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01/30/2019 AC Minutes DRAFT Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) January 30, 2019 Place and Time: Parker Room, Town Office Building, 7:30 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Alan Levine, Secretary; John Bartenstein; Eric Michelson; Richard Neumeier; Nick Nichols; Lily Manhua Yan; Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Member(s)Absent: Ellen Basch Other Attendees: None The meeting was called to order at 7:35 p.m. Announcements and Liaison Reports Based on comments at the January 28, 2019, meeting of the Board of Selectmen (BoS) and input from those present, the following topics were discussed: • Crematorium at Westview Cemetery: Mr. Padaki announced that the Ad hoc Crematory Committee would hold a public hearing on February 7 in order to gather public comments. • Assistant Town Manager report: Ms. Kosnoff reported that Town Manager Malloy gave a preliminary budget report to the BoS. The proposed budget would fund $68 million in capital programs, of which $27 million would be funded using within-levy debt, $25 million through exempt debt for the replacement of the Police Station, and the balance via the Water or Wastewater Enterprise Funds or CPA funds. Mr. Molloy would like to create a new long- term financial plan which would address policy issues such as use of personal property new growth and the use of the Capital Stabilization Fund. Ms. Kosnoff noted that the Town now uses a new tool for budget creation and tracking, WDesk. This tool is still being loaded with financial data. In addition, Mums, the Town's general ledger software, is being updated with a new chart of accounts. • Document-sharing portal: Mr. Parker announced that progress is being made on creating a document-sharing portal to allow Open Meeting Law-compliant distribution of documents among Committee members. He is confident that this tool will be ready in time for the creation of our report to the Annual Town Meeting. White Book Discussion A general discussion of the "White Book"preliminary budget document was conducted. Mr. Parker noted that a concerning trend was emerging in that while the tax levy was increasing 3.9%, and the general fund use was increasing 3.6%, the school budget was increasing 5.42%. Revenue- Mr. Padaki asked if projected revenue included money from the new"AirBnB" tax implemented by the state. It does not. Mr. Parker noted that a storm water enterprise fund has been proposed for future use as a way to collect fees and use the revenues to support storm water management. Ms. Kosnoff noted that the implementation of a proposal for tax relief, either by not taxing to the levy limit or by rolling back the capture of new growth of personal property, will constrain revenues. Additionally, Committee members noted that a change in the use of personal property 1