Everybody, everybody hear me? Everybody hear me? All right. If anybody doesn't know me, my name is Jeff Bur. I'm the vice president. Vice President, vice vers. I'd like to call this Tom Andover annual budget meeting to order. first thing I'm going to do is read the agenda. The electors and citizens qualified to vote in the town meeting town of Andover are hereby notified that the annual budget meeting of the town of Andover will be held at the Andover Elementary School in the Chyasium 35 School Road Andover Connecticut on Wednesday, April 9th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. for the following purposes. Number one, choose the moderator for set meeting. Two, to
receive the budget for the fiscal year July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2026 as prepared by the board of finance to approve the budget for the fiscal year July 1st, 2025 to June 30th, 2026. And four is adjourned. Copies of the budget are available in the town clerk's office. Voting by absentee ballot is not permitted for this meeting. Dated Andor, Connecticut, this day, 26 of March, 2025. Sign the work order selection. Agenda item number one to choose the moderator for set of meeting. Do I have any nominations? Second. Nominated by the motion and second it needs the information. Martin motion session. Okay. All in favor of Molly Martin for moderator. Opposed? Motion carries. All you have for Thank you. Couple of items just to bring everybody up for speed. At this meeting, the only thing that can happen in the budget is the items may be reduced. You cannot add to any line item at this meeting. Secondly, at the end of this meeting, you don't technically approve
the budget because the budget goes to referendum at the end of this meeting. You can request to reduce a line item by a specific dollar amount in the form of a motion that has to be seconded. then it's open for debate and then voted on. As far as the handover school budget, you cannot do anything with the line items only the bottom line of that budget. And again, RAM is voting on Ref Brendom. It will not really have a discussion here tonight. So with that, turn it over to the board of finance for their presentation. Thank you, Wall-E. thank you everybody for being here tonight. my name is Mark Winter. I'm the chair for the town of Andover Board of Finance. I guess on behalf of the selection and the board of education, especially the board of finance, I wanted to thank you all for being here tonight. this is a big team effort. First of all, along the three boards, you all put a lot of time and effort into this process, and you're part of the team now, too. it's important. This is how it gets done. So, thank you for your participation. All right, I'm going to go through a presentation. if you
would you can hold up your hand if you have questions, but I'd like to get through most of this and then you can we'll have a question and answer period. so hopefully it'll be fairly clear. I know some of the text is hard to read and you have printouts in front of you. You might need a magnifying glass to read them, but the data is there. So, thanks very much. I'll go ahead and get started. So, this is our agenda from the at least the board of finances presentation. We're going to go through the budget process. talk a little bit about that. We're going to go through the expenditures. So, we have three main expenditures in our town budget. the RAM expenditure for education and over elementary school expenditures and then the town budget includes both capital and operating expenses. We'll talk about the revenue that the town brings in the revenue out of the taxes and we'll have a quick summary talk about the capital plan for the next few years. So this is this is a little different. We haven't done this in any real detail over the last couple of years. We've attended the meetings there, but it is it is something that is in the chart and so we're making sure we meet that obligation. We'll keep it as brief as possible. We'll have a question and
answer period and then it's Ronald mentioned what you can entertain motions to accept the budget to change budget line items. again, as you say, we can only do specific line items. Okay, just talking about the budget process. I won't spend a lot of time on this to bore you to tears you know about a storm before we ever got to the thing. But we we have a preliminary town operating budget. This is submitted to the selectment. first it actually first is I should back up there's a lot of work goes on ahead of time. the town administrator prepares the budget template along with the treasurer goes out to all the departments. They bring out their proposed budget for their departments. basically zerobased budgeting. They build the budget from there and then it goes to the select the selectman and the board of finance have an opportunity to make changes as they do. ultimately they present that to
the board of finance. We go out from there. Whoops. separately the Andover Elementary board of education presents their requested budget that becomes part of the overall budget. the revised operating budget is submitted to the board of finance. So that's been when we take over. We received the budget to begin our review. So that happened over many several months and I know a lot of you know we had a lot of a lot of meetings to go over this. finally this happened last week before a financial public hearing on a budget. We actually just take comments in for the public. Of course public speak at all of our meetings. So you also have an opportunity contribute at that point or email any of us at any time. then we finalized the recommended budget for the town meeting tonight and then have you follow public hearing and that's where we are today. there is also a separate grant budget referendum and I just wanted to point that out but Wally already discussed it so that's not really part of our discussion. Quick budget breakout by entity. Again the three main contributors to the town budget. I know this is difficult to see but they're
they're very equal in terms of their contribution. The town operating budget is about 32% annual report of education is 36% and the RAM budget is about 32%. Okay, this is our proposed budget for the 2025 2026 fiscal year. it's 13,62,497. That's about 2.8% more than the current approved budget. for the budget that we approved at the meeting last year. All right. the various elements of that are in this the board of educations budget at 4,7 29,150 change of 381,000 roughly an increase of about 8.8%. the RAM middle school high school budget recommended or actually the budgeting for the RAM. This is just a line on visual change or act on is $4,135,532. it's actually a decrease of 14,754 minus4%. We'll talk about the reasons for that in a moment. And then we have the town budget which is set at $4,197,89. $104,818. Okay, we're about 2.4% down from last year's approved budget. first just a little review of the Andover Elementary School budget. this is set by the Andover Board
of Education. It's not something the board of finance gets too involved in other than to have a review of the budget with the boarding superintendent. so already talked about their their number for this year. The year their approved number is 725. this is an 8.8% increase from the 2425 budget. the main drivers for that increase. I hope I got this right. Maybe the members of the superintendent to answer specific questions you may have. we had new staff in the budget. There's about 3.1 I think FTE. Okay. And then there's a benefits increase along with that. Some of the contractual and things some of it's new hires and then there's some also technical licenses and stuff they're
driving. Okay. The RAM budget levy. So the RAM budget levy as you said is voted on with a separate budget reform. so we will have a separate vote on that. U doesn't happen here but it's it's a part we have to spend next year. So just flying over that make sure you understand it. so the overall brand budget is $32,620,000 roughly. That's a 2.6% increase. but our levy is about that is 4,237 347. So our our levy decreased our percentage decreased from 13.43% to 12.99%. So that's why the RAM budget is actually going down this year for us. It's because the percentage of Andover students at Ram decrease relative to the other towns. So that'll change year to year depending on how many Andover students are going to the RAM schools versus even in our way. You know, in a different year, it's going to be a different time. So that does fluctuate. In addition, RAM returned portion of the prior surplus to the
towns rather than sucking it away as I think they had the the right to do with the law. they looked at it and decided that they could do that and so there's actually a coming that's over total leverage for rent is 41 135,532 which is an overall decrease as I said about 4074 okay town we're going to the right in front of there. I'll talk about some of the differences the drivers there. So the this is the town budget not including on the educational expenses and separate. We do have two main components. One is the operating budget. This is just the money that we spend every every year to keep the town running and providing services. The other part of it is the capital budget. So that's the budget for major capital expenditures. the big things we have to purchase at fire truck, public works equipment, you know, community center, all of those things are typically covered in capital funding, road work, tree work,
etc. So, first talk about the operating limit. This is our expenditures just a year ago to provide the daily services that provides. We have an overall increase this year from 3,39,000 roughly to 3,194,000. It's about 155 $5,000 increase roughly about a 5% increase. Okay. the main factors contributing to the budget, there are some staff salary increases per the contract. This is what we paid. we had two contractors at the transfer station. Haven't had them for a long time. The Ugender was only fulfilling us for one. So they figured that one out and now we're paying for two. So that's there's about $10,000 stat right there. we added part-time assistant for the addition addition the digital assistant the community center. That's about $11,000 cost. the state trooper costs increased about $14,000. This isn't something we have control over. the town decided to have a state trooper, resident state trooper. we we get whatever state trooper they assign to us and that number will change year to year depending on that person's eniority. brush pile removal, this is about $20,000. This is not something you do every year. It's something we do probably three years. So this year we need to have that brush power to invest. go to the transfer station, you get down to your brush. We have to have that removed. Again, we don't do it every year. It's more cost effective to do it once every 3 [Applause] years. And then we did have actually reduction in our timing fees. These are the costs for actually taking the
trash transfer station. So sometimes how many years they go up and recently they've gone down. So that's a good thing to offset that. So we're actually kind of fortunate actually this year there isn't a lot that's going on in that budget to to change things for us for the town operating. So considering inflation and everything else we're doing okay doing pretty well. You look at the budget and a lot of very small changes line stands out. So consider okay capital budget. So this is where we put a lot of money to various funds to pay for the again larger expenses that the town incurs are decreasing our capital budget this year. We're reducing the contributions to the major funds in this budget. still maintains as we have here a pretty strong commitment to repairing or replacing the infrastructure mostly roads and bridge work related. some of you may remember we we actually had a significant increase last year and I think the year before to help better fund the town road you know better fund the town road because we had neglected for a very long time and our commitment was to try to to not have that increase year-over-year but to get to a level that made sense we can actually maintain the roads in decent condition. So we think that's where we are. We have not made any big adjustments to the county road. In fact, we actually reduced it a little bit by about $50,000. we also had a change for the fund. There's an element, excuse me, Andover Elementary School Capital Fund.
We established this last year. put about $100,000 of seed money in it. this was a problem prior because the elementary school did not have any way to fund major projects. just didn't have it set up for them. They don't have a means to have a capital fund separately from the town. So, we had to set one up in the town to make sure that we could fund the major projects. And there's there's a lot of them that have to happen at the schools. We all recognize that. So, we didn't fund that this year. instead, most of the funding for the AES capital fund is coming from any surplus that comes from the school budget. Okay. And we actually had quite a bit following the audit this year about $360,000 returned to that fund. We also reduced the amount to the building maintenance fund by about $67,000 and we reduced the amount going to the open space fund by about $40,000. The open space fund, by the way, that's what we use if there happens to
come up a parcel for sale that the town wishes to acquire to maintain open space as opposed to having to use for development. That that money is used to potentially purchase that. Okay, this is just a pie chart for capital contributions. You know, big yellow chunk in the bottom. That's a improvement fund. That's where most of the funding goes. It's a big source of funding. the next one is the public works equipment fund. And then the orange one on the upper right corner is the fire protection fund. That's that's most of them have really obligated decisions as a town at town meetings to purchase for example new tank and we have about 10 years worth of payments to make. So that's just got okay and again just to break down our major contributions of the big numbers our fire department fire department equipment was 137,000 public
works equipment 125,000 road improvement 360,000 this year induction 400 free removal 50,000 and then the bridge and pulker repair replacement at 175 5 minutes. Most of you have probably seen signs up for the Buckingham Road replacement or some of the others that are pending. Those are long overdue and we got to bank our lucky stars and most of those are being funded by the state or by federal government and we have to do some matching funds in some cases or we have to pay for the design effort in some cases. We really get a lot of work done and paid for by the state. revenue. not going to go into too much detail here. There's many sources of revenue. they're listed, I think, in your budget spreadsheet. Again, with the magnifying glass, we have interest. This is a big one. We're making about $150,000 on interest bearing accounts. again, thanks to our treasurer and our town administrator, Eric, found a stiff account opportunity and we we now put our money into interesting accounts. Interest rates have been pretty high the last couple years. We've done pretty well. Probably they'll go down this
year, but we'll see how it goes. state and federal grants. We get grants from the federal government and state educational cost sharing is a big one. the state does educational funds to help smaller towns and other disadvantaged municipalities help balance the educational opportunities in the state. they get cut this year. We hope maybe they'll grow again, but we'll see. Permits and fees. I just had solar installed on my house and get a permit there. So, that's where we even some money on renovations in your building. also, your transfer fee, you go to the transfer station, you want to get your sticker. overall, the revenues are pretty flat this year. Very little change. About $4,000 there. Not much change. Okay, so summarize summarize to summarize if I didn't I know I went through this fairly quickly but again you should have it in front of you the elementary school at 4.7 million roughly 8.8% increase where I am at 4.1 million u minus.4 for and the town overall budget. again, our operating budget went up in the town, but because we decreased the funding of the capital accounts, overall it actually is going down slightly by about $100,000. You also are going to use some of the fund balance. The fund balance is some of the extra money that's left in the town. You can think of it as a contingency fund that we use in case of major emergencies, crisis, natural disasters, etc. so we are going to use some of that money. We find that we got more than we probably need in there. We're going to use some of that money to
offset some of the increases this year. And then this leaves the remaining total by taxation at about $10,255. Sorry, $10,255,000. 557 10 million million 10 million255,000 there 5507 I've been looking at straight for about 3 days that's an increase of about 204,000 $25,000 overall which is about a 2.1% increase overall okay now let's talk about the mill rate this could be confusing so I know a lot of you have heard this full depending on these times, but I just want to explain it. So, the mill rate is a percentage. It's just a it's just a ratio that is multiplied by your personal property value to get your tax. Okay? So, the mill rate is based on the
valuation of the property in town. Okay? Now the state p state legislature passed a law this year where they changed the way that vehicles are valued and in most cases it reduced the value of vehicles in town. So what that does is reduce the brand list overall. So vehicle values went down your your own value is assessed value is what it is that didn't change. So that actually reduced our grand list which is the kind of evaluation of all the problems we have. So we use that that grand list which is on the line right here and about $316 million. that's what we have to base our tax. So when your total expenditures are about $13 million, our estimated revenue is about $2.6 million. We're going to use the fund balance and then we have an offsetting payment and exemptions. These are exemptions to certain taxes that are given to believe it's the fire department in some case disabled veterans. I got that right here. Correct. So the total you raised by taxes again I'll say it right this time 10,255,557. and then there's the grand list. That means the one mill that
is 360,000. Again, you don't really need to worry too much about the man that is whatever. but the mill rate is 32.39. Now, the increase there over last year is 2.95%. It doesn't mean your taxes are going up 2.95%. It just means that the mill rate. So, in most cases, for most of us, your model property tax, other property tax other than your house is going to be reduced. So, the mill rate just increases the tax rate. Okay. And then finally our total taxation is determined by the total budget offset by the revenue calculation rate is 32.39 which again is up above 0.95%. just as an
example this is solely a theoretical example to your house value. The house that's assessed at $200,000 will pay about $6,478 in taxes. Okay. So, pointing out also, I just want to make this point. As I said, for most taxpayers, your vehicle taxes will probably go down relative to where they were under the last valuation process. but your overall taxation will keep. So, again, that leaves us with an overall tax increase for the town at about 2.1%. Okay, now just a couple of quick slides of the capital plan. This is looking down the road. it's important and I don't think we've all just done enough of this. U so kudos to the selectman
and to Eric and everybody who's been involved in really you know helping us encouraging us to look down the road and do some better planning. Okay. 25 26 we've got a lot of projects in. We already talked about one of them. That's the Bumber Hill Road bridge construction. Again, 80% federal, 20% state funding. we still had to put out quite a bit of money for design and other other parts of that, but all in all, it's a great bargain. we're also looking at Lake Road and just road Culver replacement. should get that underway in the summer of 2026. and that's about 50% state funded. The rest we'll take from our bridge and culbert fund. We need to look at updating municipal generator covered the whole community complex here the town hall community center not we have a separate system there and we're submitting trying to get congressional funding for fiscal year 26 on road work. We always have they never update that right two seasons winter construction. So we're working into construction longterm 2027 2031 long hill road construction. Again we're anticipating 2027 80% federal 20% state funding. We're going to have to put up some design work money and we also have to pay for that ahead of get reimbursed but So far the feds have been good. culvert replacement. We have a lot of different culverts that need replacing. Some are in really poor condition failing. We need to consider on that. again they just pull the generator back up and we'll see where that gets. Might need to be a little more project. And then we've got some additional projects. Most of these are smaller. We don't it's
advanced plan. we looked at doors and ceiling for the Andover Museum. rebuilding the chimney on the library, re- roofing the gazebo here on the green up front with IC tools. So that's our capital plan. It's giving you an overview for the next few years. So I think this is all correct. We had a couple of language changes this year. but just to remind you about the process here, Rally talked about it. I talked about it. but we're at the town budget meeting. Now, for the charter, we can take the vote to adopt the budget to make amendments to the proposed budget. However, the town meeting shall only have the power to reduce or modify, but not increase the budget or any portion thereof. Okay. The town meeting may not alter any specific items contained in the budget proposed by the local board of education. and the town meeting shall adjourn to a ref referendum to be held on Tuesday following the first town meeting. So we'll go to the question and answer period. members of the board selection, board of ed and board of finance are here. We'll do our best to answer the question you have. Hopefully you'll be able to follow along following along a little bit in the process already. I know it's complicated. We all need busy lives. but this is our chance. please use the microphone and state your name and
street address for the meeting. Okay, hand it back over again and then we have since there's so many people here that you comments to with this three minutes and once you've spoken and move around other speakers before we go back so that one person at a time on this entire meeting. So we'll open it up first for question five minutes. Someone want to raise it again and I'll see you with microphone. You have a question. ask. my first question is about the line in here from advertising. What I've never seen over advertised anywhere. So, I'm kind of wondering what that $6,000 for advertising is. and the other one that I was wondering about is the beautifification that went up like a considerable amount and what they planned on beautififications during the town. with that network of six running rate. One more question. I notice considerable increases they said by contract. So I'm wondering if everybody who's employed by the town that's getting an increase, are they all under contract or are there any non-union people getting increases this year? Thank you. That's not a word of finance question. I can't on the on the advertising. legal roads that are required such as
the one that announced the legal town of this and I think planning zoning commission and others told staff to legally advertise similar I'll answer so the first one was regarding the beautifification committee the beautifification committee asked for money to do two things. The first is to address and continue to do plantings at the community center. And the second thing is there the board of selection and board of finance have approved a second welcome to andover sign and that covers the cost of hiring a contractor to do plantings and a little wall around both of those new signs. That was the vacation request. What's the third one? Got it. So, there's there's basically four flavors of town employees. The
first are people who are governed by union contract. That is actually the majority of the full-time employees. There are people that have individual employment contracts. That is typically the essentially the the senior staff if you would put it that way, which would be myself, the director of public works, the director of the Andover Library, and the director of the community center. And then there's everybody who is not an elected official but is a town employee. the everybody that's in the category of being an elected official but not a town employee, it is the board of selectman that sets salary and compensation for those individuals. everybody that is an elected official, their salary and compensation is set by
the board of finance. Does that answer your question? Not really. I asked everybody on here who was getting raises if they were union employees. The answer is no. They had contracts if they were union employees is what I asked. So, are you a union employee? I am not a union employee. Okay. Are the town clerks union employees? The town clerk is not a union employee. the assistant town clerk, who's the acting town clerk in the absence of a town clerk, which we don't have at the moment, is a union employee. And all of these guys who work down town, they're all union employees. no. Four of the five members of public works are union employees. The supervisor is not a union employee. We tend to not have any supervisors in the union of the employees that they supervise. And has meals and mileage always been covered for these people? So meals and mileage is covered under winter conditions when they are snow plowing and when they're working beyond a normal workday. so yes, that has always been that's been in the union contracts for at least the last 15 years
and I don't know past that. Donald Denny side. so for many years we operated in public works the three three positions and now we have five as we've grown under this current administration and I'm looking at $312,000 in salaries and I was wondering if we could break out those numbers approximately and let us know how much the foreman is making and how much our individual public works people are Maggie, one of the questions is the community center, which I'm a big fan of. I worked for many years and on a committee to bring us a community center. We never had one in town this side of the river. So, we have limited hours that the community center was open. And when I see limited activity, yet we're paying a 26-hour a week person 40 $45,000. And now scheduled for a raise. And we have a a new proposal for a part-time assistant in another $11,000. Just seems like $58,000 to run our community center is a bit excessive. I just like to maybe get
some comments from the board of finance and go to the board of selectment on them on that. But Eric, do I ask for you the salaries for the public works people? Can we get that from you or we get that from them? so I can tell you approximately the public works supervisor makes approximately $95,000 a year. I can't tell you down with the penny. we're fine. and then currently we have we have one maintainer one on staff, one maintainer two correction two people at the maintainer two rank and the third is at the maintainer three level and those salaries range. Good question. I can tell you an hourly wage a maintainer one makes around $21 an hour. A maintainer two makes around $26 an hour and a maintainer three makes around $28 an hour. I think Eric would still give you the best answer. Yeah, I wasn't at the board of selection meeting when they made those decisions. so those decisions are typically made at board of selection meetings in conjunction with the town administrator. So that was based on their request about the best possible funding and use. The belief is that the current community center director is has her hands full. we do hope to continue utilizing that even more and thought thinking there was a need to be funded at a higher level with more hours. Hi. I'm not going to, you know, go against what Mark said because we're a
united board, of course. I think the salaries because we spent a lot of time studying all the spreadsheets and all of this information painstakingly. I have a few things to bring up this evening. I think they're a little higher for the public works employees. So I think that's, you know, I think a lowest one is in the 50,000 a year range going up to the 62,000. So, you know, not to go against what Mr. Anderson said. And then we did have a meeting where I was present last year when we did send set the salary for the senior center, new community center director, which we were all excited to finally have the senior center. community center in town and there, you know, there was a salary set of a certain amount by the board of finance for a full-time person. I mean, that's
on record. It's inance. So, that was the expectation of that. They've since added a part-time person. so that'll be up to, you know, the community, but I just wanted to give you my viewpoint of what I've been studying. Scott Silia in Boston Road. Just a comment, not a question. the I for some reason I spent a lot of time looking at the charter the last 6 months, eight months. could be a lot of people remember why. and I I noticed that the section 802E3 describes how the the budget is supposed to be presented and they talk about a five column format that we
haven't done lately and did not do again this year. And I just think we either should change the charter to fix that to adopt what we're doing or actually go back to what's in there. That's all. Marcy Miner West Street. I have a question for the board of finance and I have one for the floor selection. I will ask that one later. from what I understand, we have three branches of government here in the Andover. We have the board of education that oversees the Yawware Elementary School. We have the board of selectmen that oversees the entire town. And we have the board of finance that oversees the spending of the other three boards. Is a board of finance that is essentially the town's financial arm. As far as I can understand, we elect these members and we expect them to keep an eye on finances of the other two boards. They're they represent us and we trust them to watch over things for us. I understand these volunteers work very hard and I've seen and been to the meetings and we know that you guys work really hard. you're smart, hardworking. So, I understand that sometimes you might not feel like looking too deep into your finances. It's so much more fun to give people what they want. It's especially hard when you look at things and the receiving end bullies you and makes you feel bad for asking the hard questions. I've seen with my own eyes bullying and the name calling in these boards. While I expect hard feelings when people don't get what they want, the bullying and gaslighting is not what we should have. What we we towns people want is the board of finance to expect the other two
boards to spend wisely and to be respectful of the town's people by choosing restraint with their budgets. What I'm seeing though is the board of finance spending hours upon hours going to the town's budget on a fine tooth comb and then swiftly sending the board of education budget right through to this meeting. There was discussion about this and Mark you tried to say we're not allowed you're not allowed to touch it. This may be true. However, you know that you can make requests for the board to use restraint. What I'm seeing here is a total disregard for the town's people. The board of education has increased their spending significantly year after year. They have so much more money that they're looking for places to spend it. And now they're currently asking for 8.8% increase. This, I feel, is spitted in in the face of the town's people. I'm going to ask you a question and I want down because I'm not the only one that wants to answer this. Mark, why did you not discuss the board of ed budget and what will you do to get the board of education to reduce its budget? It's a fair question. I mean, I'll say that right up front. The charter is very clear. board of ed or the board of finance may not make changes to the board of education budget. Okay. certainly you we have questioned in many cases the superintendent and the board of ed on their spending. I'm not going to speak for the entire board of finance. you know it's we have limited ability and limited leverage to make a lot of changes. I will say that we we cannot make any changes. Actually, all we can
do is advise. Is that where we want to spend our time arguing with them? You know, we do sometimes. I would agree that we do spend some times challenging them. we haven't always been happy with the answers. but ultimately I think that the main thing if you want to reduce the spending of the education budget is to propose the change in tonight's meeting and or to go to the board of education meetings where the original budget is approved. That's really where these changes should be addressed. Okay. I mean I I don't disagree that it's our role to provide some oversight question. You know we're not always happy with what we've got from the board of you know that's that's on record. but I think that's where these changes really need to be addressed. That's my So Marcy, I would just add to fact that we really don't have any control over that budget. We are aware that it
is a a goodsized increase this year and the board took a hard look at all the other budgets and you can see that we actually have a lower operating budget this year. We cut a lot of things open space fund, road fund, many other things, some salaries. So it's not we're just like don't care about you. We did know that there's a big increase coming on the board. So we cut back the operating budget as much as we could without hurting the town. So we do care and tried to get the budget as low as we could on the operating side. We have no control over the education budget. Hi. I'm Kate Greenhouse. I'm the chair of the board of ed currently. So, I I would just use this as a moment to say we do have budget meetings for the board of ed as well. They're open to the public. We have an email available for people to send questions and comments while we're working on the budget and it's typically presented through a couple of workshops and then presented at a meeting and then we vote on it on the following meeting the following month. So there's plenty of time for us to get feedback from towns people and we have struggled for years to get people involved or interested in the board of ed budget until it comes to this meeting tonight. And I would just encourage all of you that have questions about it and concerns and would like to give input to please come sooner and give that input and help us come up with a budget and understand what goes into it and understand what the components are to
teach our children. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, I'm Val Berno. I am the superintendent here. one thing that I wanted to add when we're looking at the budget and almost every one of Mark's slides until the very last one actually labeled our budget accurately. It said that it was the Andover Board of Education budget. The last slide said Andover Elementary School. And the one thing that I would like to point out is we are a small town and we are only one school. And so it says Andover Elementary School, but I really want to point out the fact that that budget is an operational budget and it includes everything related to educating the kids that attend AES and also all of the expenses related to this largest building in town. So that budget is a budget that is not only to educate the kids, but it's to run and operate 35 school road. And remember, even things like the lights being on tonight when we're not in school session, we paid out of bill. The heat, we paid out of bill. Everything related to 35 school road is in that budget. all of the 3 to 12 year
old kids all the way up until sixth grade. If they attend a charter or magnet school, it's in that budget. So, there's a lot of things that go into that budget. It's not just the dayto-day educating of the kids that are in this building. So, it is quite a large budget. It's a bigger increase this year. last year it was the town side at 16 and this year it's us. And it's unfortunate that it has to happen in one year, but I did want you to be aware that all of the expenses of that budget are everything 35 school. Thank you. Next, Jeff Ballard, Lake Road, Andover. And I think it's my understanding that the only way the town's people can separate the AES budget from the town budget is if this fails twice and then they get separated. Is that correct? So if it's defeated tonight, then it is separate. That referend that referendum. Okay. Thank you. It's bifurcated. If you fail at referendum, the way it's worded is if a majority of those voting at the referendum shall vote no, then the proposed budget is defeated and it shall be bifurcated as set forth below in section 803D. So if it fails at referendum, it
becomes bifurcated. else? There's some back here. I'll get to you in a second. [Music] Dennis Tammer, 23 Shotty Mill Road. I just have a question on the way that the NS surplus is now being handled. instead of coming under a improvement fund, it's all all of the surplus money is now going into just an AES surplus infrastructure fund capital improvement fund. And so from year to year, that number is going to change because it's after their audit. Correct. whatever is left is going to go into just that fund. And I appreciate that our town uses some of that leftover tax money the next year to offset increases because we've already paid taxes on that money. So, I'm always one that appreciates that we use that leftover money. And I'm just worried if there isn't a cap or a limit on that extra money from the AES fund because I will support the budget. But I'm just worried that
that fund is going to grow grow and it's only going to be used for the school when that money shouldn't all be used for the school if there's that much surplus. we should be using it to run our government the next year because we've already paid taxes on that money. So, I think that's something that should be considered and looked at. Again, I'm not sure when or where this came up, but I think I should have a cap also on how much goes into that infrastructure fund. Okay, it's a definitely a fair question. So just a couple of clarifications and explanation to how it works because it's a little bit complicated, you know,
battling or whatever. K jump in. This is so basically state law says that it it up to 2% of any surplus that occurs in in the education budget automatically rolls into a non-lapsing account for things in school like school improvements. Okay, that's not enough to fund the chains and the improvements are going to be needed at Andover Elementary, we all recognize that when we establish the capital fund for Andover Elementary, and we did vote to put a fair amount of money in there. that being said, it's a fair point. You don't want it to grow like that year over year. if we're running that kind of surplus all the time, I say personally, I think that that's a bad sign. I don't expect that we will. but we did it in in the the past fiscal year. Okay. And the quarter of financing would certainly be incumbent upon us to review that very closely if that continue to get it. And if you decided to not permit that money surplus to go back into that capital fund, it would then just be absorbed back into the town's funds. So absolutely that's what would happen. We again we we voted on it this year. We agreed that we
should move that money into the capital fund. They've got a lot of big improvements they need to make. we've got some infrastructure problems over there and parking lot was an issue last year. The bathrooms are an issue. We've got a failing elevator system that's is is needed every day. So, totally agree. Can't you can't just let that go out of control. We've got to watch that and it's going to be coming up on the board finance to do that. Good evening. I'm Shannon Brown. 248 Paris Road. Just to emphasize what Mark just said, two things need to happen for the board of education to be allowed to move money into either our 2% non-labs account or the capitalist fund and that is to get the permission of the board finance. So it is not something we can unilaterally do. We have to ask permission of the board finance. By law, we can put 2% into our non-lasset account, which means it doesn't lax. And by virtue of a policy that was just ended this past year, we can now because we have such significant improvements that need to be made to our capital and we don't have a separate capital fund asked for our any surplus in our budget after the audit to be put into our capital funding. The thing I wanted to comment on is this. Last year, the town voted for a 16% increase to the town's
budget. The reason we don't have an increase in the town's budget this year, that in fact can benefit from a little decrease in the town's budget is because we gave the town a 16% increase in the town's budget last year. The board of education is now asking for half of that. and we're asking for half of that at a time that's critical in the development of our school. We now have a student population that is one-third more than it's been and we have 240 plus students going to this school. We incredibly need that so that we don't have classroom sizes in excess of 25 or 30 students. So for everybody who thinks that we have classroom sizes of 10 or 15, please look at our monthly agenda because it tells you how many students are in our classrooms. Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade are now about 25 students. Those are the students who will eventually wander, so they won't always get the benefit of the band decreasingly levy. But right now, we need an increase in our teacher population. 3.1 is full-time employee. We need at least that to to satisfy the needs of our student population. That's to keep the classroom sizes at a level that's not terrific students. It's a size that's manageable for our
teachers, which is absolutely critical. As I said, what we've seen by putting in a prek is that we now have 60 students in our pre kindergarten classes. That gets students who are three and four years old into our student population. They're no longer going to magnet schools. Previously, we had to pay in excess of $5,000 per student on top of what you pay in taxes to send a student to a magnet school. We don't do that very much anymore because we get the students in at the pre-k level at three and four years old and they stay in our school. So we are seeing right now class sizes of about 25 in fourth, fifth and sixth grade. Those are going to continue to come through because we've got them in prek going forward. We therefore don't just need this budget increase now. We're not making a one-time request. We're going to need it for the future. We need these teachers now, for this next year, and in the future to meet the needs of our student population. Thanks very much. Anyone else want to go back to John? You see no hands. not within the week side. So, I like to go back to the town budget and 16%. Last year, I took a little took the
wind out of my sales champion. And that was a lot. And we have a lot of spending that's gone on during this current administration for public works vehicles, backhoes, trucks, and staff. And I think that we've hit a saturation point. We don't have any more miles of roads in this town, but we've got five public works people and there are extra projects to that level and we needed two more people. so I think that's something we should look at. The other thing is the again the community center. highly staffed, you know, staffed a lot of staff there and then there's item number under senior centers. Better get my to under senior citizens 4417 I would like to ask someone you know the board of finance board select what exactly is resident services coordinator if we have we're spending two people in our community center, senior center. Now, what what is this this number here? $6,110 for a resident services coordinator. Wouldn't one of the people in the community center take care of this? What what exactly is this? And none of the board finance wants to handle it. So this is it is my understanding this is a a mandated position by state law. Eric coming in right. Right. so one part of that job is mandated by state law. Yeah. So one part of that job is mandated by state law. we did discuss in a board of finance meeting with Eric went back and forth about potentially offloading that work and those those activities into the community center director and basically the answer was that they don't have the bandwidth if you don't fund this
position I'll have to do it somewhere else. Am I remembering the basic gist of that conversation? Yeah. So we decided to leave that in there for now. Of course, we'll do that as we go on. The community center is new, staffing is new. We really kind of have to see all how long that plays out. But that was the decision. So, as anybody that watches the board of finance meetings knows, I'm not as afraid to speak up. I'm usually the one that's making motions. And since you did ask, I I appreciate the synopsis that our chairman gave, but I did bring it up also and I'd like to let the taxpayers know that this position from what I've been able to investigate. Anytime I make a decision to ask for a change or a cut, I do a lot of research. It's very hard when you're talking about a person, a beloved person that maybe works at the town hall and has taken on a task when another person left and they've taken it on for an additional
stipend. I work in a school system and as anyone that works in a school system knows, there's times you may be asked to take on a stipen to do extra work. So there might be a year I get it or they might have someone available to do that work the next time. So, you know, they come and go. So, we were thankful that this beloved person at the town hall did that work. So, my idea was now that we brought on, so happy to have the senior community center. And now that we brought on two workers that weren't there, it kind of made sense for the taxpayers in town, which is why I was elected, to do the dirty work and look into the weeds, bring up suggestions, maybe put my face to it. People aren't going to be that happy with me. But if I find something where there could be a little bit of savings, so we could spend it somewhere else, I'm going to do it. So that's what I did in this case. We brought on you know a part-time worker who the board of finance thought we were hiring a full-time worker for the same amount of salary but we weren't part of that. So then we had another worker. So our thought with this position every town I
found out has to have a municipal agent for the elderly. So great service, great person that is there and gives the information, answers the question, access this agent. I took time to call many, many senior centers and ask them if they fill that dual role of mun municipal agent for the elderly. And they do indeed do that. Towns that are so much bigger than us, you know, twice the size of us. We're a tiny town, I like to call us, 3,000 residents. So my idea was just as hard as it was, this person that gets this title, which currently costs the town, 6,100 it gets funneled into some retirement amounts. So, it's costing the taxpayers $7,400 in the current budget. My idea was there be enough notice to this person that thank you so much for your service, but we're not going to fund that this year because we now have two people in the senior center that might be able to take on that role. So, that's my explanation. I did make the motion and it was denied. There may be a time later tonight. that someone wanted to take that on. Again, you know, it's a cut to a line there. Again, I don't get personal because if I get personal and think of the person, I can't operate that way. To me, it would have been great if our manager in the town kind of steamrolled this and it was well thought of ahead of time. And this isn't a a
knock on him. It's just the way that I would work. It was the time you could kind of have two new people coming into an office taking on the duties behind the scenes talking to the beloved worker that already took on these duties and tell her that there might be a change. So, thank you for meeting Robera Dhy to Merit Valley Road. I am the resident service coordinator here at the town of Andover. I've been doing this job since 2019 when the previous resident service coordinator who worked a total of 5 hours a week retired. I came in at a time when we had no money. I took over this position that was being paid at one point in time $10,000 a year. I worked 34 hours a week in the town hall. If somebody comes in, I'm there. The previous person was only there five hours a week and only took phone calls when they were working those 5 hours a week. So, if you were somebody that needed something for social services or from the municipal agent, they would only take your calls during those five hours that they were working. We also have the new part-time coordinator of the senior center and they're less than part-time person working in the office as well. They are not there 34 hours a week to take those
calls and help those people as they walk in. It is strange for the social services coordinator to be in the assessor's office because that is my full-time job. But I can tell you why it works. When you have a question with your taxes and you have things that qualify you for exemptions like being disabled or elderly, I've already have that in my office. I'm the one that provides those exemptions on your taxes if you can prove that you qualify. Those needs might need something else like where you can go get food stamps, where you can go get services. You don't have to tell your story to me and then walk over to the senior center and tell the the director there your whole story of what what you need and what they can do for you. Right now it works and I enjoy doing it and I enjoy serving the
community. I just wanted to you to understand what I do and where I do it. If you have questions I'm happy to answer them for you. [Applause] I call the blessing. I hope I'm not talking very loud here and I hope you can hear. Yes, you can hear. Okay. Thank you. I just want to say something. Okay, I am retired. I have been senior coordinator for the town of Vandor for 26 years. In those 26 years, I did do the municipal agent work as well as senior coordinator. I enjoy the job and I have always said and I'm going to say it tonight and everyone's going to be very angry. The job deserves to get paid. there's no doubt about it. I know in the in the rules or the charter or something it does say that we shouldn't have any volunteer. I was your volunteer. I was your volunteer for 26 years. Now I have to tell you we need to pay. I'm not saying we need to pay a lot of money. Sorry the bird. I'm not saying that. I'm saying yes we need to pay. And so let's
just talk about something else. Let's talk about the senior center. I'm going to call her the senior center. You can call the community and senior center, whatever you'd like. I was on that committee. I work on that committee, my husband and I, helping to hopefully build something that we would be proud of. I think we are proud of this building. I'd like to see more people come to the building. It's been very unfortunate. I retired in December, but we've had a few health problems and not been able to attend as much as I want to. We're going to get back on track. However, I want to say thank you very much to the board of finance. I
think you have the worst job in the town and I want to say also, I always thought it was the board of selected that had the worst job and now I've decided the board of finance because every year you get paid every year. I want to just say about the board of education. I think we have a great school in town and I'm sorry, guys. We need the pay. If they need the money, they need the money. And I'm hoping that Valerie and Taylor, they're just great. And they've been so good to us. I can't believe they're putting the money in their pocket for the schools for for I don't know what the I don't care. Just I I just don't believe it. That's all. And perhaps I'll be wrong and you'll say you don't know what you're talking about. I probably don't. But anyway, thank you very much and thank you board of findings. Thank you for all the questions. Is someone going to second that motion? Okay. Seconded by Deb. This motion is to end So I would recommend okay this motion is to end the debate for the discussion if you want to call it that. I will call for a rising vote on this motion. All in favor of ending this discussion, please rise. This is to end the discussion and vote on moving the budget forward. Yeah, this is to stop this discussion. Okay, you may sit down. All those imposed want to continue with the discussion. Please rise. It's the opinion of the moderator. The motion is passed. Are you going to make a motion to reduce the line item or the budget? Do I have to hold it for discussion? You have to make the motion. And the motion
has to be seconded before that can be open for discussion. You can make the motion to reduce a line item or the bottom line. and someone has to second it and then we go to discussion. I would like to make a motion to reduce it's under employee benefits. It's 141. that the account is 4117 141215. I think I have found something that there was a mistake on the spreadsheet. So, I would like to make a motion to reduce that line. $25,000. If you go on what page is ital? So page six of 14 under employee benefits. It's the third one down is the health/ dental insurance line 141215. So I'd like to make that motion because when you make a motion you open it for discussion. share those people? Okay. So, I was going to ask earlier to get some feedback from our town manager, Eric Anderson, and then hopefully that we have our computer open. Just today, I was, you know, we've been pouring through these spreadsheets. What you're
seeing is a small little microcosm of what we've been doing. And in the past week, I've been learning how the spreadsheets have been set up because we don't set them up. So, we found multiple formulas, multiple things that feed in. We've been making corrections. We've all been working as a board to do this. And just today, in a final thing, in a final going through my notes to bring here tonight, I wanted to ask Mr. Anderson, I believe there's a mistake in this and I feel like the the total that was brought over is the the health insurance benefit the total whereas usually when you work in a school system or a town agency, you pay a portion of your benefits. So I feel like they imported the wrong total. So the bottom line I'm looking at here is 239954. So I have this page. All of you can see. I was scribbling this before I got here trying to come up with a total, but I didn't want to be late for the meeting. But I feel confident that if I'm right, it's probably going to be higher than what I'm motioning to reduce. I want to reduce by 20,000. I'd
like to send it that for the corrections. We've gotten a legal opinion from our town attorney that if the board of finance agrees and if you find a mistake that it can be corrected. I happen to know he's here tonight. you know it's just a mistake in the clerical work that we don't do. We don't put it together. But I just I get it like I said and I found this. So I wanted to bring it to the attention. I think the total is the combination of what the town pays and the employee pays and that's what's been represented for the taxpayers. So, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I'd rather bring it up. So there's an amount that is the town amount. If you go down, if you scroll
down, we here this amount here is the health insurance including a 7% increase which shows us that amount for a single employee. Then we add this HSA payment that the town has to pay. We pay the dental cost. So it's the total right here. However, look at this for just the healthcare. when you go down below and we're given if you scroll down we're given the math where they figure this out. Okay, so it's supposed to be per year that amount. So when I was doing f fast math today, it should have been see how this total is going to be three. It shouldn't. We're allowed to make a correction. So, if I found it, I at least want them to look at it. Yeah. This is not a correction per se. This is an actual motion to reduce a line item
so that everyone understands I'm sorry. I'm trying what you're trying to figure out. Someone has a question. Here you are. It was. Yeah. Sorry. So it's negative right now. money and this is right, you know, it's supposed to be just So just a followup, the spreadsheet formulas appear to be correct. Now, the data that was put into the spreadsheet, Joan thinks it's incorrect because there's reference below it that says it's a slightly less money for rent 2,000 employee or for a family. So, the finance director is not here, you can specifically answer that question. So, what I would just say as a taxpayer, we get one of two choices. We can vote to approve this amendment or this motion reduce the budget by the amount that is as motives presented. and if it turns out that the numbers are correct, we'll have to find that money from somewhere else, the contingency fund. If it turns out that he or we can also decide to not pass the motion, leave it as is. And if it turns out that it really was less, then the town will have a surplus. Those are our two options. just kind of stay in what I think will happen. Who knows?
Okay, we have a motion on the floor line at $20,000. Motion has been made, seconded, and discussed. Is there any further questions? I'd rather not your table order to the floor. I ask everyone three minutes. Well, I am not arguing with anyone. I have spent so much time the last three weeks trying to go through this. So, I just want to be able to clarify. Yeah. I just want to Yes. So, I think that we could go so much higher than this, but I don't want to do that to the town. So, I feel comfortable that I made the motion to reduce by 20,000. I have a feeling that this happened year after year. So, I feel confident in the numbers and so that's
why I'm only limiting it to a $20,000. Oh, did I get that one? I'm usually not that bad. It must be all the hours I'm devoting to this time, but I'll go in the middle. Thank you for correcting that it's 25. So, I feel comfortable that it's going to come up higher. and that's it. I I did do the research on it. I know that I didn't have time to know the they've gotten a million emails for me in this past two weeks. So, I just just discovered it today. That's all. Thank you, Wally. You all have when you came in the door packing seven ballots. This would be ballot number one. If you vote yes, you are reducing the budget by 20,000 $25,000. If you vote no, you are not voting to reduce the budget. Remark ballot number one. The register can come around and lift up your ballot. We'll be in recess for one minute to please. All right. Other motions to reduce any blind eye, but are there any motions? So, I've said that many times tonight. Public works is over half a million dollars. It is growing and growing. It has grown substantially over this current administration with vehicles staffing and they have the same mileage. So, I'd like to make a motion to reduce public works by $50,000. linear salary line is fine. We've got we've grown from three people to five people to part-time people to summer help. There we go. We did two teams. Now we have two teams in the supervisor. We've gotten tax increases the last
bunch of years. I couldn't assume. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? Lori Artino. Okay. A motion has been made. Seconded. Any discussion? Let me just say roads in this town in this town back in town select person instead of administrator current board I know where I live now was a shame. It was absolutely falling apart. It was it was nothing but pops. the roads were not getting mowed regularly. Dead trees weren't being taken down. there's more people because there's work being done now to improve the infrastructure of the town. You can't do more with the same amount of people. So I think that oh build erosion won't sorry further discussion on the motion. Okay. If there's no further discussion, ballot number two of the packet will be at the
door. Yes. Is to reduce this line item. No was not to reduce the line item. [Music] We're about to get [Music] Okay. The first item that we voted on reducing for the public section was 44 yes 63 no. The motion was defeated. Now working on the Dennis Gam 23 Shiny Mill Road under section 4214 Community Center. I'd like to make a motion to cut the community center assistant position line item by $10,712. I'm not in favor of this at all because we definitely need her name is Kim as any of you know her and she's a fantastic asset to us and we cannot afford to cut her position because first of all the new director is has she has little experience. She's doing her best, but she needs care and Kim needs to I'm going to say to you, get this one. Pick up this one. Do not please do not cut her. Please do not. [Applause] Louise makes side I very much agree with Kim has been an asset. Tess has been a great asset. She's doing a great job at the senior center. We are starting to volunteers. We need more volunteers. And without the volunteers, you know, it she leaves, she goes home after dinner. She doesn't get paid. Neither are home. Both of them are there after 2:00. We don't get to meet anything for them. And I produce it. [Applause] moment number. mine is kind of just a question. Why did the salad kill?
That's what I was trying to ask before someone the question. Why did it go from 5,000 to 10,000? I don't think we should definitely So this past summer, we hired a director for the senior and community center and the original intention of that was to have that person performed three basic roles. The first was dealing with all things related to the senior center. The second was community programming for the senior center and the third was to take over and be kind of the liaison for all the recreational activities for the town. The goal being everything that was community centered to fall under one umbrella. the
original budget for the director was reduced last year by the board of finance. we did interview I think a total of five candidates. we went back to we had a preferred candidate one alternate and one emergency fall advocate. all three of the candidates we interviewed would not have taken the position for the amount of money that the board of finance allocated to the position. So we were forced to hire that position as part-time. so I negotiated enough less than the cap that I had some money remaining. and also that we had originally budgeted that person to as a full-time employee, you know, you're eligible for health care both for yourself and a spouse. So, we were able to hire somebody for less than we had budgeted, number one, and number two, that they were willing to take fee in lie of instead of healthcare. So, I took the money saved from those two things and used it to hire an assistant for that position because, you know, we pretty clearly needed more man hours or woman hours in this case at that position. So, this budget we're not increasing the hours for the assistant
in this budget, nor are we increasing the salary, the hourly wage for this that person. it was simply something that was not budgeted guess in last budget but the money was available because we took it from unused money from benefits and also from the salary from the director. So that's where it was in this year. That money doesn't show up in the benefits category because the benefits have been adjusted based on the actual personnel we have but it shows up in the salary line item. That answers your question. Hearing none, we'll call for a vote. This would be ballot number three to reduce by All right. So, you got ballot numbers for you. Yes. public works balance 91 no 18 yes benefit tax for this excuse me the salary line item for public work is not will not be reduced. and register will be around collecting your ballots. Again, this is ballot number three. The public works 91 no 18 yes was defeated. So that has not been reduced. [Music] valid hurry. I know. I just wanted to be clear. So, I'll say it again. If you can have a vote after this by standing or not, by rising or not, my my motion was
to call the question on voting for or against the budget, which I thought would have ended the session in motions. So, my motion is to call the question on voting in favor or not of the question. Okay. You want to make a motion right now to vote on the final budget? I do. After we count these balance, if you could, please. Is there a second? All those in favor of voting on the full budget. Please rise. I don't think I need to count. Thank you. Awesome. [Music] turn you down. All right. Technically, the vote to send the budget to referendum. No. It's kind of a loop point because if you look at the town charter, it automatically goes to referendum. But as a matter of giving people a chance, all those in favor of accepting the town budget and sending it to referendum, please say I. I.
Those opposed, nay. the opinion of the chair. The budget goes to referendum. In the meantime, fine. Item four is in order. If someone wants to make said motion, is there a second? All in favor of adjourning, say I. I. Those opposed. Meeting adjourned. yeah, the horn