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APPROPRIATION COMMITTEE MEETING TUESDAY,OCTOBER 17, 1995 COMPTROLLER'S OFFICE, 7:30 PM Present: P Lapointe, M Miley, R Leone, M Mairson, J Pagett, R Colwell, R Borghesani, J Ryan Absent: L Peck, M Hastings * MOTION: Accept minutes of October 10, 1995, UNANIMOUS * M Miley will attend ATFC Annual Meeting on October 28, 1995 * J Pagett & J Ryan requested that the AC give the Special Education Task Force Committee a sense as to the areas that the AC would like the committee to review. Some of the areas suggested for review were benchmarking other communities, what constitutes special education, should there be a third party audit of costs, how much inclusion, why is there such an apparent difference between what Lexington offers and what other communities offer, what is the number of students as a % of the school population by group (grade levels), cost to educate specific disabilities, what is the METCO mix, do we need a special education contingency or can we over expend as we are allowed to do with snow & ice, do all students go through a review process prior to being assigned a tutor, does any one leave the program, establish trends over time, number of students, categories, costs per child Data being gathered is not necessarily consistent from town to town or within a community. There are no clear cut guidelines established by DOE for the classification of expenses and revenues. Too much discretion allowed in classifying expenses therefore difficult to arrive at good comparisons. * P Lapointe indicated that he had had a brief discussion with A Fredlich of the TMMA Executive Board and they wish to pressure the BOS and SC to arrive at a budget figure four weeks prior to the start of Town Meeting. No one can force the issue as it has been attempted in the past without much success. * P Lapointe will contact R White and J Young and reinforce the AC's recommendation as they appear in the 1995 AC Report to Town Meeting. * R Leone suggested that if the BOS and SC can't submit a budget perhaps the AC should. * General discussion of long range planning. AC needs to draft a few scenarios with some more realistic or at least different assumptions from those being made by the Town Manager. * R Leone stated that the planning should go out ten years vs five and collapse some of the detail in an attempt to get all the projections on perhaps three pages. Need to show revenue and expense, a balance sheet and the tax impact. Capital questions need to be addressed and perhaps we should be depreciating our fixed assets in an attempt to be in a better position to fund capital needs. * P Lapointe will attempt a couple of scenarios for the next meeting. * Next meeting scheduled for Wednesday, November 8, 1995 ac10.10