I arrived slightly late and neglected to note who was in attendance. As I recall it included Charlie Lyons, Jack Hurd, Kevin Greeley, Diane Mahon, Kathleen Dias, Marie Krepelka, John Maher, Rob Adelson, Kay Donovan, Barbara Goodman, Paul Schlichtman, Suzanne Owayda, Jeff Thielman, Brian Sullivan, Fred Fantini, Al Tosti, Charlie Foskett, Bob Greeley, Ruth Lewis?, and I may have missed others plus several audience members.

The unions were picketing outside and occasionally you could hear cars beeping in support, but no union members came up to the meeting.

This was a confusing meeting. Basically the Board of Selectmen met at 4pm to discuss final goals for this year's budget where they considered an override, a trash fee, cuts in services, decrease in employee benefits/raises or a combination of the above. Unfortunately the meeting venue was changed from the Whittemore Robbins house to Town Hall and I couldn't convince my toddler it was worth his while to leave the sandbox outside the Whittemore Robbins House to attend that meeting. But basically it appears that the BoS decided to recommend getting rid of the remaining $2.3M deficit by limiting negotiations with all unions to a final pool of $2.5M to be used for raises and benefits combined for both fiscal years 04 (the current budget) and 05 (the budget we are now deciding) inclusive and for all unions (not just the teachers). This will leave a further $1.2M deficit which will be covered by decreasing services in the schools budget by $500,000 and services in the rest of the town by $500,000, leaving an additional $107,000 or so that the Fin Com has to figure out how to do away with. Unfortunately I did not get a copy of the handout presented by Brian Sullivan which details how much each town department is expected to reduce services by.

This proposal was submitted to the rest of the members of the BRTF at 6pm so there was no advance notice for those members to go over the numbers for themselves in order to have a careful discussion of this proposal.

Kay Donovan pointed out that the timing of this new bottom line during negotiations was not ideal. She expressed concern about losing staff next year and not being able to negotiate with this low of a pot of funds as even higher offers have been turned down already. She indicated her feeling that Arlington is going to have a major problem if this goes through.

It was discussed that for each decrease of 5% in health benefits, the town would save $450,000 and for each decrease in raise offered the town would save $425,000 or put another way the employees will be shouldering the burden of that amount. Kevin Greeley said he was certain an override would never pass in the town. It was hoped that fiscal conditions would improve next year.

Al Tosti expressed the need for a 3 year projection as he thought this recommendation would cause stress for the town in FY06 and 07. It was decided that the BRTF would meet again in June after Town Meeting to determine the fiscal realities for 06 and 07 with this budget.

Paul Schlichtman said we are so out of compliance with the Department of Education requirements that even the restoration budget would leave us open to not complying with regulations.

Kevin Greeley said that everyone is suffering but this is our current fiscal reality. Diane Mahon suggested that coalition bargaining might be the only way to avoid a strike by the unions. This idea was not discussed or recommended by the BoS. Suzanne Owayda indicated that as we have all suffered this year it makes sense to put an override on the ballot and let the people decide themselves if they have suffered enough and whether or not they would prefer an increase in taxes to more service cuts and losses of personnel. The override idea was not recommended by the BoS. It was expressed that union negotiations need to be completed by May 1.

Kevin Greeley wanted suggestions for how to make this process work better. It was decided that the BRTF was a good idea. It was hoped that proposals could be distributed ahead of time so participants could evaluate them before they come to a meeting. It was suggested that an agenda be drawn up and circulated in advance. It was positive that the Fin Com had a firm deadline for when they wanted their recommendations from the BoS. It was thought that citizen input would be appropriate at one BRTF meeting but not more as it was hard enough keeping these many members on topic for these meetings.

So the take home message is that our Board of Selectmen has recommended that the teachers and other union employees make up $1.1M of the deficit by decreasing benefits/raises from the current 3% raise plus 90/10 health benefit. In addition an additional $1.1M of deficit needs to be made up in service cuts, which are likely to be personnel cuts at this point unless the employees agree to even lower benefit/raises to make up for this deficit. So expect to get even less for your taxes next year.

These are my notes, taken to best of my ability and are no way official minutes or notes of any of the boards or individuals sited in my report. If I got anything wrong please let me know and I'll fix them.

Personal Comment: Or maybe, just maybe, the people of Arlington will decide that they would like to make a recommendation that is somewhat different from this one that our leaders have made. Maybe if enough people express their ideas to our selectmen this will not be the final recommendation? Although I think it's a real long shot and I'll have to postpone job hunting for another year so I can volunteer yet another year in the schools which I really do not think is ideal for me, my family or the students I am "teaching".