okay thank you everybody welcome to the town of Andover Board of Finance public hearing for the town budget for the fiscal years 2025 2026 we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order and recite the Pledge of Allegiance the pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty Liber and justice for all okay thank you so our main goal with this meeting is to receive any comments from the public on the budget I'd like to spend a couple of minutes up front just talking a little bit about the budget of showing briefly where we are I know possibly not everybody has had a chance to look at it or follow
the meetings or the developments as we've gone along here there's been an awful lot of work that's gone into this and and a lot of long meetings Etc but I'd like to just give you a brief overview before we do start though I I just want to make a couple of comments about participation tonight everyone's participation and comments are welcome we do want it to move along pretty efficiently so a couple of of ground rules I'd like you to try to observe first off try to keep your your your comments fairly brief and to the point keep them to three minutes or less if you can and you know if we need to come back to you later if you've got more to say you know we can certainly do that but we want to make sure everyone has time to participate that wants to participate you know without you know without undo time for everybody the other thing is to just noting that if if you happen to agree with somebody something somebody has said previously then you can simply say you know I want to agree with what this person had previously and support that and then go on we don't need to necessarily repeat all the arguments Etc couple comments too about the education portion of the budget this is probably not the place to provide public comment on the educational portion of the budget that has been discussed and gone through during the Board of Ed meetings so it's not in the board of Finance purview to change those line items at this time either the ram budget or the Andover Elementary School Board of Education budget if you have
questions or comments they're best directed to the Board of Ed and the superintendent and of course there will be a town meeting next week in which you can participate and you know this the budget will be discussed and Incorporated at that point but this is primarily I think going to focus on the town's operating a capital budget okay all right I guess with that being said we will go ahead and move on in the agenda which is our our we're going to receive comments from the public before we do I'll just take a couple moments to share the highlights more spreadsheet seems like I've been been staring at these all day today okay you should be seeing my screen I will just point out some things I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the details I primarily
want to hit the highlights so I'm going to move straight to the bottom line here okay the town of Andover budget is made up of three primary entities and they all contribute about equally to the to the town's budgets and expenses the Andover elementary school has a proposed budget of 4 thou 4,729 1555 you can see that on row 24 here I'll bump it up just for any of you looking at a small screen the ram budget is proposed at about $ 4,135 th000 and then we have the town operating budget which it is at $4,991 th000 roughly okay so those are the three main contributors to the town budget you know which end up at a you know the total the total amount with those three ends up being 13,56 ,000 and some change there so it's a significant budget you know but as you can see there's there's some changes here the the Handover Elementary budget the requested budget from the board of education is set at about 88.8% higher than previous U there's a lot of reasons for that that they've explained in some of the workshops
Etc the ram budget is actually going down this year because the Andover percentage of Andover students attending Ram is decreased for this year and then the town budget is actually reduced over the total fiscal year budget for 2425 by about 2.6% that leaves the total increase at about a 2% increase so certainly less than the cost of inflation that we've been looking at recently so what does this mean to the mill rate the mill rate is actually going to increase about 4% it again that doesn't mean that taxes are going to go up 4 % taxes are actually going to go only go up under this budget by about 2% so the 4% is really about how the taxes are allocated because of changes that the to the way that the legislature had had the kind of they they added some legislation that required us to Value vehicles in a different way so the vehicle property tax value changed it's offset by increased taxation basically in the mill rate so you had to increase the mill rate to make up the difference for the vehicle values under the grand list and so you know in in a way you could kind of think of it as shifting that the tax burden more to to homeowners or Property Owners and less towards the individual vehicles that the town of hand over taxpayers own so some complicating things it's a little bit complicated we happy to explain those in more detail if anybody
has any questions but but that's the upshot so we're looking at about a 2 % increase total TA by total taxation increase under this budget and we'll go through just some of the details real quick total tax revenue we're looking at about these are various Reven taxation Revenue by taxation so we're looking at about that's not right about 10 million derived from current year taxes and about 341,000 derived from other taxes prior year taxes leans interest taxes and some other per personal property taxes we're also expecting about $2 million in intergovernmental revenues which is really the grants we get from the state and other sources so that's educational cost sharing is the biggest piece of that that's the our allocation from the state to help pay for the schools okay some investment interest Treasurer and Eric have worked real well they've gotten really rewarding interest bearing account in which we've been investing the town's funds and that's been very successful it's about $150,000 in Revenue annually so that's that's been a great help for the town education as I said the the ram budget's about $4.1 million this year
the AES Board of Ed budget is about 4 .7 million okay and again those are those are normally discussed and reviewed in other other venues so we we normally wouldn't talk about them at Great length here U but you know if you do have questions we do our best to to answer them and then there's a lot of departmental budgets available you know the the town Administration the tax collectors the assessor the registar the elections cost the building departments Library community center town office Building Maintenance and management Insurance employee benefits Etc town hall to garage Old Firehouse Town attorney Public Works is a big one there's about 457,000 allocated to Public Works we have another 100,000 just for snow removal so you see things like that transfer station management a couple hundred, dollar recycling ground care Etc Public Safety the resident state troopers a significant line item the fire department significantly significant line item Public Welfare there's a lot of smaller budgetary costs in there the various commissions and Boards tend to be fairly minor and then we have Capital so every year we both put money into capital accounts and we take money out of capital accounts for various items so these are the major expenditures that the the town may may go through there's a contingency fund which we use
every year to just manage in case we have any overages in various departments the multi-use building fund this used to be called the senior center fund but it helps support some of the multi-use building fire engine fund this is paying for the payments on the the new truck or tanker that we as a town voted on last year Public Works equipment funds same thing that amount of money is allocated to vehicles that have been purchased and then there's various Road Improvement funds tree removal Bunker Hill bridge bridg and Culver fund building main fund and the Andor Elementary School Capital fund okay which is actually at zero this year and a small and a small open space fund which we actually also zeroed this year as a proposed budget and we have no debt so there's no debt retirement or interest expense and we should all be pretty happy about that I think that's a appropriate for us to as a small town we sure don't want to have any long-term debt that we don't need okay so stating that I guess Eric I'm gonna I'm going to stop sharing now unless somebody needs something else
and so let's go around and collect input from the public you want me to do that or you want to do that I'll tell you what I can go ahead and do that okay so what I'll do is I will call on each member of the public that I see by the name that's showed on the screen and if you have anything to contribute just unmute yourself and and you can speak if you don't have anything if you can unmute yourself and just let us say you know you're all set and we'll move on so the first person in my I just say Jed Larson looks like he has a hand raised I we should have people raise their hand and no well let's go around I just I'd rather go around not not everybody listening may have the ability to click on a screen and do the hand raise thing easily so although I I I appreciate that the sense of possibly doing it in an efficient manner so Jed you're the first person on my list you want to go ahead and unmute yourself okay well if I have my hand raised I didn't do it intentionally and I look at my screen and don't see it there but I did want to at least voice the concern that the I was disappointed when we eliminated the open space funding you know it was a a fairly small amount of
money that we were trying to put in the budget to try and boost that fund and and I know the budget's tough this year but you know I was actually I thought we had a good conversation on the the value of open space a year ago when we put it in and so you I was really hoping the finance board was going to increase the the cut that the board of selectman put in there but so you know we talked about the increase in the budget being less than the rate of inflation and we end up cutting the town budget which really means that you know it's a bigger cut than we have listed there because it doesn't account for the inflation and and so I was hoping that that we would consider you know either 25,000 or 50,000 I don't think that's a big budget driver one way or the other keeping that in because I do think it's a beneficial to the town we don't see that benefit today but at some point we're going to and it's kind of like an insurance policy and and there have been a couple of nice properties over the last couple of years years where we could have got State matching funds to match us but we just didn't have the money put aside to to
go out and pursue those and I feel bad that we missed those opportunities so I would just ask the finance board to consider putting that small amount of money back into the budget since since we are cutting the town budget overall and that was it okay thank you Jud appreciate it okay you could go ahead and mute yourself if you would and next up I have Pat galdi I have nothing to add thank you okay thanks Pat next I have Carol I'm all set for now thanks Mark okay thank you Carol Linda fish all set okay Dian grener can't hear you you're muted Diane no I think she un muted I'm hearing something there's some kind of audio interference doesn't seem to be can't catch anything she's saying it says connecting to audio maybe it's there okay try now try it now there you go are oh okay all right okay good thank you I apologize well first let me let me thank you guys for all the hard work to put this together I know that's a it's a major job and keeping this down to 2% is a applaudable thank you very much I I apologize I've have not looked at the budget so I'm I'm winging it here and the one of my questions is is this
the place where we can ask you to consider adding things to the budget or is this only the one where you can subtract things this you you can ask for any changes that you want so the board of Finance has not finalized this budget I think we're pretty close to where we final we taking votes on all the key areas in the town meeting next week once we have a finalized recommended budget which we'll present then at that point we can only reduce the total budget we can't add to it okay well I don't know if it's in there or not but the board of selectman know a couple months back back decided not to pursue a $4,000 for the community center
for their software package to help with their recordings and things and if that's not in there I would like to ask that you consider purchasing that software package for the community Senior Center I don't think that Tess I think she's terribly overwhelmed being part-time is there's too much work for a part-time person to start with and she should not be spending her time shuffling paper doing reports and all all those sort of things and I think the $4,000 for the software package was a shortsighted by the board of Selectmen and I think they ended up saying that they were going to give it 30 60 90 days and then readdress it and I think this is a time that should be looked at and
re reconsidered I think that's really important I also think that that position the director should be a full-time position again I think there's way too much work and too much expectation for the director to be doing this on a part-time basis and without the software and all the tools that are required to do the job properly so that's my my input thank you okay thank you it's good input appreciate it a couple of things I'll I'll comment on it's it's certainly within the purview of the board of Finance to add $4,000 to the line item for the operating budget I I do want to point out that we cannot make the decision to purchase a software or anything else though so that's really the executive branch function which would be the select one they they we could we could request that funding go into the budget and that's something we could we could take up in our a subsequent meeting when where we're going to try to finalize the budget today or tomorrow tomorrow but we don't know whether whether they it gets purchased or not we'd be up to the board of Selectmen so well I see we have some of the bard of selectman on on here and Eric as well we're not gonna have that discussion tonight though no but it's just listen up boys listen up yeah yeah for sure thank you okay thank you Diane okay next I see Jesse good evening I have a question if I may yeah does the board of Finance accept the Andor elementary school budget and just plug it into the town budget yes well it's part of the
budget that the town yeah the budget submission the board of Finance does not review it before we plug it into the spreadsheet no we review it but for the town Charter we're not supposed to make any changes to it okay we we don't have line item authority over the board of Ed's budget that's their perview we do go over it with the superintendent by all right thank you for the education I appreciate it thank you Mark Joanne y yeah I just I first of all I just want to say thank you to everybody that turned out tonight this is what we look forward to I know we've had a lot of long meetings you know where we discussed a lot of things in depth and hearing from the taxpayers about whatever they want to talk about is fine with me and and I understand you know I I look forward to this night because that's when we get the input of course we're going to get a lot of things that they want to be added in or whatever but some of the things that we're already discussed tonight we we did discuss in depth I mean it's never easy to make cuts I know someone talked about the open space I won't but we went you know in depth about why you know why we made that cut so that was discussed at our last meeting yeah but I just want to appreciate everybody that took the time you know I used to be one of the ones sitting in the audience there so thank you all for being here and and giving us your
feedback yeah sure okay move on to Maryann gu hi I'm trying to start my video here all right Mary y we can see you we can hear you okay right hi I'm the chair of the concer ation commission and I just want to agree strongly with what Jed Larson said regarding the funding for open space and I just want to add that the reason we pursue open space is it's such a benefit to the town and we've been told on many occasions that when surveys are done of taxpayers and residents in town that open space acquisition and maintenance is always something that's generally supported and popular so we're not speaking just for ourselves but for Town residents and as Jed mentioned we as an example we had an opportunity to purchase a property large pieces of property that are desirable in terms of conservation open space purchase do not come up for sale often and because of the cost of the property and how long we're talking months it takes to get funding from a state Grant we lost the opportunity to purchase the property so I expect the same will happen in the future we scan the real estate ads and we try and
purchase but unless we have some kind of funding readily available it's very likely that any additional desirable properties that come up will be lost to us because we don't have the funding available and it's purchased on the open market for development or for house building or whatever so I just want to mention that it's something that I don't think there's an actual amount we need to put in every year but at least something should be contributed every year so that the account grows and we make some investment money on it and that should be kept in mind and the
members of the commission are all very interested in seeing that happen if possible thank you okay very thank you very much Maran next I have Scott psan yeah hi he's got hi I I'd like to also talk about the open space you know the board of selectman took took $25,000 off of it and and then you guys took another $225,000 off you know I I believe what Jed and Maran is saying in the state the state asks the towns it's not mandated but it's encouraged up till now it was 24% of the acreage they wanted to see kept in open space and we have 23 now so you know we we need to keep that money rolling and they're saying by 2030 that they want 30% of open space per town so I I believe we should kept that money in there it was already the 25,000 was already taken out and and it was diminished into zero another thing is you know everybody's crying about the maintenance to everything and you took money out of the road and the building maintenance so you know I'm surprised you didn't take something out of the tree fund but you know how good we've been doing on the trees you have to continue to maintain everything in the town taking money out is not going to help maintain it Scott pan I think we still have you Eric are we recording still looks like we are Scott I think you can unmute it says mark that I cannot start the video because it's disabled yeah video
is disabled but you can probably speak yeah right so you know that's my two cents Mark okay all right thank you moving on I want to make sure I didn't lose anybody looks like my screen readjusted anything no thank you I'm just here listening thank you though okay thank you an CR an H we're not hearing you if you're if you're speaking tell you what I'll come back to you a little later might be able to put something in the chat if you you want Wall-E owner it says nothing at this time mark thank you okay thank you Valerie it pops up on your screen by the way once you try to unmute yourself for a participant it then pops up on the screen to ask to be unmuted so that might be the problem if people aren't
looking at their screen is they have to ask to be unmuted on the mode that we're we're we're currently in the only thing I will say to Jesse and anybody else that did still have questions about the school budget by all means I absolutely am available at the office if anybody has any questions between now and next week please reach out via email or by phone and I'll be happy to answer them for you thank you okay thanks Valerie I think I've asked all the board of Finance members to unmute so we should be should be okay there okay next up I have Marcy hi kind of getting over the last shock of that video I wanted to find out I couldn't tell by the budget how much of the money that we get comes from the federal government the reason why I asked about this is you guys I'm sure you know what's going on and I think we should be careful to think about how much funds could be potentially cut off from our budget and the last thing we want to do is ask Town's people for more money because the federal government is not paying what they normally do okay the second thing I want to
address is I'm kind of surprised that you take the board of education budget and you just slip it through and send it to the town from what I understand you could recommend that they use some fiscal restraint and ask them to reduce their their budget by a certain amount of money you can't tell them where to spend it but I'm pretty sure you can tell them they need to keep it in line thank you I feel like a increase of almost 9% is irresponsible it's pretty high and they've been having you know High budgets for many years and I think that it's important that we that the board of Finance helps the town's people in this regard because you know how it is when we get to a town meeting we can't do much all I got Mark are you gonna respond to that or do you yeah I'll if you're all set Mary thanks yeah I mean the the there's a couple things I I don't know about the the first question so the how much of our revenues are actually come from the state from the federal government I think actually very few there might be some grants that we're looking for there may be more that comes indirectly from the federal government certainly certainly you know we most of our money comes directly from the state including a lot of our our grants I don't see Eric on oh yeah he is on Eric so you I don't know if you have anything to add to that if
you know more than I do specifically about where the origin of those grants comes from sure so the answer is the only thing that we're getting at this very second that is that is very definitely Federal money is the bridge replacement Grant which is a project that is ongoing right now and it's certainly a concern of ours supposedly that is protected that's what the state do is telling me but it's certainly something I'm nervous about that's roughly $3.2 million project that's already started so I don't think it's a project we can just terminate you know other than that most of the money that the town gets ECS is the primary source is as far as I know that is State taxpayer funded there's not federal dollars in that so the vast majority of money that the town gets from the state comes from you know Town taxation do I think we can count on them restoring the cuts in ECS no given how many polls in the state's budget I don't think that's something we can guarantee which we could in years past but that's already baked into the budget so you know other than that you know it there's no question that a fair amount of the state money that's out there is actually originates from the federal government but we just don't really necessarily even know what the town level what that is so it's it's hard to
say what what are exposure is but I don't think it's that high other than the federal local Bridge Project which is going on now which is the Bunker Hill Bridge replacement okay all right thanks Eric Liz you have your hand up it looks like did you want to comment yes I do want to well I just wanted to comment to say that people are not able to contribute to the chat it's disabled probably because of the way the meeting is and if I or anybody goes you know puts their mute on we can't get back in we can't unmute again so that's all I wanted to say yeah so if you can raise your hand i'm trying to make sure the board of Finance members remain unmuted so yeah you may want may want to stay unmuted if you can so yeah yeah all right you can finish answering Marcy go ahead okay thanks yeah and so to get back to the second question that that Marcy asked about the about the board of Finance role with the education budget it is true that we can comment and make recommendations on the budget you know we do we do have
a presentation typically from the superintendent Board of Ed you know sometimes people have comments sometimes they don't we don't tend to make a general comment I think we all agree that 8% is a difficult number for sure but generally we're going to leave it to the town this is really the town budget the town meeting is designed around that and of course the Board of Ed it's their primary role they should be you know also exercising of course appropriate restraint and and what you know they feel is appropriate for the for the town and hopefully they are so the the you know just to read from the charter just said directly the board of Finance may add to delete from or eliminate requests made by various departments offices and agencies except
that the board may only comment and make recommendations on the budget requests of the local Board of Education so there's some you know there's some nuances of course to that but that's that is what the charter says Bill did you want to comment well I would just encourage Marcy to talk to Valerie if she has questions Valerie did a great job of explaining where those increases come from and mostly what we are told is the the student population has increased quite a bit they have two classrooms I believe that are up to 27 students a piece and by state mandate I believe Mark and you correct me we have to hire two new teachers is what we were told based on those two classrooms reaching their maximum size so a large part of what I understood from Valerie and The Bard ofed was the two new teachers that were here mandated to hire because of classroom enrollment so it's not like they're just spending a lot of money you know willy-nilly I think they're just doing what they have to do to you know meet state requirements but again talk to Valerie about that Marcy because she would be able to better probably better direct of the board of that yeah because there's some there's some nuances there I'm sure Beyond Hutcherson you should be unmuted lean if you want to add anything Mark she usually talks through a phone number too I'm thinking it's the 742 3475 I I could be wrong but if you see that you might I'll try it I'm not sure that they can unmute from the phone oh
that's true right you have to do some kind of there's some yeah some there she go see we got it is that jul can you it is yeah okay good gotcha thank you yes thank you for the overview and I real realized that I have not or I realized that I haven't gone in and looked at the everything in a lot of detail including the Board of Ed budget my question was along the lines of what just came up and some of what bill joser just mentioned what is the regarding class sizes bill just mentioned two classes with 27 people so now I I think I have a two-part question I was going to ask what the current average class size is and what the class
average class size would be if the number of teachers that the the board of education is requesting are hired and then I guess the second part of my question is according to what bill just said how does the state come in and mandate how many teachers we have to have I think Valerie's on the call if she yeah I mean you know Valerie I'm gonna unmute you I I would again just I'm sure these questionss been answered but I'm not really sure that you we're certainly not the authority here sure Mark so two things first of all again I don't want to hijack your meeting I absolutely will answer the questions and then urge anybody who would love to sit down with me to please give me a call I have sat down with a few people by phone and in person yes most of what Bill said Is Right on the The Mark there is that we can't have 30 there's 36 current third graders we
have one fourth grade class so right there that's that's a class right there there are in addition to those 36 kids that need to have two classes next year in addition to that we also have class sizes above fourth grade that are currently at 27 and 28 with no new registrations for next year and that's all of our kids in that class this is not taking into consideration any special circumstances or needs of particular kids and again I don't want to take over your meeting here but I've always said it also depends on the students when someone says well how many kids are in this class how many kids are in that class it depends on the needs of the students and recently I actually just used an analogy that you can't just say let's count the number of kids and let's count the number of teachers we have to look and that's why a lot of what we did as a board of education in planning this budget had to do with specificity to other mandates like special education needs and I say that
because I know that there is I believe 57 or 58 streets in the town of Andover and we have five people who work for Public Works how silly would it be if I said well we're just going to divide the number of streets by the number of public Works guys and they each have 11.4 streets and so there you go that number sounds great that five guys should each be able to take care of 11.4 streets that would be silly on my part if I said that because Eric would be the first one in rightfully so to say Val do you have any idea how big certain streets are versus other streets and the needs and this and that so it's not a one toone comparison and I would really love to just remind people of that but Bill is exactly right that we do have too many kids for the current upper grade classes because unfortunately when the enrollment went down years ago that was the way that they balanced that budget down to the zero and less than zero increases that they had gotten for a few years was through the reduction of Staff alone and they were able to do that many years ago we just aren't able to do that now with our increases so this unfortunately is that year and it'll it'll you know definitely be a little bit difficult for people however this has got to be that year last year I know we had 16% on the side and people weren't happy but it was a necessity and this year unfortunately it is the necessity for the school side so thank you and again I'm still open to
anybody giving me a call and or an email and I would be glad to sit down with anybody thank you thank you Valerie hey Mark be yeah before we move on I just wanted to kind there's been so much talk about the open space that I feel like I need to address it for the people that are here I want them to know that be obviously this is a painstaking process you know everybody could come on and have their you know thing that they really their heart is into and I get it and I think I even know most of you on here and what you would you know everybody wants to keep everything in every budget line but we you know we came on this on this committee or you know we were elected to to do a job so I want you to know that we do put a lot of effort into it the questions we asked Jad and Scott about the open space was and I also want you all to know there's there's an account that has grown so just because we might have cut a certain budget a certain year there's a ballooned amount that is in those accounts that we study so when I touched or when I made the motion I put my name and face behind the cuts that I put out there I'm the one that asked about the
the streets because we had about a million dollars that was going to be in that fund we didn't take anything down to zero the questions we asked about open space were was there anything on the agenda that was coming up because we had a sizable amount in there and then if something is found luckily we have a contingency fund we have a surplus fund and I forget if I'm calling the unexpended fund balance I think is the more correct term that anyone could maybe petition to Eric and try to to get something funded so again it's not easy and we thank you for all these comments what are you talking about Eric okay anything else from the board members okay it looks like I have one more person that's Mary holler no comment just listening thanks okay thank you Mary okay I guess I I'll just open it up a little bit if there's any member of the public that has anything additional they want to add I think you can raise
your hand using the zoom function if you want to add anything additional give you a minute here Jeff Bor here yeah are you in the community room Jeff they're muting again or it's getting muted Eric I I didn't mute him Mark can you unmute yeah yeah I can't unmute but I can request can you hear me now yeah we can hear you now y okay I I just came down from the Andover Community Garden meeting and they suggest I'd be here to answer any specific questions about the garden budget i' forwarded information as to the one time this year and what that was going for and what our projected budgets in the future were as well as articles that were run in the River East by myself that would give Board of finance and a better understanding of where we come from our history and our accomplishments okay so that I think that Lise had forwarded that information Lise yep that's what I was going to say and in the meeting in the meeting that's going to be following will probably be okay so in the subsequent meeting we'll discuss that yeah thank you Jeff y okay and an cre you have your hand up I think you're unmuted now an we're not hearing you and if you are imposter oh she's still there yeah and we still see you with your hand up you're unmuted I think if you want to add anything yeah we're not hearing anything yeah we were able to hear her previously right so did she just go off oh There She is again yeah she kind of moving around
yeah okay well I guess at this point we can consider that we've taken the public comment a lot of good questions lot of good questions about the process and good input from everybody we appreciate the attention we know it's a lot we all have busy lives and for you folks to follow up and and be evolved it's it's appreciated this is how it works so thanks very much so Board of Finance members we can entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting or close the public hearing make a motion to close the public hearing during the meeting I'll second okay Kim second yeah any discussion bill you got your hand up no I I lower it now no I'm in favor of also okay moving on yeah discussion I'm just gonna once again thank you everybody you know for taking the time being an active member of the community we really like to hear all opinions about everything so thank you thank you for knowing our meeting was tonight and for for coming aboard okay Board of Finance members all those in favor of closing the public hearing say I I I opposed any extensions okay motion passes unanimously meeting is still open we have a need to entertain a separate motion to adjourn unless the board has any other further comment are you talking to us now Mark I am are you trying to end the meeting are we going or well then we close the
public comment section if you look at the agenda there's like two one one is to close the the continue close the public comment section and the next would be to adjourn the meeting to adjourn the public hearing yeah public hearing yes and we're moving on to our special meeting right okay thank you just making sure the way you said it it sound like we're just done for the night yeah no no no okay so lucky okay we're gonna stay on though We're Not Gonna close it of Finance members and anybody else who chooses to can stay on for the subsequent meeting thank you yeah I still need a motion to adjourn the public hearing I thought we just did that I thought we just we closed a public comment we need to close the hearing oh it's the way it's written in the in the
agenda okay okay point of parliamentary procedure that's why I was confused yeah I'll make a motion to close the public okay thank you Lise that was Kim yes it was okay thank you any discussion okay all those in favor say I I any opposed any extensions okay the meeting is adjourned thank you again everybody we will be reopening another meeting this will be a special meeting with the board of Finance to continue the discussion on the budget based on the public comment and if necessary we'll also hold another meeting tomorrow to continue to discuss and work on the final budget to be recommended for the town next week and next week's meeting hope you all come to next week's meeting Wednesday 7M in person at Town actually in the school community school gymnasium so thank you very much for attending
feel free to stay on if you like Board of Finance members does anybody need a break nope okay then we will we'll go ahead and now call to order the special meeting this is the special meeting for the town of Andover Board of Finance on Wednesday April 2nd 2025 we'll s recite the Pledge of Allegiance a pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic stands one Nace that's thank you okay we actually have another agenda item the first part of this meeting agenda is also public speak so if any members of the public would would like contribute again I think probably just best to go around and ask first on my list here is Scott pan do you have anything to add no I'm good mark thank you okay thank you Diane Grenier I'm all set thank you okay thank you Jed Larsson I'm all said thanks okay thank you Carol all set for now thanks okay thank you Jesse hi this is Jesse pan and no I don't have anything further okay thank you thank you Chris col hopefully I'm saying that right Bruno I'm all set thank you Mark okay and Marcy I no thanks okay thank you Leanne Hutchinson nothing thank you okay and and Mary holler nothing to add thanks okay all right thank you very much everybody okay those of you who aren't on the board of Finance or the town if you if you could mute yourself I'm sorry is there anybody in the community and over community room that would like to make any comments before we start no I'm all set okay
thank you okay so Board of Finance members as you know our next item is to continue the discussion on the budget so I will go ahead and share the budget okay as all of you know we worked pretty hard on this last week and the week before and week before a lot of a lot of work went into this and I think we're we're fairly aligned so I guess I'll leave this open to the board of Finance members would anybody like to make any have any discussion about any specific line items that we haven't haven't already settled on or anything we have settled on you want to add more bill I guess I would just start off by saying that you know some of the cuts that the people talked about that came on generally speaking the open space fund and of course the the software for the community center these were decisions that were easily made they were painful for myself I believe that we should have both of those funded this year what the board of Finance was trying to do was trying to trim a budget back that was looking at a I think at the time a a two Mill increase I get the exact percentage of dollars and all that so it was just again the board of Finance trying to in in a tough year to hold spending back where we thought we could could based on the number of people that talked about the open space fund I guess I would make a motion that we would do some small amount just to keep something in that fund maybe $10,000 so it doesn't go
to zero you want to give me a number 10,000 is what I just said so I would make a motion that we add $10,000 back into the open space fund just so again that it doesn't go to zero and disappear off our radar you know going full so that would be my only comment right now I'd like to second that okay that was Louise correct yes okay thank you I think the motion is before the board of Finance to add $10,000 back into the open space fund discussion I would just say you know I I think I oppose the the cut that we made last week so I'm obviously in favor of putting money back in I I'm not sure what the the the material difference between 10 and 25 really is but yeah I'll support this motion yeah and Mark I just want to add that there's no way we're going to forget what we cut like I'm going to remember every single thing and we're
going to remember that we had such a budget year that we asked the question of what you know if there was anything on the horizon I believe the the total in that fund right now is over 300,000 so we've got a good pot of money in there so I'm going to oppose it just because it was painful at the beginning we have to cut somewhere there's no way this budget was going to pass in my opinion I mean unless you know we have 3,000 residents and a lot of senior citizens and different things so I'm just trying to be responsible for everyone yeah that's my only thing but we're not going to forget because we're going to remember what I mean I've taken good notes yeah my opinion it was hard okay Bill and Louise you both have your hands up still are you oh sorry add or is that sorry yeah I have a question
I'd like to discuss the community garden budget I okay can we have a motion before us now on the open space fund we should vote on that first okay so any more discussion on the open space fund I just like to add that I I do agree with bill it was hard but I think it's great to put the $10,000 back I I think it's fine okay there's any comment before we go on yeah I don't I don't have a problem with $10,000 I think we did our best to try to make little Cuts here and there and it wasn't a huge amount to begin with I think just you know so it can add a compound a little from the previous year years I'm not I'm not terribly opposed to that not a hill I would die on I think we've heard from everybody I think we heard from Robert already yeah so I'll just for for the record State I think it's too low I personally would rather see it go to at least 25k but I understand where we are and so I'd support it also any further discussion okay hearing none I'll vote all those in favor say I I any opposed is anyone abstaining Joan Joan you're opposed I think it makes common sense and I know we have funds to to pull from if so yes I'm opposed at this time okay and any abstentions okay hearing none the motion passes o just to take a look at the impact on the bottom line you know it's kind of as as mentioned it's it's it's fairly minimal it increases the total by
taxation 2.1% so it's U it's at 10,000 me it's it's a tenth of a percent okay further discussions on the on the budget so you wanted to talk about the community garden yeah while while Jeff is on the line we submitted every Jeff submitted it to me I submitted it to everybody because they had some further comments and questions on it and it's pretty self-explanatory did anybody have any questions yeah yeah I have a question for Jeff because I can you hear me yeah yes yes yeah so I went on to the community garden Facebook page and it was quite impressive it looks beautiful and I I saw that there was quite a an irrigation system in there already so I'm curious about why you're asking for more stuff for more irrigation could you maybe explain that if I can get myself unmuted here somehow can hear you can hear you okay yes we have a 17 the capacity is 1700 gallon rainwater collection for our irrigation system the irrigation system is complete what we are missing at this point is the pump which is in this year's budget at $1,800 and but still won't get us a functional irrigation system until we get electricity to The Shed from the Culver in front of the shed whenever
they run the wire for the upgraded generator behind the firehouse oh do we know when when that's going to happen anybody so while that question we did not get the federal funding that we requested so I would say I have no idea sometime in the next 10 years okay I have another question for you and I heard this from the board of selectman so that's why I'm asking that at one time and I saw this on the Facebook page thousands or hundreds of pounds of vegetables had been being donated to the Andover food pantry is that something that you guys still do is that still the plan or what is the plan for that well in the past couple years I have been doing Mo a a major major part of the work without a lot of volunteer help and so I approached the pantry this year and because we had two and a half beds to The Pantry we delivered over a th000 pounds of fresh produce this last year and they're stretched thin for volunteers and said that they could not find anybody to volunteer to tend the beds and so at that point we decided that we were going to divide the beds up in half so that we could offer beds to resident families to to attend their own beds and be responsible for their own beds and any of the Surplus we'll be going to the food pantry I have
as it stands now I have two half beds myself and I donate 80% 85% of my produce to The Pantry so we're hoping that it won't be 1,000 pounds but we're hoping to make a a major contribution to Fresh Produce to The Pantry this coming questions okay you know Eric I just wanted to clarify I was looking at the notes and I can't remember from the discussion the notes says the board of selectman reduce the line from fourth up $46,000 clearly that wasn't the request you're muted Eric that was the original request the original Rec commission request was for $40,000 for upgrades to the the basketball back stops in the
gymnasium oh under under wck programs I'm sorry so the community garden I guess I was getting that confused I'm sorry my mistake so I guess my question would be if we buy this pump this year there's no guarantee or idea when it would be electrified so we could spend the money but not actually get electricity for anytime in the near future is that true that that is correct as far as I know the reason I put it in was to get the system completed so all we are waiting for is the thanks further discussion or questions from the board of Finance or anybody want to made a commotion you could also do that of course are we talking about just this this item right well it would now would be the time relevant to ask any questions or discussion around the community garden line if y yep thank you but if there is none I propose we move on by proposing to move on that's means that particular line item is as it is is that correct it's as it is right now yeah okay thank you okay other line items that the board of Finance would like to
discuss yes Mark I have a couple this is Joanne so as you guys know I've talked about a couple things in different public meetings and maybe the board you know I've sent you some information of the background of things that won't be discussed here but kind of along those lines and Eric was nice enough to supply some background too i' I've made it known publicly that now that we have a senior center director I think it would be a great idea that we move some of the duties that are paid under a stien for the Social Services Comm I think it's called The Social Services coordinator you can find it in a couple items in the budget you know it'll be under an employees additional pay and then it's also under senior citizen
this particular thing and obviously we're talking about next year so this person would still retain the rest of the D ities for the rest of this year were in March so that's plenty of notice for that to go away I know I also was taking into account in our budget documents that Eric had provided I didn't know this was in existence but there was an memorandum of an agreement signed about this position and it was signed the last one we have was signed in 2020 you know July of 20 wait a minute August 1st 2022 so so we are within our rights to take away this stien now because the agreement says that we are allowed to terminate it as long as the there's 30 days of written notice and again it's a big long thing but I think and according to this mou I'll call it memorandum of agreement or the person you know is not to give more than six hours of time to it I believe and our Charter also says that this type of position should be an unpaid volunteer which we've discussed before so without further Ado with that little bit of background because this stien now that we have a senior center director who can act in essence as the municipal agent for the elderly a perfect spot for these duties to go we have both a senior center director we have a senior center assistant director
I know that by Charter we have to have this person someone to do these duties but luckily we're a town of 3,000 people I'm giving everyone in the background that's listening so it's not a very busy position I would say so I think we could save the town $7,500 next year not this year with this stip in because it's up to like $6,100 and it's also collecting murf so to the tune of about 7,400 so I would like to entertain a motion to eliminate this stip in from next year's budget which which which accounts are we talking about Joan So I think you're
gonna find the dollar under the senior citizen if you go down to senior citizens it's probably documented under Social Services yep so see it's always been under the senior center but the res res services coordinator line you know we've had this person that took it over it was great we're so thankful it was paid in the you know as a stipend but again I work in a place where stiens come and stiens go every year depending on need and my sale here for the town to save this money is we now have a senior center community director in every other Town their senior center director Community Center Director acts as this agent for the elderly and over kind of whips it up into this trying to call it a couple different names because people weren't aware that this was what it was so again having done a lot of research having talked to other Senior Center directors who are all Municipal agents of the elderly I think it's the perfect time for and over to make the change and while doing that we can save this line of $7,500 of course this person doing it thank you thank you thank you you will continue doing it through June that's my speech so if if I could summarize what
you're actually making the motion for so you're you're Mo you're making the motion to zero out the the amount the proposed budget for this line item 145-00 5100 resident services coordinator correct you know for for next budget year thank you does anybody second that motion okay I have a question on that let's let's look for a second first Louise if anybody has a second all right I'll second it okay can you're gonna second it okay yes well because the position is already listed as a unpaid position in our Charter I'm going to support that that change I do appreciate the person that's been doing it hough okay Louise did you have a you had a comment or question yeah I mean would it be a two-part motion saying to to zero out that money but to direct that responsibility to a certain person we can't direct the responsibility that's the job of the board of selectman yeah I did the research to find out how other towns handle the financial part yeah that's but that's on the that's up to the board of Selectmen correct we don't fund this they're going to have to figure out how to get it done because it is a required position I see okay thank you any other comments in the board of
board of Finance so I guess I would ask Eric because I really don't know much about what test actually I'm sorry what the director or the assistant director does do they have the capacity to take on that role because I believe that's what Joan was really alluding to was having that role be passed down to either the director or the assistant director role so I guess I'm just wondering what the capacity is for that either either one of those positions to take on that that role Eric could you if you could add any ins talk about that if you'd like to sure so obviously as a board of Finance you have the right to zero out any line item you want and then ultimately it's the board of
Selectmen and my job to figure out how to get the things that that person does accomplished are we going to be able to shift that to the director of the senior center absolutely not you know she's way overworked as it is it's already a full-time position adding those tasks onto it I I believe that's a non-starter because that means we're cutting too many other programs that she administers because there just isn't enough time as it is this week we submitted one of the two grants for senior transportation that we should have because we ran out of time submitting the other one that
other one potentially would have been 12 to1 15,000 back to the town but we honestly didn't have the bandwidth to put out two grants in that period of time so no and nor if you think about what the resident services coordinator does can I can I interrupt just I would like you to let him finish speaking Joanne he's he's trying let Eric finish let's let him finish speaking before I was only gonna ask him a question about that no no problem guys no problem so and and honestly I really don't want to distract a resident or the senior center director dealing with reporting situations and a bunch of the other things that the resident services coordinator does you are correct in that the one position that the state mandates that the town has the town Charter does say that is a volunteer position the town did that years ago in response to the state you know passing another unfunded mandate on the towns and requiring the towns do have that you know going back five years we had a a separate person that was doing the tasks for the resident
service what we're now calling the resident services coordinator when that person was fired by the town we made a decision to assign that for duties to the assistant assessor in part because the assistant assessor was the best person to be dealing with the renters rebates which is one of the things that position coordinates anyway because she already works in the agency that kind of oversees the renters rebates so from my perspective right now what we have is a good fit for the position you know but again it's it's your call you can certainly zero it out if you so choose I don't know how we would would go about filling that but it's not going to be the senior center director Joan you had a question thank you so much Mark I definitely didn't want to interrupt I want Eric to to say everything that they want to hear I just wanted to let the board know that I spent my whole Sunday sending you all emails with a whole bunch of information of how I have been trying to you know present this and I've talked about it in meetings and stuff so I hope you took the time to to read it because it I wanted you to thoroughly have the background so that you would be prepared and know what why I was asking for this and I get that everyone's vision for a per a position is going and I respect everyone so much that's why if I'm going to say something or ask Eric a question
I'm definitely going to you know present the strong points of something too none of this is easy it's it's not not personal at all it's it's trying to come up with some savings and then doing a heck of a lot of research on what other towns do so it's never easy doing things like this and so that's why I sent you guys all that prep information so you would know for our additional meetings coming up but it kind of came together with this this is something we had to take care of at this meeting and I don't mind if Eric's vision for or Our Town Administrator I should say vision for what a senior center community center person should be as you all remember we had wanted it to be a full-time job anyways and that's that's something that'll be discussed down the line but I think that they do slant more to wanting the grant writing and everything while every other town which I've spoken to many many of these Senior Center they're all the municipal agent for the elderly and I would have thought that was a no-brainer coming in I think maybe our town had a little bit of a you know we're a Tiny Town as I like to call it but we had a different vision for that so again he just had a different vision for it but I thought this was a great place to get some cost savings there since we now have an additional person so and also allowing for this
person to serve out the term go with everything in the charter not ruining anything that's already put in place and giving a lot of advanced notice so that's all Liz you get your hand up yeah so I I I support this motion and the reason I do is well first of all as Joanne mentioned the board of Finance did authorize this as a full-time phys last year no this this a different position we're talking about right no no no I'm talking about you're talking about this okay the senior center position was was authorized but it turned out not to be anyway but my understanding is that we don't even have to deal with hoarding situations here it's usually just referred to Eastern Highlands Health that's how that is that that's my understanding from my research and that renters rebates are generally have been handled by the assistant assessor assessors in the past so I don't know however they want to figure out how to deal with this it sounds like it's minimal very minimal hours and I'm in favor of saving the money on the stien other comments or questions to the board of Finance okay you know I'm just going to say I will vote against it I I think it's a little risky for us to to to be eliminating funding for a position that is is mandated you know we've heard that it's wouldn't be easy to you know redistribute this activity I think we probably get a bargain for the money we
spend on this but that's that's my two cents if if none of the other members of the board of Finance have any input we'll go ahead and call for a vote okay and we may need to do this individually so I want to make sure I get it correctly so I'm GNA I'm going to go in order my screen Bill no Liz I okay Joanne I okay Louise I abstain from this okay Kim yes okay Robert nay okay so we have a tie I'm going to vote no he the motion doesn't pass if we don't have a majority so at this point we'll consider the motion to not have passed I'd like to make another motion please okay is that you Joanne when you're when you're done yep go ahead so with that motion not passing I'd like to amend well I'd like to introduce another emotion to have this stien be funded at the amount of2 400 okay anybody want to second that this typ in please yes I'll second it was that you list like yeah I'll second it because my understanding is that it is there are so minimal hours ever needed for this position for what I understand so for someone who is in a position who's already getting paid that will be taking these same calls will be taking calls during current work hour as my understanding it it just doesn't okay if it was something that she had to handle separately as a part-time you know like after hours then absolutely I would totally support the funding but it's something that happens during the day during the work days and the the time
that that is affected for this role is very minimal as far as as I've been what I've learned in my research okay so just to regroup and make that clear so the the motion before the board is to fund this position at $2,400 annually as stien further discussion from the board members yeah I just want to say that thank you guys for we've talked about this before where all those points have been brought up remember when you have a stip in you're not usually double dipping but but this stapen is allowed to double dip so she doesn't have to increase her hours it is
you know with all the research it's minimal work and this would give money to that person of $200 a month I think if they're going to keep that stapen in there I think that's a fair amount of getting you know a little bump to do the extra work okay further discussion from the board Mark can I make one point sure Eric so right now centry has the same position that the assistant assessor holds as the assistant assessor that pays $7 an hour more than what we pay and gives a bonus or a bump in salary as soon as that person completes the six Monon probationary period you know you're kind of playing with fire because what you're going to do can I ask ped just because I don't understand the longest serving person left in the town hall who is not paid the going rate for her position personal it's not another one available right next door but you know you do have to think about that if you're going to make that decision okay that's it taken okay Mark I just want clarification on procedure yep so once the board of Finance members that are volunteers here giving their time have made a motion and we're in the discussion mode are we allowed to have you know I thought that we were talking about it amongst we ask your questions in M motions all the time and I know but we didn't that time we did not ask for additional information feel like it it's fine but I I just feel like we have a two-way street sometimes and I'm just trying to learn all the rules thank you anything else from the board of Finance members yeah I just wanted to remind as
well that the charter does say it is an unpa uncompensated position and and also the town of centry is four times the size they also they have a a ginormous budget I I know I know it well my son is dealing with it and arguing with them right now so they have a huge budget they have a large population much bigger than us it's really not personal too it's really hard when we we try to keep the person out of it because this is not easy work to do this is not easy work to do you know making all these calls making sure my facts are right making sure that I'm going to going to present myself in a professional way and then have to get this information out where you know it's not easy but you're trying to save the taxpayers a little bit of money because we did add other people and then we get this back you know from a source that I wouldn't think would be going in that direction that's all we we've got to keep the personal out of it we're trying to yeah of course just save the town some money if I have come up you know all of us Whoever has done some research on the side or taken the time to read my emails and the hours that were put into it you know it's not off the cuff thank you I have a question support of Finance members Louise yeah a question is it all possible to look at the possibility of maybe paying that person per hour again I think we're straying into territory that is a little bit outside of our purview you we can fund the budget we can make a recommendation that
the budget line items be funded at particular areas and therefore obviously we're influencing policy when we do that but I don't think we can I don't think we can do anything really directing or requesting I mean you can you can go to board of selectman meeting and ask that they make a change but they're really the ones that would need to make that change I think okay understood that makes sense yeah yeah it does one more question yeah let me ask one more I'm sorry go ahead Liz like you got up there yeah I was I was gonna ask Eric did he disappear I'm here oh there he is okay you popped over on a different screen
do you have a a log I mean is there a log that shows the number of calls and the you know that H is having to be dealt with to maybe support that a little more do I have an exact number of people that request Services no I don't nobody's ever asked me for it before so that's not something you know and it is a job that's very episodic you know the the problem comes in is that in the end what you're doing is you're transferring the responsibility back for running the hoarding task force and a few other things back to me because there is no other you know probably Town employee that you're going to get to do it and I will do that it's not like I'm not going to do it but you you know my time's pretty valuable and I want to make it clear that we're not we're not Personnel we're not HR we are only the financial like
like I Mark Mark said so we we just are looking for cost savings for the town and did a little research to come up with you know something so understood I know Liz just asked that but you know I get back to I've learned through my four years on this board what I can talk about and what I can't and I try to really respect it but this is just a funding a simple funding saving the town money you know you know asking for all the data so that we could support it every single one thing we can say is every single town has in in marbor is the perfect one if anyone saw the the River East a couple weeks ago they had a great article about this person that I actually talked to and she came on board she's a full-time person they have their website that has all the resources you pretty much direct someone to a website or where to call you know is there a call every day and and I'm not
pretending to know everything again as a volunteer that spends a lot of time trying to save the town money or or offer some cost savings whether it gets rejected or not it was just an idea but but usually there's there's websites there's things like that this is a fiscal thing it's not a personal thing it's not a person thing so back to the specific specific motion are there there any more comments or questions remind me since we've been talking about it for so long what the figure for the motion was was it 2400 2,400 right say so just to be clear it's like a $3,700 c from The Proposal yes okay understood thank you for that one more question real quick does this does this also does does murf and other things get added onto that amount as well correct the total for the stien as it sits is $ 7400 that it's costing the town currently so the murf would go down but you know the 61 is the that's a good good point Liz I don't know what the total yeah yeah it's not just this line level it's also right it affects yeah that way okay I just wanted to because I thought that was the case but I wanted to verify it's connected to the murf okay yeah it's connected to murf it's connected the indirect costs and it's also connected to no it's not connected to healthcare because that's already fully so those two the the roughly 7% that the town pays in indirects for Medicare Medicaid all that stuff plus the the down contribution of murf right and sorry just to follow up I
thought that the Moa said that it shouldn't receive any other benefits but again I'm not I'm not pulling hairs right now just am looking at the document but I'll keep the motion as discussion okay we'll take a vote all those in favor say I hi hi hi Liz Joanne and Kim did I lose Kim okay where you okay and I'm sorry I should have in order just make it clear Bill no okay muted do you have to unmute her because of the no I asked her to unmute it might take a minute that to show up we're just having a little bit more technical difficulties than you all Rob let just go to you he okay I'm gonna vote no also so we need Louise's vote well right now it's a tie so it wouldn't pass would it oh no I'm sorry if she voted yes right mind exactly it's all about the question of Ascension you sent her text I'm trying to see if she's you did okay she said she can't unmute oh should I should I ask her for a vote or is that not offal I mean we go is boy technology I'm really on the fence with this I'm gonna have to abstain on this okay Louise abstains the motion fails again or this motion fails I should say okay thanks everybody sorry about the delay okay well we can entertain
additional motions or discussion of other line items I have more I'm sure people would want to hear from me again but I just want to bring up another one that I think is a problem for the town so they can fix it I'm I'm trying to figure out where it is so unfortunately this one is another stipend and if you could you could go up to the well this could be a very you know a problem so the other one I had a lot of backup on it so we're GNA I'm sorry Mark can you go you'll have to go to the top go to kind of go where the administrator is and we'll go down from there and I'll find the line okay all right and this one's very very painful for me like if everyone
wanted to say how painful everything was before because this is the hardest worker that I know that I've come into contact with but I think that this is going against Union principles and I don't think you can do this so and if someone wants to provide me with something that says it is so it's under the treasurer Financial tab of the 4137 accounts we're looking at the 10911 5100 the assistant Treasurer stien go all the way over and let's look at the reason so I'm not talking about I clicked on it but it's it says reesing additional ra for siphon y this could mean a lot of trouble for the town as far as bargaining outside of the Union without having any kind of agreement and without anybody else you you once there's a Union contract and there's no existing things you're not allowed to bargain with one employee and if you
bargain with one employee I mean I didn't plan you know it could be serious trouble I've looked into this so unfortunately for you know there's other questions that are going to come into play later I am looking to zero out for the town that stien of $5,000 in that line right now showing the line I'm not seeing it I'm not seeing the line sorry go onk line I've highlighted here it's 109 d101 Das 510000 assistant Treasurer stien bargaining outside of Union yeah so so that's Joanne's concern you know we've talked about this in other venues right but there's a whole another thing that we're still going to talk about but this one is separate from that too but first I want to see if if there is a second to this motion sorry y discussion okay so other discussion questions so this is this particular one is this the one we've talked about before yes well Rob if I may there there's some question about some other things you know about published rates and stuff like that we're not going into that now this one it did come up I mean we're looking at something that clearly says what it's for on this document right so this is what we're going from yep no I just want to make that I'm not confusing it's literally just informational Jo I just want to
make sure that I'm not placing this correctly in my mind you know this is the one that we talked about fairly extensively before is that correct this particular one right but there's more there's more to it than just that so I it's hard but yeah I mean this this particular one was talked about a you know a little bit yeah right and I I recall I mean I recall a discussion and I you know I share your concern thank you I do not want our town opened up to a lawsuit but the tricky bit here and this is the thing that's that's that has me all tied up is that you know Board of selectman should address this I we could we could cut the funding out I don't know if you know maybe that solves the problem kind of in a indirect way that's the thing that's got me kind of hung up but I I again I I would reiterate that I share your concern I don't think this is necessarily kosher and we could be putting our at risk or something I'd really hate to see us have to deal with so I I I totally get what you're trying to do here I don't know Mark is it right for a
second let Rob finish Rob do you have more no no I'll se it I'll seed my time please by all means Scott so you guys remember Sor hold on stop everyone please I can't see who's asking to to speak was that was that was me Scott Pon okay all right Scott I'm going to give you a couple minutes we got to get to this point it's a pretty simple question and I'm ass say it's the board of Finance members too it's pretty straightforward we discussed this at length out in various venues so I I think I'd really like to call the question but go ahead Scott okay so this came up earlier in one of our discussions in the board of Selectmen that Christine was going to be taking over more responsibilities
from the treasurer and that that was the reason why she was going to get the extra money and when the treasurer leaves Christine would be there to to take over that position so I I just want to give you a little backstory on that that's all okay thanks Mark if I could and I just want everyone to know we have some matters that will discuss in private that we're not even bringing out right now I'm clearly talking about just this stipend is is not the way to go I I get and as you guys know I I think she's wonderful and probably worth every bit of money that people want to give her I just want the town to operate correctly you can't just decide to do this that's my opinion yeah I'm only talking about yeah Paul the question okay yeah I mean I'm just going to put in my two cents I think removing this is is would be the incorrect thing to do you know it's to the board of selectman to make the proper finan and Eric to make the proper you know financial and Personnel decisions I think it's absolutely incumbent upon this to raise issues where we see potential problems and do you want me to public the other ones
hold on one at a time yeah so you know I think we we've done that and we have we're going to continue to do that because it's important but I don't want to tie anyone's hands and you know this is not the final budget you know this just gives us the opportunity to move forward with this budget we can always remove it later we can remove it in the town meeting the board of selectman can choose not to fund it you know even though it's in the thing doesn't mean they have to spend it guys it's Joan again I just want to reiterate there's a much bigger problem than just this sipen so I don't want you all to get confused with you know there's there's kind of a couple issues this is the one I'm publicly talking about okay so but I if this is the way I hey I go with the board I've done my thing my soul will be clear with finding a mistake you know in thinking and thinking this could be a problem and operating outside of unions with doing this if you don't if I know that it's our charge to look at this spreadsheet that we're given and decide what we want to keep on it you know there's backup to everything else that was provided this one we don't have any backup and I'm just looking at the reason that's there and I I don't think it's a legitimate reason especially when it's a union
employee if it was a non-union employee I feel like there's a little more that's all you've all said your piece I've said my piece my I'm clear I I did my thing with bringing it forward yeah I'd like to go ahead and call for a vote if nobody's got anything different or something they want to add okay going down in order Bill no Goan yeah based on what I just said yes I'd like to remove it okay for the town sake I would say yes because that would force the issue to have the the over the overall issue looked at from the word I second okay Rob I'm going Liz Liz I'm I'm I'm gonna vote Yes because I'm
concerned about the the bargaining part of it that's true and if it's a concern because of that I'm saying yes perhaps a conversation can happen with the board of selectman later and get that straightened out so we can know for sure before the budget's finalized okay just making the point that this can't be funded if if we remove it and pass it onto a toal for Budget Kim I'm GNA vote Yes okay okay and I will vote no so that leaves four yeses two Nos and one abstention so that motion passes so that is this line right here and we will Zero that out you're idiots okay thank you
everybody hey Mark I just have a followup just remember and then I did send everybody an email I might as well say it publicly we are requesting an executive session with the board of Selectmen at their next meeting so there will be a few items discussed this was just one I wanted to address today thank you okay other motions or line items to discuss to the board I just wanted to come back to one thing I don't know that we sorted it out after we talked about it in the public hearing the money for the software what where was that for the I think was Senior Center Software was like $4,000 was that correct oh 1200 you know I I don't know that it was in our original thing it was zeroed in the original estimate here okay no maybe not so that was zeroed there okay I guess sorry I apologize I be confused maybe getting a little tired I'll let it go never mind okay any other items the board wants to look at Mark can we see where well I do have some concerns with the spreadsheet this is Joan again and maybe Eric can answer if he thinks that it's I don't I'm hearing background noise is anyone else hearing that I think it's it's almost like a little B Dog you know I think it's Louise if she could mute temporarily that would be great thank you think got it thank you my goodness I got it okay you know obviously I was gonna ask where our bottom line was look at the mill rate look at what it was but I
I thought of another line I wanted to look at too yeah so so the taxation total is down to 2.0% which is where we started right I think the mill rate might be might be slightly like four point it's another 10 higher than I wrote it was like 32 point and then can you go up Mark a little bit because there's a total in the corner that okay so the spending is up this is the line that I always look at in case the public cares for this part is the 219 590 so the expenses for this year from what we've cut so far we will have an increase of 219,000 I can't see it all but 590 something there so we also have the the thought when we get to if the point that anyone else was going to make some suggestions for cuts that we could throw more of the fund balance that Eric in Eric's suggestion to bring things down just a thought well I think we're at a 2% increase with taxation I mean I don't see any reason to deplete our fund to reduce that we're well below the rate of inflation and obviously you know the the town's people can certainly speak right you know make make motions to reduce things but all right no I was just bringing that up as a as a thought too because well everything should be considered yeah right so that's my personal view I wouldn't change anything there right I know he put the 40 you know I think we
were standard with 150 for a while and he put the 190 there because last year we were 40,000 over so I think he put it back in for that yeah yeah that's just kind of a one time thing right oh of course of course oh you know what the other thing I was wondering is where where would we see the The Returned money from the sale of the the equipment the from the town the town truck guys the what do you call them DPW guys do is that is that reflected in here anywhere if anywhere it probably be in Revenue But Eric I don't know we we probably aren't going to show it separately unless un you you have a net amount somewhere it's not because it's it does not affect next year's budget that would affect essentially revenues in the last year's budget okay so where did it go I guess is my question goes into the general fund balance general fund balance okay is is that a tab in here the general fund balance no it is is not because the general fund balance for this budget we use a general fund balance number that comes from the previous audit so I gave you the cheat sheet with which is what the unexpended fund balance is as of the financial statement that was relative to July 1st 2024 so those expenditures presuming this year we are under budget that would show up in the next fiscal statement next year anything that got returned to the general fund balance
from the sale of equipment okay that doesn't show up all right thank you thank you that makes sense okay would the board care to look at any other line items I had a question for Eric if I may Mark sure go ahead Eric I know I learned a lot last week when we found out that the fire department and the library I believe take care of their own budgets and cut their checks do they and it's just if we could scroll down to the library Mark just so that I understand I might as well because I think there's only one line for the library in there there's two lines there's a salary line and there's an operating budget yes okay thank you right right so one operating I it's getting blocked for me for some reason there we go Library so the library payroll is self-explanatory and then Library operations the proposed budget is very similar to the year before do they
provide did they do they provide a breakdown to you I know we asked the same thing about the fire department so I thought it was fair to ask about this yes they do and that should have been you should have had that that is in the information that was in the shared gr that you had access to I must have went by because I went in there and I tried to look at that all right just a question so they cut their own check they have a checkbook okay none of that runs through your approval or okay well what runs through my approval is the check every quarter to the library got it okay no I just want to make sure I learn from this every year I get a little bit more and then can we go up to the fire department one more time Mark yep hang on thank you yeah down there's a fire department play commission okay so and I know we went over this last week and we talked okay I
just wanted to see the dollar amount so that's 16785 or 150 167 350 350 yep my computer screen is there we go all righty 35050 167 and then one more because I know we're coming to the end but if we could go down to the public works again I know that's one of our bigger budgets okay I just wanted [Music] to there we go all right so it has all the lines and then the bottom line [Music] there mark are we allowed to make a motion you know just on the bottom line and then let a department decide where they'd like to make any I don't think that would be appropriate we we you know I think we need to control the budget line items at this point remember they can always do an in in depart you know Department transfer between accounts if they if if if that's the kind of thing you want them to be able to do if you want them to decide and you just want to take a number out well only because I had tried to take you know and again I'm only working in support of what what I think is right so it's not easy but I tried to make a motion and it failed in a prior meeting when I was trying to take a little so I thought maybe it would be fair to try to just take a little off the bottom line whatever I would propose and then allow them to decide that was my thought and being a little more
so let me all right this is the last one from me for the night I'm going to go ahead and propose that we decrease the supplies for public works by 2500 that's my motion okay does anybody want to second that motion that's account number 301- 620 56010 second guess I'm not hearing a second that's fine I just do my due diligence due diligence thank you Mark y well I guess at this point then I would say unless somebody has an another line item they want to take a look at and address do somebody want to make a motion to accept this budget as is as the board of Finance recommended budget to go to town meeting ISO move can I I ask a question well let's let's let's have the motion Rob's got a motion on the thing do we have a second I I second okay Bill second disc go ahead was that you Liz you're asking a question yeah discussion so we have never discussed the AES budget and that's been brought to our attention I would like to to talk about it does accepting this preclude us from talking about it no so if I if we accept this we could I'm able to talk about the AES budget sure absolutely yeah okay you can talk guess can't change anything can't do anything about it hold on so yeah if you want to I guess change it in some way then that more but just talking about it absolutely yeah well I want to talk about it because I thought we got a legal opinion that we were allowed to make
recommendations to lower a bottom line if we felt it was appropriate right we don't have line item Authority but we do have the ability to say we think this should come in lower well we can I don't know that we can cut it well we can suggest it I would like to hear what Liz has to say y oh I apologize I didn't mean to cut in I apologize sorry it's okay it's okay yeah you so I know I was annoying everybody earlier when I was on my fact finding Mission and I appreciate everybody's patience with all that but really I'm not not sitting on this board to rubber stamp anything and there's really very little transparency in in numbers and information on the aeos website so I tried to do do my best to gather information and obviously was faced with some push back so what I was able to gather I gathered it on my own I've gone to other Town's websites and found a whole lot more information so much easier information to find and I just feel like the town's people don't have the information they need to
to know if they should even support the budget or not that being said I do have a couple things I wanted to share some images I wanted to share that I had put together and if you guys would indulge me I'd like to send it to Eric and then he could present it you can you could also send it to me but yeah oh or I could oh I could send it to you okay ou know I I I think I'm gonna I don't know does the board I mean I I okay I'm I'm gonna make a statement it's just kind of a personal thing I I am pretty am prettyy clear on what the what the charter says so I would not be at all comfortable with changing the thing because it's clear that the charter says that we can't change the board of education budget just comment on it so you know I wouldn't go to change it I've got to get up very very early for a flight like three in the morning so what I would prefer that we do and I'm just throwing it out there this this board does not exist for my benefit but I would prefer that and unless you want to make a motion to change this budget could we vote on the to move this budget forward to the meeting vote on the on the on the
motion at hand and then if it fails we'll we'll we'll continue with that or we can talk about it after Mark I make the motion go ahead Bill we already we already have a mo I would make the motion that we accept the budget at the budget as presented the budget that we have the authority to act on right now well well we've already got the motion in front of us right so we're at the discussion point now Rob Rob made a motion and you seconded I think and I seconded it well and I mean that's fine because we still have time we have time tomorrow it's a separate item though yep it's a separate item we have budget is a separate item from this budget oh if we vote if we vote to like to be clear on on on the procedure if we vote to accept this as the recommended budget there won't be a meeting tomorrow guys can I say something to we're in discussion the only thing that I want is is respect for someone that's put a lot of time and effort into whatever Liz is going to tell us tonight I mean I feel like I'm on the receiving end of that sometimes and you know I you know put a lot of effort into things and and then you know everybody wants to move on and I get that we're all very busy people we have busy schedules but I at what point can she just even if she doesn't present can she talk to whatever I just want to show her some respect yeah I mean I think I think I think if if if Liz says
I'm not comfortable with this budget I think we should reduce the Board of Education line item and I think we have the authority to do that and explain you know that that's that that's her thinking then we can you know we can we should certainly discuss that as part of this acceptance this this motion this before us right I just want her to to to be able to say what she wants to say and I think that's the just respect for the questions that she's asking you know because I think she's you know I'm just being an observer right now and so that's off thank you yeah I just I just want to make sure it's relevant to the to the to the motion motion on the floor
that's really what I'm trying to do and she did try to ask she asked it very politely at the beginning if she says yes does this mean she can't speak anymore I'm just being a human I just want and you are too Mark thank you but and everybody that's what I'm addressing right now is her concern that she wants to just say something yeah I yeah so my my question is if I say yes to this motion and and it passes then I can't say anything more about my thoughts about the a AES budget well we could we could continue the discussion I think we could certainly have more discussion in this meeting but the next step in the budget process would be to go you know there wouldn't change the recommended budget okay so if this motion went down then what I have to put forward could possibly change the bottom line of the a budget if it was so motioned and agreed
to correct I it could I think we I think we'd face a legal challenge honestly because that would be in contradiction to the Charter but it could seems like the Charter's kind of I don't I don't think so the charter is pretty clear it says the board of financial of public hearing blah blah blah the board of in preparing the budget the board may add to delete from or eliminate requests made by the various departments offices and agencies except that the board may only comment and make recommendations on the budget requests of the local Board of Education to me that's pretty unambiguous that the intention of the charter is that the Board of Education sets the the school budget for purposes of the town meeting it doesn't mean that the town meeting can't change the amount that's really I think where the the border contemplates that the that the town budget meeting is where the board of aded changes to the board of aded budget can be made that's that's I think to me it's pretty clear and I wouldn't as as y as long as I'm able to make my Spiel then I'm I'm okay with that because at least if public if people are watching and they want more information they'll get this information and then they can do what they want with it at the town meeting yeah I think that's important I'm okay with that okay all I ask is that I don't I don't get rushed All I Ask yeah understandably and I I didn't mean to rush you but I do want to make sure the discussion is
pertinent to the motion that we have in front of us there so Mark I have a question yeah we as as a board of Finance members are also part of the public so we can make whatever suggestions we want at the town meeting as well yeah absolutely so I don't know if everybody heard or it was a little broken up but Louise made the point that as members of the public we on the board of Finance can also make comments at the public meeting or a motion for that matter all right that's good that's all I just wanted you to have your moment to to speak and whatever you want to present you know everybody puts a lot of effort into things so glad you'll have your moment Liz yeah thank you I think Eric has his hand up yeah oh
give you Eric what do you have let's make real quick i' had given the board of Finance about four meetings ago a copy of the Town attorney's official opinion on this his opinion is that the board of Finance and I'm not a legal scholar but in his opinion you can and I'll just read the last sent or paragraph in conclusion my answer your specific questions are that yes the board of Finance has the ability to modify the bottom line of BOS budget and any such adjustment must be voted by the board of Finance before the combin budget is sent to the voters for the annual Town budget meeting you know and obviously he was talking about a different date since this opinion was three years old or four years old so that's just a point of information I'm not trying to say whether you should or shouldn't y cut understood yeah my in my view and I'll just State my my view my view is that the the charter is pretty clear regardless of the the Connecticut General statutes and the intention of you know in in general powers granted the board of Finance you know the view of of the
charter is that the board of Finance should not be the determining Authority for the board of EDS line item so that's what I based on yeah I think the town the town meeting is the is the appropriate place for that for the charter okay let's you know let's move forward with this motion and then I'm happy to give my Spiel board okay we'll go ahead and take a vote the motion before us is to accept the budget as it is presented to us tonight as with changes we made as the final recommended budget to go to the town meeting next Wednesday all those in favor I'm going to go individually just because it's too complicated with the way we are I can't see who's got their hands up and everything
Bill yes Liz I'm gonna say no okay es Lise I didn't hear Joann's Joan said yes yes I'm gonna have stain at this moment what I'm gonna obstain she's abstaining I'm going to say okay and I am a yes wait so we have four yeses two Nos and one abstention as I read it so the motion passes this will be the budget that we present to the town in the board of or in the Town budget meeting next town budget meeting yeah okay however yeah we should definitely hear out you know as we discussed okay I'm gonna maybe a little bit where we are yeah so the other so we're going to go ahead and let any other board members make any final comments including Liz so we'll give Liz the floor again I think because
we've done we've performed the main meeting that we have to today I think I'm going to step out and hand control the meeting meeting over to Joanne if that's okay Joanne yeah I've never controlled the meeting before is is well just just in terms of you know you know Eric can manage Eric can manage thank you but I I really wish you would you would stay and and listen to this I'm a little disappointed I mean 3 a yeah I appreciate it I just I have I've got to travel in the morning and I promise I will review the video once it's available so it's it's it's an area of concern to me I will say that yeah I have I have some concerns over the school budget myself okay I just emailed you that document so I guess you're not the person I should have emailed it to
well let's let's go ahead and start I I see well if you want to email it to Joanne or I can she may not be able to share it and can can Eric present it it's just the one document right yeah email it to me and I'll share it turning it over to me and I'll you know I'll do the directing like you said that would be great if you could because Eric can present your presentation Liz yeah let Eric yeah yeah let Eric go ahead and then I'm happy to interject and I think it's important that everyone has their time to speak or you know make their motions whether they pass or don't AB absolutely and I didn't mean to come in try to sound like I was coming in over the top or anything it just it's been a week as we say said last week for yes absolutely last week was a week but we're here believe is that what I'm what you see is what I'm sharing is that what you're looking for yep
yeah so I I just wanted to me it's really important that we are honoring the taxpayers and making sure that we are providing that we're funding certain areas of the Town appropriately for the needs of the Town one of the narratives that I had heard quite a bit was that the school is just growing exponentially and there's big concerns about the growth of the school but I do want it to be known that the preschool is the driver of the growth and the preschool has been opened up to non-and over students so I wanted to address that so that the taxpayers knew that the preschool now represents 25% of the enrollment of the school and this chart here is a high level just high level shows K through six on the top line in any potential magnet students that might be in there preschool you can see how the preschool has grown a decision was made at some point to to add non-end over students and I think the intention was because they could make more tuition money which is what I was told that decision was made in an executive session so nobody
really knows exactly what the discussion was around that you can go to the next slide okay slide P so this is just more of a breakdown people were asking how large the classes were actually this doesn't show the number of classes but it kind of breaks it down a little more and I can make this available to anybody who wants it just if people want to know really what the enrollment of the school is the general fund is what we should be concerned about K through six because we're told that the preschool is self-sufficient whether or not that's true I don't know and I wanted to highlight that again it is 25% of our overall enrollment and this is not about not wanting to fund the school I'll just say it's about funding it appropriately so the kids get what they need and the taxpayers wallets are honored okay you can go to the next slide and I think the next one's okay so this this is the one that's most important and you guys might want to zoom in on this one yeah it would be helpful if we could zoom in I can barely
see it what you say there you go nice we can look at the Top Line first the Top Line basically is the budget going back to the last year ending 2024 that was the the adopted budget and I wanted to highlight that they had an over 10 10 a half% surplus and that's astounding I think the reason for the for the Surplus is over budgeting excessive budgeting the t Board of Finance made an agreement with the Board of Ed that they would we would take their Surplus and put it into an AES Capital fund for very much needed capital projects there's no doubt that the projects need to be done but on top of that they get to keep the first 2% into their non-aps so that's $84,950 so adding on to last year's budget we gave them a 2.6% increase and
here's their current adopted budget 4348 million and then they're requesting 8 .76 for next year's budget so going down can you go down to the next line please I'm sorry I'm I'm I'm really nervous I don't like presenting nope nope nope nope next line not next page oh sorry right there there right there yep so I look at this and I'm like what does what does this what does a school really need to run and in my estimation what they needed to run in 2024 financially what they needed to run was exactly what they spent which was 3,378 15131 that's what they needed this is a projection based on that number as a baseline so if you look at that number and say we approved the 3% actually 3% for the next year they would have gotten 3.92 million 825 and say we said fine you can have your whole 8.76% and we added that on to to to next year the total would be 4.24 million my point is I'm sure in this current year that we're in right now there's going to be another Surplus I think to first of all first of all no one no one no one's going to accept that 8.76% increase I think they probably put that in there hoping for half and
I'm not even saying that they shouldn't hire the teachers that they that they want I understand those those other two classes are a little large but I think they can probably afford it with what they have and I I know that will be disputed but if you look at this projection there are surpluses in every year and I I just think I think the what they're asking for is way too much I personally feel that a 2% increase for them will get them what they need and be able to hire their teacher on top of that they now have a two a 2% non-aps fund that has 261,000 in it if they run into trouble they have that money plus there are grants there are grants every single year if you scroll down I'll show you the history of the grants and I I know they're going to say that they're you can't count on them well let me show you the history you can count on a good amount of them I took
these off of the the website it's public website where you can research all this stuff the prek grants are the Smart Start and the early I forget what it's called but that's what the grants have been through the past couple years and here's the miscellaneous grants the grants will come in and I don't think the grants are factored into their revenue when they create a budget and I think that's why we get to the position at the end of the year where there's money left over and historically there's a spending spree to try to try to spend it down as much as you
can and I don't think this school is unique to that I think I think it's probably a standard you use it or you lose it right so and I'm not really even criticized in that and then the last slide that I have here I'll just let you look at this real quick is just to show that I pulled the per pupil expenditures for the state of Connecticut and just kind of skined it down to our area just to show where where Andover stands with our neighbors our neighboring towns so I just feel like to continue to build a budget based on your current Year's budget is just compounding compounding every year you're com compounding the increase every year I don't think I don't think it's honest and I don't think it's fair I don't think it's fair to the taxpayers and I was honestly wanting to share this information for quite a while and I waited because was kind of advised to kind of hold off and I really was under the assumption that we would have the ability to affect their bottom line so if anybody has any questions or you want to look at that other slide with the the Baseline projection you happy to ask questions may I make a comment yes please so the only thing that I would comment on that is a little different than what you said is I have a different take on the
grants and the surpluses basically my take is that as does a good job of bringing in grant money that they I think they appropriately can't assume they'll get I understand exactly what you're saying that they are pretty consistently bringing it in if it were true that they went on a spending spree at the end of the year I don't think you'd see the surpluses we've been seeing so on the one hand I understand exactly your point which is that they've been coming in under budget kind of consistently because of granty really I I honestly think that's a good chunk of why and then they take that money and they put it in the the% onlaps saying but I don't think that they tend to at the end of the year frantically buy a
bunch of stuff just because they can to do their budget and I've see that in the business world you know use it or lose it is is absolutely a thing I don't really think as does that I understand know yeah I know they've done it I've heard I've heard them say it in a in a meeting but go ahead oh really go ahead yeah yeah I have go ahead you can continue I don't mean to interrupt you because no no no no I'm sorry yeah I should have interrupted you I was giving it's okay Liz yeah okay I could be wrong it was my impression that basically what they've been doing is s saving up money really more than spending it down but the truth is as you've pointed out and you know this is fairly obvious to those of us who've been on the board for for a few years now they have pretty several years in a row now come in with surpluses that's true there's no two ways about that so I'll stop there I I just wanted to say you know the grant money thing is is a tricky thing assuming you're going to get the grants versus saying well look we we we get them every year but we don't know exactly how much there there's some play in that I think there's reasonably people could differ that's all I I'll stop there because I I don't want to ramble yeah andless I just feel I just feel this this 10 this 10% Surplus I think the reason we're seeing the Surplus is they understood that there was a deal that
they could have the money into the capital fund so it behooved not to spend money at the end of the year and and that's fine because I know there's capital projects that need to be taken care of and the school needs to be maintained and I'm all supportive of maintaining the school and giving them what they need I'm just saying that if if there's that Surplus knowing those facts I think there's probably more of a surplus each year than we really know about and because of that I feel like it's unfair to well first of all to accept the eight the 8% budget I think that's I think it's crazy talk but but I'm not even arguing that they need the two extra teachers I just think that they can do what they need to do with the with the money they have and I just know that there's a lot of people that are struggling financially and everybody is having to tighten their
belts and we as a town Board of Finance are trying to show some respect for that and trying to tighten the town's belt a little bit I think I think that ads should do so as well Liz I mean only I I didn't want to interrupt you or whatever I always appreciate someone that puts a lot of work into something when they're on a board or so thank you for taking the time to put this together I think it's important that all of us are heard and our opinions are out there you know that's why we ran for a board like this we all don't have to see eye to eye or agree on every single thing I mean tonight you know is is an example of that you know we're all going to continue to follow what we think is the right thing to do and put it out there so does anyone have questions for Liz on this presentation that she put together it's hard because we're in this different mode so I can't see people I don't Joanna can I speak for a minute it's Kim of course I don't have any
questions Liz I just want to say thank you I appreciate this presentation I have come through the board of education budget as well and I come about to the same information in terms of percentage wise and what we could recommend that they put their budget at I'm very uncomfortable with an over 8% ask this year I'm going to mimic the same things that Liz has said I think it's tough on our taxpayers to continue to ask for this things are very very expensive and I do have some concerns about how big our prek program is at the end of school and what impact that is having on our budget I also want to say that I think Andover School has wonderful teachers and I think lowering the ask won't hurt the education of the children that's all I have to say thank you thank you Kim does anyone else want to yeah I have a comment go ahead Louise yeah Liz thank you for all that I think it it's an eyeopener and I'm glad you had the opportunity to say it at this forum so and it's being recorded So other people in town can hear it prior to the budget being passed if they wanted to you know question it more at the meeting next week so thank
you for your time and effort thank you and that's the point of all of these meetings I don't know how all of you felt but I I felt like we were sort of directed tonight to what we should do and so we all have to fall in line with you know whatever proposals we're going to make and that's fine and we did our job we're all here to to be participants and do the very best we can for our town that we're volunteering in so that's why it was important for me that whoever on our board has researched or put some information together has their chance to speak and and be respected while doing it I don't know does any other board members have anything to add you know with this final presentation there because I understood from the conversation that was going on that we were moving it forward W and and like Louise just mentioned anybody that has opinions you know it was great to have a good turnout tonight of the public whether I always want people to speak up to me if they don't agree or agree you know we all have to stand up for what we want so negative or positive is fine but I'm glad to see the public came so anyone else have anything they want to bring forward thanks for the effort there on that that presentation I mean I knew that took effort that took time so thank you thank you my husband would appreciate [Laughter] that was right like the volunteer hours that we put in and the research we do it
might not be well received but it's a lot of time and effort you know to at least bring go ahead Rob I think Eric has something oh I'm sorry so I so I sent you a some information regarding a budget message so you guys as you're all aware per the charter the board of selectman not or Board of Finance not only has to present a budget but a budget message so I just want to make sure you guys are aware of that because whatever gets published has to get published in the next couple of days so I don't know how you want to proceed with that the budget's simple I'll get it from Mark in the morning his annotated F and we'll publish that on the town's website but if you have a particular budget message you as a board
want to present please get it to me within the next couple days so that can be published also no thank you I know we always have it correct for so I'm sure I know Mark usually puts together a presentation so I will send him an email or you said you sent it to all of us I didn't give you a presentation but I gave you the documentation on spending you'll have to adjust that because you've made some changes to it but that overall that document's okay right okay so I will follow through on your request to you know let Mark know the things that we have to have prepared I will look over the spreadsheet too there might am I allowed so if I find any errors we're not allowed to correct them I I think I found one last year and corrected it at the budget meeting is that what we have to do that is correct because You' adopted a a spreadsheet although I don't actually have that Mark has the updated copy so he's got the official copy that you've all adopted got it of course let's see we already did the vote is everyone comfortable with moving to public speak at this point I don't know if there's any more discussion by board members I'm good thank you Bill I'm good okay good li no I'm fine go ahead okay Louise and Kim all set yeah I have one quick question goad presentation that
Liz just did can part of that or or all of it be added to the meeting for next week so the people that are there can actually view that information as well we can certainly find out I don't know the the parameters I know that we have had additional documents at the meeting before we could enter it into the minutes we could enter it into the meeting packet or into the minutes right right that's what I'm asking I think think we're allowed to the document Eric gave us last week as far as the capital projects and everything update we could add what Liz just presented yeah I think we're allowed to but I'm saying because all of these Charter things come up we'll just run it by him and make sure but thank you Louise for bringing that up we'll check into that thanks y of course and now I'm going to do public speak I guess one more time I'm going to go to Scott psan I'm good thank you okay Carol carolly I'm all set thank you thank you Jesse hi yes I'd like to thank M loek for that creating and presenting that I think it's long overdue I really appreciate that thank you pleasure Chris I'm not sure if she's still involved Marcy hi yeah I'm very very impressed with Liz's presentation thank you so
much for all that I imagine it was took a lot of time time I know in these volunteer positions there's a couple ways you can go about it and you can either go about it and work really hard to make sure your your time is well spent and you're doing what you can for the town or you can you know sit by and rubber stamp and you know just allow everyone to have whatever money they want I mean that's the easiest thing to do but but I know how hard it is to ask the the questions and you know ask fiscal restraint from you know our Town's workers so I appreciate the effort that you guys are all doing there so thank you so much thank you Marcy Leanne Hutchinson yes I also want to thank Liz for putting that together I learned some things tonight and I want to thank the board for seeing that she was able to speak because you obviously as you know you spent a few minutes at least determining if she was going to be able to continue to speak tonight or if it was going to take place another time depending on apparently your vote on the overall budget so also as somebody who asked an informational question during the first public speak I appreciate this Liz's presentation great thank you lean okay I don't don't see any other Eric did I miss anyone can you see more people than I think I got everyone but Chris Chris herac oh I'm she's the she's the assistant here I've got no comment Joanne thank you I did ask you Chris did
you hear me yeah I had trouble unmuting it you moved a little too fast I just want you to know that I did see you no problem yeah is anybody in the community room still I don't see that on my screen is it still there oh and community room my apologies it's showing muted yeah you un I looked a couple minutes ago there's nobody left in the community room okay thank you thanks Eric well according to my calculations it looks like we got everyone so we're moving on to our final number of the night which would be adjournment would anyone like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting I'll motion to I'll you Bill I have to accept I think there's proceed guys so I'm gonna accept lizz's first as the motion for the to for adjournment and then would anyone like to Second it I will Kim okay Kim Kim psan is seconding the motion so this time I'm going to remember to take a vote I just shut off the last time so all those in favor say I hi okay I think that's everyone I myself I did forget discussion sorry I always me in procedure does anyone have anything they want to