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02/23/2023 AC Minutes 1 Minutes Town of Lexington Appropriation Committee (AC) February 23, 2023 Place and Time: Remote Participation: in accordance with “An Act Relative to Extending Certain State of Emergency Accommodations”, signed into law by Gov. Baker on July 16, 2022, communication took place via a Zoom teleconferencing session that was open to the public; 7:30 p.m. Members Present: Glenn Parker, Chair; Sanjay Padaki, Vice-Chair; Anil Ahuja; John Bartenstein; Alan Levine, Secretary; Eric Michelson; Sean Osborne* Member(s) Absent: Lily Manhua Yan, Carolyn Kosnoff, Assistant Town Manager, Finance (non-voting, ex officio) Other Attendees: David Kanter, Capital Expenditures Committee *Mr. Osborne left the meeting mid-way to attend to a family emergency At 7:32 p.m. Mr. Parker confirmed attendance by roll call and stated that the meeting was being recorded for the purpose of creating minutes. Mr. Padaki agreed to take minutes in the absence of a recording secretary. Announcements and Liaison Reports Mr. Bartenstein reported that he had reviewed the Cherry Sheet included in the Governor’s preliminary budget proposal. The projected increase is about $2.5M compared to the forecasted increase of $238K used for the FY2024 Town budget with the majority of the increase attributable to Chapter 70 aid. The Committee acknowledged that this number could change as the State budget is finalized and that it would be important to keep track of the final allocation to Lexington. Annual Town Meeting Report and Articles Mr. Parker proposed that the Committee follow a new process for voting on financial articles for the purposes of the Committee report. A similar process has been used by the Capital Expenditures Committee which has allowed for a more efficient utilization of time. Per the new process, all articles that require a vote of the Committee would be reviewed and discussed to determine which of them would be supported unanimously. At the end of the process, a single omnibus vote would be taken to cover all of the unanimously supported articles. This would reduce the number of roll- call votes that will otherwise need to be taken. Members were in general agreement with the proposed process. Mr. Bartenstein recommended that any single member could require an article to be removed from the unanimous list. Mr. Padaki, recommended that the member(s) researching a particular article provide a summary prior to deciding on how to vote. Both recommendations were agreed to by the Committee. Mr. Parker displayed a spreadsheet containing the list of the articles that this Committee will vote on. The following articles were discussed in detail: Article 5: FY2024 Enterprise Budgets Mr. Bartenstein indicated that the Brown Book was still carrying a plug-in number of 10% for the increase in the MWRA water/sewer assessment while the actual increase is closer to 5%. He also pointed out that assessment varies by town and is proportional to the amount of water consumed during the previous calendar year. Therefore towns like Lexington that saw a larger amount of