FinCom meeting schedule, October meetings

[David Escalante]

I want to let you all know what the schedule situation is.  As you know, we are on an exceedingly foreshortened schedule this Fall for a variety of reasons.  There is a primary next Tuesday, which caused the Board of Selectmen and School Committee to shift their meetings from Tuesday the 16th the the 15th and 17th, respectively.  The early STM cuts at least a week off our time.  And the Jewish high holidays are relatively late, I think, in that they're into October this year and interfere with our schedule in that we'll miss several members if we meet those days.

The STM warrant closes on around the 23rd, and FinCom recommendations are due Oct. 6.  At the moment, it appears that there are 3 big issues for the STM to deal with:

- Town Hall "ratification" or resolution supporting Option 4, presumably including funding it with CPA and 3% debt only
- new DPW building, approve the $6 million in 3% debt
- Newman design, approve some unknown amount for design of some unknown type of school for an April debt override

Things are further complicated by the fact that Lisa, Louise, and I will all miss the scheduled Sept. 24 FinCom meeting because of High School curriculum night.  There's no reason the rest of the committee can't meet, but lacking a chair, vice-chair, and secretary, you'd have to appoint an acting chair and secretary.  I believe we therefore agreed that it made more sense, if we were to meet, to meet on Sept. 17 and cancel Sept. 24.

We are now informed, however, that the School Committee is meeting Sept. 17, and that they plan to go over their long-promised 5 year financial forecast that night, and that they would welcome FinCom members attending, and further that they would be happy to come to a future FinCom and discuss the forecast with us.

Also, while we have numbers on Town Hall (Louise will distribute Dave's financial plan from last night's BoS meeting to us), and can get numbers on the new DPW building, we are still lacking Newman data.

Which brings us to October.  At present, we have noticed meetings on October 1, 15, 20, and 22.  That's 4 meetings to go over the STM warrant.  Not much, especially given 3 potentially big topics.  I would anticipate that STM will take at least 2 nights, the 27th and 29th.

My inclination as of today is to try to fit it all in during the 4 nights in October.  We'll start with Town Hall and DPW, which we have numbers for, and can talk to the Town about, then save the later October meetings for Newman, where we don't have numbers yet, and the School Committee won't have resolved by early October barring a miracle, given that they don't have numbers either.  This will mean we won't get our recommendations into the warrant, but I can't see any way around that.

The reason for this rambling note, however, is to see if anyone violently disagrees.  DO NOT "REPLY" OR "REPLY ALL" TO THIS MESSAGE.  If you think we should meet on September 17 to continue discussing Town Hall, and presumably go over Dave D's financing plan, send an individual message to that effect to me by Friday early afternoon.  That would give us 5 meetings before STM instead of 4, and they might possibly not run as long.  It's also possible that we have reached some level of consensus or beaten these subjects to death already, and it will turn out that there's no reason for long deliberations, and we don't need a lot of meeting time anyhow.

I will weigh whatever comments you might choose to send, make a final decision, and send out another message with final dates for meetings leading up to STM.  Thanks for listening. I could just decide this, but I know our meetings affect your lives and schedules, and it's going to be a real busy October in FinCom terms, so I wanted to give you a final opportunity to let me know if you have any issues with the way things are shaping up.
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David