okay thank you everybody Welcome this is the town of vover board of Finance special budget Workshop meeting for Wednesday April 10th 2024 we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order recite the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation go indivisible with liberty and justice for all all hey thank you we will go on to agenda item two which is public speak so linda looks like you're the only member of the public of the board have anything to add nothing to say okay thank you we'll go ahead and and move on to our Workshop then I assume I'm not sure I don't know if Kimberly or Jan will be joining us but we'll we'll go ahead and get start as far as I know they will be yeah Eric if I could share my screen I don't know if it's enabled yet or not hang on two kay okay you should be seeing the Excel sheet
now Okay so so yeah as I was mentioning I think we we had a spirited discussion about the director of the wages for the director of the community center and I think that the consensus was that we would decide we decided that we would kind of leave that in as it was and leave it to the see what feedback we might have gotten during the hearing and also and if we don't have any then we maybe leave it to the public vote in the town budget meeting so that's kind of where we left that I don't think we addressed anything specifically or suggested any changes in the rest of the line items for the community center did anybody want to review that again all set a lot of this is swag we know because it's not up and running so we don't we don't know what electricity is going to cost or the supplies and everything and as Erica mentioned last meeting we do have to do an initial stocking so that's going to you know potentially take a little more than it might in a normal run R year but it's going to be all be new so we'll figure it out okay if we move on to the 4199 a section this is advertising this is the legal advertising primarily I think advertising the the votes and the various meetings that need to be posted probably some you know other openings and things so Eric we're looking at no change there it looks like yeah I mean that th those are guesses that fluctuates so we have to do legal notices for any land use board anything that comes before significant that comes before a land use board
requires a public hearing Town meetings require advertisements the budget requires advertisements registar stuff there are a lot of reasons the state makes us advertise an awful lot of things we typically use the River East because it has a wide circulation everybody in Andover gets one for free and it's a relatively lowcost advertising means there are it's almost three times as much to use the ji for the same ad as it is for the River East we do occasionally have to use the ji because there are some things in the land use realm that require two notices and with very specific times between the two of them and we can't satisfy that if we do both of them with the River East so in those cases we'll do one in the River East and one in the ji but that's you know I'm not anticipating we have a lot more use this year so as long as they don't raise the costs for their advertising rates we should be okay okay any questions on that okay hearing none we'll move on to insurance so we've got a 4.9% increase in Insurance as Eric note here Kera has a three-year lock in we can't exceed 5% maybe lower but probably prudent to to assume that rough increase there anybody have any questions on that or Eric do you have anything you want to offer beyond that yeah and since I got
that note the two things so our insurance bill is comprised of essentially three major things the first is kerma workers comp the second is kerma liability in automotive and the third is the fire department's esip Insurance so we don't have firm numbers for any of those esip has when we asked them said they anticipate a 133% rate increase to 22,000 but we don't have an actual contract kerma has said we are going to be at the we are going to be at the max of our three-year lockin and the reason is on the workers comp you know we did have one fairly significant claim from Public Works you know that was cardiac related and we did have on the other side on the the lap side we had a significant claim for the plumbing failure in the school because that required an emergency clean up because there was a lot of sewage in the crawl space so basically based on this year's claims they're going to be so what I'm saying is that that our insurance that number should be okay but it's not going to go down okay what's East that like Emergency Services Insurance l or something yeah it's they a lot of towns do that they separate out the so the fire department still runs off of our workers comp but everything else related to their equipment is covered by EIP okay any other questions for Eric on the Insurance okay hearing none we'll move down to benefits I know probably some of some of this is an estimate but some of it's probably hard numbers
you've got Eric do you want to comment on this yeah so the the biggest chunk of that is you know so secured in Med that just relates directly to the raw income that we have un unemployment compensation we don't have firm numbers we never do it this time of year but based on the last couple of years we've been putting quite a bit more money into that than we've actually getting charged so that's why I reduced that down to 5,000 the biggest chunk is health and dental insurance that still needs review Carol and I or Cheryl I plan on sitting down and going over that because I gave her the formulas I used to do it and she had some concerns with it we know overall our perers health care increase is going to be around 16 between 16 and 16.5% per the Consortium what we don't know is we don't obviously that that also includes the addition of one completely new employee and there's something wrong with my math and I can't figure it out so I've told Cheryl as soon as she gets back which will be you know not this coming week but the week
after that we're going to sit down and review all the formulas because there's still something wrong it just mentally it doesn't add up that that should be a 42% increase unless we had last year's numbers wrong which is possible well we went down quite a bit you know Health dental so is the extra employee you mentioned is that the community service director or the community building director yeah okay do we have any other questions for Eric on this so we should obviously flag that to come back to it yeah absolutely yeah point and the other thing I would just mention on the unemployment comp so we've been under expending we've been budgeting too high you've dropped it by half do you anticipate we're sort of going to soak up that a little bit and then maybe meet in the middle and you know in future years we might need 7,000 or 8,000 whatever instead of five or do you think five is the real number I mean I think five is the real number our expenses the last two years have been about five okay one a little bit more one a little bit less I think but there's no I don't see any real Rhyme or Reason to why you know okay that's I was just curious as to whether how we were
handling it and now that you mention it it was a silly question because this isn't a fund this is operating budget so we're not soaking up Surplus we're just budgeting accurately so thank you y other questions I have a question mark I don't know if am I visible can I you are now yeah yes okay I had a heck of a time getting in I don't know you know I I tried to get in the meeting maybe 701 so I apologize for my late arrival my I was spinning I don't know so I kept logging out and logging in so I don't know how much of the meeting I missed but I thought I had put something on this there's the disability insurance policy Eric is which employees are are covered under that Disability Policy pretty much all the full-time employees I know I had emailed you a while ago I wasn't sure it I had a question of it obviously it's not a big amount but I knew that it's just a it's disability insurance I guess for if someone is injured or can't continue in their job that is the policy yeah it's a long-term long-term disability policy right and then I knew short-term disability but we do maintain long-term disability right and I I never in looking at all the contracts and everything I had never seen that as a benefit so again I don't I just was waiting for the question to get answered so I figured i' ask it now so we provide
it even though we don't have to by contract or anything like that correct yeah like I said it's not a big dollar amount I just wanted thank you right go ahead what were you gonna say well I'm going to say that I would never accepted my contract without some sort of long-term disability I would never have accepted it structured the way it's structured and the whole concept behind eventually taking the entire town to just PTO in instead of separate sick time plus personal time plus vacation time acrel you know that implies that no employee has that sick time bank to cover them during extended outage which is basically what long-term disability policy so I think either you go one way or the other you either go back to traditional sick time for all employees if you're going to consider getting rid of it or you keep it that's that's how I would look at it as an employee certainly right and I remember when we were in the contract negotiations talking about that very thing and yeah like my town offers it for employees but it's a they can buy it
for themselves like just like any other person can yeah again I don't want to make too big of it it's not a big line item but I had emailed you several times and I didn't get the answer so I figured I'd ask now thank you yep is is it something that you know there's employee contribution and then we cover some I know in my company I buy whatever the I don't even pay much attention to it it's just a line item on my benefits but every year I select it it's like a 60% salary for long-term disability and it's you know it's negligible to me but I'm assuming under the hood that the employer kicks in something too is this just our share no that is the total cost okay so okay it's a little different to contribute to that generally not super expensive stuff no oh no absolutely not
it's nothing you know I don't have any problem with it I was just curious and the only reason I bring it is when you're sitting on a negotiations table you know you just like to and I got to know the contracts quite well so I just had never seen that in there whereas like in my contract we're able to like Rob said you get to pay a portion the town covers a portion but okay thank you okay any other questions on the insurance and benefits sorry benefits and we talking about okay hearing none let's get down to the Old Town Hall so we have an increase in the electricity anticipated cost based on actual expenses this says 2223 so looks like trying to more realistically estimate the the expenses it's only a difference of less than $500 but it is there and we also have a fuel oil budget added in which looks like got missed last year so occasionally get a fill up this year as the tank is down okay Rob
you have a question yeah just the Oldtown Hall you know that's that's the is that the museum when we say the Oldtown Hall that's the museum area right that is correct that's the museum building not the yeah the building we're demoing okay just just checking okay cool Eric did you have something to comment on there or no just just that that that's the building we do we don't fill the tank every year because we we only use it occasionally because it's only open in the winter occasionally and it's nominally an unheated building but they do fire up the system if they're going to have a Saturday open house so but I did look we're down to just about a quarter of a tank so Scott said he typically fills every second to third year so we're do to fill the tank this area Okay move down to Town garage just a couple of reductions here otherwise it looks like it's flat anybody have any questions on the Town garage C I was just wondering Eric is there any plans longterm I just happen to be talking to Jay today and you know understanding you know the work that that place needs is there is there a long-term plan for that garage of any type oh there's there's kind of two things three things on my medium-term radar for that building the first is something for the exterior walls Martin has recommended that we simply laugh and stucko the walls as the easiest way to preserve the exterior I have a little bit of concern with that because I think at the same time we do it we want to consider
increasing the insulation of that building too in my head I would probably you know use an exterior foam insulation a rigid insulation and go over that with vinyl sighing but you know I I really need an engineer to weigh in on that because I want to make sure whatever we do doesn't affect the long-term structure of the building and since we're talking some of those sections of the building go back to the 1850s you really have to be careful about the permeability of the mortar and the bricks and stuff like that so that's one the cold storage building definitely needs a new roof it's got two layers on it already so you can't re- roof over it it would have to be torn down or torn off and re-roofed so that is something that we should do
that portion is not leaking the front portion with the flat roof is completely trashed and to be honest the best thing we can do with that is just tear it down because structurally it's not sound enough to for us to really want to spend a bunch of time fixing it up in its marginally useful space so that would be my you know kind of the three things on my radar list for that the fourth thing is a replacement of the generator for that facility because that is a that generator is a little older than I am it was basically an army surplus generator that they got about 30 years ago and that they've been using
ever since but the problem is it's not it's not a stable enough electrical generator that like they can't run any of the computers or anything like that it's too noisy of power they can use power tools and they can open the garage doors and stuff like that but it's not fully functional so at some point we ought to consider a generator upgrade for that building also does that answer your question well I was just wondering with with all those things like what is the plan to fund all those things like I don't see anything in here for like how do we fund all that is or just going to be a big Bill we get someday well no I mean I I was planning on using a bigger chunk of this year's Building Maintenance funds for public works oh okay however the board of Selectmen has made it clear that they want to do the the gy floor project and the downdraft lit fans for the gym out of that budget also so you know 35,000 of my you know my 100,000 is already spoken for so that's going to reduce my ability to do stuff with that but that was those are the projects I'm kind of looking at in this next iteration there's also a chance I can use some lowp funds for some of that too that
gets harder because if I use lowp funds and not internal Town dollars that makes me I have to go through shipo the state historic preservation Society or office and you know I I'm sure they're going to refuse to allow me to tear down the front facade if we touch any state funding for that so just a quick note to is when I did that tour was that a year or two ago I forget we had that tour that Jay set up and that'd be something I think all the board of Finance people would definitely if he does another one should go to just see what condition that build is in anyways that's my thoughts yeah real quick two questions one the the generator and replacement thereof is this a this I assume is a gas generator or not a propane it's a diesel generator diesel yeah okay because there's already going to be fuel tanks there right right they they currently run it off the same you know basically they're running it off the home heating oil okay tanks there okay and then the because it's the same stuff right and then the second question is I have a vague memory in from CIP meetings from a year or two ago was this the building that needed regrading and work on its exterior walls to prevent moisture getting up and Wrecking its found not its found some electrical work down out there too right so yep it definitely does need that okay so there's a to to Bill's Point like there needs to be kind of a whole plan
for this building that we should talk about in the coming years that was be my question I wasn't able to make that tour and I really wanted to I drive by there every day I I'm just going to stop in or ask Jay if I can come see it because I bill overall is it in terrible shape I've heard they've done so many improvements inside too but I don't know yeah I mean no they Jay's done a lot of work in that place and he's cleaned it up done a great job but he can point out the shortcomings right and I'm not sit here and try and remember all of them but you know as Eric just talked to there are there are needs for that building so anyways it's just I was just wondering how we plan to pay for some of those and this is one of these things where we need to kind of figure out what the what the overall plan is and then the building equipment fund is going to need funding to measure with that at some point espe prioritizing yeah yeah well when Eric says you know part of that building is from 1850 that kind of makes you think oh yeah definitely like I yeah yeah understood yeah I just have to go see it for myself too to kind of get a better because they've talked no yeah and don't think that we haven't been putting a fair amount of
money into that building that building has had some really extensive electrical upgrades both bathrooms have been fully remodeled because they were remember you know absolutely disgusting not that I take credit for that there's been a new locker and storage area that's what I heard about yeah we've poured a bunch of concrete in there to level off the floors we've done a complete lighting upgrade in the building we've replaced the roof of the main you know area we've added another door in the back so we have been putting quite a bit of money into the building we're just kind of doing it over time we have excess money available in the building maintenance fund sure there are some big ticket items you know and it's just a question of prioritizing you know and and looking for what things we can fund without tripping you know requirements of State oh yeah yeah and and last question the diesel tanks there are theys are they above ground yes all our tanks are above ground there's a big diesel fuel tank double wall fuel tank outside and then the oil tank is an above ground indoor tank a big one but you know yeah no you know that's that's the main question I'm just thinking about Legacy issues from you know past years I mean you talking about a building of that age even even a building 100 years newer than that I'd be thinking about what was there before and what happens if you stick a shovel on the ground oh just a thought absolutely I mean I could not believe
that place would not be a Brownfield if you ever wanted to use it for some other occupation the the good news and the bad news is it's right next to a river right and the joke the the solution to pollution is delution comes into play but yeah so what we think about this plan what think about that too but that's down the road thanks okay other questions about the Town garage all right hearing none we'll move on to the Old Firehouse so we've got reductions there with a note that hopefully we can dump I want to avoid this ongoing cost so Eric a question about that I know we had a a plan to rebuild that Eric and I know part of that money was a a grant that's kind of based on us spending money on the museum I believe if right memory surgy can you talk to that just a bit on where we are with that sure
so so that thing's that's kind of a cluster I'm willing to admit so I still don't have final approval from shipo over our what we had to submit to shipo is this giant set of documentation about a building because anytime you tear down a historic structure you have to show you have to have like all this documentation about what you're tearing down so we have submitted that to shipo like six or seven months ago and when I followed up with them several months ago they still hadn't reviewed it which does not make me happy we're the the other thing that affects us dramatically on that property is that when I went to the a agency that deals with prevailing wage in the state that has ultimate authority over that I was I asked for a ruling and was told that that cannot be considered new construction because there's an existing building on site and I asked for legal interpretation
because as far as I'm concerned if you tear down the entire building and you don't reuse the walls or the foundation or the slab or any utilities or anything you know you're building something new right you're not reusing anything over maybe the dirt that was under the building but you know they they have said in no uncertain terms that that's new construction or that's you know not new construction as far as they're concerned the head of that agency told me basically verbally that you know unless we were doing something in primeval Forest it was going to be you know it was not going to be considered new construction which is nuts but you know her husband you know is the head of the Union trade Association in the state of Connecticut so I mean their agency head is as Pro Union as you could imagine so that is going to drive our cost up for that project I'm not sure how much I had anticipated I had budgeted based on it not being a prevailing wage job and
not having to deal with shipo you know my thought at this point is I'm about to submit a for congressionally directed funding to pay for the community center and the generator that will cover the community center the fire department in the town hall and if I do that then we have plenty of excess money in the multi-use building fund to absorb any increase in costs in that building so I have kind of a plan in my head of how I can make this all work but if that doesn't come to fruition then I would be going back to the board at some point saying hey here's what our actual costs are here's what it's going to cost the town you know do we proceed or do we bag this got you so thank you yeah I have a question yeah go ahead L just got a curiosity what does the electricity actually what are you actually paying for what electricity is actually in that building because it's a vacant building so we haven't dropped the service and the reason we haven't dropped the service is that when we go to do the asbest of batement we need water and we need electrical service on site to do the asbest abatement and the reason I didn't drop it a while back was because I was anticipating having done it already and frankly as soon as
shipo gives us the authority we will go out to RFP for the demo contract so I'd like to do that regardless of what else we do with that space and how we finish it off we're going to demo it anyway so I've been keeping the utility on in anticipation of that I certainly hadn't expected it to take me as long as it has to get to this point but anything to do with the state takes a long time agreed thank you yep okay any other questions hopefully we'll be to point some point where we don't have to include these line items all right auditor actuary we' got a small 5% increase assumed we don't have a contract obviously so seems prudent any questions about hat so one of the things I would say is that since it is the board of finances you know decision to hire or not the auditor I'm assuming since we've gotten to this point you're happy in that you as a board want to renew the services of the auditor for next year if so your next regular meeting you should probably motion to that effect because the state's already bugging me for to declare who's our auditor for the cycle yeah make it makes sense can you
make sure we get that added to our agenda for the April meeting questions okay Town attorney so we have a note we have a 7.1% increase in the budget it's 14, 15,000 it's not a big deal increase in fees from Dennis O'Brien 1,000 rest is for labor attorney and occasional land land use so all right nothing and then we have not a not a revaluation year so we don't have too many concerns of the assessments legal fees so that's staying flat okay any questions on this none nope okay move on to town engineer we're flat here too there no questions we'll talk to Probate Court looks like we have a small increase $100 nothing okay moving up to the capital region Council of governments so that's what
sir Cog is and remember capital is Connecticut conference and municipalities is that what CCM is I don't know is yeah cost is Council of small towns they're kind of like the lobbying arm for small towns in Connecticut got it got it so we have these are all membership fees I assume correct yeah correct so it's small increase don't really know what all of them are so okay seems reasonable it's not a not a whole lot of money yeah CCM has not actually passed a budget yet so I don't have that final number but it's not going to be much of an increase okay no questions we move on to public works so not really a whole lot of change here there a vehicle maintenance up 15% you know couple thousand dollars tires accounting for the difference as Eric mentioned tires are bloody expensive I just had to replace a two-month old Tire because I got a big piece of metal in it I think the general costs are just really high just because they're still the the raw material cost the carbon black and stuff is still driving the cost of tires up but anyway that's my personal observation so I can relate to that [Music]
increase in diesel alde yeah so you know because we never drain the tank completely we do get our diesel tested twice a year in the winter we because it's an exterior tank it's still cold enough here that we need to add the anti-gel stuff to it so that stuff's fairly expensive and we also do add algicide to the tank just to prevent algae growth because algae does Believe It or Not poly live in diesel tanks and it's really it really messes up the engine if you start sucking algae in do you not want that in your fuel injectors and your fuel filters no it may be helpful when you're trying to clean up a mess but that the critters like to eat diesel but in your engine I I don't think I realized that we needed to do that consistently okay yep noting this increase in signage costs under the equipment line what's what what do we what signage do we put in so the side of the trucks or something no that that's like the you know the basic stop signs and all of that kind of stuff oh oh oh okay so road signs they yeah and we we have more signs stolen than you would think we actually spend an amount of money that annoys me for replacing signs that get stolen signs that get deliberately run over cones and barrels that get thrown in the river or
thrown somewhere where we can't find them anymore it's it's it's quite annoying actually it's you know how many slow chill signs can we possibly have sorry going back my fraternity days that's that is irritating though so we're we're having to replace consistently a few signs a year or oh yeah way more than that wow and part of it is that we are slowly upgrading our like our stop signs a lot of them don't meet the new reflectivity standards so there's some stuff we're building in just because of its age but we actually have a bunch of stuff there's a couple spots where we've consistently had problems like con and Gilead that intersection we those signs stolen and taken away on a fairly frequent basis because you know 30 years ago it was
only a a two-way stop yeah and now we made it a four-way stop and that makes people angry because they remember the good old days when they didn't have to stop so they just steal think well there's no sign now I don't have to stop anymore that's what's going on oh my God we have to Doc I live on Gilead I never realized that that's bizarre yeah we had the same problem it was you know teenagers being idiots I didn't yeah and we had that problem on Long Hill where Long Hill and hendy intersect that used to be yield in all directions and then they put a stop sign on two sides and that got people angry so those signs got stolen a lot for years wow that is definitely different I was just down there the other day yeah I'm like I don't think it was like this yeah guys I'm gonna suggest we gota stay focused and try to move along got a lot to cover so I have a question thank you
Eric just can you remind me I mean in just a brief because I was looking at the salaries that make up the public work salary I understand we have Jay and then we have I believe a fourman crew so that they can and did someone go I know we have a maintainer one two three did anyone go up a level in the past year that maybe was a one before I don't want to name names I thought I saw more twos it just looked like a bigger bump than when I was looking at the year so did anyone have a race not there's no level change projected in next years one employee Rich was bumped up to maintainer two I don't know whether that was last year's budget I think that was last year's budget that he got bumped to maintainer to and I think we created or I'm not we but there's a new wasn't the three added or something at one point there was just two levels and now there's three or maybe no actually there's always been four levels oh but we don't ever stock essentially put anybody in the fourth level because the fourth level was what we used before we had a public works supervisor when we still had a a union position holding that top level kind of manager position gotcha so we're not we haven't had a maintainer for essentially yeah that's basically maintainer one maintainer two lead maintainer and then like supervisor cental okay all right thanks there was some bump somewhere that I couldn't get to make sense to me but I'm sure it's fine thank you
yep any other questions or comments on the Public Works removal not really a lot of change here saning equipment's gone up a little bit small hand winter equipment needed so I'm sure there are small hand sanders and meals new contract increase I assume that was meant to say contract not contact yeah correct yeah questions on this portion no NOP okay I guess we move on to transfer station so very minor change in the wages maintenance you got 20% there another $500 not a lot noting here we're going to need some pavement repair I assume that's just patching that the Public Works does that is we do have some issues there which occurred last year basically we got a pretty bad bad rat infestation and the Rats had gotten through the side of the block walls and they were hollowing it out back there and pushing the sand out the cracks so they can make nice big nests so we have added a you know a pest removal service to the transfer station you know but okay so we will have to do some patching is what I say but nothing super significant nothing Public Works gain at
all okay good questions anybody why would the electricity go because good question maybe actuals or something you know so so first of all last year we were going into a year where the electrical costs were spiking it was kind of hard to determine where they were going overall so we've kept that high for a couple of years but you know we've got enough historic data since the time that we have changed over the electrical system in that and and rebuilt that that I'm that I'm confident that we can get away with the lower number there based on past usage so they'll probably be consistent for next year as well presumably unless you know unless the
utility company unless we get a spike either in Supply or delivery charges from the utility company which is always possible questions no okay move on to recycling so we have an increase of 7.1 % hazardous waste have note there that The midn Rock contract one more year to go on the existing contract that's our contractor for picking up hazard waste also increase on antifreeze used oil tire pickup okay so again not a lot of money increase here you're talking about you know less than $800 All In anybody have any questions or concerns not there no [Music] okay ground care so we have mowing that's flat that's the contract with clero and estimate from the heat parks and wreck you spelled that correctly too there mark contract yeah Eric is that for the the
field that is that is that line item is mostly field related but it also covers the town's regular mowing which we sub out to end over Landscaping okay because didn't aren't we buying a new mower tractor that's the roads side sorry thank you that's the road side yeah okay and then the old Cemetery maintenance the Grant that's in there was that grant for more than a year I thought that was you know was it a two-year Grant so generally speaking and I'm guessing but generally speaking we've been able to get that Grant pretty much every single year so I'm assuming that we're going to get that but we're only GNA spend that line item if we get the grant good that's my point yeah yeah right if we don't get the grant we're only going to spend you know we typically spend put a couple thousand dollars in down money into the old Cemetery meetings yeah that's what I remembered and we only bumped it up to the seven because we got the Grant and we wanted to account for it correct okay but then all right is it a little misleading to the town that we're putting it as an expend I don't know I mean as I mean I know you'll remember it I'll remember it but we're counting it as an expense as we need 7,000 but right but yeah you know that's fund accounting you know I understand understand yeah yeah okay any other questions yeah I'm curious are there any grants out there for any type of beautification especially when you're putting in a new building and there's new plantings and
things like that not that I mean I you could go after maybe Hartford foundation for public giving I mean I think if I wouldn't have done it necessarily for the beautification portion I think if we don't get the Congressional set aside I'm G to go after money from the Hartford foundation for public giving for the kitchen for the community center and see whether they'll cough up the money to fund that because I know they funded that in other senior centers but honestly I've never really looked for Grants specifically for beautification when you say are you putting in trees or are you talking flowers for limited plantings so right now we are for the community center we are going to put top soil down and grass seed and maybe maybe one tree in the middle of the turnaround and that's it everything after that has got to come out of the
beautification budget because we just don't have we don't really have another source of funding for that okay it'd be nice to maybe get the town involved in something like that because I remember when the Hartford opened up in Windsor I was working with the old facility and they actually had employees come over and do plantings and it was kind of a cool thing where people got involved with what it looked like yeah I mean yeah I was thinking that would be a nice thing too for the town and the public maybe you know people that like that kind of thing yeah I mean beautification is a beautification committee that's not money I spend that's money you know the beautification committee spends on keeping up the plantings around around town right so I think you could certainly you know have involvement with the beautification if there's specific things you want to accomplish I mean in truth Kathy do roa's sense of design is a hell of a lot better than me so I tend to rely on her for you know and let them do whatever they want to do in terms of plantings and that's what I would do
here and I can tell you she's always looking for more hands so if you have more than ideas and you have muscle she'll take it doie I'll come help her all right I'm not good with the design sense but I can help because right now in all honesty it's it's a lot of old ladies and me but yeah we could always use more help there not just opinions but help I resembl that remark okay all right should we move on if you guys are okay with that yep yep yep okay Street lighting we've gone down from 10,000 to about 5,000 so Eric is noting need better numbers for electrical cost did we just over budget last year what's yeah we did and for whatever reason even when you know our cost should have spiked really dramatically last year
because utility company went up like 48% on their you know on their supply costs which is a little more than half of the total cost for electricity but for whatever reason it was not reflected in our street lighting bills and our street lighting is the one thing where we pay for the electricity through eversource not through a third-party supplier so for the life of me I don't know why that didn't go up significantly last year but it did not so in fact it was lower than the year before which makes no sense but you know we put together 12 months of bills you know and did kind of a historical look at it so unless something changes you know 5,000 seems appropriate for that or you know a little bit more than that 6,500 Eric did did we use the same level of kilowatt hours we've used in the past or did we like switch over to LEDs and use less power so that's a good question we did they did when they replaced the lights here in front of town hall they did put LEDs in those so that might account for
some of that we'd already done LED street light up you know all our streetlight street lights are LEDs the only non- LEDs we have now are the the existing spotlights on the athletic fields you know so that's my only thought as to why we might have seen a reduction when we when you have the the rate increase is that you know even as my power usage in my own home has changed over the years is one of the big things I think is that just about every light in this house now is LED and they just use dramatically less power so maybe that's it I don't know it was just a thought yeah I mean sodium oh I was say high pressure sodium versus LED is a huge huge difference yeah so okay so are we good with this one should we move on move on okay the custodian cost we have a pretty significant cost here and as noted I think we talked about this before there's a salary increase plus the increase in hours of completing cleaning the community center for the year questions there is that regular M or is it because of all the construction that they're doing right now budgeting for the annual cost right Eric you're gonna have to clean it a couple of times a week somebody's got to go in and do the floors and clean the bathrooms and do all that so that's what what that cost is and you know a year from now that may be adjusted up or down once we understand how often it's going
to be used and what the maintenance schedule has to be I mean I sat down with Willie and went over the building and said okay you know how often do you think let's assume you know we have this thing open during the week and we're doing evening programming too you know how often do you really think you need to maintain it and he said well I think probably you're looking at two days a week you know and so we kind of budgeted for that yeah I mean I think we this along with the whole section on the to the town community center is that we're throwing darts at a board right now and once we are a couple years into it we'll have a much better idea things are reasonable other questions okay resident trooper so this kind of is what it is we don't know what the cost is going to be right Eric you want to elaborate yep I mean so assuming we keep our existing resident state trooper looking at the the actual cost and overhead associated with that employee again the state police doesn't
make the final determination on the rates to later in the year but presuming they don't change that radically we can live with the same budget and we we've been at roughly 140 for the last couple years we were at 140 last year it dropped down a few years back we had a resident state trooper that had a lot of seniority and he was a relatively more expensive employee yep when when we got Trooper Nessie our cost dropped pretty significantly because he's a much he has much less seniority I I do remember that so yeah it's always a crapshoot but if we keep the our current Trooper we we expect the cost to be flat roughly correct okay other questions okay fire department Fire Commission so we've got about a 99.4% increase this is actually one where we probably wouldn't haveand I don't think we talked about having somebody from the Fire Commission come here and explain this I don't know Eric if you can address it or we need to have somebody come here and kind of talk about it or give us an explanation and writing I mean I can if you continue on while you're looking at that I can pull up I should be able to pull up what the Fire Commission gave me for justification for that hey Eric I just got a text from Joan she said can you have Eric let me back into the meeting please are we allowing people yeah wow I didn't realize she even dropped off yikes yeah I don't know how we didn't flag this one it must just not have been quite on
our threshold where we took our top 10 yeah wasn't I think I think in retrospect we would have wanted them to come and talk to us oops can someone let me know what we're discussing now I got we're on the fire department at this point Joan thank you took me forever to get back in yeah the you know we just talked about resident trooper I don't know when you dropped out but we just noted that we really don't have a cost until you know we're certain who the trooper is and that the so now on the fire department noting that they had a pretty significant increase request at 99.4% which is the equivalent of about $15,000 so we were wondering if Eric had some of the rationale behind that or if we should have somebody from the Fire Commission come and explain the basis for that request increase thank you for that back I was at the town hall yesterday so I have a question and that would be great we it would be nice to see which line items make up
Eric are there people in the fire house every day I I should know this being a town resident are there actual people there or no we don't no the answer is no there are not people there all the time often whoever the officer is that is on on duty will stop by at least a couple times during the day and then you have call outs we typically have at least one call out for the ambulance service a day so you you will often see that going out so if you see a bunch of cars parked there that's usually what that is I have their actual request but I don't have their breakdown I can either get that from Wall-E and I suspect it's my problem because I'm sure I got it from him I don't know why I don't have it in my budget folder or you can ask and I will have Wall-E attend the next meeting if you want to discuss the fire commission's budget direct that would that would be my suggestion is that we just kind of skip over this and ask for him to come in and explain because it's a significant part
of the Town budget it's a significant increase we should know why sure agree yeah and Mark I asked that question too cuz I kind of want to understand how it works too yeah it was interesting to me cuz I was thinking I would have walked over yeah just like is there one person on a yeah salary but we'll see that next time yeah I mean anytime you talking about almost a 10% increase you know you want to know why a significant amount of money yeah well if it's significant yeah not a $100 but right yeah you know on the other hand the entire fire department costs us roughly the same amount of money as a single resident state in a vehicle don't even go there play with me don't get me started we all saw that we all saw the public response when there was discussion about removing the state trooper from the budget before so no actually I wasn't going that way with it I was going to say that overall the fact that we've been able to maintain a fire department as inexpensively as we have there are not many towns that have been successful
staying 100% volunteer for fire department and ambulance services and I do know that it would not be a surprise if in four or five years they no longer had enough members to run it as completely voluntary that's I want to know the history and I'll do that on my own I I'm fascinated by it so I want to know how it runs just and you said you get about a an ambulance call a day yeah probably sure and that's the vast majority I mean I looked into this a while back and you know it's been decades since fire departments spent most of their time actually fighting fires it's almost
always weighted toward medical calls right accidents yeah we should car accidents Medical calls those are but yeah I mean it would be good to just hear from Wally I mean I don't expect to grill the guy but you know just to to find out you know we've been going up slowly and then this is a bit of a spike so yep okay we'll table that discussion for next week then just going to highlight this as something to talk animal control from niog went up 20% Couple Grand so you have a note here Eric agreement with the Hein fell through this is the bill from theod to do so we had we had tried to set up a Consortium with two of our neighboring towns to get away from the regional an control operation just because they're so far away from us that it makes it tougher getting support with endover and if they pick up a dog the
closest the dog is going to be is in Norwich so a resident has to go a long way to get their poot back which you know is a good Learning lesson if nothing else but that's what I think true but you know the other issue is that the services they provide R limited a lot of acos will deal with roadkill that kind of stuff and you know nuisance wildlife and you know we really don't get that out of our out of neog's animal control service they do the absolute minimum required by the state and they bill us based on that but ultimately the three towns couldn't agree onir figuring out how to do it we even had a little outside grant funding that would have been applied to a new three town organization but Hein backed out and without Hein the other two two couldn't pull it off so we're just stuck with knog that's too bad I mean does does he
have a pound is that is that the issue is that Hein would have the containment facility yes and that is part of the problem is that the the state in their Infinite Wisdom made a decision last year they changed the standards for animal control facilities you know they changed the the fencing requirements they changed the Run requirements Animal Control facilities now all have to have air conditioning so there's a bunch of stuff that got put down on that's why we've we've kind of decommissioned our pound completely so we don't even we won't wouldn't even use it in an emergency because it would cost us too much money to meet state standard so that's part of the thing that's killing you know and that's part of the reason why nikog has increased in cost this year because they also have to their pounds now have to meet that increased requirement it was the other Town Marboro or was it a different town Colombia was gonna be end over Columbia and ebrin okay all right suggest we move on from this sounds like we understand that one I just got a text from Joan her computer shut down she's going to try to log back in having trouble tonight yeah Fire Marshall minimal increase 3% on the salaries and a little bit on the D memberships is $25 it jacked up the percentage any concerns over the Fire Marshall section ope okay a senior citizen so we've got a small increase in the coordinator I think that's what this is yeah and then U Senor lunch up quite a
bit and Eric has the note unknown as we shift to the community center we keep consistently underfunding this last year we spent about 5,500 bucks so you know looks reason me we underfunded it by a lot so obviously food costs have gone up pretty considerably the seniors in have managed to fund raise a pretty significant fraction of the cost of the senior luncheon program but year overy year we're not we're not fundraising more but our costs have gone up a lot so even though the total cost of the program has only gone up like 30% the cost they can't Grant fund or can't fund has gone up a lot so that's really what what we're looking at but I mean should be budgeting as to actual expenditure correct you know let's let's get real yeah it's just yeah it's a ey popping
percentage but it is what it is right and same thing with the program reason we built that Senior Center and we do these programs yeah so right so the next line I'm also 50% again is that just we're consistently o overex expending yeah yeah for the the programs the programs yeah yeah well so what I'm trying to do is whoever walks into the job of running the senior center I want to give them enough of a budget because one of the things I want to do is I want to get away from the range of programming where we are now because what we're what we're capturing is the less active senior population you know and I want to start increasing some programming that catches the more active portion of the retiree population and I think we're going to need some extra money if we're g to we're going to do that so I'm trying to give them enough funding so that they can do that as part of the the new community center Senor yeah okay any further questions on the senior citizens budget okay looking at senior transportation we got a big jump we think talked a little bit about this maybe but Eric do you want to just kind of Hit the highlights here sure you know every year I ask department heads for the budget and pretty much every year they return a flatline budget from
the year year before but it's not a realistic budget because every year we end up pulling money from somewhere else to supplement that so I finally said okay you know I'm I'm sick of putting up with that and I took the last year and we looked at how many total driver hours that we ran last year and we also realized that our oldest senior Transportation driver not oldest but person who' been driving us for a long time had been hired at a really low salary an hourly range initially and then all the subsequent employees had been hired at a higher rate because that's what we had to do if we were going to get them to you know so we still have one driver that's making like four bucks an hour less than all the other drivers and she's the driver that's been driving us for the for the longest period so we're going to level her hourly wage with the rest of them and then because I think that's only fair and then look at how many hours we actually drive with this program now it does look like I've filled out the paperwork this week for
the you know because we do get reimbursed a portion of our costs and we can get reimbursed up to a half the toal total cost but it looks like they're actually capping how much they're going to give back so we're actually probably going to get back around $10,000 so we're going to spend 44 but about 10 of that's going to come from a grant so under this cenario okay Mark can I ask one question I I'll make it very quick I I miss it looks like are you able to scroll up a little bit I know you're on the transportation so the resident services coordinator position I know you talked did you have a discussion about that at all was that the stapen I was asking about last yep that is a Sten right and I I never want to single out employees there was some I'll probably Circle back to it next week but when I went after the meeting I went looking at it and I thought that that person I understand those you know the serious things that they take care of that you talked about obviously the town has to have a person to take care of that but I had thought there was some other duties attached to that that was senior transportation and things that were going to be moved to the community center so maybe I'll take so is this stien just for those smaller things or is this person also helping helping with the transport ation and all of the things that were listed on the budget in the past no I I think the the there are several things by law we
have to have you know so I look at resident services coordinator as being the municipal agent for the elderly yeah you know that's one state required they're kind of key part of our hoarding task force they deal with all the renters rebate they deal with all the fuel assistance stuff and there's a series of things along that which are lumped into that we used to have a standalone employee that worked just a few hours a week that did that but the the problem I had with that is people would always come in asking to talk to the person and then you got to say no that person only works Wednesdays from 3: to 5: or whatever so one of the reasons why I wanted to assign that to one of our full-time people is because when the Town Hall's open most of the time I want somebody to be able to walk in off the street and actually speak to the resident services coordinator so that's kind of why I've structured it the way I've structured it and I get it I know we've talked about it before I think it is a good service you know or I I imagine it's not like you said it's not an all thetime thing but it has to be available when it's needed no thank you for clarification and circling back that was one of the things I was going to touch on thank you Mark okay we talked about the senior [Music] Transportation there's no more questions on that we go on to the health officer you got a small percentage it says the Eastern Highland Health District budget has been adopted so I guess that's pretty solid as our contribution yep I don't see anything really to
discuss there amplify mental health services so you have a slight reduction there that's just again $30 it's not really affecting any significant yep Social Services so we're jumping up a little bit this is request from the access Community a agencies which you've got there so it's 600 bucks you're jumping from 400,000 again it's a big jump but not huge dollars I guess correct so access agency is one of our primary social services agencies it's one one of those things that a town is required to have but by using a regional organization which access is we satisfy that from the town's perspective the vast majority of their funding comes through the state not from the town they ask for a pretty modest portion of their budget from the towns that they serve so they did ask for a lot more this year though I'm not surprised okay all right if no questions I guess we can go ahead and roll down there ahm Services y we ever in the past we always used to have ahm come and present were we doing that this
year you all got an invite to their budget presentation but nobody took them up on it oops Eric I felt bad I was supposed to attend in said I and then you know I didn't put it on my C calendar so I do did yeah yeah they always send us the spreadsheet or something if I if I had to guess it's ongoing you know mental health kind of stuff you know we've seen this the last few years yeah they usually send a send a budget over you know and then as Eric mentioned they have a budget presentation which if you you know could go to but it's pretty self-explanatory generally they do pretty good job of it and I sure as heck don't want to run my own Youth Services Agency yes because that's complicated goodness no they're great you don't want to do that Eric no is excellent I just you know we due diligence yeah all right so if there's no more questions we can go ahead and keep rolling forward we have the selectman looks like we've got a reduction in the salary amount sure Mr McGuire has indicated he is not interested in drawing a salary therefore that's removed from the budget so that's okay took it out Flatline for four of them and he does not take a salary okay Board of Finance I mean we had the clerk wages we don't really see any change there we just budget where we where we are yeah I'm not anticipating upping the per meeting stipend so as long as we keep running roughly the same number of meetings there's no need to increase those budgets and we're fine we haven't really
used the legal y kind of a that was a we were jumping at Shadows a little bit discussion a couple years ago sense at a time but you know we've moved Beyond Conservation Commission you know flat I guess we can move on if nobody's got questions about that board of assessment appeals we've got some minor dollar amount increases in the salary and some training costs you know 400 bucks or so I mean ibody have any questions on that all right hearing none zoning board of appeals flat they really we get flat until we get to down to the recreation Mission we've got a little bit of a bump couple thousand $1,500 so outside facility rental so this it says wiggle room for incoming Center Director so I guess Eric what you're suggesting is we might want to bump up the budget slightly in case with the new director we have more external activities that would require external facility rals correct okay and I I'm just overall I want to give them enough an operating budget the first year that you know that they can function and they could legitimately increase their overall programming and I don't know exactly what that's going to look like I mean it's really going to be highly dependent on who we get for the director sure Community Gardens going up high percentage not a ton of money is that something that's taken off you know it's really growing they seem to be doing more work just in terms of the you know it's not a huge amount of money but hey no pun intended on it seems to be growing that was not intended actually
that's sad that's sad I wish I had intended it they've got nice raised beds and they've got some watering facilities and stuff there inside so you know yeah I mean I'm I like the idea I just I'm curious you know it's a doubling a little more than doubling of the budget so I mean it's small in dollars but you know if it's going well great there's been a lot of volunteer work over there too oh yeah more is needed unfortunately but I I think it's a good mix with the the center I mean it's all I think so good good Synergy and dynamic could could work there well so I have I have a question about the rec center the recre will that eventually go away after the community center person takes charge will what go away the Recreation Commission no no absolutely not I mean I want the Recreation Commission to you know make the decisions but I don't necessarily want the wreck commission to have to do all their own scheduling I want somebody doing that for them but I want the rec commission working with them on what Pro programming to provide and things of that nature which is very similar to what's happening now you know all right okay so we get a bunch of zeros and negatives coming up yeah yep get down to the bridg and Culver fund here we go Capital there we go oh boy all right let's see where we are the big ones all right I mean it you know
that absolutely makes sense we've been talking about the culs for a while went over that when we had our the whole issue where the requirements have changed for doing those those projects and and the and the result on the cost has been repeatedly discussed it's just unfortunate yeah before we even get there we've got a we've also got a 99.6% on the fire engine fund so that could be something the fire commissioner talks about as well is that that is that associated with the the new truck though isn't that just math part of it I think that's less than 100 though is 80 something per years can't remember what that yeah that's part of it is that we have a good amount of money in the fund right now and the cost per year for the truck for
the next 10 years is going to be around $125,000 yep so if we keep it at $125,000 we're Sally saying the only thing we're ever going to do is truck is that that's realistic I think it needs to go up a little bit but you know we've also told them that we've given them basically two really big ticket items in the last four years essentially so they're going to have to keep it really reasonable about what else they get yeah I mean that makes sense to me in that you know if we don't do this we're just treading water on the leaste cost of the trucks we have so if we're the the purpose of these funds to set
aside hopefully for the future at least that's my goal so I for one if we have room in the budget we'll see how this goes at at the budget hearing and the and the town meeting but if we have the room to do it yeah I'm I'm strongly in favor of trying to pad this a little bit so that we have some money going in there that isn't just a pass through for the least proposing any changes to this at this point are you rob no I'm not I'm I'm supporting it I'm saying it's I think it's the right call it it's it's a bit of a you know it's it's a non-negligible increase it's it's not crazy though and I think it takes into account our our real needs the the fact of the matter is that the last truck that we got years ago when we first developed the Fire Equipment fund Capital plan that truck was slated to cost three4 of a million dollars it almost cost I think it was like 950 in the end because cost went up and you know stuff happens basically and we have to plan for the future too so that makes sense to me okay the C yeah sorry flat on equipment FL flat on road Improvement tree removal Bunker Hill Bridge we zeroed out I wanted to ask about the tree removal real quick if it's okay how are
we doing Eric generally just you know surface level quick quick comment like how do you feel about where we are on the trees I think we've been you know incredibly successful and I look at that and I look and say consistently on these big wind events are we having major issues and the answer is no whereas five years ago we were and then I also look at because we have five and a half miles rail trail running through the town and the state does not proactively cut trees on the rail trail and I look at it and say how many trees do we have go down in five miles of rail trail versus how many do we have go down in 34 miles of our town roads and we tend to have less problems on our total town roads than we have on five miles of rail trail so I think we're doing very well but we're also doing well because we're playing really
nicely with the utility company and while you see a budget of 50,000 our annual expenditure on tree removal the last bunch of years has been more like between1 and $120,000 in in tree removal because we're mobilizing with eversource in conjunction with them and you know and I'll back that up I mean I have lost power once in recent memory whereas it used to be a a fairly consistent thing so no I just wanted to double check on that but yeah I I think that works that's good so so I would just you know when I look around Eric I still see a lot of trees even on like Wheeling Road the roads Drive the most but I see a lot of ash trees and dead trees that worry me that they may not fall on power lines so maybe eversource isn't going to address them but they certainly worry me as far as falling on the road someone could get killed quite easily it happens so is there a plan in place to like finish a lot of like remember they did Wheeling Road years ago and there's a few that we just stopped because we ran out of money I guess I think you said to me at one point and I'm just like there's still dead standing there and could fall on the street like so I'm just wondering what the is $50,000 mostly for the rail trail or do we have a plan to finish cleaning up a lot of the Dead Road dead trees none of that
none of that 50,000 goes into the rail trail the only thing if we were to address a tree on the rail trail it would be because it's down and Public Works can cut it up if we need money for that's a state responsibility not a town all our money goes into town roads not not to the rail trail we may use a little Manpower on the rail trail from time to time but not not contractor dollars no so we've we in the past we were using distinctive tree care and we were doing kind of big swaths where we had an extraordinary number of dead trees in a short distance and we we just took the worst sections and went after them section by section and now we're starting to get more specific and we're shifting and we've been using a different tree company and just going after where we don't necessarily have areas where we've got
hundred trees in a mile to take down it's more efficient to use a regular tree crew than distinctive with the big grapple saw and I think going forward we're going to use a mix of both of those you know because either one could be more cost effective depending on where it is we've had to spend a lot of money doing Cider Mill Road we had a ton of really large trees that required a 100 foot bucket truck which those are expensive per day but it was too tall for us to get with the grapple if we'd have done it three years ago we could have done it with the grapple because the trees were dead were dead but intact and now they're more fragile and now if we grab them with the with the grapple saw they just tend to come apart and we can't you know lower them safely so we're mixing and matching depending on exactly where we are you know but it's an expensive proposition however we I think we're doing a great job compared to all our neighbors we've been very successful with that tree program after over the last four years to five years it just seems like oh go ahead go ahead Jo go bill because I have a different fund you can ask about the
trees it just seems like it's not a lot of money for the amount of trees that I see that still need to be addressed just doesn't seem like enough money there it is scary when they're leaning over I'm afraid they're going to fall on someone or a car or something too I mean if a cars going by and a tree falls man hits the car you're dead it's I know it's so scary you hear about it in other towns are on a highway randomly and I think of it too it's not yeah sure all right can I move on the the other fund I was gonna ask real quick Eric I know that this year we funded the Road Improvement is that yeah you know level to last year what was this past year I know we overspent and had to transfer some money what was that like 184 or was it one was it do you remember the amount we transferred out of the maybe the old library fund or something I'm just wondering yeah I want to say that was I
would have to look back to give you an exact number I think that was about 140,000 okay y y because we got extra work done I know it was in this current year that we're in now this fiscal year so that's something to kind of think about down the line depending on I know we were ahead of the game with that because we had to transfer money into it all right thank you okay other big one really we have going on here the bridge and Culver funds so we've got a 75% increase from 100,000 to $175,000 of course the note here needed for Lake Road of basa that culbert is in bad shape and the plan was to replace that I don't know Eric anything more to add to that no I mean it's it's I was talking to the engineer today you know actually we were discussing ways to reduce our survey cost for that project which I think we can save a little bit money on that it's just replacing covers today is stupidly expensive you know and and the requirements are just the old days of digging a hole and dropping a couple squash metal pipes in and you know building a facade on each end and calling it good are are done and over with I guess my only question is if is this enough you know is this the year to push even a little bit more given our sort of good luck with the ram budget situation should it be 200,000 you know because this isn't going away we have another project after this one right no there's no no question in in fact Public Works has been working
the last four days to repair damage on a cover on Bunker Hill that has scoured out so badly we had to go in and repair kind of the outfall of the cover we're going to face a fair bit of expense for bridge and covers you know for a bunch of years going forward you know there are kind of three that are critical right now this this being one the second is the one on Hutchinson Road I think we have a plan in place to get away without replacing that Culvert by basically convincing the state to allow us a curb cut onto Hutchinson on the other side of the cul and then basically just abandoning the existing and removing the existing Culver you know because there's so few houses back there it just seems absurd to be spending you know one or between1 and $22 million replacing a covert that really only accommodates several you know several properties so as long as we can get them access in the way right right and so if we can come up with the workaround to dump them off on Route Six further up we're going to do that and and just not you know and then the next covert we really need to go after is one of the big ones on be Swamp Road because that one is failing we've had sink holes there before we're watching it but we know that one is you know is in you know pretty poor shape so after this one gets funded you know what I've been talking with the engineer at Nathan Jacobson is basically waiting at least a
year and then submitting to the state local bridge program to replace that one also so that as soon as we're we're done with this one we already have the next one pre-approved into the program and we can start putting money aside for that so yeah so yeah my my comment remains basically just that I you know not only am I in support of this increase I just I wonder if it's even if we should even go a little further but that's my only that's my only thought we know we have all these issues coming up so yeah I mean don't get me wrong I'd prefer more money in that program Well
yeah if we get a budget past we we would always like to put as much money as we can but you know this is strikes me as one of our biggest needs correct yep any more comments here slight reduction of the building M maintenance fund AES Capital fund we talked about this before we voted to kind of fund this out there's $100,000 in there and 50,000 in the open space fund to from Planning and Zoning commission we think we kind of talked about this in a prior meeting as well did I don't know if anybody has any further questions on that on those items Mark can I just sorry obviously I take the meeting that I wasn't at the beginning of the meeting but I figure we're going over all the line items and such and then I would think in a next meeting we we're all going to give our thoughts on things overall I mean we're just kind of I'm not taking this as to I'm rubber stamping everything I'm getting an overview of everything and then I what I would suggest is if we go along we did this in last week's meeting if there was something that you know people feel like really ought to be adjusted let's do it let's adjust it let's address it now or you know we can do it next next meeting too there's doesn't have to be done this meeting but I think if if anybody wanted to you know make a suggestion we we made some see we seem to have some consensus on a few adjustments early in the beginning right parts of the budget but you know we can we can certainly come back and
address it you know no I'm glad I was able to say that I know I we did kind of go along that way I think I this is a lot of informational stuff so yeah you know kind of digesting yeah sorry time to think about it more too if you if you want to do it talk well digesting it all looking at the big picture talking about it as a group I mean all of us you know will have our opinions on what we think you know so that I wanted to ask you directly and it seems like we can do that we're going through all of this we'll all come back with you know what we think yeah I think so we but and but if anybody had any specific you know proposals to make you know we could certainly talk about those too but you know absolutely we can
continue to do it you know and I'll have them reflective or whatever and it won't be like every line or anything like that no thank you I just want to I feel like we've done that in Prior years so you know with respect the briti cul front I don't know that I'm ready to make a motion around this or anything but I guess I just Food For Thought for everybody you know just based on the needs that we know are coming down the pike how do we feel about that number do we think it's right do we think we wna you know would it would it make sense to entertain a motion to increase it to 200,000 or something like that just kicking it around I again I don't have a strong opinion at this moment but I just have a doubt as to where we are with that fund and given the cost increase that we're seeing you know is that enough I is basically my gut feel especially in this budget cycle where we we are in a reasonably good place in a lot of other areas it's just my one I agree with you Rob I think that's another one that that bridge and Culvert fund should be increased not only for contingency of what might happen but to start putting even more money away for the future because these are expensive and and if I mean Eric hopefully we get the okay from the state to you know take a cut on Route Six but if that didn't happen and we had to do that project wow so it just see it seems to make more sense I'm not a that guy that likes to spend more money but
sometimes you just have to and that's one of the places I would think I'm in agreement with Rob as far as that goes I agree with Rob too and my my take on this and why I asked the question that's where we make our priority decisions you know and something like this because when we have our big picture talks there's you know I have had people come to me so I have thoughts on the budget overall not in a big way but we're going to make our push of what we think we should do but I have no problem with putting more money in that too whatever is needed the most and then when we get to our big talks or what we think we want to put forth for the town after we do job as the board of finance and fine-tuning it and everything maybe this would be you take a little bit away from the roads that we already had done ahead of time put that extra money that you are because we had to transfer such a big amount you know kind of and then put it where we need it we know those bridg and coverts are needed so maybe deduct a little bit there pad the other side I'm not saying we can do that in every instance but in this one it might work just a thought yeah that's that's a fair point in in that we did overex expend last year by like 150k roughly speaking I I remember that transfer too I I thought actually Jo I thought your number was right but I think we might have been plugging two different things and one of them was the road over expenditure but
whatever it was it was in the 150 range yeah yeah and I I on the flip side I want to keep ahead of our roads because I know we have plenty of work to do there me too and that's why and and I'd like Kim to be present too when we have the big overall talk too because I think she'll have some thoughts and that's why you know I agree with you though I have no problem putting more in that one yeah I just that's the that's the one fund of all of these that gives me some concern going forward just based on what Eric's telling us about the project costs yeah and we've been talking for years about being funded on our roads
and and bridges so yeah specifically the culverts I mean it was a real jump Eric came to us a year or two ago about that and you know we're just facing the fact that a project that we would expect to spend half a million dollars on is now almost a million dollar project that kind of thing so you know we have to we have to plan for that but other than that I mean I really kind of like this budget I I think it's good solid I think we've gone through we've done a good cut at it and you know that's one I would just flag as everybody kind of just think about and you know whether this is the year to push a little bit on that and if we get the town meeting and people are like nope we you know we want to cut the budget well there's a place we could drop back if we have to but right now and it's already granted we're already putting in a significant income increase don't get me wrong but I feel like you know just based on what we're hearing from our experts on the matter you know we're gonna have I don't want to get in a position where we need to do a bridge and we have to bond it or something you know y understood yeah so you know yeah we are pretty much at the end of the budget here the mill rate calculations are going to be they are so we don't really need to worry too much
about those right now just as a point of procedure though I think one thing we need to keep in mind is that we only have we have two more meeting dates before our town budget meeting so neck we have next week the 17th and we have our regular Board of Finance meeting on the 24 one of those two one of those two meetings needs to be a budget hearing so it would either be next week or I guess my preference would be the the following week for the board of Finance meeting that would give us an opportunity to kind of finalize what we think would be the proposed budget next week making any motions to to make changes to that and then have the hearing on the 24th at the board of Finance meeting then the following week would be the public meeting May 1st for the the town budget meeting if the town if the meeting pass if the budget passes at that meeting then the referendum is the 14th 14th yes right so like a two we yeah trigger yeah so we we basically need to have a recommended budget by the end of our meeting on the 24th I think or or else we'll end up calling some special meetings I think all of us
would prefer to avoid I don't think we're that far off so my guesses we'll we'll be able to to zero in on a proposed budget for the town budget meeting as a meeting of the 24th so it would be super ideal if we could get Wally to come to our next meeting yeah yeah I would agree if we can get him on the 17th I don't does anybody else have anybody anybody any other departments or anything they feel like they need to hear from I don't think we identifi that's the only one I got yeah and Eric I mean mark would you mind is is the Bri and cover one that you can highlight so we remember to come back to that or like we did lines yeah 24th of April was going to be our public budget hearing that was my assumption which I might have to miss by the way I apologize but what date is that 24th of April yeah I think that's likely to be our budget hearing and our kind of that's our first pass through with the public and unfortunately I may be able to make it
but I may have to miss it I have my kids that night unexpectedly good yeah and I was going to mention also I will not be available for next week's budget so Joanne if you could take the meeting I'll be on you're not available next week when we're okay the 17 17 I mean there's a there's a slight chance that I might be able to join but you know honestly if if you guys knock it out and you have the you know you have changes you want to make and you get some agreement you know you just make motions about accepting those changes you know propos you know to accept the budget as you know currently shown and and you can go ahead and and approve that you know you know certainly don't need it without me you will need a quorum you need four people there so as long as you have a quorum you're you're good I'm good for next week I just want to be clear two weeks from now potential and again I'm iffy I may be able to make I I just have kid duty that night and we'll see okay and then I I should be able to make the actual Town budget meeting if every oh Joanne you mark Joanne will have this this version of the budget that's been marked up right yeah I'll send it out to all of you after the meeting tonight shows the highlights and the things we wanted to talk about Mark before we close tonight just so that we know where we stand right now are you able to go on the mill rate calculation
tab for us real quick since we came to the end yeah let's look at that agree budget as and Eric is this up to date as far as I don't think there's 1% little less than 1% yeah that should be it should be calculating through correctly 091 because I'm GNA be honest with everyone that's here it's not people would be happy that the budget's not and clearly everybody got elected or put on the board for a reason so I have to be true to the people that come to talk to me about different things so since everyone won't be here next week they understand that there's not a huge increase overall but they also you know we have to keep in mind the spending piece of it that once we higher than the the mill rate increase is that what you you're pointing to yeah I mean we just want to be fair versus the. n or just in general like you said like we're this is a good year with ram being low and all of those kind of things so whatever we kind of marry align to or decisions that are made down the line it's harder to take it back once it's come forward yeah I mean that's the
reason where I just personally speaking this is where in years like this I like to shovel money into Capital funds because they're not operating budget yeah understand Lally it because you can always adjust that in a way that once you've increased an OP budget and then like things grow it's harder to to draw back down where you know so no I I absolutely hear you I agree so I just think it's a good good debate we've all been put on this board for our beliefs and what we're gonna try to do and you know with we all want what's best for the town but I think it's always good to have one open meeting and I know we've been going Line to Line and saying that I've been taking information in and whoever can be there it's important that we are there because that's why we're elected and representing what we believe in like Rob will always be strong and I'm Gonna Be Strong yeah that's all yeah so Bill did you have something to say if I could you could bill I was just thinking you know if you look at the the trend it it's gone pretty down over the last you know we were 33.9 35.87 31 I mean we shouldn't you know as we look forward the the RAM and the the education budget we know is going to increase because there's going to be an increase in student enrollment so you have to get realistic this are the years years yeah yeah I mean if you if if you keep trying to go down it's gonna be all the harder
to swallow that big increase that's coming down the road so I think Rob you've talked about too these are the years that you try to get some things done and then you know those things get done and the the the the mill rate is at a reasonable res maybe it's 31 maybe it's 32 whatever it is but when those big increases come it's not GNA hurt as much because you you've got a lot of things done and now you use that money for the ram increases or the the Board of Ed increases so to me you know when you look at where we were over the last you know 33.9 35.7 listen I'm not opponent of big taxes but this is not a bad middle rate and I looked at a lot of the towns around Connecticut this is not a bad at all this and the reality is that you know it interacts with our our valuations and and you know what people are actually paying taxes you know depends on that but you're absolutely right you know I agree with you on that in that we have to pick our spots where we can kind of smooth out right kind of
level loading the the ex we're gonna you know there are years the last thing we want is for everything to come to head at once and go to the town with some ridiculous you know 10% increase and I agree with you guys I definitely this is why I like healthy debate or talking about it because I see your vision and I understand it and I'm also trying to align it with a few of the things that I believe in too so we're all gonna have we should definitely keep you know our nickels and dimes in a row and not overspent I mean only because that's who put me on the board you know I had the the people L you got a
you got a comment I'm guys if I could let her Speak oh okay sorry don't think we're getting anything substantive so yeah my question is to Eric as far as the coverts do you anticipate anything coming down the pike that will probably use the extra money that we we we might end up putting into that oh so so the next one after this after so the the first thing is I don't want to spend any more of I want to Grant fund as much of the cost of replacing culverts as I can so primarily we've been looking at applications to the What's called the state local bridge program I have looked at a couple other funding sources unfortunately most of the the other federal and state funding sources all require roads to be at least minor collectors which is a problem for us because we don't have the traffic volume to justify that category so given that we're looking at putting getting projects qualified and into the state local bridge program and writing Grant applications for that and then as soon as we get one in working to come up with enough Capital to pay our half of it because the state pays half and we pay I don't want to pay the full cost of any large covert project because they're just too damn expensive you know we're in a lot better shape than a lot of people because we have we at this point every large bridge that we have is either redone since the mid 80s or is already in the federal local bridge program with 100% funding so compared to most municipalities we're actually doing great so like yeah
there's some Doom and Gloom but it's not nearly as bad as most towns you know and we haven't had any major wash outs because we've been very proactive but after this one we are going to have to do the one on Swamp Road because that one is failing the whole bottom of the barrel is eaten away and we've been getting sink holes on that road which we've patched and we've dealt with and you know we might have to do a more extensive repair similar to what we did on Bunker Hill bridge but that one can't go another 10 years I mean sometime in that period we're going to replace it so the goal is to get through Lake Road as as fast as we can and immediately start socking away money for you know for Bunker Hill we do have one thing going for us and that in about four years after lill Bridge has been replaced we will have a pool of money that we can repurpose for Bridges and covers because the money we've been putting into the bridge fund for Bunker Hill Bridge once Bunker Hill is done you know we'll use that money for the Long Hill bridge but then we should get all of that back and we can use that for culs so so in
other words what I'm telling you is at the rate we're going we're going to be able to fund Lake Road at Bola and we're going to be able to use a significant portion of money the town already has that's currently locked up in a bridge fund that we have to do to pay because the the way these programs work is that we're obligated to pay the contractor and then we get money back from the state and federal government so even though it's 100% funded we still have to lay out the money and then wait to get it back but eventually once we've gotten it all back we will be able to
turn around and reuse that money for our culverts if that makes sense yep what's your take on on adding money into that particular fund right now going up I mean I think it makes sense if you think you can get it through the budget okay and that's really the bottom line should that fund should it be higher yes you know and that's one the the yeah what's possible yeah so it's Bas I agree and and I like all those points what I guess I was basically saying when we look at this page if we're all not going to be here next week we're you know we've got 600,000 we're
asking an increase in spending for the town and I'm not saying any of this is wrong I see the you know then you got the school you know per the usual which is understandable and then we're actually using the fund balance this year so that's another 150 so spending in general is up a lot so just asking the town to digest the the spending so we'll we'll back to it next week but it is up almost if I'm looking at this right total back taxation is up by almost a million so that's real you know and one thing I would add to that is that there has been frustration at times in town that we fund the town at such a minimal level and everything gets thrown at at Ed funding which you know you know hey I got two kids I I I don't mind that necessarily but it is a thing and here we are we're taking the opportunity to to kind of turn the tables on that so that would be my argument but that said I I too do not want in any way to lock us into higher spending that we then flail around with three years from now or something I don't want to do that which is why I focus on the capital true that's that's all yeah no good point because that can be adjusted if need be when there's emergencies in other areas right no it's all just good thoughts and then we're all going to have to Circle back to what we truly believe in next week and then just go from there yeah see what we feel we want
to bring before the town right I mean that that's our last meeting before we bring this before the public I've just I've just had points bre brought to me that they know that of course the board of Selectmen and board of that are going to bring their highest and best budgets to us of course and they want the board of Finance to do their due diligence instead of just passing it into which we are which we always do so that's all in full transparency so if we all have that food for thought of our overall thoughts I mean last week there was debates about the community center and the director so we have to Circle back to that you know be you know whether we're going to leave everything on the table until the town maybe that is the final decision so yeah just one more good discussion question about things and bring maybe things to the table that people are not quite sure of or want to make any adjustments or entertain talk about it anyways is my thought I'm good for now there's nothing solid We're not gonna make any motions anybody want to make a motion to adjourn you don't have to go to the airport tonight D no I will be at the airport next week though when I'm
supposed to going to be at the I have to take my mother to the airport Friday morning so I I feel your pain anyway yes I will move I will move to a jurn I'll second that a motion okay any other discussion on the motion no all right all those in favor say I any opposed oh sorry any extensions okay thanks much I will send this this updated spreadsheet and as I said I won't be in the