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BOARD OF FINANCE -PUBLIC HEARING
MINUTES
APRIL 7, 2003
Tom Harrison, Chairman called the Public Hearing to order at 7:30 p.m. in the Community
Room, Avon Senior Center, 530 West Avon Road. He noted the presence of a quorum: Messrs. Gugliotti, Hooper, McGuff, Monts, Speich and Zacchio were in attendance. Mr. Harrison led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Mr. Harrison: Good Evening. We're going to have a slightly different procedure tonight than what we've been used to. In the past we've sort of broken up the presentations and taken some questions in between and then had another presentation and questions. What we're going to do tonight is have presentations by the Town Council, the Board of Education and a brief
presentation by the Board of Finance in sequence. Then, at the end of that process, we'll just
have an unlimited period of time for questions. As always, I assure you we will stay here as late as it takes so anybody who has a question will be heard. Another different procedure, some people have expressed a concern in the past that they are uncomfortable speaking in public, so we will have some blank cards if you would like to write out your questions to have them read for you. The cards will be on the table near the door. One thing we ask though is that you put your name and address on the card, as the speakers have to do as well. Just briefly on the proceedings, because some of you may not stay to the end, this is the Public Hearing required by the Town Charter where the presentations on the requested budgets are made and you have the opportunity to ask questions and seek clarifications.
After tonight, the Board of Finance will hold workshops which are meetings which are open to the public, but they are not Public Hearings, as such. They will be held Wednesday and Thursday of this week and then next Tuesday night, in the Avon Room at Town Hall. This is the large room down stairs at the back of Building #1. At a couple of these workshops, we'll try something different this year, as well; we will permit a period of time at the end of our meeting for public comment or questions. We have not done that in the past. This change is receptive to some of the comments that took place last year so we will have public comments at a couple of those workshops. At the final workshop, we will develop a recommended budget. That budget will then be presented at the Town Meeting the first Monday in May. Since we've gone to the Referendum procedure, there will be no vote taken at the Town Meeting, but we will adjourn the Town Meeting to the Referendum at which you can vote the
budget up or down. That's the schedule. In view of what happened last year, there seems to be some kind off confusion about the functions of the different boards and the roles they play, etc. Therefore, we've asked the Town Attorney, Dwight Johnson, to make a very brief presentation and explanation of the budget process, as it's spelled out in the Town Charter. That's the document that governs all of this.
Dwight Johnson: Thank you. Briefly, as Tom said, the Board thought it would be helpful if I briefly run through the process by which the Charter directs that the budgets be established. I think it's helpful in doing so to recognize that there are essentially two budgets that are put together by the Town and by the Board of Education initially and are then combined by the
Board of Finance and presented to the Town as a whole to vote on. What I'm going to do now, briefly, is run through the steps set forth in Chapter 9 of the Charter. By February 1st of each
year, each department and agency of the Town and the Board of Education provides expenditure
requests for the next year to the Town Manager. By March 1st , the Town Manager is required to provide to the Town Council a draft budget, which includes detailed information concerning expenditures, revenues and capital expenditures as well. The Town Council then reviews the
materials provided to it by the Town Manager and presents and recommends the budget to the Board of Finance with such modifications as the Town Council deems appropriate. However, the Town Council does not have the authority, under the Charter, to modify the Board of Education's portion of the budget, but can only make recommendations with respect to that portion. The Board of Finance then holds one or more Public Hearings (this is the Hearing we're holding tonight) to take input from the public concerning the budget. Any elector or tax payer of the Town, as provided under the Charter, may comment as a matter of law to the Board of Finance. After this hearing, the Board of Finance then conducts the workshops that Mr. Harrison talked about and consults with the Town Council and the Board of Education and determines
what revisions it wishes to recommend to the budgets which have been presented to it. Those revisions can affect what we call the Town's portion of the budget and the Board of Education's budget. At the conclusion of that process, the Board of Finance then recommends a budget for adoption to the entire town, the adoption to occur, or rejection to occur, at the Town Meeting. Copies of the recommended budget must be made available to the public in the Town Manager's office for public review. At the Town Meeting, the budget is received and a motion is considered to adopt it as recommended by the Board of Finance. As Mr. Harrison suggested, at that Town Meeting there is no vote on the budget; the vote will be postponed to a Referendum. In addition it is important to recognize that the Town Meeting is not a forum for making suggestions that would cause the Board of Finance to change the recommendations. Instead, it is a meeting at which the public learns about the proposed budget. Then
the Meeting is adjourned to a Referendum at which all the residents and tax payers can vote on the budget.
Mr. Harrison: Thank you, Dwight. The sequence tonight; Dick Hines will present a power point presentation of the Town Council's budget dealing with Town operations, Debt Service and Capital Improvements. Following that, Marty Toyen will be giving a power point presentation of the Board of Education's requested budget. Steve McGuff from our Board will then give a short power point presentation with some of the general observations and overview issues that the Board of Finance will take into consideration as it's reviewing your comments, etc. tonight. We'll start off with the presentation of the Town Council portion of the budget and I'll turn the meeting over to the Chairman of the Town Council, Dick Hines.
Dick Hines: I'd like to start off by introducing all the members of the Town Council. Diane Hornaday, John Carlson, Bill Shea, Joe Woodford and myself, Dick Hines. I thought before we start to look at the budget, it might be good to take a little bit of an overview of the revenue picture. The revenue picture applies to all of the budgets, not only the Town's portion but also the Board of Education's. Then I want to talk a little about how the Town Manager and the Town Council went about this past year making changes to the budget prior to this Public hearing and then go through the major pieces. Let's look at the revenue picture. One of the fortunate items for Avon is that we have a 3% increase in the Grand List which is a very fortunate thing to have tonight. However, we've lost some money in
the State Grants, which all Towns have. This loss does not have too great an impact for Avon since we receive very little from the State. Many of our neighboring towns and cities have not fared so well. One of the areas where we have a certain amount of money during the year, we try to invest it and like in your own personal life there are years when you get 7, 8, 9, 10% interest - today it's considerably down to the 1, 2% level so we have lost quite a bit of money in interest compared to previous years. This year the Town Manager worked with all his town departments and made them aware early on that it was going to be a difficult year because of the State budget problems and also the whole economic situation and they had to come in with lower budgets.
When the department heads come in with these budgets, they are looking at how do they provide the service they think the residents want. One thing that has changed over the years in my time in Government is that people seem to expect a lot more from town government today than they did years ago, whether it's in athletics, highway services, police services, ambulance services, schools - there is a greater desire among the residents. Then we have to look at the economic climate and say what can we afford? This year the Town Manager made some major reductions and also did the Town Council. The Capital Improvement Program, which is something you don't just reject, what you're doing is delaying those things. These are all items you need. It's like when you have a need for a new car, you put it off for a year or
so but finally you have to make that decision. The Town Manager also made major reductions in the Town Operating Budget, so before the Council ever saw the budget there was 3.8 million dollars reduced. That's a sizeable amount of money. Normally at this time of the year the Council would make very minor changes and bring it before the Board of Finance and the Town to hear their thoughts. This year with the economic situation of the Town, the State and the country we just could not do that. So we made major cuts and we took over $847,000 out of the Capital Program and $387,000 out of the Town Budget for a total reduction to date of over a million dollars. Whether we can take any more out or not, I don't know. We're going to have to work very closely with the Board of Finance on each of those programs.
This presentation shows the total budget of all the items that the Town Council has authority
over; it excludes the Board of Education. When you look at that it's a 7.11 % increase. First of all, the Town Council brought that down from something close to 9% and it's now a little under 6% with our reductions. The Sewer portion is pretty much a white wash that's covered by revenues from people who pay for this service in their sewer bills. The Debt Service is something we can't change. That covers all the projects that have been approved at Referenda by town residents, mainly the schools. I think at this point approximately 95% is for schools and 5% is for projects for the Town such as the sewers and the police station a few years ago. These are items we have already approved at Referendum and we can't reduce. The Capital Improvement Program is something we can always keep delaying, but there are problems as you'll
see as I go through these later. An awful lot of Capital programs are multi-year to get the funding taken care of. This is the projected Debt Service that we have in the Town, it's something we try to manage very carefully. It includes all the construction projects for the school additions, new schools over the years; it includes Debt Service on the Rhodes property we just purchased. In addition, we've included in here what we see as major debt that we see coming down the road, things we would like to go out to bid for. A million dollars in athletic fields at Fisher Meadows, we've included money in here for an expansion to the High School that we think is probably going to be needed and expansion at the library that's coming down the road. It may be several years before that happens, but we try to project what that will be and we have set that top piece as a sort of peak. What we want to do each year is put a certain amount of money in the budget to take care of the debt so it
doesn't have spikes, so it is properly laid out so it can be managed. This gives you an idea where the money is spent in the Town budget. You can also see this in Public Safety and Public Works, areas I'll be concentrating on tonight because they are the big pieces in the budgets and they also have some of the largest increases. We look at expenses by function and you'll see that Public Safety and Public Works are up about 8% and I'll be discussing this in more detail- why they will be going up and why we think it's important to do that. Most of the other items are within a reasonable number compared to the total of 9.6%. All of our efforts are broken down into services, the first
is Personnel Services. One of the problems we run into is in our pension funding. We try to have a certain rate of return on the pension funds each year. We work with actuarial services, we have guidelines, we have people, professionals in there to help us, we have a pension committee. However, as you know the income on investments is way down. We're seeing that, but we have an obligation to fund those pensions for our employees so we're having an extra $300,000 put in that fund this year. The next item is the Government Accounting Standards Board, they have put some new rules into effect and the best we can tell from our actuarial efforts is at the end of 2003 they will probably go into effect. It says if you have a retiree responsibility for health benefits, you have to start putting that money aside because that's a
liability. We're going to have to put some extra money in there this year. Our Workers’ Compensation is up and the medical insurance is up, but not as far as it's been up previously. If you look at our services and supplies, there are some large increases. Our insurance policy went up quite a bit this year; fire fighting costs are quite high, we have more fire hydrants. I'll talk more about the solid waste disposal program - it's costing more and more to transport refuse and the fees for disposal are also going up. We can no longer bury all of our refuse up at the town landfill, we have to transport it. We've got some increase in the computer aided dispatch and communication areas for the Police Department; we have more street lighting and street sweeping and basin flushing efforts on which costs are also going upwards.
In the Capital Outlay, we have some increases – fire prevention, computers; also, the Government Accounting Standards Board is saying we have to properly account for and take care of depreciation of all the equipment we have in our roads and highway department and what we really need is a software program that will allow us to monitor that and keep track of it and that's the software in that item. Now, I want to spend some time in both Public Works and the Police Department because that's where our major increases are. For many years we've been running with the same number of employees on the road portion of the budget. Public Works includes facilities, it takes care of mechanics, in the highway department they take care of all the vehicles for the Police Department, the Fire Department and the
Board of Education. In the road area, we've been staying at 10 or 11 people going back to 1978 and we are now recommending one new person to take care of all the increased roads we have here and the highways, and that's an increase. We've also had some additional work in the contracting services and the solid waste disposal. To give you an idea of what the highway department takes care of, we now have 96 miles of town roads; we have quite a bit of highway here in town that are managed by the State - Route 167 West Avon Road, Route 177 Lovely Street, Route 44, Route 10 and in addition to those we still have 96 miles to take care of. We take care of 57.5 miles of sanitary sewers, 28 miles of storm sewers, almost 2600 catch basins and about 131,000 sq.ft. of buildings and 800 acres of parks and athletic fields. I think in general we hear nothing but praise for that whole department for taking care of those athletic fields. It has become a service the residents seem to want and it's an
important part of our budget. This is what's driving us to have an additional employee in that area. Look at the cost for the Public Works, if you can remember this past year and think of all the snow removal we had - it actually comes out that about ¾ of it is being performed on overtime. Snow might start during the day, but at night they have to go out and start sanding, that's overtime. An awful lot occurs on the weekends so that quite a bit of it is on overtime and this year we have overrun our overtime account, what we budget for an average year. Hopefully, we won't need that tonight. One of the areas we have tried to improve over the years was to upgrade the trucks that we have that we use for town activities and for plowing. Many times during a snow storm we'll have a truck that will break down and have to be taken care of. We've worked over the years so that now the average truck is only 10 years old, many are a lot older than that and you can
see the year they we purchased and how that averages out. We put in a new truck last year in the budget, but we had to remove it due to budget concerns. We had two in the budget this year but we've already removed one and we think it's going to be critical to get one new one as the town grows.
Another area of concern - you all go out and buy gasoline, there's been a tremendous increase in cost. We buy it in bulk through the State, we don't pay any taxes, but it still costs us $1.025 and the extra you're paying is all taxes. That's a little eye opener because I don't think the average resident realizes how much tax they pay when they go to the pump. This affects not only the Highway Department, but the Police, Fire, all of our activities in Town. Another area that is increased in cost is the cost to send our refuse to Hartford to CRRA. The rate to dispose of refuse has gone from $51.00 to $57.00 per ton and it's now up to $64.00 per ton. A lot of that has nothing to do with the Enron situation, it's just the cost of operating going up. We actually have some plants in the State of
Connecticut, Southington, that are paying over $80.00 per ton right now so we're still ahead compared to other areas. This is a large increase and the transportation cost to the facility has also gone up. Just getting rid of recyclables has hurt us too, sometimes you can sell them and make a little money, sometimes you can't. Now it's just the cost of transporting them that is the problem. In fact, some States have already looked into the possibility of stopping recycling bottles because of the cost. We will keep our program going, but at an increase in cost. I mentioned since about 1978, the number of people working on road maintenance has been between 10 and 11 - we want to add one person there. This also applies to the Police Department. Between 1986 and 2003 our population has gone from a little over 13,000 to a little over 16,000 and we project that's going to continue. That's been a tremendous effort for the Police Department and if you look at the number of businesses in
Avon along Route 44, Simsbury Road, and all of the activities in Avon Park North and South, that has increased. During that entire time we have been staying with the same number of Police Patrolmen and I think we'll recommend an increase in that area. If you look at the calls the Police respond to, that's over 30,000 now and it's been in that area for quite a few years. That does not include all the calls that come into the dispatchers, it could be twice that many and more. People call to get directions, to ask if the mountain is open, what are the landfill hours? We have five civilian dispatchers who are constantly busy, these are all calls the police department has to respond to and it's pretty steady year after year. In addition the number of medical emergencies has gone way up. This is something that when I moved to Avon, no one seemed to be upset if you called an ambulance and it took 15 to 20 minutes to get there - now everybody wants it in 8 minutes. Well, that costs
you money so now what do you do, you have ambulances sitting out there around town waiting to respond to an emergency. All this costs money and when you have the number increasing because you also have an aging population, that costs more and is another increase in cost in Public Safety. During that whole time, from 1986 to 2002, we've had the same number of patrol officers. The Police Chief has said to us that it is getting more and more difficult to give the same level of service that they gave years ago with the same number of police officers out on the roads. We are recommending an increase in the number of patrol officers from 16 to 17. How do we dispatch our patrol officers? There's a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 6 allowed; we never go below the minimum of 2 officers from 11 p.m. to 3 p.m. or 3 officers from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. which is the most crucial shift. Police officers also have other things to do - they have other activities, training, time off, going to court, so you
can't have the maximum on at all times. We're at the point now where we have done everything we can to try to allocate those officers and now we just think we need one more. At a time like this, when we are putting two new people on the Town's payroll let me give you an idea how the Police Chief feels about this. Recently, after the Town Council decided we had to cut the Town Budget more and we had to take something from Public Safety, the Chief offered to take a Police cruiser out of the budget in the hope of getting that patrol officer. He feels that's in the best interest of the Town of Avon. What we are proposing tonight is not staff people; these are people who are going to work out on the road, Plowing, patrolling the roads; this is not a staff person. If it were a staff person, the Council would have cut them out right away. These are people we really think we need, we feel it is important and that it is worth delaying some Capital programs to try to do that.
Now let me talk a little about the Capital Program. The third chart I showed you talked about the reductions the Town Manager had done on both the Capital and Operating budgets and also what the Town Council had reduced. I'll show you both of them because these are very important items that we would have liked to go along with but we just can't do it. On the road surface improvements we had $483,000 and when the State finalized their budget they took additional money from our Town Road Aid program; that's the difference between the $843,000 and the $378,000. The Sewer Pump Station, this is year 2 of 4, and that cost will be recovered by the sewer assessment and the user fees that are paid. There is also a master sewer facilities plan which maybe we can do out of the revenues, but if not, we will simply
have to delay that. We don't really have a good overall plan for the Town and we should have one. Field lighting at Sperry Park - this is year 2 and this is a wonderful opportunity because the Little League paid half the cost last year and this is our share. This is already a commitment and we can't get out of it. The floor Lift in the Public Works garage is a very key item, a safety item. We had it in the budget last year but we couldn't fund all of it so we delayed it for a year. If we put our fire trucks on today, which are getting much larger and heavier, those lifts start coming down. This is a very dangerous situation for our workers and we feel we have to do it. If we go to the Board of Education they requested replacement of the gym floor at the high school. The Superintendent of Schools had an expert come in and look at the whole facility and he made a recommendation to Dr. Kisiel that for a reasonable amount of repair work, he could keep it going for a couple of years, so
we have pulled that item out. Another item out is that we may be putting a new roof on the High School Gymnasium - or making some additions there and we questioned whether to put money into a new roof until we did a total job. Dr. Kisiel has come up with a very good alternate and he feels pretty confident, so we were able to bring that down to zero. For the last few years there has been money in the budget for the bath rooms at Roaring Brook and Avon Middle School. Both these facilities had renovations that did not include these bathrooms - everything you hear about them sounds pretty bad. They do minor repairs now and then but they are still bad and hopefully we can move ahead on this. That was all on facilities, now we go on to equipment. This is the third year on the fire ladder truck - what we try to do on all of this equipment is to purchase it on a cash basis so we usually do fire trucks over two year periods. When we get the ladder truck, our Town Manager did an
excellent job with the manufacturer to get three years, at no interest. This is the last year on this item. The Fire Department wanted to get into a Bishop Lane cistern system but we have had to pull it out. It's something that is worth while and it will be needed in the future. Last year we had a request in to get a new dump truck for plowing because we thought we needed it but we had to pull it out due to the budget reductions that we had to make. This year the request was in for two trucks; the Town Council has already pulled one out and we would like to keep that last one in there. We think it's needed because these are the kinds of services you expect in snow removal. The Board of Education had a request in for a new pick up truck and we pulled it out due to budget concerns. Last year we bought a new pick up truck for the Board of Education to go with the Thompson Brook School and that was the only truck we bought last year. On the non-recurring fund, this is the second year
of revaluation. We have to do that periodically, I believe right now it came out four years for us and this is the second year. You will probably receive your notice of the revaluation of your property later this year, probably in November or December. This will be effective for the October 1st, 2003 tax year but it won't be due until July of 2004. We also are in the second year of the Lakeview Water extension. They have pollution problems up there, the sanitary sewers are mixing with the water and the water was unfit and many residents in that area just can't afford to go out and have the Avon Water Company come in and put in a new water line and pay for. There are people there who don't have enough equity in their homes to do that so the Town is helping out with that situation. We agreed last year that we would pay up front for the water lines to go in, pay the water company and we would assess the residents of Lakeview over a period of years. We will recover
that cost over time but it will take a few years. This is the first time we've done this over a period of years. In the past we've done it for a year or so for people who needed immediate help and those were areas where people who lived there had fairly good income and who could afford to pay us back in a short time. In this case we didn't think so, so we're doing what we think is best to help them out.
Several years ago we had an overall plan for the Town Hall showing what should be done over the years. We made some changes and improvements and if you ever went into Engineering, Planning & Zoning, Finance departments you'd find them extremely crowded. They don't have adequate facilities for storage, for desks, for conferences, for customers so we started three years ago to do renovations to buildings 5, 6 and 7, to bring them into conformance with disabilities acts and we started on it in a good year - we gutted it all out - last year we had $400,000 in and we cut it all out. This year we've already cut $300,000 out but what we'd like to do is to close up this area for the safety and environmental standpoint. It's open and we think we should spend a minimum amount and close in that area. I don't know when we'll be
able to do the rest of it, but the Town employees have been good and understanding in putting up with the situation. The Library had asked for $75,000 for preliminary design on expansion. The library has done a very good job of getting volunteer work - an engineer did some work and came up with a feasible plan but it will be a couple of years before we can do anything just from an economic standpoint so we decided it did not make sense at this point to go out and do the design study, but concentrate our efforts on maybe acquiring some property adjacent to the library which we think we need for parking, try to get that first so we have removed the design work. I don't think there's any problems with the program, we're still moving ahead and we can have the Town Manager start talking to the adjacent property owners.
Secret Lake is an area where we try to help them out each year with some efforts, road work, etc. They want to do an overall drainage master plan. If you've ever gone out there you'll see the homes are very close. They aren't sure where all the drainage is going into the lake; this would be a fine study but we had to cut it out this year. If you look at all of these totals, it is still 1.404 million. To give you a summary, this is everything excluding the Board of Education so when you see that 7.11 % that doesn't include the Board of Education. I think after the Board of Ed's presentation, the Board of Finance will show you the total which includes all of the efforts that the Town Council is responsible for which are these, and the Board of Education. Thank you.
Mr. Harrison: Thank you, Dick. Now we'll have the Board of Education's presentation. Pam Friedman, Chair of the Board of Education will lead off.
Ms. Friedman: Good Evening. I would like to introduce Dr. Kisiel, Mr. Franzi, members of the Board of Education Marty Toyen, Dave Shopis, Peggy Roell, Bernadette Mayer, Sue Henneberry, Mike Eagen, Tom McNeill and Tom Carey. It is my pleasure to give some introductory comments to the budget this evening. This budget was a collective, bipartisan effort which was unanimously approved by the Avon Board of Education. I want to thank the members of the Avon Board of Education and the Superintendent and Mr. Franzi for their help in developing the budget. These certainly are difficult economic times and the Board of Education recognized our opportunity, our responsibility to exercise fiscal restraint in putting this budget together. The increase in this year's budget is a result of several things:
negotiated salary increases, fixed costs such as insurance, utilities and transportation and an increase in personnel to accommodate the 120 new students in our district this year. So, contrary to the economy, our business is booming with nearly a 4% increase in enrollment. We are challenged each year to keep up with the rising enrollment and the increasing demand for technology in our schools and in our society. In the area of technology, the Avon schools significantly trails the State average of 4.1 students per computer with our average of 7.7 students per computer. This deficiency is a product of prior budget pressures in previous years and now it represents a critical need. Last year's budget did eliminate some essential items that need to be addressed this year. Many of our text books are outdated and our mastery test scores support the need for a new Kindergarten through Grade 4 program. Unlike brick and mortar issues, the need for curriculum advancements requires regular
revisions and updates of programs that need to be addressed. These issues do not disappear but rather leave our existing students at a competitive disadvantage. While we're not ignoring expenditures in the area of proactive and preventative maintenance, the dollars in these categories have been budgeted at minimum levels. This year's budget again continues our efforts to keep special education costs to a minimum by educating many of our students within the district instead of possibly using out placement services. Our community has entrusted us to provide the resources for the education of our children. We, therefore, cannot jeopardize the education of our students because of a short term budget problem. An academic year in a child's life cannot be made up. Even in difficult economic times, investing in children, investing in our future, is an investment we cannot afford not to make. I'd like to make one further comment before I turn the meeting over to Mr. Toyen, I know the
Avon Taxpayer's Association has distributed a handout talking about employee salaries and insurance benefits and averaging the Board of Education and the Town and coming up with a 33% average across the district. I think it's important to note that we also handed out our own information this evening. There are extreme inaccuracies that exist in that handout. The discrepancies include we do not pay teacher retirement, we do not pay social security benefits; that's a large, large group of our employees. In fact our average benefit cost across the school district is 15%. Our average benefits per family are $8,800, not the figures you see in the handout that was distributed so I think it's critically important for you to get the accurate information. When we saw that handout we were extremely disappointed because we had tried to provide accurate information to all people concerned so that they could make an informed decision and when we contacted a member of the Taxpayer's Association
her comment was "I have my role and you have yours". I'd like to go on record as saying that the Board of Education's role is to provide the most accurate information possible so that people will make an informed decision, whether you agree with us, or whether you disagree with us, we'd like you to have those facts. So, to present those facts now, Mr. Toyen.
Mr. Toyen: Thank you Mrs. Friedman, and Good Evening. We begin with a slide of what we are requesting. Our current budget is $30,291,000; we're proposing $33,262,000 or just under 3 million dollars in increases, or 9.61%. Why the increase, what are the reasons for the increase? The fIrst one basically is student involvement. That is the driving factor in our budget. In 1993 we had slightly over 2,000 students (2,100 in that range) in this coming year we're going to be about 3,200/3,300 students. That's a 1,000 student increase in that period of time from '93 to
'03 -a 50% increase. The population of the Town, as Mr. Hines spoke of the population growth, I think his slide went back to '86 time frame and when you look from '86 to the present we had approximately a 2,500 increase in citizens in the Town. That represents 1,000 students that came in that period of time. Another reason, one of the things I think you should recognize, is that the Board of Ed, when we looked at new programs and new issues, we try and analyze whether or not we have a successful program and whether or not before we spend money -where is that money going, how is it going to be used and be able to track the effectiveness of the expenditure. This is one example, this is a curriculum program. In Grade 4 and you'll see grades 4, 6 and 8, and what it was, we implemented a change in our language arts curriculum.
We felt that our students, the school population in Avon, could in fact, we wanted to change our curriculum and make it more rigorous. When we did that we then tracked the performance of the curriculum vs. the test scores the students were receiving. This is the same group of students when they went from 4th grade to 6th grade and then on to 8th grade and you can see we have a significant improvement in reading and in writing. That's because we implemented a curriculum change. One of our requests this year is a curriculum change in mathematics. First it was reading and now we'd like to implement a mathematics program. This is an important slide because in looking at the numbers (this is prepared by the State of Connecticut, and it comes from the strategic school profile that was done by the State Board of Education). The four columns represent the district itself, that's Avon. The pre K to 12th grade districts, there are some districts out of 169 communities that do not have a full
K to 12 system so that column represents only those districts that have full service. The next group represents our ERG, Educational Reference Group, and these are towns that compare with Avon such as Simsbury, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, etc. Most of those towns are in fact located down towards Fairfield County. Then All Districts represents the entire 169 towns within the State. When we look at the numbers you'll see "Where are we spending" instruction, staff and services, this is for the year 2001/2002, that's the most current available data, 5,100 for us, 5,500 for Full Service Districts, ERG is 6,000, All districts in the State 5,500. As you can see we are approximately 400 below what all districts - every district in the State, we are below them by $400. If you look at the other operations, our Plant Operation $900 vs. $943, $1,000, $936. Again where we are spending our money, are we spending it wisely? Just look at how we are spending it, we are again about $400
less per student than all districts. You can walk through each one of these, our administration $746, $900, almost $1,000, $946. Again compared to all districts we're $200 per student less for administration and support services. We try to put the money in front of the students. When you go down to the totals one line from the bottom, we are at $8,742, all full system districts $9,261, ERG Group up $10,113, All Districts in the State $9,200. We're comparing eastern Connecticut, northern, western, southern, to us - all districts. We are approximately $500 per student less than all the communities, on average, in the State. Are we spending our money wisely? We on the Board of Ed think we are and we think we're getting a top performing educational district and spending $500.00 less per student than the average for all the communities in the State. So then you say where's the money going, what's
happened? If you look at land, building and Debt Service, currently we're spending $2,542, all of the other communities are down in the $1,000, $1,100, to $1,200 and $1,300 range. We are spending because of the new school we added, the renovation of the High School, Pine Grove -this may even include some money for Thompson Brook. You're looking at $1,300 to $1,400 per student on that line item. When you look at approximately 3,000 students in the school district times 1,300, we're spending 4 million dollars in debt service. Did we need it? The answer is Yes. We had a thousand students come into the school district in ten years, on an average of 25 students per grade, that's over 40 class rooms we've added and then you have to add all the other services that go with that. I just want to show you where the money is
going. We are a service based operation - where is our dollars for the budget this year? As you can see, salaries $1,300,400. or 4.3%. New personnel, we really need to add personnel in certain class rooms, we're looking at approximately $651,000, or 2.1% of the budget. New programs, $271,000. Fixed Charges and those are all types of insurance, healthcare, workers comp, general liability, life, etc. $231,000 or .8% and then equipment numbers and that is all types of equipment not just computers but all types of equipment. It could be labs, could be musical instruments, etc. We're looking at $161,000, or .5% in the increase. What are the programs that we are looking at. Now, the first one is World Languages Grade 5 - that is a program we wanted to start last year but because of budget cuts, we pulled that out as a program - we have it back in again this year and I think as Mr. Hines stated there are programs that we want to do, that we need to do, just as he talks about road
maintenance, there are programs in the schools that have the same impact. There are programs that we would like to implement, that are necessary for the betterment of the student. K-4 mathematics. That slide that talked about reading and writing, this is the new program. Again this was in last year's budget, it's back again this year. We really would like to implement that program. As you see it's approximately $125,000. High School Tech Engineering Program, $89,000 that's a program for we removed money out dealing with technology equipment, etc. but we really truly would like to for those students that want to major in engineering in the sciences, this is a program we would like to implement. AP Physics is a new program, $4,000. And the developmental boys/girls Lacrosse and Volleyball, $7,000. We have a tremendous number of students that are very active in the athletic programs and this is again a program we would like to implement. It was there last year and again we are
requesting it for this year.
The next slide represents programs, dollars which were removed somewhat from last year that again, we're requesting for this year. Our library books one of the issues that was raised during our high school valuation program was library text books. In fact, we pulled them out last year and we would like to buy about $40,000 worth of books for the libraries, and it's back in again this year. World History $28,000, Multi-media Materials $21,000, computer software $109,000. A lot of this $109,000 represents licenses that we must put on the computers upgrading. Equipment replacement and some new equipment $64,000. I think one of the issues that Mrs. Friedman brought up was the benefits and salaries, etc. Here are the numbers that are in our budget - currently administration salaries, this is all forms of
administration $1,686,000, professional $18,800,000, non-certified $2,000,000 total salary base of $22,476,000. Remember, we're requesting $33,000,000 so what you have is approximately 67% of our budget is just in wages only, we're service based. The benefits, this represents healthcare, social security, life, etc. total $3,484,000 and that's our 15% of our benefit dollars. That's where they are. That's all we spend in benefits for the employees and that's all three categories combined. It isn't just one. So our total for benefits and employee wages represents approximately $26,000,000 or almost 78% of our budget is in people costs. Just to give you an idea of the facilities we manage and what we have to take care of and the costs that affect us. The High School was built in 1956, it currently has 163,000 sq.ft. I think Mr. Hines reported on the Town Council side they have about 131,000 -our one building at the High School is 30,000 sq.ft. larger and in 1990 we renovated and added
100,000 sq.ft., in 1998 we added another 37,000 sq.ft. This is almost 47 years in the High School. The Middle School was built in 1968, 121~000 sq.ft. and we added to that in 1992. Thompson Brook, brand new building in 2000 occupied last year 97,000 sq.ft., Pine Grove 86,000 sq.ft and Roaring Brook built in 1965, 1974 and again another 31,000 ft. So you can see the size of the buildings that we are managing, maintaining, the cost to maintain those. Here's some of the costs for utilities and maintenance -as you can see, we went back and looked at the numbers on the top line, the year 2,000/2001, water bill was $44,000 - this budget year it's $66,000. That's a 50% increase in approximately 4 years for water usage. Heating bill, $234,000 in 2000/2001, our requested budget is $325,000 or again just under 50% increase. These are the numbers we are experiencing in maintaining the buildings. The maintenance bill was $666,947 for maintenance in 2000/2001, we've requested $843,000 this year
- these buildings are relative new so our increases are not as significant. We're up to an increase percentage of 18%. Our utility bills have clearly been rising significantly on us. Student expenditures - how well do we manage our money. One of the things we looked at recognizing we've been growing, but we looked back and said what happens if we go back 10 and all we had on a per student cost basis was 2-1/2% increase in cost to operate the buildings, wages, etc. What would that number be? First is the growth - the new size of the student body, where would we be. When we talk about the different increases in the budget requests that we've had. If you look at 93/94 coming down, we spent roughly $8,250 per student back 10 years ago. The new number would be $10,450. If we went at the 2.5% inflation which is the bottom line across, $10,606 - we are actually $156.00 less per student versus 2.5% increase over the last 10 years. Are we managing the money? Well, we think we are. Have
there been increases, Yes. People want to be part of this district, people are moving into this district and we've experienced growth in the population and we've attempted as best we could to manage that growth as reasonably as possible. In summary, my last slide shows the various categories based on our what we call charted accounts -general control, construction, health care, transportation, operation of plant, maintenance of plant, fixed charges, cafeteria, etc. Our current budget is 30 million approximately three hundred thousand is going up to $33,262,246 requested or just 9.81 %. Thank You.
Mr. Harrison: Thank you Pam and Marty. I want to thank both Boards for the obvious amount of time, care and preparation that went into putting these presentations together. I think it's extremely helpful and I want to thank both Boards for doing that. Now, to make the transition into the question period, I'm going to call on Board of Finance member, Steve McGuff to give you some general information on the kinds of issues that we all have to wrestle with as a community. Steve?
Mr. McGuff: Thank you, Tom. I'm going to start off tonight and capture what our mission
statement is with the Boards. I think it's a great intro to our presentation, it's to provide quality in Town services at a reasonable cost to all citizens and tax payers. The presentation tonight of the Board of Finance is really just to highlight some of the current economic trends that we see, some of the things we look at as part of our process, also to look at some of the historical data on the expense and revenue sides of the Town. Some of the economic trends that will not come
as a surprise to most people; inflation is on the rise if you look at the market indices as most of us probably do, it's not been a stellar year according to the Dow Jones and NASDAQ. As Dick mentioned, fuel costs are certainly on the rise even more on consumer based costs compared to the 30% increase the Town sees even on their costs. Average salary increases are on a downward trend - this is an aggregate number looking at professional sectors non-farming, labor, CT based unemployment rate is starting to inch its way back up and our interest return on the T Bill rate is at an unbelievably low rate and continues to drop. These are important facts to look at, not only from a Town Operating/Board of Ed standpoint, but just from an individual tax payer's standpoint. This is an excerpt out of the Hartford
Courant back on February 28th highlighting the State tax increases effective this past week, April 1st, so most people will start to see it in their paycheck the tax increases of the State tax flow. I won't go through each of these but I think you can see an upward trend on State taxes. This slide summarizes the presentations you saw earlier and I'm not going to go through each of these numbers but highlight some of them. Town Operating Budget, again, proposed to increase from current year just under $850,350, the Board of Ed just under three million, sewers, Debt Service. The Debt Service, I'll spend a couple of minutes - that includes the full year increase that we're now seeing on Thompson Brook School. I have a separate slide on that later, as well. Capital Improvement, Dick's presentation shows the proposed increased up to 1.4 million this year for a total proposed budget of 4.4 million dollars or a proposed increase of 4.4 million dollars over current
year. Looking at the annual Operating Budget, this is an historical look that does not include the Debt Service, you can see the trend of the past 10 years in the proposed for this year is just over 15 million. Layered in the Board of Education budget over the same time period and their proposed budget for the coming year is $33,262,000. When we look at the long term debt, this is actually the expenditures on an annual basis, the best way to look at it is like the mortgage on your house. Primarily what's in here is the sewers and the police station renovation. A big piece obviously is our investment in our schools and facilities; this year the projection includes the full year increase for Thompson Brook School. As we start to look at the income side of our statement we see that the State and Federal Grants that we're seeing are on the decline. These are primarily formula based, some are for Grant Reimbursements and you can see a downward trend in the projected number which is
about $400,000 from prior year. I guess the one upside to this, it only represents 5% or a little less of our total operating budget. On the interest income side, you can see Dick's swing here that was mentioned in the earlier presentation about the returns on our investments and how they invest our cash and our cash accounts, the projected amount is down approximately $100,000 from prior year's based on the market conditions, over $500,000 from the prior year. The overall Grand List is projected to be 1.665 billion dollars for the Town of Avon, it is projected to grow by 3.04%. One thing I do want to highlight is the drop in 2000/2001 that was our last revaluation. An interesting thing took place that year, the prior reval was back in 1987 and so we saw a general decline in State wide inflationary values in homes over that period of time - I suspect that would not be quite the same this time around and as Dick mentioned that reval is taking place this year. I highlight that
because as we look at the mill rate on the subsequent slide you'll see the swing that takes place there. If you look at the Grand List and the percent change per year over that same period, you can see a lot of good positive growth. This is the reval year that netted to be a minus 2% that year and since that period of time we still live with that 3% per year growth rate. If you look at the mill rate as we then roll up what the mill rate would be on an annual basis to fund all the budgets, you can see this one again, 2001/2002 that's the make-up that had to take place to
reflect the decrease of our valuation that year. In the proposed year if we were to pass through the existing budget as proposed it would go from 27.3 mills to 29.5 mills. If you then look at the mill rate as a percentage increase from year to year, another big jump occurred that reval year, about half of that resulted from revaluation and the other half was in spending. This would represent about an 8.06% increase on the proposed budget mill rate change. What does this all mean to a typical homeowner? The average home value in Avon is $356,000 according to the latest survey and looking at 70% assessed value which is by State Statute, that would put you at a $248,000 assessed value and this year, 2002/2003 the taxes on that would be $6,770. The projected cost on the current proposal if it passed would be $7,316 or an
increase of $546. Of course, there are other tax implications for personal property taxes. In summary, the proposed spending increase is 8.72% that 4.4 million dollars over the present budget; the estimated Grand List is increasing a little over 3% and that would translate to a mill rate to 29.5, or an 8.06% increase. That leads us to the next steps in this process. You're at the Public Hearing tonight, this is when we get the feedback from the citizens, taxpayers in Q & A. As mentioned before, the Board of Finance workshops will start to occur over the next week and a half. Your handout shows that the 4/14 meeting has been swapped because of scheduling. If you plan on attending those, the 4/14 will only occur if needed and the final meeting will be on 4/15. The Town Meeting is on May 5th that leads to the Referendum on May 14th.
Mr. Harrison: We'll open the meeting to the public. If your question elicits a response, we will offer the opportunity to ask a follow-up question. We do ask that you not ask again until everybody else has had the chance to go first. As I stated, we'll stay here as late as we need to give everybody a chance to be heard. As you're asking your questions, remember a couple of things. We recommend a Budget to you but ultimately it's up to you, the voters, to approve it or reject it. When you're doing that remember what you're being asked to approve or to reject if that's your choice is a lump sum item. We don't recommend, nor do you have the authority to vote on any of the individual items Marty mentioned or Dick Hines mentioned. You approve a lump sum and whatever the lump sum that you approve is, it
will then be up to the Town Council or the Board of Education to allocate those costs within the lump sum. So, if you want to approve the budget or disapprove it, you're not going to be asked to vote item by item. That's not the way the Charter works. It's strictly on a lump sum basis and whatever that lump sum is, the two boards then have the full authority to spend that according to whatever priorities they see fit. I'd first like to introduce the members of the Board of Finance so you'll know who to blame if we don't do a good job this year: Tom Gugliotti, Jim Speich, Mike Monts, Bill Hooper, and you already know Steve McGuff and Mark Zacchio, and the real power behind the throne is our clerk Elinor Burns. With all of that, we'll start off with the questions. Please use the microphone and although most of us know you, state your name and your address.
FIo Stahl, 2 Sunset Trail: I'm the president of the Avon Taxpayer's Association and I will be
brief. I want to thank Phil Schenck and his staff and Dr. Kisiel and his staff and Gary Franzi and his staff for their cooperation. We really appreciate their time and their work. Their data made this document possible. It comes as close to the truth as we could ascertain. But, in fact, this report understates the truth and I'll tell you why. It's very hard to capture all personnel costs. For example, this doesn't include overtime pay, the cost of substitute teachers, earned stipends, mileage allowance, cell phone costs, membership costs, publications, conferences, all of which are directly attributed to personnel. It also compares teacher's salaries on the same basis as those who work 12 months a year. But it comes as close to the truth as we could ascertain. I expected a rebuttal from the Board of
Education so this doesn't surprise me but let
me tell you what happened. We asked the Town "what is the actual average cost of employment" because all of us know that it's more than just salaries. The Town came back with the following figure which does not appear on this rebuttal. I'm glad you're sitting down because here is the actual average cost of employment of Town employees -49.67%. Almost 50%. I didn't make that up, that was what was told to me. I asked the same question using the same words of the Board of Education. I'm not a numbers person, I'm a resume writer. The answer came back as you see it between 15% and 17%. This is a huge disparity. What am I to do with that? Please remember that the Board of Education employees and the Town Government employees get exactly the same benefit packages. Now I know, and Mr. Franzi took pains to
explain to me that as he said and I made a caveat on this document that recognizes that teacher retirement funds, social security does not come out of the municipal budget. I acceded to that. Now, even factoring that in there was no way to close the disparity between almost 50% and 17% so I did what I though was right which was to average the two numbers which comes to 33% which to my surprise is the industry standard. It's about 33%. Now if I erred at all please note that each Town employee is 16% lower than it should be because I averaged it out. We are all trying to get to the truth; I stand behind this document. We worked very hard to make it as accurate as we possibly could. Thank you very much.
Angela Sum, 31 Ridgewood Road: I highly support the police addition I can't believe how the Town functions on such slim staff, never mind the amount of people who live here, just the
amount of land that the officers have to cover. On recognizing these are difficult economic times for everyone and to compare to a personal care as earlier discussed, children's education cannot be put off for a year. We can't put off my 9 year old daughter's education for a year while we try to get a grip around where we want to spend our money so I'd like to support the Board of Education. They made good decisions to provide enough teachers and the right curriculum to support our students. Thank you.
Sam Levine, 98 Cotswold Way: First of all I'm concerned with the comment how the Town Council edited some of their own budget without first bringing it to the citizens for us to voice our opinion. Maybe there were some improvements that they cut out on their own that maybe we thought would be appropriate to be made. Coming from that basis and then editing
themselves without coming to the citizens - I hope the Board of Finance appreciates it that they really kept a budget that was fiscally responsible and one that could potentially cost more money in the future because it may be more expensive to do those things at some point in the future. The Board of Education, the cuts that were made last year as result of the Board of Finance cuts are palpable. You can feel them in the school system, there's been some changes and I hope the new math program and the budget they put forth this year that the Board of Finance will respect the budget that was put forward. Also there was some concern that I have about the whole budget process from last year. If I were to think when the budget failed and went back to the Board of Finance - the Board of Finance told the Town it failed because
(Mr. Harrison: The timing is July 1st. Because of public notice requirements the maximum number of referenda that could be squeezed in would have been three in the period before July 1st. You can hold more after that, but you can only get three before the end of the fiscal year.) And then it failed. I don't remember the process, if it failed that last time then what would happen to the budget?
Mr. Harrison: The information everybody had last year turned out to be incorrect. Dwight Johnson has researched that for us and when we had the meeting with all three boards in September, the process happens is if the voters have not approve a budget by July 1st, on a short term basis (a month, month and a half), the Board of Finance can approve expenditures. We can't set taxes or anything. Ultimately it's the Town Council that has the legal authority under State law to set whatever tax rate and budget it desires without any referendum. It would be up to the Council to set a budget and a tax rate without public referenda.
Mr. Levine: There were some substantial cuts made on a false understanding of the laws of the State of Connecticut. Also, I might want Ms. Stahl to know, there are accounting procedures and you can't just average numbers together like that to find the answers. The systems are a little more sophisticated than that. Thank you.
William Heubner, 111 Moravia Road: I am 78 years of age and during my productive years I helped finance many municipal efforts with my taxes. However, may I speak for those who live on a fixed income and for those Avon Residents who have been caught up in corporate layoffs, downsizing and face loss of their homes by mortgage default, inability to pay electric rates, insurance costs, health costs, etc. Reviewing what other towns and cities are doing in these economic hard times due to layoffs, union give backs, delayed projects, salary cuts, etc. I propose the following three points to have Avon accept its responsibility and tighten its spending belt. 1. A 10% salary compensation reduction across the board for all elected, appointed and contractual employees for a period of one fiscal year. 2.
Elimination of the financing of superfluous and redundant positions in Town government such as assistant principals, administrative assistants, consultants, etc. 3. In the event that Union leaders refuse to negotiate or approve a taxpayers financial relief program, then request the Town Council to instruct the Town Manager to declare a State of Financial and Fiscal Emergency for the residents and operate under a state of fiscal emergency for a period of one year. Thank you.
V. Santos, 63 Meadow Ridge: My comments are in two parts, one for the Board of Education and one for the Town leaders. For the Board of Education this is also divided into two parts: 1 is a question of policy and the other is a question of technical matters interpretation. The presentation showed us the cost per pupil and how we compare with other districts. I might add another measurement that fits in the presentation for the future. That is an equalized educational tax rate for the Town of Avon. According to the State Board of Education and in the ERG, Avon is 3rd out of 11 school districts. Although we are 10th in net Expenditure per pupil, when you look at our equalized educational tax rate we come out in 3rd position and I don't think in that regard we to be number 1. The number presented in
the slide was a net 4% increase over last year. The actual computation should be 6.4%. The 4% that was shown for the total Board of Education was not computed on the salary base of 2003. The annualized cost of the 14% in new personnel as added in the budget is not known. The $651,000 was included in the budget this would impact on 2003/2004 and that comes out to about $49,500 per person. I don't believe that we're paying $49,500 on a partial year of employee's service for each teacher added to the Board of Education. There are services and purchases that the Board of Education makes, computers, furniture, office equipment which the Town also makes. The question is should there be a town-wide supply agreement that can be negotiated so that we can use the bulk purchasing power of the Town and not subdivide the Town and the Board of Education.
Linda Merlin, 48 Highgate Drive: Something strikes me every year when this question comes up and Mr. Santos has a much better handle on this in his whole workup that he did on the handout which I wonder about every year. Every year it seems to come down to the Avon Taxpayers Association and the Board of Ed's budget and I think the Board of Ed worked very hard to balance the interests of the Town and do the best it can in a town that just keeps growing and growing. I would like to know what the Town planning board is doing, why can't the pressure be put on the Town planners instead of the Board of Education to control this growth. I don't know what the laws on this are, but let the developers put money into a fund that would help the Town. I would like to know what the Town can do about that instead
of always having the Board of Ed cut the budget.
Mr. Hines: Some States call them "impact laws" which allows developers to put money up
front for development. The State of Connecticut does not allow that so we cannot do it. I think New Jersey may have that and some other states. What we've been able to do is to get developers is to develop roads, bring in utilities, etc. If you do put money aside for the schools and ups the price of the house, it makes the price of houses even higher so there's pros and cons on that whole situation. Under the present laws of the State of Connecticut, we cannot do that. As far as the number of residents, the Planning & Zoning, in the Comprehensive Plan of Development came up with a plan which is mainly 1 acre zoning in Avon. That kind of sets the density in Town. You can't tell people they can't use their property. There are lots of court cases against towns that try to stop them. You can have a moratorium for a year
or two but you have to do something. You can say "we have to put sewers in Town" and you would have a couple of years where you wouldn't have any development. We have brought that in but so far as development in Town, we are pretty well developed. Our estimated ultimate in Town is about 20,000, we're over 16,000 now. You can see pretty much where we're going and where it's going to be. You can't completely stop development - only for a short time and that of course for a purpose. If we started to increase our zoning to 2 or 3 acres, that would be exclusionary zoning and there are cases in court on that, too.
Ms. Merlin: It just seems to me that if we can't control the population any better we shouldn't hurt the Board of Ed because that hurts the needs of the students as they continue to grow.
Mr. Harrison: Another thing that we can do just about two weeks ago is the Town's open space purchase program and those of you who were at the meeting for the M.H.Rhodes property, that's a 15 acre parcel that if the Town had not purchased it, it probably would have been zoned to accommodate 10 or 12 houses with student population, etc. So the Town is trying to do some things and you, the voters, always turn out to support those open space purchases. That's another thing we do to try to regulate the growth.
Wilson Vega, 53 Zachary Drive: First of all I want to say that presentations were very thoughtful, you can see that some people put some thought into bringing them together. One of the things is persons who are retired, you can't ignore their needs and concerns and obviously you can't ignore the needs of the children in the schools - it's very important. My question is that every line item has an increase - has the school finance done everything within their power to strip out costs without affecting students. I know people in the town of Greenwich, everything in that school system goes out to bid, pens, pencils - and the money is poured into student education as opposed to office equipment and things like that. It's come to my attention that there's a contract for office equipment that has come up
and will not be negotiated at all or go out to bid. I think it's ridiculous for people to sit here and argue about dollars and things like that are not happening. Is there any explanation for why we haven't done this?
Gary Franzi, Director of Finance: Specifically to Mr. Vega's addressing, our copier contract with Ikon that we've had for the last five years; we belong to a 10-town educational source collaboration where we move forward to reissue our contract with copiers in our school district. The contract has been through negotiations under State Contract and we are totally at our discretionary jurisdiction to achieve that contract going forward. We consulted with our Town legal staff in terms of going out to bid. The State Contract is the best cost around, it's in the best interest of the Town of Avon as well as the 10 towns we collaborate for that, as well as our other purchasing that we do in the district is in conjunction with the Capital Region Education Councilor the Capital Regional Organizations,
that collectively bargain with several towns in the State to get the best available prices. Mr. Vega also received a personal response from our office. We have done the right thing.
Mr. Vega: I agree with that, you certainly are within your legal rights and also in using the State contracts and I go back to towns that are well run financially and this Town is and this is the reason I moved to Avon because it is a great town and I want my neighbor's kids to have great educations. Why would you not bid everything out that you possibly could to get the lowest cost possible and not hide behind the State Contract. I do not understand that. If you can strip out $50,000 in costs on office equipment, furniture, pens or pencils, it's well worth taking a look at it. If you are in the ERG you shouldn't even be using the State Contract, you should be getting better pricing on your own. You've really got to take a look at those things because there' probably $100,000 to $200,000 in costs in
various items. These dollars could go to other items that those students, the new curriculum that's proposed.
Mr. Franzi: We did release the specifications to Mr. Vega early on and his corporation could not meet our specifications that we require for the district. Our decision was to stay with the existing contract. Also, it is the lowest cost available and we have service and liability over the last five years that has been excellent. If a copier breaks down the company is out and the machine is replaced immediately. There's nothing more costly than down time in the school district when instructional staff is trying to make copies for a curriculum and can't use the machines. Our phones don't stop ringing. We have a turn key operation and for the present time we are going to stay with it.
Bob Paine, 68 Tamara Circle: I've lived here for 25 years in the Town and really this budget thing comes up every time we go around and this is the second time in the last 10 or 12 years that we faced this budget at a time of need and also of cross roads in economic events. We have a real tough job ahead of us. The last time we had this go around we almost had mortgage defaults or tax defaults. We had close to $900,000 of uncollectible taxes for a period of time. Eventually people were able to pay up. I hope this doesn't happen this time. I had a couple of questions I wanted to address to the Board of Ed. One is I can't figure out what's happening in these figures how many
people that we have in the system that are certified to teach, in numbers. The other question I have with regard to that is making comparisons of Avon to other towns in general it really doesn't make a lot of sense. I hear say that more than 10% of the homes in Avon with children in them have computers in them, and that the children are proficient on them. That is not true State wide and that is not true in other areas. The other thing that is very very indigenous to Avon is that Avon parent participation in the education of their children is extremely high. Again, that is not true throughout the State of Connecticut -it is not true in some affluent communities because both parents work and surrogates are raising the children. We are not quite at that state in this Town and some of the comparisons we make I think are off the mark. We have a unique situation here, we have a very dedicated population as it concerns the education of our children. Right now we've got a tough time and
we would like to --- all I hope is that we find some way to, at least temporarily until we get by this tough time, give the people a little breathing space. I think this budget may be a little bit too big for this go around.
Dr. Kisiel: In the instructional pile we've got 300 employees, 250 of those employees are
certified type people but not all of them are classroom teachers. 165 of those people are actually teaching in a classroom, teaching mathematics, science, social studies, English and language arts so you
have to put this in perspective because classroom teachers we have guidance counselors, we have social workers, psychologists, reading specialists, a whole cadre of support people, special education teachers, that make up the difference to that 250.
Mr. Paine: I asked that question on purpose because at other times, I know what's going on now is bureaucratic.. to education, but at one time we had people who taught and did other things in the schools. The guidance counselor was the math teacher; the phys ed teacher was a history prof. I don't know how this came about but we seem to have. ..and then we get these ratios - I don't think these ratios really tell the truth with regard to the number of instructors or certified individuals per pupil.
Dr. Kisiel: I'll make a personal response. I guess in 1956 that's the way it was - it's not that way in 2003 and who made it?
Ray Dicamillo, 67 Talcott Notch Road: I heard that we had $100,000 pension loss and I'm
wondering how did we lose it? How much money did we have and what were we invested in?
We didn't get that information tonight. With regard to the snow plowing, we heard that we were
over the overtime budget for this year. In the past few years what happened to the money that was not used for snow removal? We heard there's money going into sanitation, fire hydrants and sewers, where I live I don't have any of that and I'm wondering who pays for those people who do have sanitation. With regard to improving the math scores in schools - I can't see how more money is going to improve that. Either kids learn math or they don't. It's a matter of
getting an interest in math to make them want to learn. We have 24 people who want to study science and engineering. What we need is for teachers to spend more time with those 24 kids.
Mr. Hines: On your question about the pension funds, we really didn't lose the $100,000. What we're saying is we made a certain amount of money on investments in previous years. We estimate this coming year that the income on those investments will be down about $100,000. So if it used to be 3%, now it's going to be 1%. We mainly invest in short term notes; this is the kind of money we now have. A couple of years ago we had school grants from the State. They gave us that money which we could invest while we were doing our school projects. That doesn't occur any more - the money comes in as needed and gets paid out immediately so we don't have that any more. We're still getting the same amount of Grant money, but we don't have it to invest. That's another item that's down. In regard to sanitary
sewers, if that goes into your house, you'll get assessed for it. People who are not tied in to the system do not pay for it. If you have a sewer, you get a sewer use fee each year and you pay on that assessment. In regard to refuse pick up, there is no refuse pick up in Avon. You either use a private hauler which you pay for or you take it to the landfill and pay our basic fee up there. What you saw in our budget was the increase in cost to transport that refuse from our landfill site to Hartford. We are paying $64.00 a ton to CRRA for all that refuse. That's up from $57.00 last year. That's a sizeable part of our budget. If you take your refuse to the landfill, you pay a fee. We're increasing our fees this year to try to offset the increased costs.
Thayer Brown, 42 Byron Drive: I want to compliment all the boards for their presentations
tonight, you get better at it every year and this is really excellent as far as our understanding what you have to say. Having complimented you all, I'll have to say 9.8% increase for the Board of Education and 7.1 % for the Town departments, a combined increase of 8.7% is shocking at any time and particularly in this economic climate. Can you tell me what sort of budgeting guidelines you gave the town departments and the Board of Education to follow in coming up with these budgets -and we have a lot in there for Capital Improvements Projects even cut back from what was originally requested and yet I understood the Town was adopting depreciation accounting so why isn't there simply the depreciation expense for items lasting
longer than one year in the budget to be collected rather than the total amount of the Capital Improvement Projects.
Mr. Schenck: You probably will in future years see that be implemented, the depreciation
issue. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is requiring municipalities to adopt new procedures really full accrual based accounting in our financial statements which is requiring us to look at the different assets of the community, establish their values and set up a depreciating type of accounting system for the fixed assets. The Town of Avon in the fiscal year that's ending this June, June of the 02/03 fiscal year, our annual fiscal report will be published this coming fall will start to show these sorts of things. Private industry did this a long time ago and now it's being brought to the public sector as a way to get a better handle on the infrastructure of each community. Many of the older communities may have water purification plants, sewage treatment plants that are 30, 40, 50, 60
years old and they are not required to show that depreciated value on a balance sheet up until now. Avon is fortunate because our infrastructure is new, it's not that old so we will not have as big an impact initially as some of the older cities. But there will be an impact; you'll probably see in future years the setting up of the depreciating accounts, reserves established to offset that all again driving up some of the budget issues. We have what's called a Capital and Non-Recurring Expenditure Fund which is essentially a multi-year fund that can be used for the accumulation of capital reserves to offset future capital expenditures. Right now we're basically operating on a cash basis. That will continue until we complete the transition over to a fully depreciating capital fixed asset base which will take quite some time. (Mr. Brown -Then maybe not in the 2003/2004 but in the following year the new assets that you're budgeting through that will be depreciated and you will
have a year's depreciation in the budget to be collected from tax-payers.) Mr. Schenck: I think you will be astounded at the amount of the fixed assets, the depreciation schedules have to be established as part of this process and then the reserves have to be established and set up to offset the depreciating items. If we come up with a negative value on our depreciated assets, it's actuarially determined that in order to avoid future capital budget increases on a cash basis of five or six million dollars, or any other group, is going to approve a budget increase of five or six million dollars to establish a reserve. We've got to work into it and it will take some time.
Mr. Hines: There have been questions tonight about how we keep our expenses down, the
Town of Avon has had a person here who's been doing that fantastic job -our Town Manager. This is a special month because he has just reached 25 years with the Town of Avon.
Mr. Harrison: Regarding any kind of guidelines given to the boards by the Board of Finance, there were no formal guidelines, caps, limits or quotas. A lot of the neighboring towns do set a fixed cap- it could be a percentage of dollars or tax increases. We have never done that in Avon. We have always relied upon the boards to do their initial things. This year, in view of the economic condition, we decided informally to inform the Council and the Board of Education what kinds of increases we could be comfortable not having exceeded with the initial submissions. That was decided at our February meeting, it's in the minutes if anybody wants to check and what the suggestion was that given the economic situation, we thought it would be helpful to this process if the Council and the Board of Education
limited their requests for increases in operating budgets to around 6%. The Council has come in at 5.96%. The Board of Education is 9.8%. It was not binding, but it was a suggestion and you see what the results were from that.
Barbara Leonard, 73 Timber Lane: Have you looked at reducing the number of employees in the Town?
Mr. Harrison: According to the Hartford Courant, just about all of our neighbors, Simsbury, Farmington, Canton and some others are actually as they go through the same process, looking at reducing the number of employees, both in their school system and on the town side. I don't know where we'll come out yet, but just be aware of that the number of employees of our neighboring towns in the Farmington Valley, and throughout the State, are looking at actual decreases in the numbers of personnel. That's something we'll all have to keep in mind as we wrestle with the tax issues.
Mr. Harrison: There was one card completed by Dorothy Magda, 12 Crestwood Drive and I'll read her comments to you now. 1) How much of the "Restorations", "New Programs", text books, supplies, maintenance etc. costs are derived from a bid process? And 2) On Lacrosse and Volleyball- why a separate charge? What happened to other sports (ex. Football?) -if specialty sports why not have a charge to the parents of the Participating students.
Ms. Friedman: In regarding to having parents pay for their children to participate in sports I am totally against this practice, I believe in a totally free education for all children.
Margaret Bratton, 52 Old Mill Lane: I'll start off by saying I'll be attending my Avon High School 20th reunion this summer. I'm an Avon parent of children enrolled in Avon school system and I have attended numerous Board of Ed and Town Meetings over the past year and I've attended PTO meetings and I'll be voting no at the referendum in May on the high percentage of increase. All the Town employees, school administration, board members and parents and teaches that I've worked with have been helpful and pleasant people. I like them personally, but - I may not agree with everything they say. I disagree with the way some of the people explain away last year's increase in the budget as a decrease or cut. The Town Council's budget increased a little and the Board of Ed's budget increased a lot. No one's
taxes went down unless they sold property or had property that decreased a lot in value. We were told that Thompson Brook School might not open and that teachers might be cut. Last year's Board of Ed budget increased 14% wasn't presented to voters because it was too high of an amount. The first referendum was defeated at 7.3%; the second referendum for 5.3% was passed. Even though that was technically a decrease to the increase, the school still opened, the administrators still got salary increases across the board of more than twice the rate of inflation and the superintendent was given a 5.6% increase in salary. While one teacher was cut parents were asked to purchase classroom materials which should be covered by such high taxes. This demonstrates two things, that Board of Ed requests are puffed up to about three times what is actually needed and that, on the other hand the Town Council seems to make some serious attempts to cut spending. I disagree with the way our tax dollars
were allocated and The majority of the budget increase was in salaries which rose twice the rate of inflation, not due to new construction... Families have fewer children per household than they did years ago also they have houses almost two times the house I live in, they pay 2 times what I pay for taxes. However, they don't have 2 times the number of children I have. """'...'.. The year we funded the new Thompson Brook School.
Greg Rubino, 17 Hammersmith: I'd just like to make a comment in support of the Board of Education's proposed budget; I think they brought good data to the table in stating that our comparisons with our economic members group - we not only are doing better in value, we all want value in whatever we buy, we're buying education and we're doing it at a low cost. The point they didn't make was our scores are at least as good. Any time you see report in the Hartford Courant, Avon does as well or better than our ERG. We've delayed technology too long. Anybody in the corporate world or who is in business, once you start delaying purchase of computers and software, you can never catch up. We've delayed it already and I think it's about time we spend money on it. I moved away from Avon for a couple of
years, two years ago I came back and I just tonight, I have a son who is a senior in High School, he went to Pine Grove School, and Mr. Nolan was his principal six years ago. I came in tonight and Mr. Nolan who hasn't seen me in two or three years, knew my name and asked me about my son who's a senior. No other principal of a grade school in any Town could do that.
Dennis Lanahan, 81 Stony Corners Circle: I moved here to Avon three years ago, I moved
here for one reason only - I remember talking to Dr. Dick Kisiel when I met him before I moved here, was education. I specifically looked at Avon and Simsbury within the State of Connecticut as the place to move to. I don't think I am unique from that standpoint, I spend quite of time in the sports field and talk to a lot of parents that recently moved here and they all stated they moved here for the reason - education. I think that's one of the greatest things that the Town of Avon brings to the State of Connecticut. In looking over the numbers in the presentation, some of the charts don't line up exactly, but my concern is taking a look at the growth in Avon, the Avon population trends for the 2003 to 2006 is roughly 1,000 to 1,500 new people and the Board of Education they say that the estimated growth from 2003 to
2008 is about 400 students. I look at those numbers and think they are probably very low with the number of houses that are going into the Town. Are the population growth estimates correct and if they are, is the Board of Education comfortable that the budget they have out there will in fact support the right amount of money to keep the class room sizes the way they need to be to insure the reason I came here in the first place -a first class education.
Dr. Kisiel: To answer your question, Mr. Lanahan, regarding the projection I would say that
growth projections for the next five years be more accurate than the next ten years. I think that’s historically what we're going to find. I feel comfortable with the 2008 figure. However, I have no control over, nor do the demographers, over economics. If things should change who knows what could happen to the housing market, we know there is a slow down. We know that all the projections for Roaring Brook School, or example, on the kindergarten level are going to be less than what we originally thought. We will be able to manage six sections of kindergarten as opposed to the six and a half we have right now. I'm going to say to you that like any statistic some of it, I guess, is based on some historical data that what happened in the past will continue to happen. My guess for the Board of Education
is that seems to be a reliable figure at least for the last two years. The State Department of Education enrollment projections I think have been fairly accurate, at lease over the last six years. I can't speak for the past. I hope they're right and if they're not we'll be facing this issue of continued growth at a different kind of level. But we will continue to grow for the next five years, there's no question about that. I hope they manage to keep within the numbers that currently area projected, that's all I can say. Obviously most of the growth now will occur at the High School level. The growth that now exists in grades 4,5and 6 will be moving to the High School and we will be exceeding that school building capacity within two years and there will be another issue to bring before the Town. Right now, I think overall at least our elementary enrollments, based on the most recent demographic studies, seems to indicate that things have stabilized at that level. Stay tuned -we'll
look to next year's projections.
Debra Woltberg, 50 Woodhaven Drive: In the event that the Board of Finance reduces the Town and Board of Ed's budgets to a 6% overall budget as Mr. Harrison suggested and as reported in the Hartford Courant, can you tell us specifically what the Town and Board of Ed services and projects have been identified to be cut.
Mr. Harrison: As I explained earlier, what we do is recommend a lump sum to you, the voters. Just for sake of discussion, the Board of Education is requesting 33 million something. Let's say we were to recommend and you were to approve 33 million, how that 33 million will be spent, on which projects, whether they can spend it on purchasing copy paper, hiring new teachers, adding another assistant principal, or whatever it is, that's up to the Board of Education. We cannot and do not say we recommend x amount of money but you've got to cut this or add that. It's the same on the Town's side even though there you do have the authority to do some line item cuts, we do not do that. Whatever the amount we recommend and you approve for the Town's side, the Town Council will decide how to spend that. It's
not something that the Board of Finance does nor is it something that the voters can do. The only thing that's before the voters is a recommended lump sum item.
Randy Leaning, 559 Lovely Street: I think I have more comments than questions. First I'd like to say that I've lived here for almost 20 years and that I'm proud to live in a Town that
provides the quality of education and the quality of life that we have for all the age groups in our Town and I think we need to look at the fact that we've been getting a good return on our
investment for many years and we invest in that life style. I think it's important to remember
that the Town of Avon is growing and it does not reflect the current economic times, whether we like it or not. These are tough times but our town is not representative of economic charts that are presented that reflect what's going on overall nationally. I think the Board of Ed has proven that they have been fiscally responsible and have also delivered a return on that investment. If you look at the scores, and you look at the type of responsible young adults that we're turning out and also by commitment from parents that help in the schools and I think they have proved that the additional information on how they have managed these large building and the growing population, so I fully support the Board of Education's budget and in response to people who have mentioned that the assistant principal is a redundant position
come to anyone of the schools in the Town of Avon and shadow its assistant principal or just volunteer at the school and you will see that an assistant principal has a tireless job from morning until after the end of the school day. I volunteer in the schools and I am amazed that they can handle what they can given the staff that they have. In response to the comment about why gym teachers can't teach classes, it's because there is bus duty, recess duty, lunch duty because there are too many children in the cafeteria, it's not safe for one teacher to be in there managing 140 children in one lunch period and in addition to that I can tell you in Roaring Brook last year gym classes were doubled up because there were not enough slots in the school for the kids to have their own gym class. I just want to say that I think the Town is doing a great job particularly the Board of Ed .
Mr. Harrison: I have a question for Dr. Kisiel concerning the English curriculum at the High School - do they still study John Donne's poetry? Because of your comment that Avon the
economic trends that are going on don't affect Avon. I'm reminded "no town is an island entire of itself', so we may be a little bit better off than some other towns, but we are being affected by what's going on it the State and the nation. We are blessed that we do have some better
advantages than some of our neighboring communities. Let me read two questions from Mrs.
Magda. Why not put the library in the facility on Thompson Road that the Town just bought? I assume that refers to enlarging or expanding the library. The other question is for computers and software, has anyone gone to Microsoft or other manufacturers for gifting?
Mr. Hines: I think when we talked about the Rhodes property, we said it could have many uses for the Town and the library is one of them. I think the library would like to expand on its present site, assuming we can get additional parking. If we can't get additional parking there we'll be limited in size. Just how much of an increase they need there, I don't know. There's always a possibility that the Rhodes property could be used for that. The next question to come up would be what do you do with the library property? What other uses does that building have? At the moment we'd like to expand at the site on Country Club Road and that's what the Town Manager and the librarian are going to be looking at and see if they can get additional parking there.
Ms. Friedman: The technology - I will tell you that we do apply for Grants that are available and we have received over $100,000 for infrastructure but as far as gifts are concerned, no we haven't gone to Microsoft but I will tell you that usually that kind of gifting is reserved for the more needy. Our district is not considered in this category.
Mr. Dicamillo: I've lived in Avon for 5 years and I think it's well run. I think sometimes things get overdone. In regard to the Board of Education I think they did a fine job in preparing but I couldn't quite zero in because I look at Hartford and their student cost is high; I look at the cities down state -so I can see a comparison of...
Flo Stahl: First a comment, then a question. Please don't frame the issue as seniors against education. Please don't do that. We lovingly have supported education for years and years and we will continue to do so ~ it's a false framing of the question. Dr. Kisiel, not personally but professionally because it's not you as a superintendent but superintendents in general - when you speak about reducing you budget, when you're speaking to parents and I was at the last PTO meeting, it's so frightening when you talk about what it is that you're going to reduce. You will reduce programs, class sizes might get bigger, you might even reduce teachers' supplies. Teacher's supplies? This strikes fear and if I had a kid in school- it strikes fear in the hearts of the parents and I totally understand this. Why is
it when you talk about reductions it's always on the side of kids - have you ever considered at meetings with other superintendents asking for a voluntary wage freeze for one year, or some kind of reduction or some changes in the benefit structure. Why is it always just the kids and not the staff?
Dr. Kisiel: Mrs. Stahl evidently you didn't attend the same meeting I did because I don't recall placing any fright on anyone about any reductions. I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. I was very clear about what a baseline budget would require for the district. That is to maintain current services and programs. I did not ever say we had to cut back on supplies. I did say as a superintendent my major priorities emerge from issues the Board of Education hears continually and that is class size is the ultimate concern of the parents and I said regardless of where this budget turns out, that will be the major focus of my attention and it may be at the sacrifice of other things that people think we might need in our schools. But I place priority with teachers and children. That's fundamental
as far as I'm concerned. You raised an interesting point, I don't think at this stage we're at the point of having to go to our employees and asking them to take a wage cut; I think we negotiated with them in good faith. We have an obligation to meet the contract obligation. Given the state of our budget, whatever that may be, both now and in the future it possibly could be an option, I don't discount it but I think that would depend on where we are. I don't think essentially the reaction among all our employees would be favorable; I think we expect it wouldn't be. On the other hand it's a question that could be asked by the Board of Education - I think first we need to understand what our community will be able to support, I think the Board of Education will have an opportunity to analyze its budget accordingly and at that point make whatever decisions are necessary. I resent the implication that I would take this out of the backs of children. That's really not my responsibility
as a superintendent. My job is to serve them first and I'll do that to the best of my ability.
Mr. Santos: I can't leave here tonight without expressing my appreciation to the Town employees, I commend the Town Officials for hiring the nicest people at Town Hall. Wherever I went they assisted me and they rendered service with a smile. One relates to the performance of the assets and whether the Town has changed the policies to stop the deterioration of the assets. In the two years ended June 2002, fund assets lost 1.8 million dollars in value. I suspect the increase in pension costs for 2003/2004 is directly related to the depreciation of those assets. Regarding the use the Town Surplus Funds - 4.1 million and I'm not a lawyer but I read in General Statutes and there's a section in there that says that the Town Surplus shall be applied for use to reduce the ensuing year's budget and I've
heard the rationale for keeping the surplus which is in case of emergencies - there is also a provision in the General Statutes that states the Board of Finance can recommend a 2% contingency other than there are also surplus tax in the special revenue funds that I'm not sure are available for transfer to the General Fund. I don't know if there are restrictions on those funds. The Bond Anticipation Notes that were issued for Thompson Brook, 14.2 million, the whole cost for Thompson Brook was about 1.8 million less than projected so I'm assuming that there is a surplus of funds available from the Bond Anticipation Notes. I'd like to know what the town is planning to do with that.
Mr. Hines: On the Thompson Brook issue, once the contract came in at a lower cost than had been estimated by the architect, we did less bonding. We didn't have extra money sitting
around. We bought less Bond Anticipation Notes and we put less of our requirements out into the bonding so there's not an extra piece there. In regard to the pension fund, we have professional advisors, a professional advisory committee that works with the Town Manager.
The former Chairman of the Board of Finance is on that, the Town Treasurer and other people, there's members from the school on that board and we don't look at that on a short term basis. We try to look at this on a long term basis and that's how our investment's been done. We have not made any quick changes recently.
Mr. Harrison: Yes, there is a surplus there, a General Fund Balance. One of the benefits of
that comes into play when we do go out for Bond Anticipation Notes in terms of the interest rates that we get. The financial rating services, Moody's, etc. look to a significant amount of General Fund Balance as they make their decisions on interest rates. When we went out to bonding last summer, both of them came through here and one of the reasons we got an unbelievably good interest rate which saves all of us quite a bit of money over the years of the length of the bonds is the fact that we have a surplus. That's why we don't touch the surplus. I think we're trying to get eventually to 10%, we are currently at about 7.5%.
Mr. Hines: With reval coming up I think we may want to keep a little surplus to offset that ...
Mr. Harrison: I do want to comment despite what I do on the Board of Finance, Mr. Santos commented on the professionalism and courtesy of the staff in Avon, I've got to tell you, across the board, that's the case. In my practice I do a lot of work in other towns and I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that people coming into Avon, whether it's questions about the schools, getting building permits, wetlands, whatever it is, the professionalism on our boards and professional staff is widely recognized and praised throughout the State. We are very, very fortunate that we have the quality of people working for us. I have personal knowledge of that.
Linda Merlin: I just want to say this in support of the teachers salaries - I don't think there is a more important job in this world than the education of our children and if you go in and volunteer, you will see the teachers get there before the kids do, a lot of them work long after the day ends for the kids. The administrators also have such patience but I do think they are overpaid. I also want to say that in terms of the Board of Ed, I think they have a1read made cuts that they never presented. A lot of schools have instrumental musical for 4 graders; language in elementary schools is something that exists in other towns. I think they made cuts too early and I don't think there's any fat there.
Resident I feel that both the Town and the Board of Ed have prepared budgets that have their fiscal obligations they are responsible and I support both of them.
Mr. Harrison: Any other questions? The process now, first of all I want to thank all of you for coming out tonight and expressing some wonderful comments and asking some wonderful questions. If you have other things that you think of, you can write to the Board of Finance at the Town Hall, all of the letters you send in were forwarded to us; I've received several so far and have responded to most of them. We'll go into our workshop sessions now over the next week and we hope to come up with a recommendation next week. At that point that will be
presented to the Town Meeting in May; May 5th. Again, thank you and the Public Hearing is adjourned.
Respectfully submitted
Thomas A. Gugliotti, Secretary
Attest: Elinor Burns
Clerk
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