Frazier. We've got The superlative eight one out of two Babe Ruth Wow, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter All on one card and there's more on the back Don Manningley, Mariana Rivera, Lupinella, Roy White, Derek Jeter, Jorge Pasada, Craig Nettles, Greg Nettles and Andy Pettit. I think Roy White's the only guy I don't know on this So a group of Yankees there. They're pretty awesome. That's gonna go to one person and we've got Another dual relic. We've got Carl Malone on the top and we got Charles Barkley right here on the bottom That's pretty cool three out of eight and let's see what else we got ladies and gentlemen pretty awesome You got another multi relic right here. We got Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Duke Snyder, Stan, The Man, Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Paul Wainer 11 out of 20 The superlative seven That's also sharp man Three more to go then we'll type these in and do the randomizer and then see who gets what what else is here green foil We've got two out of four Babe Ruth again Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Bear, Reddy Jackson, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter, Don Mariano, Lou, Roy, Derek, Jorge, Greg and Andy Pettit This is a team break that would have been Yankees have gotten two monster hits Another multi relic card here two out of five Tony Gwynn, Ken Griffey Jr, Eddie Murray, Barry Bonds, look at that Roberto Almar patch there, Don Mattingly and the wizard Ozzy Smith And the last one here boys and girls and we've got Dual relic five out of six John Elway. That's pretty nice And there you go boys and girls that was your ten right there. All right, we're gonna pause the video I'm gonna type in all those hits and when we come back we'll randomize it We'll see who gets what stick around. I'll be right back All right, welcome back folks. So I got all the hits typed in here Thanks for your patience if you're watching live one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten Right one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten there you go Remember just a couple things to highlight there. There's one of those superlative 16s, which I think is mostly the same players I think there might be a couple that are different between the one out of two and then the two out of four But both have Ruth in it Babe Ruth in it. So but the numbers will be different. So just keep that in mind Everything else is pretty unique so The two magnificent sevens, but they're two different numbers as well completely different players right here So there you go cross your fingers a lot of great hits to be had let's roll it Let's randomize it two and a four six times for each list your names first one two three four five and six So two and a four six times we got Dave down to mark All right, let's let's match you up with a hit after six times good luck one two three four five and Sixth and final time We got the superlative seven to 20 and the superlative quad auto six out of ten on the bottom And all the other hits in between Alright, so here's how it shakes out Dave. You've got the superlative seven eleven out of twenty Featuring Mickey Mantle Willie Mays, etc. Paul with the superlative sixteen sixteen relics Yankees legends You got the two out of four edition all aboard the big-head Express And Russ you got the same thing except the one out of two edition featuring Ruth so on and so forth I think there might be a couple players that might be slightly different on either one of those But Russ all aboard the big-head Express We got John with the superlative dual relic three out of eight Carl Malone Charles Barkley Chris Erickson last bond mojo with the superlative seven out of five featuring Tony Gwynn so on and so forth All aboard And a train was for Joe as well with the AI Steph Curry dual relic dual auto all aboard the big-head Express We've got the Tyson or no, so they've got the tone. We've got more train whistles Tom a etc. The enshrined autographs three out of four That's awesome, too. All aboard the big-head Express and Rick Serrano also gets a train whistle a dual relic two out of two Muhammad Ali Mike Tyson, man all aboard Chris Erickson with a spot you won you get the John Elway dual relic five out of six and a six out of ten quad auto Four amazing coaches right baseball managers right there for mark s. Wow. What a break Thanks, everybody for getting in. Here's another look at all the hits again. Wow Some pretty great stuff. Thanks everyone for making this happen. I guess we'll try to dig up some more cases of this man Some good stuff there Yeah, Rick that that dual relic two boxing legends pretty nice see this says Thurman Munson catfish hunter I think the other one's different There's the Malone Barkley These are all all different teams right here, that's pretty cool too that Mickey Mannel one that was for Dave Here's the other one. That's the two out of four No, I guess these are all the same names No, all same names There you go. Nice And we had the two out of five Right there and then the L way right here five out of six Greatness dual relic. There you go ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us There are the winners again and what they got really appreciate you getting in We'll try to dig up some more keep an eye out on jaskies case breaks comm and I'll see you next time. I'm Joe Bye-bye


So I would like to talk about some recent work done at Daisy in collaboration with Markus Fierigl, Fabian Rühle and Julian Schweitzer, which is the work I talk about is contained in these two papers. One came out a little more than a week ago, is this one, the other is essentially finished and will be out I think in a few days. So let me start with some very simple questions, everybody knows. I think it's well known that fermions and bosons play very different roles in the standard model. Now quarks and leptons come in three copies of complete gut representations, whereas gauge bosons and hex bosons form single, incomplete, sometimes called split multiplets. Now in the following in this talk I would like to argue that there may be a simple reason behind that which explains this difference, namely a connection between gut symmetry breaking and supersymmetry breaking. Now so the result will then be that the scalar quarks and scalar leptons, the partners, Susie partners of the quarks and leptons, they are very heavy because they belong to complete gut multiplets and because of that they also come in several copies, three not being distinguished. Whereas a supersymmetry breaking should be small for gauge and hex fields because they form incomplete gut multiplets. So that is the argument is there should be kind of a double split.  Or the other way around you have a split gut multiplet and then small Susie splitting. That is the picture of split supersymmetry as suggested by these people. And in fact I should say to us this outcome was a little bit of a surprise. We were not planning to work on that, rather we were thinking about constructing a detailed model of inflation in from extra dimensions. So in order to explain what is behind this statement, let me start with a few technical points concerning compactification of supergravity on obi-folds with Wilson lines and flux. So we consider 60 supergravity with a U1 gauge field to start with. It will become a little complicated, more complicated later. And we look at the compactification on the toes. So then as a standard metric as you know is this, you have the four-dimensional metric for essentially the Minkowski space, you have the internal metric of the compact space, rescaled by the radion field, that's a six-dimensional metric. And here you see the lattice corresponding to the torus, the fundamental domain. And then as you know on the torus you can have two Wilson lines, the one going in this direction, one going in this direction. And you can write them as a line integral over the gauge field. Now what will be important in the following discussion is the following. It's not really important, but I think helpful is the following. Let's now go to the obi-fold. So that means we take this thing and take half of it, which is the fundamental domain. So here you see this fundamental domain, which now has four fixed points.  So topologically, as you know, the obi-fold is a sphere with four points taken out. Now therefore, on the obi-fold you have canonical, I would say, one cycles, which in fact just encircle these fixed points. So you have one here, one here, one here, one here. And here you see the projections of the Wilson lines on the torus to the obi-fold. So this one Wilson line now is this, the other one is this. And you can decompose it in this way. You can write, say, this Wilson line as the sum of Wilson lines around these fixed points, T1 in this way, T2 in this way. Now as you also know, once you are on the obi-fold, you no longer have continuous Wilson lines, but they are discrete. And if you look at this line integral, the exponent of that, then it's quantized and you have essentially a parity. That means these factors can only take the values plus minus one. This is well known. Now let's introduce, in addition, a flux. So we have, say, a gauge field, some are characterizing the Wilson lines and we have now a flux, which is constant on this obi-fold. Then we know the flux on the obi-fold is quantized also in this way. And the total background field is now the field related to the flux. And in addition, it's the obi-fold field. The obi-fold field produces no flux. So if you have, say, you can have fractional flux at different fixed points, but they add up to total of zero. And then, as you know, what is important for the following discussion is the flux generates chiral zero modes due to the index theorem. So in our case, that means if we have, say, with a minus sign here, if n is positive, we have n flux quanta, then we have n left-handed fermions. So we have chiral, so with flux, we have just a number of chiral zero modes. Okay. Now let's look in more detail at 60 supergravity. The Lagrangian or the action for that is well-known. You have, of course, a metric. You have a dilaton field. You have the field strength of the anti-symmetric tensor field B. And we have now the field strength of a U1 gauge field. And then one includes in the field strength here, transimons terms for the spin connection, local Lorentz symmetry, and for the U1 gauge field, which is this one. In our discussion, we will ignore gravitational anomalies. So I can comment on that if you want. So we will, in the following, ignore this term. Then if you now consider also flux on this orbit fold, it turns out you have to redefine your tensor field in such a way, so that you can do the usual proper Kalutza Klein expansion. And so you have then, once you do this redefinition, you can write the derivative of this tensor field as, say, the two form on your compact space times the derivative of a scalar. Little b is now a real scalar plus another three form. And this derivative of this tensor field is, we are interested in the 4D action, then this is, this field will not depend on the coordinates of the compact space. Having this, you can, in a straightforward way, derive, write the field strength of this anti-zometric tensor field in this form. So we have the scalar here, which comes together with this fluctuation, and you see it's proportional here to the flux which you have, and then the rest. Now, there is a, if you are familiar with this, there is a standard way of how to manipulate the thing. If you want to derive the 4D effective action, you dualize this field strength, that means you, of this thing here now, so you trade this for another real scalar C, and then you also, instead of radion and dilaton, introduce two other scalar fields called T and S. That's a standard procedure. And now we are ready to discuss anomaly cancellation. A crucial problem in this business is the anomaly cancellation for, which can be done for, in fact, by adding a green Schwarzstone. Now, this is well known for the case of the obi fold. You know, once you have an obi fold with, which generates, say, zero mode, then you know that the anomaly cancellation for that, that means, can be done just by this green Schwarzstone. But, and that cancels the anomaly on the one hand, the bulk anomaly, and then the fixed point anomalies, which you have in this obi fold. So that is all fine. However, what created a puzzle for us and what, to my knowledge, had not been discussed before in the literature is the following. If you now introduce the flux, you get, in addition, zero modes due to the index theorem. So you have the bulk anomaly, you have the four-dimensional anomaly associated with these zero modes, and you have fixed point anomalies on the obi fold. And the question is, what do you do about these anomalies? Well, Andy turns out that if you work this out properly, then in the end, you don't have to worry about that, because this Simon's term automatically takes care also of the new zero modes. The way that works is you insert here another full gauge field. That means the background field plus the fluctuations. And then, due to the quantization of the flux, you automatically get the contributions, which also cancels the anomaly due to the zero modes. So, if you work this out, then finally, your full action has the following form. You have the field strength for your U1 gauge field. You have a classical, this is a flux, you have a classical contribution to the energy density. You have the B field, this real scalar together with the vector field. You have this additional field scalar here, again, together with the vector field. And you have a linear combination of these two real scalars coupled to this Schrodinger-Siemann's form. So, the physics of that is that one linear combination of the two real scalars, which are contained in the anti-symmetric tensor field, combine to make the vector massive. So, that's a Stuckeberg mechanism, a version of the Stuckeberg mechanism. But as the other linear combination remains a massless field, coupled in the standard way to the gauge field. So, that you can easily write like this. You find that sort of the end of the story. You find the field strength here of your U1, this classical contribution to the energy density, the mass term for this vector field. And here's a coupling of this, the kinetic term for this one massless axion. And here it's coupling to the U1 gauge field. And if you look at the formulae which you have for this vector boson, for this kinetic term, for this coupling, then you see here always a factor N, which denotes the number of flux quanta. That means you can now construct various limits. For instance, one is where you put flux, you put the flux to zero, then you just get the usual Stuckeberg mechanism and you get the mass for the vector field just from the normal term. If there is also the flux, you can have just the flux without even a fermion, then just classically you generate a vector boson mass. Or you can have the linear combination of both. Then what enters is, in these expressions, is a flux. It's the term from the normally and that gives you the mass for the vector boson and also for the couplings. And what is interesting is you can now construct wave functions also for the bulk fields which you have on this orbital. In fact, for that, in fact, for this whole work, what is very important is a paper written a number years ago by Bakas, who had some wave functions on the torus, there were extensions on the torus, also on the orbital. And then you can get explicit expressions for these wave functions. First of all, let me say what the spectrum is. The mass spectrum, what is well known since this work of Bakas is that if you go away from the orbital and you introduce a background flux, the spectrum changes drastically. You don't have the usual thing with Wilson lines. Rather, the spectrum is now independent of the Wilson lines. And instead, you have a spectrum for the scalars. It starts with zero here. So 4 pi n over the volume, the two volume would be the mass squared of the scalars. And then for the fermions, if you take here n equal to zero, then you see you get zero mode and zero mode and also you get a heavy one. So the 60-wire fermion splits into two components, one of which is massless and the other one, massless. It combines in the Kaluta client tower. You get nice wave functions and just watch here. If you have the full dots, it means that the wave function at these fixed points is non-zero. So this is a situation with flux, no Wilson lines. Now you can introduce Wilson lines and then you see that this pattern changes. You now get at two fixed points, you now get vanishing values of the wave functions that's indicated by this empty circle. And on some points, say here and here, the full points, you get non-vanishing wave functions. And then as you change the pattern of the Wilson lines, that changes where the wave functions are zero or not. But if you take, say, these canonical cycles, you can immediately, and assigning fractional flux to them, you can immediately understand where the wave functions are zero or not and how qualitatively such a pattern of wave functions should look like. So this is the kind of technical introduction. Let me now come to the main point. And so this way of how you get zero modes, on the one hand from the singularities of the orbit fold, on the other hand from the flux, if you are familiar with, say, guts in higher dimensions, as discussed by, say, Olnomura and a number of people in the past, you immediately realize that there may be an interesting possibility. And I will illustrate that with one, say, SO10 gut in six dimensions, which a couple of years was discussed by Asaka, Kuvir, myself, and also Olnomura. So there you have, as bulk fields, 45-plates, you have a 16-plates, a 16-bar, and 10-plates, the standard SO10 representations in the bulk. And we will now, and the nice thing or the way the symmetry is broken in this model is that you have a fixed point with a pillow with four corners. And in fact, you can break at fixed points by adding Wilson lines as a symmetry in the following way. In the bulk, you have a symmetry SO10, which is unbroken at one fixed point. And another fixed point by adding a Wilson line, you break it to the pati salam group. It's the other fixed point to Georgie Glashow's standard SU5. And then here, automatically, it's broken to flipped SU5. And then you get the standard model out as the standard model gauge group as an intersection of these four gut groups, which you have at these different fixed points. So this is the picture. And now let's extend SO10 to SO10 cross U1. Let's add an anomalous U1. Typically, this is what you would expect if you do add out extreme compactification. So if you embed this in E8, you have the minimum group would be, say, SO10 times U1 cubed. And it's anomalous under them, and you will have a more complicated sector. So in some sense, we are aiming at constructing a subsector here. Now, at these different fixed points, you now have the standard decompositions of the echelon representation, the 10 plate, the 16 plate. And what you do at these fixed points is that you always project out certain parts. So, for instance, at the standard SU5 fixed point, you keep for one 10, you keep only the five. From another 10, you keep the five star. At the party's alarm fixed point, you just keep the SU2 fields. You throw away the color fields. And so this is the way you realize the doublet triplet splitting. So from these projections, you break the gut symmetry and you reduce the complete SO10 representations to split multiplets as far as zero modes are concerned. So for the Higgs, which comes from these 10 plates, you are left in the end with two Higgs doublets. And from this 16 plates, you are left with fields which can break B minus A. This is the old picture. And now what is known is if you have just this, then you have the usual picture of gut breaking by all before boundary conditions and you get a split Higgs sector, the doublet triplet splitting. And you can cancel the anomalies by means of a green Schwartz term. But now what is interesting, if we have the U1 and we add now flux and we treat this U1 as the chiral symmetry, that means we assign, say, U1 charge, say, just to the 16 plate and not to the other fields, then we generate, in addition to these split multiplets, you generate copies of complete gut multiplets. So for instance, if I take the 16 plate here, give it a charge Q and add now the quantized flux. Then depending on the number of flux quanta, which I have on my orbit fold, I will generate a couple of 16 plates as zero modes. So these will be my fermions. And you see the point is now if a field transforms non-trivially under this anomalous U1, then you will get on the one hand a multiplicity. And on the other hand, you will get a complete gut representation. So that always comes together. So the fact, in that sense, if you look at the forks and leptons, the fact that we have three copies of them is tied to the fact that they are complete gut multiplets. Whereas if you look at Higgs and Gage fields, they have no, they don't feel this anomalous U1. Therefore, you don't have multiplicities. You don't have copies. And you don't have complete gut multiplets. They come as split multiplets. So that is somehow the observation, which is related to this the way the symmetry is realized. And then the other thing is now, of course, what is crucial is due to this work of Bacchus, that this way of having gut multiplets and split multiplets on the one hand and the other hand is directly related to the way you have supersymmetry breaking. But before I come to that, let me first discuss what you can now learn in such a model about Yuccava couplings, because there are some implications for the flavor structure. As I said at these fixed points, these multiplets are projected. And now you can have, for instance, at one fixed point, you have the coupling 16, 16, 10, 16, 16, 10 to another 10. And you have always for each bulk field, you have one coupling. This is a coupling which is given here. If you go to another fixed point where the symmetry is broken, you can have couplings which are compatible with the unbroken group. So here is your five, so you have one coupling more here, but his alarm, you again have a coupling less and flip less your five. And now, if you now have the flux for the zero modes, is you, the single coupling turns into a matrix simply because the 16 plaid say becomes three copies of zero modes. And these three copies of zero modes, then for them, you have different products of wave functions at the corresponding fixed points. And in this way, the complete super potential for all these zero modes look now like this. You have the couplings, which you can have for the bulk fields. And they always come together with a matrix, which just depends on the fixed point. So at the fixed point, you get matrices which are determined by the flux quantum numbers and also the geometry that fixes these matrices. And then you have, in addition, these couplings which come from this. Now, to work that out in detail is something which we are looking at at the moment. But now, let me come to the main point. As I, yeah, as I try to explain this idea of assigning an anomalous U1 in the bulk, so to start from the group of SO10 cross U1, gives you copies for complete gut multiplets and just single fields for split multiplets, for split gut multiplets. Now, the flux also introduces supersymmetry breaking. That's due to this work of Bacchus. So you will have a universal scalar mass plus calypsoclin excitations. So the lightest scalar quarks and leptons will have a universal mass, which is 4 by n, where n is the number of flux quanta. In our case, n is 3. So it will be this in units of the volume of the compact dimensions. Now, I should say the volume of the compact dimensions, here's the dynamical quantity, because it depends on the radion field. So it has to be determined from stabilisation. And of course, this is something, well, work on that you can find in the literature. We are trying to understand, looking at that now also. And of course, what you then get from that has to be consistent for this mass to be consistent with gauge coupling unification and this proto-dicates. That puts some constraints. But typically, this mass, this scalar mass will be of order, the gut scale, say, 10 to the 15 GeV. Now, so that means at three level, you start from a spectrum where only the scalar quarks and masses, because they are in a complete gut multiplet, are massive. And they all have masses of the order of the gut scale. The rest, at three level, is muscles. Now, so that means, gravity, no, gauge, no, six, no, six both, so they are all muscles. Then, the flux introduces an energy density, which corresponds to the term breaking. Therefore, you generate a gravitino mass. I think that's unavoidable. So, typically, if this is, say, 10 to the 15 GeV, the gravitino mass will be around, say, 10 to the 12 GeV. Then it depends what happens. Now, there's a normal mediation, quantum corrections and all that. So, in the standard picture, one would say, I have a normal mediation. And then, if this is 10 to the 12 GeV, I will generate gaugeino masses, say, between 10 to the 9, between, say, 10 to the 10, 10 to the 9 GeV, roughly, also very heavy. The biggest protection you have for the hexynos and the chargenos, they can be even lighter. What their mass is depends on the way you treat the quantum corrections for that, but that remains to be seen. So, in any case, qualitatively, the spectrum will be that you have really a universal squawk and slepton mass of roughly the gut scale, maybe a little bit smaller, much bigger than the gravitino mass, much bigger than the gaugeino and hexino masses. Now, what comes out in detail, I think we are learning now about the topic because, for us, this is rather new. It depends on how you treat the quantum corrections in detail.  But that's the question of the quantum corrections and, of course, you have now all the problems well known from split supersymmetry of the fine tuning, how do you understand the Fermi scale and all that. I have nothing to say about that. We are also just looking now again at these problems. But at least, I hope to make the main point clear, namely that the fact whether you have complete gut multiplets or not is related to the multiplicity and to the size of supersymmetry breaking.  And, of course, it will be very nice if one would find some evidence for that at GLC, which could be light hexynos. Okay, so we have time for a couple of questions. Yes, I understood that if you take into account the bound on the hex mass, I mean the value of the hex mass, that rules out the squares and the sleptons at the gut scale. Have you considered that? That all this has to be consistent with 125 GB heaps? Well, of course, I mean, I'm aware of that, but we have not yet that worked out. I mean, of course, once you have this picture, there's fine tuning for the Higgs, the well-known fine tuning of split supersymmetry for the Higgs, as well as radiative symmetry breaking. Yeah, but on top of that, in principle, you see that there's this plot and this paper by Yudich et al, where you see the line of the Higgs mass and then see how the split suzie fits, and it brings the value of the split very, very, very slow. Yeah, at that point, the question is what split suzie means. I think what split suzie means in that paper is not what it is here, because that's a special assumption, I think, on the masses of the other particles. Well, we can discuss. Yeah, we can discuss. Just a question. Typically in these dimensional models, when you compute the mass of scalars, very often they become techonic. Yours are positive definite all the time? I think so. I don't see what... You mean the scalar mass is here? Yes. I don't see what makes them techonic here. The term can make it... Well, no, but that is... The term can work in the nice and the wrong direction, positive and definite. Well, I think this is, as far as I understood and talking to some people, this is sort of established that for... I mean, this is essentially the mass spectrum worked out by Bacchus. So then, Bacchus, I think, didn't even ask the question, what kind of supersymmetry rate do you have?  Then you get this kind of spectrum that was generalized to the case of the obi fold, and it was also figured out that I think the vacuum energy density, which you generate by the flux, corresponds to a deterrent breaking. As you know, later on we did a more detailed computation with Kremlade set out, and I think you get both sides in the spectrum, positive and negative, but I don't know... Well, I mean, I would be... In the presence of the orifice, it's true that the orifice can project out some of the negative states. Okay, I mean, this is something we have to... I mean, we look at your paper in connection with these wave functions, and in fact, we learned a lot from that. What that means for the masses of the scalar particles, I don't know, but I would be glad to learn more about that. All right, one more quick question. Okay, I don't know, it's a question or comment. If you think about the stabilization of radius or the electron to cancel, then I think, generally, you can do this, but the generically f-time of these things could be easily generated, because you have supersimilar breaking, and you have radius t, f. And if the f-time of these things are generated, and even it's this size of gut scale or complication scale, and if that's the case, Gagino will also get the mass. Of course, you can kill that by going to no-scale type scale or whatever you can do it, but you may need additional things to get actually this. Once you think about all these dynamics of this... Yes, I fully agree. I mean, what happens now, whether there are other sources of supersimilar breaking, one has to take into account, and what that does to the rest of the spectrum remains to be seen. Yeah, I agree. Great, so let's thank the speaker again.


Okay. I'm reaching out to her now, but we're recording so you can begin. Okay. Yes. Thank you. So we do have a quorum. So I am going to call the meeting to order. I do want to say that this meeting is being held virtually through the various acts of the state legislature. And so everyone will have the opportunity. People have the opportunity to for public comment. If they're in the audience, just raise your hand or if you're on a phone, I think it's star nine. And that's for raising your hand. So I will go through that again when we get the public comment. So, um, I do see if we have a quorum. So I will just call the meeting to order and go through a list of participants to see whether we can hear you and you can hear us. So I'm just going to go by what's on my screen. Andy. I'm here. Bernie president. Councilor Hanna key. Present. Matt. Present. Kathy. You're muted. Unmute. Well, Kathy's unmuting Alicia texted back that she'll she's on the way. Okay. Okay. Great. So, um, Let me see if there's any participants in the audience. The only attendee is Lynn. So I think we'll, we'll hold off on public comment. So the agenda for those of you who haven't. Seen it where we have public comment number call order public comment, then the CPA funding. We were going to try to review the annual audit, but it's not ready yet. So we can't look at that. I would like to have a discussion of how we can review the budget. What process we think we want to use and want some just people to throw out some ideas about how to improve. Not only our ability to review it, but reducing the amount of time that staff members have to come before the committee. And then topics not reasonably anticipated. So. I'm going to wait on public comment because, as I said, we don't have anybody right now. So, why don't we talk about the CPAC report. So we've seen this before. We basically, they had 2.376 million to spend, and they want to spend 2.375. So they want to spend pretty much all of it. The debt service out of that money is 520,000. And then the rest is going to be split between community housing, historic preservation and recreation. There were no open space. Applications this year and there's no administrative fees this year. So the total of 681,000 for community housing, 564,000 for historic preservation. And 1.13 million for recreation was being proposed. So, I don't know if we want to blow up councilor Walker. Can you hear me? Can we hear you? Yes, I can. Thank you, Bob. Great. Thank you. Welcome. I was just going through the, the, the report that we have seen before. Does anyone not have it because I can send it to you if you need it. Okay. So anyway, I'm just going to open it up. I don't know if you want to go through, if we want to go through each of the projects, or maybe we should just kind of see. General general comments. Personally, I thought all the projects were reasonable.  We haven't. We sort of done a lot of similar projects in the past. So Kathy. Yeah, I agree with you, Bob. And actually when we saw it a few weeks ago with Sam. We did go through the projects and Mandy and I will actually me at the council meeting the Mandy again we, we had some comments about the Mount Zion church, but it wasn't. It wasn't a not going forward with it. It was just a concern. This may be the tip of the iceberg and it needs to be done. So, my hand went up mainly as I'm willing to make a motion but we usually we have a, we also have a financial order so we make a motion that the council approved financial order dot dot dot dot dot dot so I'm willing to do that, but, but I'll let you make Mandy's hand is up so I would have to word my motion to include the language of that financial order. Yeah. What maybe well Mandy's making her comment I can pull up the financial order for you. Thank you. 2507 a. Thank you. Yeah. I basically agree with Kathy, except I have concerns about the East Amherst local historic district funds. You know I mentioned this last time, and I understand the projects. Value to the town whether or not the historic district is ultimately formed or not my bigger concern though in granting funds for a project are the application comments that the project would be supporting so it's not the project necessarily I have huge concerns with I have concerns that that would imply that we support the wording of the application. As I stated about two meetings ago when we first discussed this the application has some very concerning wording in it for me. That I don't want to endorse, even if the project itself is ultimately that portion of the project the doing of the, the, the structures report historic structures report is ultimately valuable to the town. I don't want to vote for a project that has an application, and then would in theory have the town supporting an application that uses quotes like the construction of prefab shoddily built student hotels which detract from and devalue the town and only a handful of landlords and quote and also quote rapid changes are occurring in the area including a new school and a proposed adjacent overlay district that are impacting its historic character and integrity that are. First of all there isn't a proposed adjacent overlay district so it's just wrong. But, so I'm not sure what to do with that one on my own in terms of a vote, whether to ask that it be pulled off so I can register my non recommendation on that. But I really do want to disavow the application for the East Amherst local historic district because I believe the wording in it is not appropriate for us to endorse. I share the counselor's concerns is just expressed about the wording that's in that that application I mean, forming a historic district should be an active of instruction and research and. You know, in something that's positive so those comments are toxic in my humble opinion. I would not want to insuring that sense as well that I would not want this to be seen as authorizing a local historic district it's more of a it's more of an investigation as to whether or not there's substance there. I just. Yeah. Again, I share the same same same problems with the application that counselor Henry does. So if we were to. Not approve this particular application. We send it back to CPAC for a different wording in the application or should we. What do people think we should do Andy have you done that in the past. What, what, what we, what do we do in the past where we have an issue like this. I don't think we've had one that's exactly like this. It's sort of a very unusual situation in that. When we've had objections in the past to things. It has been something that was pretty specific like. Trying to think that the. House that was last year. We had some serious concerns about it. I don't think of an analogy that's quite like this. And I wish that we had said something that Sam at the time because. Though I think I guess that I would recommend. Going back to Sam and the committee in asking them for modification and clarification. As if my understanding is correct and then it can. Confirm that there's no reason that the council has to act on all of these things. In one bundle and the deadline is really the end of the fiscal year. So that we really have. I think that's a good time to dispose of the rest of them and put this in recommend putting this one on pause until there's clarification to meet standards that the committee defines. Okay, thank you, Kathy. And he said we, you know, he has longer years than I do, but I have the six. So there was a year where one of the projects was more controversial and we wanted to make sure we got had ample public time and it was. It was an affordable housing project on coming into town. So we pulled it off the pack out of the package. Approved the rest of the package and then separately looked at it and approved it in June. I mean we did ultimately improve it. But what I remember and Andy can correct me is the financial order itself then needs to be reworded because it takes it in this case it would take $20,000 out and not have the same list in it. And so if we were going to go that that is the way we went the other time, as opposed to just held the whole package. We pulled one out. But it seems to me Andy what you were saying is we could either wait on the whole package and tell Sam about these specific concerns and figure out what if anything they can do because this was the applicants. And I think he said everything was voted out unanimously, including by the historic, the members who are in on the planning board and the members who are representative from the other entities. So we could either hold the whole package with this concerned, or we could pull this out with a recommendation we move ahead on the rest. So that's, that would be my, I don't know which route I personally would like to let the others move so we can just come back to just this one project. And I'll stop talking. Thank you, Bernie. I've, I've had considerable amount of experience with Community Preservation Act activities, albeit on a town level, not a city level, but I, I believe that under the the statute, we could knock out the, the $20,000 for the local historic and suggest that the council approve the rest and then let the, you know, let the Community Preservation Committee of the applicant come back and straighten things out. There's no, this isn't a one and done kind of situation. And so we can either my, so my suggestion would be that we strike the $20,000 and amend the order so that that's not there and forward that to as our recommendation to council, the council can put it back if they want. And Bernie on amending the order it's both the total up at top goes down by 20 and then. The line order. I'm staring at this because I have my laptop screen and things are very small. But places the total appears gamers historic district line just can be struck strike through. And the total at the top comes down by 20,000. The total down at the bottom comes down by 20, and the remaining goes up by 20. I'm just saying there, there, there, there's more than one place that the numbers would have to change. Yeah, that's that's that's accurate. Yeah. So just, just amend the document that way. Bob, if I may, I don't think the committee needs to worry about changing this document or amending the document, the committee is just making a recommendation to the council to, you know, it from the conversation to approve those and not approve the local historic district so you don't need to worry about the changes we would prepare a new order with if the council decided to act that way with the changed line. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Bob. Yeah, I, I took it. I was initially asking to clarify that that Councilor Hanna key was was objecting to the which application but I'm looking at the CPAC application now and I do see that problematic language in there. I'm just wondering if if striking this outright is the only is the only action to recommend I certainly understand and agree that we don't want to necessarily endorse those two or three sentences. I'm also strongly I mean, I agree that this is overall a very worthwhile project and I'm wondering, could we indicate, you know, some disapproval of that language or or just sort of a implied non consent to that language if that's a term within our recommendation to the council and you know I think the work itself is is important and you know they are asked to demonstrate urgency for the report for the work and I think that they have. So I wonder if there's another mechanism by which we could indicate that we are not, and we're not the CPAC so we're not the ones who approve this application. You know, not to say that we shouldn't do due diligence but CPAC did and so I wonder if there's a space where we can sort of indicate that we don't support that language in particular, while still allowing the project to move forward on the timeline. So what I was suggesting, and the man is coming in was that our, our recommendation would be to send it back to CPAC to figure out what, what if anything could be done, you know, if they could address the language so it wasn't a no way hose for the 20, you know, that it's gone and that we would reflect that in the recommendation to the council on this one goes back to them with this concern. And so I wasn't just going to say, we like everything but not this one but, but more the concern about the wording not, not the concept of forming the district, potentially for forming the district so, but it was a different kind of wording on what we would recommend to the council. And I did, I did understand if Bob I can just respond I did understand that I was wondering if we could make a full recommendation to the council that included sort of, you know, concerned about that wording. Yeah, I don't know. This is why I brought it up because I don't know which one is more appropriate. But I do look at my other concern and looking at the appropriation transfer order it, it literally says East Amherst local historic district which was not actually the title of the project and I think also miss implies what's going on with that it's the committee and hiring of a consultant to do things and, you know, this is not forming a local historic district I don't want as as Bernie said I don't want any indication that this is endorsing a local historic district although the structure historical structure reports that would be created from this could be valuable. I think we need to be very clear as to what is going on with this 20,000 number one and I don't know whether the appropriate thing to do when there's a concern about the language of the application is to say no to the money. Make a recommendation of not approving this and say come back with an application that doesn't use in Bernie's words toxic language. Whether it's to approve the project and the money for the project because the project is worthwhile, along with some sort of statement that says, we do not endorse or condone the language in the application. I don't know which one is more effective or valuable, which is why I brought it up. Bernie. Well, my thing would be simply to, we can do one of two only things. We can forward this order to the council with the recommendation that they approve everything except the $20,000 and outline the reasons why we're not an approval of this, or we can send it back to the. I think we're on shake your grounds if we send it back to the, to the committee. You know, it's up to the committee has a certain degree of independence and what it comes down to is the appropriated authority whether it's town meeting or town council gets to say yes or no to the projects in a wholesale they can't amend them. They can't again increase them and they can't amend them. So it's my preference would be that we advise the council that we are not in it we are in agreement with the record recommendations except for the East Amherst local historic district. And the reason why we're not supporting the East Amherst local historic district is one. This is the wording here is not accurate. This was a proposal for a historic structures study, which would be the precursor to any attempt to form a historic district that's one. And two, the language that was used in the application suggests that this is being done as a way to further Amherst history and distinction but to inhibit or limit development and that's not something that we're willing to endorse. The other thing would be is that, you know, we send this forward order forward and say to the council. You know, I'm in the order to take this out and let. Let's see pack wrestle with it. And I can always bring it back. Andy. I agree with the concept that Bernie is generally putting forward because what we would really want to do is give the applicant. There's no opportunity to amend the language but if they're not willing to accept. The suggestion we're making for a change in language. I think we need to know that from the from the source you need to get to the get to the original applicant and make sure that the applicant is really on board with the change that we think is necessary. So, I guess I would tend to recommend everything except that one line to tell them why we're not. We could go ahead and notify the committee on by the finance committee notifying the committee is to the reasons why and say that if they and the applicant can come to an agreement on amended language. That we would still have the opportunity to change to recommend a different outcome for a different application within and get it done for the end of the fiscal year. Okay. Does someone want to make a motion to that effect? I agree. I think that's what we should do. Bob, I'm prepared to but I want to make a slight change to what Bernie said. You know, I think the concern is the language in the application is negative about all recent change and suggest and suggest the goal is to inhibit all development. You know, they didn't explicitly say no development but just not, you know, not to be as sweeping but the word suggest so that's the way I would word or sending it back. If people are comfortable with that I can. That's that's certainly that's certainly within the letter and spirit of what I was suggesting I was. So I make a motion to approve. I got a can you scroll just up a little bit. What would be to recommend. Yeah, I make a motion to recommend that the council approve appropriation and transfer order FY 2507 a with the exception of the $20,000 for a study for a potential East Amherst local history district. The concerns. We recommend that that item be removed from the approved list. The concerns with that let's let's let's include that part in the reports or your motion would be to recommend approval of the order with the exception of the East Amherst local historic district and the amount of $20,000. Okay. Period. Yeah. And I wanted to word it accurately though so the study to consider an East. I realized that's not what it says but as long as we 20 say 20,000 so we're accurate in our wording about what it is. Okay. Yeah, I would I think that's correct procedure and what I would then consider doing is having a second motion that the committee. Then would essentially move that it communicate something to the CPA committee regarding modifications that it recommends so that the project itself can be. You know, we considered before the end of the grant year. So can we do that motion second and point of order. I think we just need a second on your motion first Kathy. There a second. I was going to get. Thank you. And then I was going to make a comment. Yeah, I think I agree with Andy a second motion, but what I wonder is whether that second motion is also a recommendation that the council communicate to the CPA committee, not that the finance committee communicate. I feel like it should be coming from the council, not. The finance committee. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So let's why don't we, we vote on the motion. Does is there any other comment on the motion, the one at hand. Okay, so why don't we will start I'll start I'll I'll say yay. Council Hennecke. Hi. Matt support. Kathy. Yes. Bernie support. Councilor Walker. Yes. Andy. Yes. Okay, so it's unanimous. Now the second. Does someone want to put some language forward for the second, which is for the council to. I would recommend to communicate to CPAC our concerns. I can take a stab at that and everyone can edit my words. I make a motion that we recommend that the council communicate with CPAC to concerns about the $20,000 award for a study for an East. Society. The first is that the way it was worded in the financial order implied that it already exists. It needs to be changed to the study. The second. Is the language in the application is negative about recent changes and suggests the goal is to inhibit all development. Is there a second. Okay. Any additional discussion. Okay. Why don't we vote on the motion then. Council Hennecke. Hi. Matt. Support. Kathy. Yes. Bernie. Support. Councilor Walker. Yes. Andy. Yes. And I vote yes. So again, we have a unanimous vote. And two sports. So I think that's it on CPA. Does anyone else. Say anything more about CPA. No, I don't know. You know, and when you write up the report, Bob, I think it was generally an excellent set of projects so that, you know, I would put some. General positive wording on our. It, it was quite well balanced and a lot of it just something that says something nice about the and we thank CPA for their work, you know. Yes. Okay, I will do that. So the next item was the going to be the audit, which is not ready. So why don't we discuss our budget review process. What we've done in the past is we've divided up the budget into, you know, by by by department. And we each one of us each, each person on the on the committee would take one department and take a deep dive in into that particular part of the of the budget and take questions from the other committee members. And then kind of submit those questions to the department and have them when they come before us, they would have these questions ahead of time for the most part. I don't know whether that is the way we want to go ahead. I'm open to anyone suggestions. I know it's a very tedious process for us and for the staff. And so if there's any way that you can think of to streamline things. Maybe, well, any, any, I'm open to suggestions. So feel free. Kathy. Yeah, I don't. I want to make sure I word this in a way that it's not negative about any element of what our town is doing, but we have some departments that are one person or two person departments. And we don't give them completely equal time, but we do divide a time and then we have departments that are a major share of our funds. And I think the departments that are a major share of our funds. Aside from what they're currently budgeted for hearing from them about either the stress of current staffing, turnover, other things that we wouldn't naturally get because although we're dealing with a budget we can't easily. We can't increase any amount of money that's been allocated to them. So I don't know whether there's a way of grouping what I'll call the smaller and and then so removing some of the meetings and then leaving some time with the others where the understanding is respond to the questions that we've presented and then talk a little bit about, you know, from the ground level up to us about their budget so that's one thought the second. And I have no idea how we live with this is we know the budget guidelines, despite the increase to 4% are a major source of concern for the schools, particularly the regional schools. So that seems that's going to need, we're going to need some guidance on how we even have a discussion about that, because the town, unless Paul miraculously finds a million dollars. The town doesn't have a place for what the school committee seems to be suggesting would be a budget that's coming to us. So that's where I don't know how we handle that one. But we can't avoid that discussion so we just have to have it. And I've been actually looking at budgets and issues of staffing and, you know, is there some belt tightening that could happen, but I'm not sure I don't think it comes to a million. So that's just my, my thinking about this. And, and, and in the meantime, I mean there's not much of a meantime between now and May. And if the work like Andy talked about the work at MMA if if chapter 70 miraculously had a chunk more money if something could come that would ease the stress in the schools. It would be great. So I would schedule them later rather than earlier. And when we're meeting. So I'll stop talking there because those are my thoughts on fewer meetings but more focus. Yeah, Councilor Hanneke. Yeah. So, this is my first year on finance so I've come in and out of the budget sort of meetings in May from finance committee when it's held them on departments I'm interested in so I'm not fully, you know, engrossed in what finance has done in the past, but a couple of things. I'm curious whether finance has ever actually taken our budget guidelines, looked at the manager's budget and made an affirmative determination if that the manager's budget meets the guidelines. Because, you know, the department meetings are great, but from my experience. Many of the questions are, and those meetings happen too late because the budget's the budget. And we can't really, I mean we can decrease it. But if it meets the financial guidelines that we've issued. Do we have a reason to decrease it right have we ever has finance ever sort of made that determination and so that's sort of where I'm starting with is shouldn't we first be comparing the budget to the financial guidelines and saying it meets our guidelines or it doesn't meet the guidelines. And then I think the question becomes what do we do about all the questions we have about the individual departments and when are they most appropriate to happen and I'm just not sure that it's most appropriate or most appropriate it's not the right word, most useful for them to happen in May. After a budget is in front of us versus in the time where we're developing budget guidelines and before we're developing guidelines to be able to ask more general questions about departments. In the vein of what Kathy just indicated about where is the stress what is the staffing, what, what issues are you having those much more general ones and so I guess I kind of like to see a much more streamlined focused may on does the budget meet the guidelines and then maybe move a lot of these department meetings to August, September, when we can talk in more generalities in order to develop the guidelines for the next year. First of all, it just doesn't point out that the way we've organized the department presentations was by functional area in the past so we do public safety, all in a bundle and we do the and you track the budget and it comes out of the budget which really is organized around what the state requirements are the local services and how they organize presentations of budgets so that sort of filters down to the committee but we don't have to do it that way. So I just want to point that out. The other, and I do think that it's right that man is good point that we sort of know that the budget just by looking at it, and by the presentation from town manager that it is responding to the guidelines. And, but the, there are a number of departments that are pretty straightforward we spend a lot we spend time on them and take their time. And really need to think about that. The schools is the big issue that I think Kathy's right which is really when I raised by hand. And the timing problem is the regional schools. And we can't avoid the fact that the regional school issue has to be dealt with in line with the other town meetings in the other three towns and the regional school process because once three towns have approved the budget it's done, unless except for the question of the assessment methodology which takes four towns to approve. And I think that that's where the big pressure is going to be that's what the million dollar request is about. So, I think that it's important that we think about that and recognize that we always take that out of cycle and take it first because of the fact that it coincides with the process and both three town meetings in in pounds that are the other part of the region. Yeah, that is a that's a that's a good point Andy, we can't really postpone our discussion of that to a later date because there is no later date really anyone else have any thoughts. Okay, well, I think I just I don't think we need to decide this now I just thought I wanted to start the process of thinking about it, I will write down a couple of thoughts about, you know, how we might proceed. And I'll bring the points up that that Councilor Hanna get raised as well. So, Kathy. Yeah, I don't want to stop the conversation on this because I was going to bring up another topic and it would be a 48 hour rule but not really it's like future agenda item kind of things so Andy if you're still speaking on this goat before me. Yeah, no, I think that we need to actually just make sure that we schedule the regional budget presentation pretty quickly and that we think through very carefully how we're going to approach that. In the information that we're asking we can't delve into the budgets of the school committee, because it's really ultimately their decision as to what they do. So it's not that you can say, Oh, why do you need this item or why do you need that item and try and second guess their budgets but on the other hand. I think we do have to make the point that has concerned me for several years about the schools that there's a trend, and they just continue to put together budget proposals for the towns and for us. It's not a strategy that are what they a strategy for the year at hand, but they don't think ahead. It's not a long term strategy of what it is that we're doing. And we've pointed out a year ago that you know this train wreck was coming. And here we are with the train wreck and they didn't do anything differently except put together a budget based upon the same principles that they use every year, level services cost of local services and what cuts are necessary. And Bernie can go next. Bernie. Thank you. Yeah, this, I mean the budget reviews are kind of they're an interesting thing because it's not like the finance committee is shaping the budget, the finance committee is commenting on the adequacy of the budget and the judgment of the, you know, the town manager's ability to put this stuff together. The other thing that we do do is we do expect each of the departments to manage with the amount of money that's been allocated. The school committee seems to think it's an exception to that. And I frankly was very troubled by the remarks that were made that, well, we're going to add a million dollars into it and let them figure out how to fund it. That's not how you manage a budget. So I think the suggestion that we for the future that department heads get interviewed in September, October when there's the opportunity for the finance committee in particular and the council after that to make recommendation to the manager that you really need to pay more attention here. We make these adjustments there. What we're doing now is just saying, yeah, this looks adequate. So it's a strange situation to be in and I do agree that we have to have the school discussion up front and that's 60% of our budget, 60% of our revenues go there. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. I agree. We should be. I guess it's technically asking the manager to forward the regional school budget to the council for referral to finance committee sooner rather than later so we can start on those discussions. I think it would be valuable. And I think there also has to be either a public hearing or a public forum. I'm not sure which and we should get that on a schedule, probably sometime in April. We probably need to discuss from a finance committee point of view. If there's any. Recommendation from finance committee is to when it thinks the council should vote on a regional school budget and when it thinks finance should make a recommendation looking at when the other town are holding their town meetings. I also like a discussion, although I can make suggestions now as to who from the school district and school committee we asked to show up to our discussion on the budget. In the past I think we've generally had the superintendent and the finance director I'm not sure there is a finance director at the schools right now, but given the school committee. The regional school committee is the body that voted not to follow our financial recommendations guidelines. I think it would be valuable to invite members of the regional school committee to the hearings. Kathy. I am staying on this topic. If we put that together. The other thing I'd like to do is gather our questions sooner rather than later, including if we have requests for data because often we requested data that's trend data that wasn't readily available in terms of in this case hand and yes, some of us can go find it on desi maybe, but having it be, you know, not codified by the school so I would just like to gather some of that, or those questions earlier. And so the team, I know how stress they stretched and stress they are in the staffing because the acting superintendent, as far as I know is still the finance director so with it, there is a team working with him but you know Doug made the decision in the four towns meeting when someone said I'm looking at enrollment after the last four or five years, and it's down and it looks like employment is up staffing is up and Doug quietly said yes actually the student to teacher ratio has declined. I mean, in a, in a classroom and a classroom level but I just think trying to get some sense of two of what lies underneath these numbers without going to individual lines. And so just gathering our questions earlier, so that we can get some response on these you know that the what I mentioned last night and I probably will just say it again is when I look at what the charter school is taking out of the region. In terms of per student. And then I look at the charter operating budgets, we're overpaying them, you know, in terms of their operating costs, but we're helping because other towns don't pay as much because their average costs are lower. You know, so the kids coming I just picked one or two schools the kids coming from South Hadley the amount they're sending to a specific charter school is much less than what we're sending so we, we are in fact creating a margin in the schools I mean so there's just many ways of looking at this is this isn't right the way it's working. And it is one of those. It's a long term stretch, so it's a structural. I'm going to jump in with the point of order here I don't want the committee to get too far into the weeds about the regional school budget when you know the discussion is about the, the process. I just want to point out that we're, we're getting into it a little bit and, and also in terms of scheduling. Right now, we're expecting Doug to present the regional school budget on April 1 and Bob and I had to discuss potentially April 29 Monday evening public hearing on the regional school budget. So your answer to getting the questions early is like that we'd have to have them now. Thanks. Thanks. So does everyone agree with the schedule that that Athena just talked about I mean we have opportunity to go to do it earlier. If people want to do it. We can begin our review on a meeting on April 2. I think we can. We could begin the review. If Doug presents it on the first we can start looking through it. I don't know that we'll be ready to discuss it on the second we may have to live with it for a while. So we've we had scheduled that for the 16th. Just to give people a couple of weeks to live with the budget. Does that make sense or we to people what I mean we can we can come back and we can revisit this but. Andy, any thoughts. I think we have to have it also a question as to whether we need to move the. Hearing to an earlier date. I suspect that the hearing is going to. Generate as much interest as the ARPA funds. Discussion did at the council meeting last night. And that we're going to hear a lot and. There needs to be. Question and arm. You know, as matter of process whether. There has to be some time to. Deal with the repercussions or the follow up to whatever happens at. At the hearing. So I just wanted to put that out there for just consideration. I just wanted to talk about process. I had discussed the 29th, because the week before is the first night. I think of Russia, Shawna and the week before that is a school vacation week. So if the committee was interested doing on a, on a different evening. I can pull for dates. We had selected a Monday evening. Rather than the committee's regular meeting time to improve public access. Any thoughts. Yeah. I was just going to try and confirm when, when Athena named a Monday night. This is, it's being called. As a finance committee public hearing, right? We're not trying to put it on. At a council meeting. Well, the council might, it might be dual noticed, but it's not being tried to be at a council meeting. So what we had talked about in the past. Was. That the hearing is required by the charter to be a finance committee hearing. In the past we have. Posted it as a finance and council hearing. Because I think we've always done it before a council meeting. But it doesn't need to be a council meeting. This is an opportunity for. Members of the committee and counselors who wish to attend to hear it. And there's not a discussion. Needed on that evening. So. The idea this year was supposed to, as just a finance committee meeting and invite counselors to sit in the audience to listen. So. I guess. You know, I. I would like to see it, I think before April 29th, because we can't really have a good day. Discussion and finance until we've had that public hearing. On it. I mean, we can have a good discussion, but we can't finish our discussion until after the public hearing. And it's my understanding that two of the towns are having their town meetings on the 27th. Of April. Am I, I think I'm correct on that. And the other one is sometime in May. Which means. We would already have their results before we even hold our public hearing. Which seems kind of strange to me. Not, you know, versus voting. Sometime after. We know the results, but I feel like holding the public hearing before the town meetings, other town meetings have voted on the regional school budget is more logical. If there's. No objection. I can pull the committee for evening dates. Before the 29th. And we can figure out what evening works for everyone. Yeah, I, I think, Athena, let's, let's see if we can get something before the. In something in the week after the week of April. One, I guess. There's a, there's a council meeting on the eighth. Is that correct? Maybe that week. Yes, that's right. Maybe that week we could, we could try to. Cause I agree with Andy that the. The, the, the, the public hearing is going to take a long time. Or we should expect it to take a long time. So I would think that we should have maybe a separate meeting. Just of the finance committee.  And just. Let people talk. Cause I think there'll be a lot of comment. So it sounds like I should pull for the week of April 8th. A different evening during the week of April 8th. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. Is that, does that sound okay to people?  I think that week or the week of the 15th. I know the week of the 15th is. School vacation week, but the hearing would be on zoom. So it's. A little less. I feel like it's a little less problematic to try to. Do a school hearing during school vacation week. When people can attend from anywhere. That doesn't mean it isn't problematic, but it's less problematic. Okay. I will pull from meeting dates for those two weeks. Okay. So does anyone else. Have anything else to say about this? I had a question about going back to the. When should we talk to the various department heads? Do. I don't have a problem with doing it in. The August, September timeframe. The question I have is whether we should. Not have those two weeks. Okay. So does anyone else have anything else to say about this? I had a question. About going back to the. When should we. Talk to the various department heads. To see whether we should. Not have those conversations in May. This year. And just have a review of the, the budget. As. Counselor Hanneke has suggested. To see whether it's within the, it meets the guidelines. Or should we. Sort of have a conversation with the department heads. For this year's budget and then talk about next year's budget. In September. And then talk about what the thoughts were on that. Kathy. I'm not sure what Mandy had in mind, but if we think of our guidelines. With the exception of town services, everything. It's this much. Library increase this much schools. Then we have a lot of wording about. Sustainability and roads are important and public safety. So that is one set of budgets. And so. There's one thing we could have a lot of conversation about. That is what Bernie just that leaves out. 62% or 65% of the budget. If we're putting the schools in another bucket. So I'm, I'm. Mandy, I'm not sure what you had in mind because our guidelines. Set up. You know, Uniformity. And we, you know, even if. You know, I asked quickly and said, forget it. You know, on library, but what is the light? What would the discussion about the library be? We, we said this much of an increase and they're good. That's what they're going to. No one's coming in under what we suggested. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But it's a group of activities. And that could be a discussion on. You know, what we're allocating to all of those other things. So I'll just stop there because it. It's a, it's one long meeting then, but it's not on multiple departments very easily. Councillor. The guidelines are very extensive. Some of them. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this one at 4% or lower is this one at 4% or lower. All of that. But others go to sort of how is the money being used. Where I think there could be some questions, but I don't necessarily think it has to be by department. Per se. You know, if. I'd have to go back and review the guidelines, but to talk about Kathy's sustainability. You know, give us information as to how this budget meets those guidelines on sustainability. We could potentially have a couple of meetings on different parts of the guidelines during the budget process. And then, you know, I guess one of the things I'm envisioning for department meetings, if we were to do that. Why I'm not sure they're necessarily helpful in May. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how. Instead of focused on the guidelines where we can write those things in about sustainability or public safety services or things like that. And I think if we do those, those meetings in September or October, we would be more focused and more forward looking on our questions. Less likely to potentially get into the nitty gritty that maybe the council is not supposed to be in on and more likely to be in the direction of the town when we're not staring at a number that has been proposed. When we're looking forward to that. So I think there could be a way to organize May. In a lot less meetings than finance has done in the past, but around different sections of the guidelines as it relates to the operating budget, the capital budget, any particular things we said we want to see focused on and things like that. So it wouldn't necessarily be one long meeting. But I think it could be split. But I think it would take a lot less pressure off finance to meet twice a week for four weeks. Because we might be able to do it in four meetings then instead of eight or nine. Anyone have any. I like it. Mandy, that was helpful because you're picking out something in the guidelines that's cross cutting to have. Yeah, rather than. Yeah. Well, okay. There's, there's a lot of thoughts swirling through my head. This has been a very good discussion. So I think we should, you know, maybe just. Finish up this part of the discussion. You know, we have time to really plan what we want to do in May. So I just wanted to get started on it. And I think we've gotten some really good ideas. And I'd like, I'd like councilor Hanneke's idea of looking at sections of the guidelines. And seeing, you know, I want to sit down with the guidelines again and see if, you know, how would we do that? To make it meaningful. So. But this has been very helpful. So I've been checking on the participants. And we still have no public attendees other than Lynn. So there's really no need for public comment. And I don't think we saw the minutes. I don't think. Athena, do we have the minutes? I haven't seen the minutes of March 5th. So I haven't had a chance to review them. No, I don't, I don't have them in the packet. I, I didn't have a chance to put a packet together, but I do have drafts. So I'll get those to you. Okay. Thank you. So, um, Kathy, did you want to. Yeah, but I say Holly's hand went up. So let's take. I was just going to comment that it looks like Lynn's hand is up in the attendees. Okay. Okay. Lynn. Hi. First of all, I love this discussion about the guidelines and that was very useful for first. But my raise my hand. Earlier because, um, I personally believe that it is important for every council. Counselor to be visible during a hearing about the school budget. And, uh, as a counselor who would not be visible. Uh, it makes, doesn't make the audience feel like the rest of us are listening. So it's always a decision of the chair of the committee. And the committee as to whether or not they want to open that to as a committee of the whole, but I strongly urge it because I think, as I've said, it's important for the public to know we are all listening. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks you, Lynn. It's a good thought. Kathy. Mine is just a future agenda item for when you're working with all and Athena and the rest of the able town staff. I would like to get some sense of the buildings and where they are in terms of fire station and citing. And we're in. We are going to be where we see it in a spreadsheet, but just schedule something when it makes sense so that we have it on the list that we can hear whether there is a plan on making a decision. So that's it's just a request for an agenda item for what I would call the missing buildings. The plan for two more. You know, I do know what the plan, you know, the plan as of five or six years ago, but just, you know, trying to, to get some sense of after I serve out my third term, which will be seven years. Will I be leaving where there is actually momentum or will we still be talking about it. So, and that would be coupled with status of reserves, you know, on sort of money. So just sort of a robust discussion that allows for discussion. That's it. It's an agenda item for when it makes sense, but not next year. I agree has to be sooner rather than later. I have the same questions that you have, like, where are we going with these buildings. I mean, we didn't see, I didn't see the fire station in this, the JCPC report. I think it's because it's a five year plan so that I inferred it's in the tenure her, you know, it's in. You know, so in any case, yes, that's what the plan is and we need to know because I think we've, you know, I had a constituent say when they moved here, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago, they, they were promised a fire station. So, Andy, did you want to add. Yeah, no, I think that this is actually a good add on to the discussion to bring the capital projects in, because it circles back to the consequence of a regional budget being voted by the four towns. That adds $800,000 to our budget because then we have to cope with how do we pay for it and it ultimately comes down to one of three things either devastate the municipal budget. We go to reserves and then affects the capital projects, or we ask for an override and see if the voters will be able to go for that. And there's timing questions with that one. If you do an override, there's also when do you do the override, how does he get presented. So, this is a raising a whole lot of issues that I think that is a finance committee we need to get our hands around in a real discussion when it's on the agenda. And one of the factors that I just threw out there was the capital. And if we don't have a handle on the capital plan that Kathy was suggesting we need, then how do we address the question of what the effect would be of making a decision to use some of our current stabilization funds to fund that $800,000 or 850 or whatever. The exact amount is the VR share of the million dollars that the region would be voting that we would be obligated to pay. I think that it is important that we have that discussion and it may be important to have it soon enough that it is something that we can consider as we have this other discussion. I agree. I think if we're going to have it, we need to, you know, I'm looking at, you know, we're making a recommendation on the region school budget in the May 3rd, May 3rd meeting, we're going to have to have that discussion beforehand. So, let me ask Paul, Paul, do you think that the, that we'll have all the information available to, you know, we'll, we have the projections by that time in the next sort of two to three weeks. Projections for on the school. No, no, on the on the capital projects. It might be a challenge because we're really focused on the operating budget now. We're finishing up our budget hearings later this week. But I heard the entire discussion. I totally agree with your assessment of the timing of things. We're also are the bigger priority right now is to look at what a potential. Additional funding for the schools would look like we're projecting that out and projecting that out over multiple years. What that looks like. So we have a rough draft of that. Whether we could get it in April or not. I can't guarantee that just given the crunch of the budget, but I understand you'd want it in certainly in May. Okay. All right. Good idea. Anyone else have anything they want to say, add. Okay, well, thanks. It's been, didn't have that much to talk about today, but I think thought our discussion was very good. Very helpful. And we'll try to get these things scheduled out over the next couple of meetings. Right. With motion to adjourn. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask for that. Second. Okay. So we have a motion. Kathy. Yes. Bernie support. Matt support councilor Walker. Yes. Andy. Yes. I'm a yes. Councilor Hanneke. Hi. All right. We are adjourned at 315 p.m. Thank you.


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