okay thank you everybody this is the town of Andover Board of Finance special meeting discuss the bud the school excuse me the budget on the agenda tonight is primarily to review the the school budget I just want to make a couple of comments here particularly for the members or the public who may be joining us just in case you're not aware the main role in the board of Finance with respect to the school budget is just to review it we do not make changes to it for the charter the it is the board of education's responsibility to review and adjust the budget as they see fit and the budget that they pass will then be the budget that is presented to the town in the town meeting so the board of finance will does not actually make any changes to it but it is something that we review and ask questions that that are relevant to the to the budget so hopefully some of you had the opportunity already to review some of
the meetings and the presentations that the board of AD had had and just informational sessions about the budget prior to now but if not we do have the superintendent with us and she will go over the budget and then we'll just have some General open discussion okay so we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order so and recite the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to flag United States of America and to the Republic stands Nation indivisible Liberty Justice okay thank you the next item is public speak we give an opportunity to the public to share any of their comments or questions in advance Eric do you want to go around quite a few people on this a few people there sure first up on my screen Jer and and cre hi everyone I just want to say of course I'm here to this evening to support the Boe budget for the 2025 2026 school year however I would like to tell you from my personal experience just today why I'm so supportive of the endover elementary school budget I was asked to be one of the judges for The in invention convention today I with other judges spent over two hours visiting with and
part the participating students most of them were fourth graders I was astounded by the creative thinking of these students theyi identified a problem in their world and then proceeded to invent a solution to the problem and create a prototype of the and that was the their invent ion and with the Prototype they were truly incredible you had to see it our students were friendly then they were able to articulate the process and their their entire thinking that went into this project the other students from the other grades who came in to see the projects were kind and respectful I couldn't be more impressed I was extremely proud and and of our Andover Elementary School our school is the crown Jew of this town our students are second to none I thank all of our staff our teachers principal tler Parker and superintendent Val brunau for teaching and caring for all of our children each and every day I am requesting that the
board of Finance members of the community along with the board of Finance support our Boe budget for the upcoming year thank you okay and kmine I nothing I'm just listening okay Jay Tuttle evening I was just popping into if the board of Finance members had any questions on the information I provided the other day from the last meeting thanks CH okay Linda fish I'll excuse me I'll set okay Celeste Willard hi good evening everyone I'm just here in support of the Boe budget thank you for your time okay and Caitlyn McIntosh hi I'm just here to support the Board of Ed budget that our board passed unanimously just we're asking for the town for their support as well as we continue to support our school and the incredible awesome things that they're doing thank you okay Mark that appears to be the members of the public I see you Chris
Hera that's the assistant finance officer sorry okay got it okay well that being said thank you everybody for your input I guess the first thing I would do if if valer you give just a just a little bit of time here does anybody have any specific questions for Jay on the information this cheat that he sent that we could I don't want to you know tie up the the discussion right now with that but if anybody has any specific questions and then we could cut him loose if we if if there aren't any more Joanne yeah I just wanted to thank Jay and thank you Val for letting him just
go quickly in front of you I wanted to thank you for all the details that you sent to us after the meeting last week I know I had said in in the meeting that I would follow up with some questions but before I did that you sent those spreadsheets that you keep with the extreme detail so we were able to see line by line all of the information so any of the questions that I had were kind of answered in the details that you sent so thank you for that that's my input thanks okay Louise you had your hand up too yeah I just I actually am echoing the same thing that Joanne said lot of information there Jay you did a great job and we thank you for that else agreed excellent yeah appreciate all that detail it really really helps a lot ditto okay great okay Joan you're on mute oh I have one followup question just real simple you had said last week and I think it was specified in the spreadsheet how the the payments the lease payments you know in your Public Works equipment I wasn't prepared for this but I think it's the Public Works equipment fund we were we were going to take some out of that other fund right and it was showed it it was okay you you were gonna yeah it would it would be coming from the tar account thank you for this for
this fiscal Year's payments okay come this month in June yeah and the amount of funding that's in that fund currently and what is asked for next year will cover one payment for each and then we talked about the other situation okay yeah yeah thank you that's it all right that's all I had just just a quick pop in and appreciate you let me stop by okay thanks Jay appreciate the of the time okay okay so that being said you turn it over to the superintendent who will give a presentation on the budget theol to share screen yet Eric yeah we'll have to activate it you should be able to share now okay thanks see hang on one second up let's see if it worked did it work
looks good okay so first before we look at the actual numbers there I'll do a quick I won't do every slide but I'll do a quick reminder of kind of along the way what we've presented myself to the board and then to seniors in town so that you kind of know the the the quick narrative there this year sorry I'm sorry could you put it in full screen mode yeah sure I can see the slides coming have a lot more detail and small print oh yeah my my old eyes will not be able to read it okay thank you okay so thank you y no problem so the big things this year that that we really needed to consider number one first and foremost is enrollment so I'm going to show you a couple of slides on enrollment and this is really what we've kind of you know echoed meeting after meeting after meeting is I've been here five years and I'm very grateful that in the last five years we've gone
up by 70 kids I'm sure that the whole town as a whole has seen that enrollment effect I know we've mentioned this before but we have houses selling like hot cakes some people in in the school it's self I know I I I keep using Rosemary Crandle her her son was looking for a house for some time and finally after 10 bids on the 11th bid they managed to secure one and so I do know that homes are going for a lot more which in the long run will benefit us all an Andover because that'll be more of a revenue coming in on higher priced houses than what they were before so enrollment overall is is a big great thing for the town this year we also negotiated a teachers contract and a noner contract which it's a driver but we will have three years now of knowing exactly what those costs will be
and those increases so that in the long run again is going to be a positive for us special education costs unfortunately those drive it year to year but you never can plan for down the road in the future because those are always the unanticipated at times for an elementary school anyways the variable there is when we have three-year-olds to 11 year olds that's going to be the prime time that you have new referrals and and new services that are required you know children aren't often identified as special education after they leave Elementary School it happens but their
services will be adjusted but the new referrals occur in a small I mean in a a a younger setting and they're mandates so there isn't even anything that we can do there they're mandated through the PPT process process medical benefit increases again I'm sure you saw that with the townside budget as well we are in a Consortium as you guys know and so every year we had hoped to keep this under control and we've been pretty lucky and the past five years that I've been here so this year we were looking at somewhere between 7 and % and then the other adjustments that we make as a school is the other things that we know do we know people coming off the insurance do we know people coming on the insurance we are going to welcome five Andover babies this year to our staff so we do have to look then were they on an individual medical insurance plan before and now we know it'll be a family plan next year so we do have to look at those things and then Tech and mandated changes to the curriculum that's kind of important because in the olden days I'm dating myself here but in the olden days it was books how much do you guys need for books and that really just isn't the case anymore with curriculum we look at What technological needs what sign on you know for accounts for students we look at new curriculum
coming in that's piloted in what goes along with it as supplemental material sometimes it's books but not always so those are the things that we do have to look at that drive our budget increases this one right here is our enrollment summary this is current and so you will see that we have kept the number of classes in my recent five years as low as possible in terms of the number of classes I know back when we had three 100 plus kids you know there were three of every class all the way across I've really tried in the past five years to not increase the number of classes until it gets to a point when it's no longer appropriate I either number-wise or by student need and so as you can see four five and six are very large classes and they're very large classes because we were able to kind of hold that off for the taxpayer as long as we could without having it interfere with student and student achievement we are starting to see that obviously we're at the 27 27 and 22 Mark there that's just not possible and if you look at grade three you will see that grade three is already over they've got 36 kids they couldn't possibly by law go into one fourth grade class that number has to be below the 30 Mark there so these were all things that we consider now one of the things I
I I also made sure to put into every time I've presented this is the misnomer I know that historically there are people that sometimes assume that we I've always had small class CL and that you know we always had the same number of classes so I I purposely wanted to show the community and now you guys tonight that if we went back to 2010 when the student enrollment was 334 students at that time there were 22 classrooms and if you look at that trajectory from 2010 to 2025 our current you can see that the number of classrooms did go down as the student enrollment went down
and in 2018 there were at that point 198 students there were 14 classes and there were three prek then the following year the number was 205 for the 1920 school year again with 14 classes I take over during that time period so the the time period where it says closed in March down to the end that would be what our enrollment numbers were since I've been there and the decisions to Hold Steady reduce or try to increase class sizes then from there would be something that I I really looked at we stopped originally with the three prek classes after covid and we had gone down to two prek classes at that time we just didn't have the number of of students that we needed to have to really warrant thre but if you notice the Grant funded I mean
the general funded classes are the number of other classrooms and you'll notice that we held 14 there for a while and in 2022 we did go down to 12 at that time with the student need at 200 kids with the student need as well as the class size for two years we had a split we didn't ask the taxpayer to open an additional second grade class and additional third grade class and we've held that steady all the way through until 2024 we have 11 classes plus the four preschools there with 242 kids so it's it's really tight now it's really tight and when we look for next year we do have to address as I mentioned on the slide before we do have to address the fact that we now have too many kids in third grade here for the one class and very large fourth grade here for the other class however if you notice the 22 will come out of our population here that's grade six they'll go to RAM and we are not asking for a second sixth grade class this upcoming year that would be the following year for a variety of reasons adding three new teachers adding three new classes to that Upper Grade we do think if we have the right fit for the interventionists for the special education teachers that we currently have we can manage that one more year so
this is our current enrollment these are the number of classes and this is all online I know you guys have seen I'll go back to that one the salaries the salaries for the teachers came in at at fair and reasonable 2 to 3% raises with the two contracts that we negotiated with an increase to their portion of the insurance as well very fair contracts special education costs again this varies from year to year I talk about this all the time with you guys every single year this is something that I think that the the average public sometimes wrestles with like why can't we reduce something just real quick here before we get into the numbers real quick when we come up with this number it's not something that is just a a generic number we don't say oh well we spent you know $70,000 last year on speech so we'll spend $70,000 this year not necessarily we go through very systematically and we go through every plan for every single one of our special education students that require that service and we say by their plan how many hours do they need and then we figure out based on the number of direct service hours for let's just say speech we then figure figure out how many indirect service hours there are do they have in addition to ppts that they are going to have to sit in on do they have students on consult and we really systematically come up with how many hours we need of speech service and then that's what we have speech for
example this year we started off the year with a speech pathologist that came to us that we share with another District and we each had that Speech Pathology olist as a05 meaning half the time so they did two days in Andover two days in the other district and then that last day every other week they alternated midye they said this schedule's kind of tight definitely kind of tight and we did the best that we could with the consult hours with making sure that we could meet the needs as long as possible and just this month we from the other District had to take that other day so now we are at 3 days a week because of the increased number of service hours so we do hold off as long as possible we don't kind of build in any extra hours with those service providers but from year to year it varies it varies on the needs of the students so my little there we go benefits we've gone through this before and I know you guys are are very aware that we are an insurance Consortium so it's a very successful Insurance Consortium it is the town of Andover bard of Ed town of Hein bard of Ed town of marbor Board of Ed RAM and ahm we meet monthly we are it's it's a great Consortium not only is it a successful Consortium but we have voting rights then so all decisions that are made are made by the whole Consortium as a whole the only one with two votes is Ram because of the large number of clients that they have you know that they cover staff that they cover
let's see as I mentioned with curriculum and Technology the changes are with the change of curriculum it's not new devices it's new things for the devices is like licenses with the increased number of students would be the increased number of licenses because most of the children's technological licenses for software programs that they utilize in in math and science they are charged by the the number of students that we have so they give us a rate and they say this is the rate per student and if we have to add more students then there's an increase there it's minimally
affected but nonetheless it is there okay so I am going to stop sharing this one for now not done yet though Eric I'm going to be switching to another screen here if you don't mind whoops and I am going to pop up the worksheet for the budget that I know that you guys have already seen sorry Eric I I'm I'm trying to figure out how to close out one and move into another so just bear with me for one second here do we know how to do this let's see okay think I got it now all right so now I can share that screen again when I share that screen we should now see there we go thanks for being patient and again I will try to make this full screen okay how's that is that better very good thank you you're welcome I take the glasses off for closeup bill but you know I'm with you the opposite so okay so if you went through the the budget you know you will see lots of areas where we were able to keep things the same and again focusing on only those areas that we say are
drivers would show the increases so clearly you can see that this whole section here on the top this whole section I can't see you guys so somebody have to yell out if you have a question this whole section on the top would be the section that is our salaries and the increase here would be to the salary increases for our certified staff through the contract increases but it would also be that new 3.1 FTE that we are looking to add to accommodate the needs of the additional classrooms so and wait Valerie Val can we ask questions as you go through this line by line are you guys all okay with that Mark and everybody or do you want to just see the whole thing first and then ask questions I think it makes sense I mean did you say yeah did you say we could ask questions as we go or should we wait until you're what would you prefer I don't care it's probably better to do it now especially if she's accessing multiple files it might be tricky to go back and so it probably makes sense just you know I think as long as we're not you know hitting you know 500 questions
but I mean even if we do questions we can ask them yeah good so the first line the teacher salaries what on that line what is included in in that line so like currently there's 11 teachers in the current budget and you're hoping there's 11 classrooms but Liz in there's 11 classrooms but in the teachers union is is everybody else you you got to remember we have a gym teacher we have an art teacher we have music teacher it's everybody who's in the teacher contract Library yeah well no library has one separate line so I was just going to say Bill unless you see it as a separate line so you see special ed teachers have their own line there and that's more for bookkeeping purposes because we have state reports that we have to fill out where we have to examine our sped costs speech is a separate line I don't know why it works to our advantage now but I think that was done years ago because it's my estimation that the speech teacher wasn't always a union contracted position it was probably at one time that it went back and forth maybe it was in the union and then maybe it was a contracted position the library salary and then instructional tech salary
these are just all it's all part of the teachers union there and on those top five lines but under teachers it would be all the specials areas teachers as well everybody who teaches within the building it's not just the classroom teachers what you won't find there though that is Union but you won't find in there is the for teachers that teach preschool because as you know that that budget's not is not in here it's it's self-sufficient so those four teachers are not in there thank you you're welcome now that's a good point I was gonna have that question too just to kind of understand it and I think I did too I knew you had you know the special ed teachers are we allowed to ask is there are we allowed to ask numbers of you know I knew the teachers the certified would be the classroom and then thank you for pointing out like the PE and music or whatever you have as right being in that Union the instructional Tech is that your library not your library media specialist right you have another teacher on staff that does technical things technology yes that's always been the title I love to say she's the guru of everything but that is Chistina Frasier wases in
that line I thought so yeah yes so that was her technical title for the teachers contract Union which morphed into not only does she do that obviously she's been doing 10 other jobs during the course of the time that she's been there for as well but that line is where she is now remember to your point Joanne and to Liz that because this is the budget for next year that we've you know proposed and then the board's voted on under that teachers recommended the 1.5 there that would include the new two new classrooms that we're looking at so the additional fourth and fifth so yeah so those 11 that we used to have would then be two more 13 so Valerie I have a question yes Lou special ed teachers how many are included in that just curious so that one includes two full-time special ed teachers that we have downstairs so that's two full-time ones and then we do have a teacher support from one sorry if the dog barks I apologize so yeah so so that would be like two and a half
staff members okay thank you so under instructional assistance sped and then the substitute teacher regular substitute teacher special I will tell that these lines have been on the next ones they've been a little skewed in in the past year because we've had a difficult time permanently filling a couple of special education I mean a couple of par educator positions and so for part of the year and that's why you see 27,000 in there for the teachers and then under special ed teachers you see two and then the next line you see 3,000 in there for subas and people keep saying me well what's the difference where does this go it's a little bit skewed because sometimes we are short temporarily I'll give you without revealing too much about a specific student if a student moves in
let's say and it is known that they require some assistance but we haven't gone through the whole process of assigning let's say a pair of professional to them that could fall under subia for that particular moment in time until there's a permanent one and then they would move to a different line so if there's any questions on those I'm slightly vager on those because I don't want to identify a student but those numbers right there substitute teacher regular and then substitute teacher special ed it doesn't necessarily mean that I I would like you I think I'm saying I'd like you to look at the 29 ,000 as a whole there instead of saying why is $2,000 allotted solely to a special education teacher and not to somebody else those two lines right there combined for 29 are substitute teachers for the teachers union okay if we look further down you'll notice that most of it's exactly the same there really aren't any major changes on the rest of this page we did mention that there is certainly going to be a change with some of their benefits not substantial changes on this particular page you'll notice the negative 75% there with custodial again it's not that large of a number but I would like to point out kind of to give a little Kudos our custodians work really hard and they have made sure that especially in the summer that they do a better time with planning who's on vacation when so that they can work out the whole summer
schedule and in the past two years they've been very good at preserving that line and so I give kudos to them on that we were just making the schedule this week as to who's here which weeks in the summer that we know of already so that they can make sure that there is always a custodian there so I just wanted to take a second to give them cudas on that one okay Val just a quick question sorry to interrupt but the pension line what who does that include which employees does that include so the pension line that's in there that if Terry were on here she would tell you exactly which ones we don't pay pension to teachers I didn't te yeah they pay their own trb so I'm glad that up yeah we do just like the town side we do pay the murf the mer yeah yes that would be the only pensions that are paid on our side is and mainly to administrators is that no no no like I'm I'm in teachers retirement okay thank you it is to anybody that is not
you know in the education teaching C Union or in the admin Union so it would be par professionals anybody in the noner union the nursse is in that Union PA of professionals are in that Union the custodians are in that Union the Rosemary's in that Union Diane's not Rosemary is but yeah that it's no that makes sense I I know that some districts do have you know retirement benefits for the instructional assistants or par professionals some don't and Y so that thank you and that's a good point I didn't yeah and I didn't look up in the contract to see so thank you for telling me what that one was just curious thing and it's the same thing as the town side so you know whatever percentage is paid it's paid universally so they are part of murf the the par that you know yes and I won't go on a it's it's a huge thing I mean I know some districts have Define contribution and we've had our other Bo you know Board of Finance discussions about murf and the so not not the time or place for it here but no that that makes a difference that's why that's a high number because murf is a high percentage and that's been in their contract since
right right and to your point Joan not every District does have it my other District not but it is here and and so yeah it's been here for for quite some time okay thank you okay so then on the second page which my pages that are in front of me oh there we go okay on the second page you'll see again almost everything there starting from the retirement on down you will see that we don't have significant increases with the exception of the benefits and you'll see here it's 8.75 over the benefits line that we currently have that is because although we're looking for an 8% increase in the premiums we would have to have adjusted this for the new positions and any other changes that we know were occurring along the way as I said if we know already that someone's going to have a family plan who didn't before sometimes it works to our advantage that lots of people's kids came off when they turned like 26 not the case this year because we're very lucky that we do have a younger staff and so that's where that number comes from you'll notice as you go a little bit further down and I'm going to try to make sure that I'm not skipping any sections here there's a couple of changes minor changes I don't want anyone to think we are pulling Services when you get down to psych Services you'll see that there's a small decrease right here that doesn't mean we're
reducing psych Services but you'll notice that our actual expenditures here were so low because of the general fund because that had been part of a grant and so for 2 years the majority of what we were paying for the psychologist had been coming out of a grant so that's the difference there went from Grant funded in part to not Grant funded from the 24 actuals to the 25 adopted let's see and if you look down there is an increase I don't want to miss it on here because it's you're looking at the non-h highlighted version because when I showed you a highlighted version it just didn't close well to be looking at something highlighted in yellow let's see again Technical Services we see some increases too again it's not the purchase of new devices it is either something that is curriculum rate related or it's because we just have a a a new number of students we are not upgrading I'm not buying all new computers or anything like that the only time that we do purchase new ones if was if we don't have enough I know this year there was a purchase of about five new Chromebooks because we were short in Supply but other than that it's not a purchase of new Chromebooks can I ask you a question what is where is it where did it go oh on lunch program no no no where did it go right here 20,000 program yeah what is that okay so because it's extremely expensive for a small District to have a full program on its own we are one of those districts and we have for a long time that we fall under the
umbrella of another District basically we share a food service program with centry and the employees that's what I was wondering the employees that work in our kitchen are in our Union there are employees but to have an oversight person her name is actually Beth Pratt who oversees the program for centry centry then bookkeep I guess you could say to I call them buckets so Beth oversees basically two kitchens she oversees centries and then ours bookkeeping wise they do the paperwork for the federal government they do the state paperwork they take care of all of that for us and they do our you know Revenue in and revenue out expenditures it's not Revenue expenditures out and they keep our bucket and so they charge to us at the end of the quarter the end of the year they will charge to us what our our expenses are that we couldn't cover with what was in that bucket now I'll go back just real quick here the reason why it said actual expenditures for 24
$33 so just in case that question getting I know so what happened was during covid and after covid for quite a period of time the government had been doing very high reimbursements so where a free and reduced lunch reimbursement might have been $3 for lunch and a $110 for breakfast the reimbursements that they were reimbursing to districts were much higher and so we're very lucky centry is a great partner for us to have as they were reimbursing they were actually putting into our bucket all those additional Revenue sources instead of saying well you know we have oversight so we're just going to keep it for ourselves which a lot of other places would have done and so what happened was for almost two years there for the 23 to the 24 year what happened was we wound up with Surplus funding in there the only catch to that Surplus funding is they don't return that funding to us they have kind of a laundry list of things we can do with it to better the kitchen and so if at the end of the year they say Val there's $10,000 in your bucket you can't carry it forward but this is a list of things you can do with it that's what we did in 23 and that's what we did in 24 so we didn't get a bill in 23 they said quite the opposite here's the extra money that's there these are your options for what you want to spend it on and we actually have in the past I'll say 24
months because I don't know exactly when the purchase was made but we were able to replace the stove which probably we still had a little bit more life on it but we had the money to do that that we might not have in another year and they were able to replace two other appliances during that time period so we have a beautiful kitchen we got a dishwasher because we knew that the law was going to change and that no longer were we going to be able to use the the foam you know serving plates for the kids the trays we were going to have to switch to the washable ones and of of course with only one person full-time in the kitchen and one part-time one we knew that was going to be a difficulty so we purchased the the dishwasher so we've been very lucky with them 20,000 is what our marker is because based on our Trend data going back pre-co that would be the most that that year would cost us and if you looked at when it cost us preco it was around that money so the 20 is in there because we don't know what's going to happen this year in terms of Revenue we don't know how many kids are going to buy lunch and how many kids are not this
year and how much we're going to have left in the end and so if in fact we wind up having that bucket empty the maximum it would cost us would be 20,000 so that's the long version there but it's been absolutely a life saer for us to be able to partner with Cent trate because it does save us quite a bit of money any other questions on this page okay we'll move on so we've had some increases and I know you guys as the board of Finance have really worked with us this last year and a half to really talk about moving forward some of our big projects but you know we very regularly you know take care of all of our repairs and maintenance issues within the building we have our our contracts that you know for example our custodian with some of our contractors we make sure that all of the Heating and air conditioning filters are changed that's contracts that we have on a regular basis we make sure that everything is taken care of with the facilities and the operation on a regular basis so that we don't have unexpected big things we know that happens but everything is in these lines here and so the increase to some of the service contracts that we do have coupled with some of the things that have just gone up in cost for us because there's more of them more rooms that are utilized the increase there is about 14% we have for example a USA mechanical we have contract with USA
mechanical and they come and take care of all of our HVAC needs and they work with our head custodian who again kudos to Scotty's wonderful they do our inspections and they make sure that anything that needs to be replaced is done in a timely fashion you know small things small repairs and operations we're not talking about big Capital here talking about regular maintenance and operation there so that would be one of the reasons why that line this year is a little bit higher if you look our actual expenditures for 24 were closer to that 75 they were 74 716 so it was necessary for us knowing that those are
our increased costs to increase that to the 75 excuse me again transportation is a contract it's a contract that is a regional contract for us when I mov down to the middle there nice I'm just curious if any of that in that last section has anything to do with the bathroom repairs that need to be done nope I'll get to that in the end Louise that was the bathroom repairs that we know we need are as a result of an incident that occurred where there was a difficulty with the urinal and then from there when the plum came we realized that there was something a little bit bigger it wasn't something that wasn't picked up in a routine check it's just an incident that occurred you know unexpectedly with that said I know you're going to get to that any possibility of insurance covering some of that because of the situation they did Cover Surf Pro did Cover about $112,000 I mean a kerma did Cover about $122,000 worth of cleanup at that resulted from that so that's not in here so that's a great question and yes they did cover that they reimbursed So Pro coming in to clean up for that so that's not in here from last year and anything after that as well as far as repairing the damage no because it was it was repaired so now moving forward it's a capital issue to make sure it doesn't happen again which is why we close those bathrooms because it wasn't just a matter of well if you fix the toilet you'll be fine it was a matter of us saying H if we keep at it with the with that plumbing system there we're going
to have even more problems so since we have other bathrooms let's not use these okay so thank you so yes but I will get to the bathroom in just a just a couple minutes so in transportation as I said the contract that gets renegotiated it gets renegotiated for Hein and over marbor and Ram we do share that contract it was a fair and reasonable increase you know it's tough nowadays any of you who work in in either education or any other fields that deal with transporting with bus companies sometimes even trying to get a bus company we have a few in the state obviously but to get them to even issue Us in the RFP process was difficult because they need drivers and so ultimately in the end and I thank RAM and Hein because they really took the lead on that last year we managed to come out a lot better off than had we gone with another company but to remain with dco and we do know what our premium will be then for year to year so that 137 that's there is is based on the the contract that we negotiated this past year with them and our costs special ed Transportation that's a tough one always special when when when you have a surprise need to transport in terms of special education that is something that adds up very quickly the average average cost to transport a special education student on let's say a deco bus or an Easton bus it can range from $190 to $300 a day Reas and that's the the reasonable rate so we're
pretty lucky that we don't have a problem right now because we are leasing the town senior vehicle so we have a contract with Eric over at the town and we pay a certain amount of money to utilize that vehicle for our handicap need as well as our enrichment need for a student that goes up to RAM and so now can I ask a question on that just piggybacking what you said are you allowed to and I agree with you this is this is a high cost thing if you need it and you have to go student by student are you allowed to I know in bigger towns we have without giving up too much information but students that have the need for special ed Transportation like you say Ad door to door or something we may have like five students on a minib buus is that the way that it's handled and right okay that's what I figure we absolutely had that ability to do that we have shared Transportation with other towns before if we had a student that was outplaced and the other Town had a student that also attended that outplacement absolutely we do that it's not always an option the bus company oftentimes tells us when they can and can't you know meet our need and so so are you and I I apologize for interrupting so are you talking about above and beyond just the regular transport to and from school like you said for the enrichment or addition well so again we'll talk in the hypothetical Joanne you know why of course of course
so a handicaps student for example needs a handicapped vehicle so they can't ride the regular school right there becomes times when we have students that either temporarily or permanently also require special transportation and that all under here so if for whatever whatever reason there's a student with a sped need and they can't ride the regular full school bus we have to provide alternative transportation sometimes we can do it like we do with the student that goes to Ram with utilizing the senior Transportation but if we weren't able to we then would have to contract with another vehicle we'd have to call dco or Easton we'd have to potentially call another town and see if we could you know mirror a ride someplace so unfortunately those we don't always know now for next school year but these are the services that we do know right now that 36 U built into that is excuse built into that 36 for next year is what we pay the town thank you yeah I just I didn't know the different modes and if we're done with Transportation I just had a question understanding if you could just tell us because I know you've talked to it before Val I just forgot the instructional techn the the line above
the instructional technology repair and maintenance and then the admin technology repair and maintenance that's an outside contractor sort of like an it yeah so the the 40,000 that's East con so what we have is we have Easton that does all of our Tech and with that I will say they also provide two half days a week where they come on site for that same amount of money so it's not just they're answering things remotely if there's an issue within the building they are there on site on a regular schedule and I'm not sure which days they are you'd have to ask Taylor that but you know it's it's it's a godsent because having that person on a regular basis able to come and and and get things up and running we then are not ever without our service either so that's been phenomenal and they've been helpful I mean I know that they've they've helped the town on on a couple of things too so yes that is thank you for pointing that out that is a contract that we have contracted service no thank you I just want to understand and and thinking about in the past I think there have been for those that don't there you might have had a person in the building but when you have a person it also brings additional costs like for benefits and different things that go along with having a person so when you look at the figure this
probably like you said works out well right I mean it's one thing to have like a castina that can brainstorm other things but I can tell you that the average cost of having a person let's say 5 days a week that's just your Tech person and that's all they do your tickets and everything you're going to pay that person $100,000 correct right yeah I mean and so she Christina Works along with Easton clearly does work she does and and the good thing is I will say this about our Tech person and I'm sure every town is different you know on the success rate with their Tech person through Easton but ours is phenomenal and castina can email or call or reach out even when it's not a day that they are in the building and say oh my goodness like we have this issue and very oftentimes they're able to solve it for her right then and there or they'll stop by if they're dealing with another
school on a different day and they're like you know what we're going to be in the area tomorrow we'll come take care of it tomorrow you don't have to wait till Thursday so so yeah it's it's really been instrumental and that c has stayed fairly steady there's no price gouging for us on on that one so thank you so yep you're welcome okay so wait one more question on that sorry one more so the difference between the instructional technology and the admin technology what's the difference instructional technology repair and maintenance versus admin technology repair and maintenance so it's everything that's not the guy and eastcom that's in the
40,000 contract would be everything else that's in the 10 so if there's something that we need let's say the Easton guy comes and says you know you need a router put into this classroom or you need and I'm making this up because I'm not all that techsavvy but we won't tell anybody about that a a router or something else that would go in the line above it so it the instructional technology repair and maintenance does not include the person does not include the regular contract that we have with Eon so if there's anything else that needs to be done it goes in there so that's okay the other one is the person and the one above is right
things for instance over and above what it is we contract with yes okay the regular stuff goes under the 2580 line and then everything else would go in the 22309 yeah so okay anything else on this page oh on the bottom magnet schools in the outplacement Special Ed I can't change the title of that line that's on the bottom but I will tell you that this year for example some of that outplacement special Edline was actually services that were provided in placement for a student hypothetically speaking there are some students at times that go to programs that are half day outside and they're covered someplace else through insurance or through another program and then they come to us for the other half day that would fall under that line magnet schools on the other hand are different magnet schools are not special education magnet schools are any of the charter magnet schools in the state that an Andover resident decides to attend by law they have that right and if they do by law we have to pay for that the average tuition is
about $5,000 per student for those schools I can tell you that there are a couple of residents in the town of Andover that we've never had the privilege of meeting but their tuition is in this they moved into the district they attend that school when we prove residency that they live there we then get the bill so unfortunately that's the way it works so I can't tell you that I have the privilege of knowing the children that we're paying that1 18,000 for for the magnet schools but I can tell you that that's the law if an Andover resident attends a magnet school we have to pay for it and it's our budget that it gets put in because we are the k6 school so after sixth grade then if that child is still attending one of those schools it would be in Ram's budget so you will see in Ram's budget that there's a same thing there's a line item for Charter and magnet schools for anybody that attends a charter magnet school instead of ram that is a resident of Andover okay and I know lots of people say to me that's not fair but it's the law Valerie could you maybe talk a
little bit about the go back down a little bit the library line that looks like a really big percentage jump the library the library the instru library software instructional technology licenses fees it's a 30 almost 32% jump well if you look it is less than $1,000 from our actual 24 expenditures so I'm looking at I'm looking at current here so well so that is because as I said you know oftentimes if something was not in the general fund it was covered from a grant and it has to move back it's in there some of this would be related to you see under there the licenses and fees things that we didn't used to have to pay for for the curriculum the new curriculum would now be in there so you'll see last year when we piloted a program we piloted a new reading curriculum as well as a new math curriculum so when we piloted the new reading curriculum and remember the state did mandate us to choose new reading curricula if that wasn't required the first year it wouldn't have been in there if it was required D then that Taylor opt and we have bookworms to include that now this year it would be in there so those licenses and fees are back to what they were in 24 with a new program we now have book works so if you want a list of curricula I absolutely will get a list for you list Taylor would be the one that would Supply that for me so I can get that for you I'll write it down and all of the resources and
expenses that are associated with that resources and exp yep no problem okay yeah there we go okay on this page there isn't any increases to anything we've got 0% on the top there when we move down you'll notice that when we get to this section that has supplies I've always hated the fact that they do separate it out like you would at a middle or a high school buy area because sometimes they overlap but what I like about this page and this is why I didn't give you the full seven pages of the supplies there is is that this one doesn't separate everything by grade on this page it's it's pretty much the same when we had grant opportunities in the past few years and we had supplies we utilize that most of the classrooms to be quite honest with you with the change in curricula really have gotten away from a whole lot of the you know lined paper that they would use in the lower grades and things of that nature so I'm confident and I've talked to Taylor I've talked to the teachers union I'm confident that where we are at this point with these supplies will get us through so that's why we don't have any major increases
here let's see I'm line this page up with my next one the 610 okay on this one here you'll notice when we get down to electricity we do have a little bit of an increase in electricity here based on our Trends from the last 12 months I'm hoping that maybe in 12 more months we'll be having a different conversation if those numbers go down with solar the heating oil we do show a a negative increase an oxymoron there but a negative increase for heating oil not because we plan on using less heating oil but because we locked in the rate and our old rate was 297 and the new rate for this year is 259 moving forward to the 25 26 school year so that is absolutely a plus for us there other than that on this section we we don't have any other changes or increases and then that brings us to the bottom line there we get to the bottom line I know that there's you know quite a percentage increase on here this year again if you looked at exactly what the percentage increase you know represents that figure there is 381 and when you look at the 381,000 the contractual obligations for the contracts for theer and the noner make up about 56,000 of the 381 222 would be for the increase of positions the classroom teachers and the point tws for the special that 3.1 FTE about $75,000 of it would be to the benefits line and about $21,000 to licenses and technology and those other small increases so in the end sure it seems like a pretty difficult number because
we're doing everything in one year that probably should have been done over the course of a couple of years but we put it off because we held those classes bigger any other year I think people would have said 27's too much we've got to cut that down that's too big what we wound up with was people having faith and understanding that we were still going to meet the needs of the kids while we could and we just we just can't anymore I would also at this point then and I know I said we go back to the bathrooms kind of just look at a couple other numbers for us in the overall I know you say well our job as a board of finances to look at the whole picture I do know that this year educationally speaking we will wind up
with and we're lucky for this we will wind up with I don't want use the word refund but a surplus back to the town from Ram of of 100,000 because our Levy is low and that was their Surplus I do know that in looking at their budget we'll be lucky enough that we will wind up saving 34,000 there on educational dollars so when we're looking at what this unfortunately whole big picture looks like I know that that that will play a factor for the town's people when they're looking at a 381 increase to be able to say well we do have $134,000 that we will save with ram I do also know that on the town side last year and then going into this year they are recommending another 100,000 into the ases capital account but I can tell you that this year we don't need to put that in there we don't need to put that in there and respectfully I know this is your job to do the town budget but we we could take that out we could take that out because the audit is almost finalized now and as the audits finalized I did meet with the auditor last week on the school side and the conversation that I initiated with Robert almost two years ago now Robert if you could believe it almost two years has passed since we had the original conversation where as he was getting his child ready to march in
the Memorial Day Parade I said listen I'd love to have a conversation with the board of Finance because I happen to know with the grants that we have with some changes that are coming over the next couple of years you know we're going to have Surplus money and I would love to be able to work on putting that aside for some of the future capital projects and thankfully Robert was listening and said I think that's a good idea let's talk about this and he came to you guys and then I know he worked with you guys and with Shannon and then our other board members and last and now Caitlyn to really work on getting that account going I am very grateful that you guys were able to get that account going last year we didn't have as much but that's because a fair number of the grants well it's actually two years ago because remember they just finished the audit for last year but I know that we had some grants that ran two years so the Surplus we had year one was a little bit less but the Surplus than year two was higher and I can tell you that we did finish the audit and Robert as I expected almost two years ago the Surplus that we are going to be after our board meeting you know Caitlyn will have a letter put together but asking for you guys to put
in there is going to be about 358,000 and so thankfully I don't have to sweat it out everything worked out exactly Robert as we thought it was going to work out and so I wish that I could say well let's just use that 358 to offset the 381 we need but I know it doesn't work that way that's just not how we get to legally do that but the 358 that winds up going in that account Louise to your point is the reason why we don't have to come to you guys this year and say in addition to needing staff we're going to need more money for Capital because we're going to be able to kind of help fund that for the town with that Surplus and so I know you guys will appreciate that I know the taxpayer will appreciate that and then Ram's money should offset the the townside budget so I think actually even
though these numbers look really large I think when all said and done and you guys have to do the job of looking at you know extra revenue and surpluses versus what we're asking for I think we're going to be okay and and everything will work out and if the taxpayers is able to see that they'll see that you know this was a couple of years project on part of of all three of the financial entities the budgets but I think it'll work out I think the bathrooms the elevator and the driveway were what I know our our our last year's chair who's on here now Celeste she really was able to let you guys know when you asked at that Tri meeting what is it you need I know she was clear she said we need the bathrooms we need the elevator we need the driveway and we know that that account only has 212 in it right now but there will be 358 going into there and so I do believe that it's not necessary for us this year to worry about asking for more when we have that Surplus there more for Capital what we really need is to focus
on increasing the staff that we have to match up with our increased enrollment and if we can do that this year I think we're going to be in a great shape so I have appreciated I mean I know I just called out Robert andan there for working with us but I mean the whole board as a whole because you all voted on that for us and I think that we are in a good place and it just looks scary to see 381 without saying but we're getting 358 to put back into the capital account and now we can take 100 out of the towns side where they were going to set it aside for that Capital account so so I'm optimistic I'm optimistic that once that picture is explained to people they really will understand that it's a a good thing in terms of the place we're at right now I just want to say thank you for for offering that 100,000 you know being honest with what's coming
back and you know presenting to us tonight I I know Mark will take over but I mean I think that's a big deal that you said that we could you know we do have a tough budget in ahead of us like you said the overall picture so you coming forward and and being honest saying that you know you have this Surplus coming back and then saying that you you know that we should could remove it you're you're actually helping us with that so thank you for that well because I mean let's face it we're all on the same team here Jo no exactly no I just want to acknowledge that not many people do that you know you're being honest you're telling us where you're adding but you're saying hey this year we have this coming back we have these projects we have a yeah so I appreciate it I I like when people you know we know it's this year we don't know what'll happen any other year but I app well and the thing is is if if we're
not going to spend that all in this next fiscal year then let's wait and do you know what I mean like don't you don't want to take money now that you're like well we might need this we don't know thank you this is what yeah that's that's what we do I mean and what US volunteers spend time doing analyzing and looking and asking questions that's all so you're right if it if it really isn't needed this year in that particular line that's going to help us you know in our in our task so thank you okay any further questions go ahead Rob yeah so Val I wanted to ask you I wanted to kind of circle back to the original graphic you had about the the class sizes just because I think this is a topic that'll come up when we go to pass this budget you know you you pointed out and I agree with you the the high numbers four five6 right I mean my daughter's in six 22 isn't too too bad but 27 that's that's a big class size you know especially for us but you know pretty clearly on the graphic there you've also got three classes that are projected out where you're having like 11 kids a class and I personally strongly suspect but I want to hear you talk about it a little bit that that has to do not just with well that's the right number but also it's about specific students and their needs and things like that I presume you guys have gone through that I haven't watched every presentation so I do apologize but I think that's something that is a likely flash point and so I kind of wanted to talk about it a bit
and you're on mute by the way yes I I just wanted to reach over and grab the numbers in front of me so you're absolutely right Robert that it does depend on the students it depends on the grade level as well because we all know like hey when we went to college I don't know about you but I had like 200 people in some of my classes I mean you know it's I went to Trinity no I went to Southern for a while so so it depends it really does and I do hope that the you know the general public here in the town of Andover has recognized in the 5 years I've been here I am not that person that's pushed to keep eight nine 10 kids in a class I don't think that's even healthy to say you know we expect every class to be 10 or 11 kids in a regular classroom setting you know it's it's what's right for those kids and if you guys remember some of you were on the board but you were all you know living in town one of the things that I had pushed post Co and thankfully got support was if you remember at that time we did three first grades and I know we got pushed back because at the time they were small but I knew looking at those particular students they hadn't all attended preschool and some of them missed a huge chunk of kindergarten and so the task at hand in making them readers was going to be impossible if
those teachers did not have smaller classes and so I fought for it because I knew it was the right right thing at that time but then I wasn't fighting with the town's people I had disagreements with some teachers when I said let's do a two three split instead of opening a extra second and an extra third boy I wasn't popular the first time we had that meeting but I was able to show them that it was appropriate for their children that they weren't going to be forced into that class and as we moved along and I believe actually celeste's daughter was in that class but I believe as we moved along people realized okay that was the right thing to do at the time and we didn't put a burden on opening a class for the sake of opening a class just because of the numbers you're absolutely right Robert I could very easily have said well we also need the extra sixth grade class next year because that number is going to be high as well but I do know the needs of those students and we do know the expertise of the staff and we can prolong that one more year so I didn't want to ask for it just simply because that number next year is going to be high I do know that there are for math for example there are students from that class that already go to small group with another faculty member so for me to say well
technically there's 27 kids in there sure there are going to be 27 kids in that room next year but not for every academic so it is able to be done for one more year so and yes you're right and and and we take into consideration the needs of the regular education students the needs of the special education students what other resources we have available in assisting those students who need interventions and things and so yep next year you can probably expect a sixth grade request but not this year so just to just to get back to it so it's like first second third if memory servs from your chart are the classes where you get the real small class sizes as opposed to and there a dramatic difference right between the two and you know obviously it's the consider judgment you need those small class sizes that at the at the early end but I mean it is something people are going to bring up you know when you have 10 or 11 kids in a class you know could those be combined would it in fact be harmful to the kids education you because obviously the main driver here as you walked us through is your Staffing changes that is the big difference everything pretty
much flows from that the the the salaries the benefits the whole night so you know I guess if somebody would to say like well couldn't third grade be one class or next year couldn't second grade be one class the counterargument to that is you know what there's just too much need in you know in that student group that you just don't feel comfortable doing that well so if we go backwards on the enrollment chart there so right now if we have two third grade classes currently okay there's 36 kids in the that by law I can't make one cl oh no I'm not talking about that one I'm talking about know so if I go before that if I go to grade two grade two there are 24 kids there's absolutely right there's absolutely no way with those 24 kids that those 24 kids could even be in one classroom with the needs there there just isn't that would be an impossibility if you looked at if you looked at first grade again with the 21 students that are in that first grade impossibility and in kindergarten and and it's impossible and just just be clear it's this isn't you know I'm not trying to be hostile or anything I'm just trying to get dig into it the when you have 21 kids you know there's a lot of people
who are gon be like well that's not that crazy number so it's is it really just that there's a lot of services for that group that that they need like a lot of you know there's a fair bit of addition work I can't I can't give you certain information on the kids I don't I'm not asking for detail you know on a particular student that's that' be a violation but I can tell you that I would need to increase significantly the number of par professionals that I have currently in our building if those class sizes got bigger so it's kind it' be like one step forward one step back kind of situation where you'd have to staff up anyway because as you guys know too because I think Joanne mentioned it when she asked about the retirement many years ago I know that one of the strategies that not necessarily Andover but certain school districts utilized was when a class size got big they threw a par professional in there and a par profession we know that the rate of pay at that time you know was somewhere let's say around $20,000 and they said oh however as Joanne pointed out we have to pay murf on that particular individual not that they don't deserve it they do so I don't want anybody get mad at me there but now when you're looking at the overall cost of adding that non-certified teacher you have to consider $25,000 plus the contribution to the pension and if it is a a young person who may have a family for insurance benefits the average cost of to the district of uring a family is
30,000 so you could potentially be looking at the exact same cost as a brand new teacher so a lot of districts realized that years ago and went wait a minute what are we doing here because then you also had someone that wasn't a certified teacher so that practice I think in general and I don't just mean to you know our little corner of the state here that practice by most districts doesn't really occur anymore you don't see regular education par professionals being put into a room just because the class size is large so instead most of your par professionals now are hired solely for special educ a purposes but they're they're
specifically there for particular students particular needs or and sometimes we are able to with students that require need let's say half the day instead of a full day a par professional would be assigned to multiple children and I will tell you that we have more than 50% of the Paras in our building that work with multiple children so we do not have a lot of like what they used to call onetoone Paras we just don't so they are yeah I'm sorry I I phrase that badly what I meant was you don't have a pair that's just kind of there because there's X number of kids in a classroom they're there for it may be two or three but it's for specific needs and when I say two or three it's written into a document so we we don't have any pairs that work with students simply because the teacher says I need help here that we don't have any of that is development plan stuff yeah okay they're all in either 504 plan or an IEP for sure for sure okay which is not something you get to hand wave away no but I will tell you you know I was a special ed director before and I can tell you in my my other district for example they actually a couple years ago would have said wow she cuts a lot of Paras because Robert I am not a believer that adding
extra adults in a room for just for the sake of the numbers of kids does anybody any good so you know I I will put them in the room if they're needed just like I will will make the class size smaller if it's needed if it's not then the class size stays larger so you know I'm pretty Frugal when it comes to that stuff we have great teachers too which helps so you know there are not every teacher would have been able to do what the teachers did this year in fourth and fifth and sixth grade with those large class sizes and they've managed very well they are very skilled teachers okay well that was basically I just wanted to touch on that just because I see that as a looming issue you know when we go to public hearing and what have you it's a thing and and I I my answer would always be if we could make one class like I have over the past five years I absolutely would Robert without a problem I don't have a problem with that okay thank you anybody have any further questions for Valerie okay hearing none thank you for Valerie for your presentation I thought it was well paced and detailed and told us what we needed to know of course there'll always be more questions eventually but appreciate your time and
that of the board members and other supporters do anybody have any final comments we don't actually have a another public speak session but if anybody from the board would like to add anything or clarify ify anything to give you the opportunity to do now do so now just unmute and raise your hand Bill's on mute I you look like you were talking man I was I was just saying thank you Valerie excellent job and no I'm all set mark thank you yeah thank you Val for the presentation appreciate it and answering the questions as we went along thanks well okay I we're we're good Mark just here I just truly want to thank the relationship that we have been able to have in the last year and a half with the board of Finance it's really truly been you know a a great thing that we're all able to have these open conversations about the finances it's really been helpful absolutely so I I truly thank you guys for that great thank you thanks thank you all right so I guess we'll turn it over to the other board members so we have a couple of options we could adjourn the meeting we can go on to General discussion of our budget as it stands now those are really the two things we can do the we can't go on to anything that's not budget related because it as a special meeting it needs to be part of the agenda posted ahead of time yeah Rob my only thought my only thing I think we might want to consider doing tonight is to talk about that Capital fund thing that Val brought up you know I think it makes total sense
to Zer that out in the light of 358 coming in I think that just makes a lot of sense and helps relieve some of the pressure on this budget but you know I don't know if people want to mle that some more and kick it to the next meeting or something I'm I would be comfortable talking about that and voting on that tonight but up to you guys we certainly can it's part of the budget relevance so we you know we certainly talk about it that was not a bad time to do it does anybody feel like it's a bad idea I guess is my my question I was I'll I I was I was just thinking that you know with this budget two Mill increase
that we were looking at that we were going to have to at least take a whack at that $100,000 not eliminate it but hearing what val did tonight it sounds as if there's no harm at all in doing that so I think I would support what Rob said this going be a tough budget to pass this year and that's that's a gift so yeah yeah we really appr word but yeah we'll take it I mean I like the idea putting the money away too because you know there some big ticket items coming up there but like she said the $358,000 that's coming back is coming back so it's be a tough year and I think we have to take advantage of that so Mark can I share my screen real quick go right ahead can we hear from the other board members first two Mark just before Eric you know does his part in it me other board of Finance members anybody have anything else they L I had yeah I was just going to say I know that you you had I had a question for Eric that I'll say for the end but I know he's probably going to show us some projections with that or something but I just wanted all of us to have our our input but I I really appreciate that she brought it Forward because a lot of different people might not you know different departments they always want to get their money so I set it out loud to her
so I really appreciate it and she did make point of just so that board knows I jotted down these the ram budget was 1, 38379 over last year that's what their budget was over so like like Val had told us they are keeping 62 25,000 they're returning you know to the towns the money so it you know it is a win that will get a little bit back there as well so taking out this AES Capital fund because they have their Surplus coming back is a good idea in my opinion too and I know 's going to present to us but I just wanted to make sure that we had our board members say something first if we could I have thoughts but I'm gonna I know I'm gonna be the fly in the ointment my feeling is I wanted more detail I wanted more detail from the board to really see breakdowns in the budget like for instance the AES custom detail report would have been nice we didn't we didn't really get to see that and and I know that the board voted for a capital fund which I think is important because there's stuff that comes up and it has to be done but I don't think we agreed that all the Surplus would always go to that fund and it seems to me if they've got a a surplus of over $300,000 to me that shows that the budget was higher than it than what they needed so I'm just concerned with just going along with a an 8% increase given that it it just makes me concerned about I don't know it concerns me that budget concerns me can I just interject
one thing I think sometimes with respect to as budgeting it's a little tricky because we don't always know what grants we're going to get and they'll get you know Val get a Wrangle Grant mid year and that'll result in savings that they couldn't Bank on so I think and this I bet you this happens at the ram level too which is why they got these massive surpluses sometimes I think that's sometimes what happens and so it's a little hard to budget real close to the Bone like we' like I I agree with you in in kind of the abstract that if you if you were to consistently come in with hundreds of thousands Surplus then you maybe you're budgeting there there's too much in the budget and you need to pair it down we certainly look at things like that on the town side so that would be my thought on that as to the two not the 2% apologies the capital fund I think in the end we kind of decided to to kind of roll with the idea that this is all being done in good faith and so I think it is more or less okay from my perspective for them to to dump that money in there
especially because we know we have like three major projects coming but that's my take and and you know opinions differ that's fine y Kim has a question Y no I just I just want to say I I'm great with you know going forward with the $100,000 but I also agree with Liz I they have a surplus this year but it seems like almost every year they have a fairly good amount of money left in their budget and I am very uncomfortable with an over eight% ask I think that's high Kaitlyn has a question or Caitlyn has her hand up and she's on mute okay yeah Caitlyn you're on mute yeah go ahead yeah sorry I wasn't sure if I was allowed to speak or not yeah but in terms of the agreement that we signed with you guys that both our boards signed that that pretty much does say at least the one that Joanne wrote that we're allowed to ask you guys to put our access into that Capital account at least that was my understanding from the final draft that we passed and and in regards to you know money that's that's left over at the end of a budget year 100% like most of the time that's related to Grants so like Valerie spoke about the bookworms thing that was piloted and the fact that we didn't pay
for it in one year because it was a pilot program and now we will pay for it so things like that and and other things that are covered by grants are not stuff that's known at the beginning of a school year and it's not things they can Bank on it's not like most of a school budget is you know money going into different Capital funds to fund future projects it's money that you need to use in that particular year so but we we really appreciate everything that you guys have done for us in the past couple of years so thank you thanks thanks Caitlyn I just want to piggyback on what everyone's saying I mean truthfully looking at it and and we the the people that look at it a lot but it will go to the town and the town is going to have things to say and like Rob brought up and then he asked the good questions about enrollment because that does stick out we tried to ask as many questions as we could this is a year where this increas is is is Big we did the other thing in good faith we
did talk about that Capital you know the AES Capital fund or the rules and regulations going with that or what we would be okay with because we wanted to make sure at least if there was a surplus that it wouldn't be overspent when there were projects waiting if you follow what I'm saying so I agree there's there's a lot of different ways to look at this my take is I am happy that since we have a bunch of projects on the horizon now and there will be a surplus that the taxpayers already spent that we can put it back in that fund and hopefully the money's there then again we'll be decreasing our overall budget you know with the hopefully if we take action on that tonight but I mean everyone is not wrong and that's why I like opening it up to everybody's opinions Mark wasn't here the very first meeting Mark where we all decided overall we thought the budget numbers were high you know little by little they've trickled away with you know Ram
taking a little bit away and now if we can decrease this by the 100,000 we'll see where we were yeah I don't want to go on and on but it's it is you know it's a big number to look at and I don't think people would want to see it year after year that's for sure I hope yeah and Mark if and you explain too that we are here just to listen to it and not take action action is taken when it goes forward to the town meeting and things like that we I think have to be the reporters for the town we all those of us that wanted to ask plenty of questions to get detail yeah that's but I I have a question for Eric at the end so I'll I'll step away for now Mark thanks all right Eric did you want to tell us what you were going to show us here and follow up there sure so if you take Val suggestion and change the capital fund zero out the AES Capital fund from the town side to zero that Nets you a town budget now that's year-over-year negative as Val mentioned when you add in both components which is the budget that was actually passed by Ram plus the amount they're giving back to
the town that makes the the ram budget negative year-over-year it's about a $116,000 decrease the town budget with that is a $15,000 budget and the AES is a still a $381,000 increase that gives you a total by taxation increase of about 2.9% which is roughly what inflation is but it does we do still see a pretty big Mill increase but that is in part because of the change in formulation and the fact that the grand list at this point is a significant decrease however the board of Selectmen at their next meeting on the 10th will be debating whether to the general assembly passed a an emergency bill that would allow the towns to incre increase the basically the delay the depreciation schedule for automobiles which would have the effect of increasing the grand list for automobiles by at least 10% don't know the exact number until you actually crunch all the numbers with our actual range of cars so it's something that would have to go back to qds and be recalculated but as a ballpark you can expect that to restore about $3 million
to the Grand list and if you do those two things you take away you know at least 1% of the mill rate increase for the town so that's just a summary that's their decision whether they want to do that per the Connecticut General statutes I'm assuming they will make a decision to do that but I don't know and that's pretty much where we're at right now so this is what that budget looks like with those two things in it as Val just said can you scroll down a little more what were we at for this to oh never mind it's right there okay Eric just a really quick question the the The Returned money from Ram is built into this yes the return money from Ram is built into this yes okay it's under the hood somewhere I'm just assuming it's in one of the subtabs yeah it's it's so the way I've always done it with ram is because what they do is they instead of giving the town a check for $150,000 let's say what they do is they decrease the next year's monthly bill to Andover so or so over the year they we give that they give us that $150,000 back build that straight into
the ram number right here right okay so it's it's basically it's taking off our Levy over time correct okay I got it thanks Eric other towns show it a little differently I'm hoping in the because this way we can keep track of where it started what they did I think every year that information will help us I was going to email you this but I know that's what happens you give us the bottom line after they do the deductions but I think it was marber I was just looking at a whole bunch of different towns and different things I think they show the original ask then they show what was refunded to the town it's just easy to follow year toe I mean I know I'm not going to ask you to do it now
but I'm hoping maybe we can show that I've got to kind of research it a little more it's just very easy to read so we can say okay this is what their first ask was they reduced by they their audit was 1 million blah blah blah back 383 719 over they decided to keep their 2% and they're non-aps and they're returning the rest to the towns it's just very readable and it will help all of us you know our Board of Finance members will be rotating Through The Years so they won't have the memory of oh yeah we started here I just kind of do you have any problem with showing it that way instead of just doing all the subtraction and then we see it well I mean currently in the the budget in Andover Ram shows up as a
single line item so I'm not sure what you're I'm not sure how yeah I've go to I've got to vocalize it better it just was you know so just the other towns maybe just added it in the next row you know underneath it it's it just it's more informational for us so that we have kind of like what Rob asked you and what I'm saying that I've seen the other towns do is it almost like a note Joanne just yeah yep like they'd have the where his cursor is they'd have the total underneath they've got like in parentheses in red then an next then a then a note saying returned from Surplus right you know reduced further in Board of Ed meeting you know because they also reduced it by I thought I had notes on
that too Ram also maybe just some comments off to the right like it's just like the comments that that Eric already put in all of our you know in the budget right there's always a comment that explains com was just comments so like you say in future years people can kind of see the trends so because they they had the Surplus and then they actually reduced their operating and capital budget by 57344 too you know so that was good you know they reduced so their their starting figure was up here and then they went down and did a couple things so it' be good to have those notes right and then Eric my followup was which meetings are you going to miss of ours if you the next one the 12 okay just one meeting correct is that the ram meeting no that's the one after no the the 12th is the ram 12 is the ram meeting was okay okay we won't have the ram superintendent that's right the 19th was supposed to be AES and then we moved it up so another good reason why we may want to take action tonight just so that we have the most updated spread sheet in front of us know if Eric isn't around isn't going to be available at the next meeting just a thought somebody want to make a specific motion to change the budget I will I will move that we zero out the contribution to the as capital fund this year take it down from 100,000 to zero I'll second [Music] that okay just try to get looking at I'm
looking at Excel so I'm just try does anybody have or what further discussion or comments hearing none we can vote on it I all those in favor say I hi I any oppose any extensions okay thank you that motion passes so we'll zero that out okay that being the case just so everybody has it on the one drive that you all have access to this budget as of today is now uploaded to that file I added one additional file a number of years ago the Town's attorney was asked for a legal opinion about what the board of finances Authority was to adjust the AES budget and I'm not recommending that I'm just putting that up there so that is your legal authority of what you can and can't do and when if you have any questions about hat it go ahead I was just gonna ask when you added it I was in the file today I don't think I saw it or was it is it in there I added it during the meeting okay I was going to say I've never seen that document in there correct thank you so the other thing I would say is that I suspect that pending the auditor's statement in a week or two they are right now just doing the they're basically they they've got their financial States statements written they are just proofing by asking us for a bunch of information about a
bunch of different they're just going back and making sure that we're actually doing things correctly at this point that given that we would have the ability to probably return instead of 190,000 because remember that was 15 ,000 plus the 40 we over taxed the residents last year we can probably bump that number up to 300,000 which would also provide a significant decrease in the mill rate you know so I think the budget is looking a lot more palatable to the residents overall absolutely you know but we're not going to have that until we get an actual out auditor report which hopefully we'll have in a couple of weeks super that's good news yeah we are getting kind of tight on of time but yeah yeah good to when is the Rambo when is the ram vote like when is our yeah I have a couple things that I was trying to raise my hand to say I don't know if anybody could see me on the and Liz I was going to bring up I I printed out our meeting dates and I was just going to go over those too B good no I appreciate having that other thing up but let me so another question I don't I I really appreciate knowing how much Surplus we have that we can throw at the budget but I want to publicly say that I really want to have our meeting when we talk about the budget tonight I know you know in our thoughts you know we're all gathering information right here because whatever we end up passing is going to to be you know I don't want to artificially bring it down with the surfplus I'm happy to throw more Surplus
at it afterwards but I'm hoping we have some time to discuss it doesn't have to be tonight and so I know Eric was getting to that point that maybe we'd do that the qu I had a couple questions but let me get those meetings I just want to make sure I I guess I'll do it from memory we have the 12th where we have Ram we have the 19th open yeah and then I'm 19th be our regular meeting no the 19th is the budget meeting special meeting the 26th the following week is the regular meeting is the regular meeting after April second and April budget hearing okay April budget hearing so that's the that's the official budget hearing that we will entertain comments from the from the public on the budget anybody does that Mark the April 2nd second right and then April second is the budget I'm sorry budget hearing that's the informational hearing where we kind of present it it's just it's an online yeah generally the way that these roll if you remember is that it's it's very similar to a typical budget meeting and other than you know except that we generally have come to some you know kind of narrowed in on some agreement on what the budget will be but it's a last opportunity for the public to have their voices heard about the specific budget where it is at that time so we will listen to any members of the public who wish to speak give them an opportunity provide their input in one last meeting and then typically after the public has provided that input then we would either vote to finalize the budget
change the budget and then hopefully we have to finalize it but we're going to need to we're going to need to finalize a budget either that meeting or in a special meeting very soon thereafter right because the following the following week is the town budget meeting in person taking taking it to the high school gym you know so okay generally speaking what we've been able to do in the past is we have our budget hearing we present it a a handful of Town's people weigh in and then we make a final call and then we we kick it to town meeting yes so so 49 on April 9th we will finalize the budget we'll come back we really need to do it on the second if at all possible because we need to yeah we need to make sure that there needs to go mailers need to go out for the town budget yeah so right the ninth is where we're literally going to get with all the people in the jam
explain it to them and ask them to vote to send it to referendum so that's the special budget hearing is on the 9th budget hearings the budget hearing is on the secondary is the one on the n and the meeting is the big one the meeting the in-person meeting where we present the budget to the town formally people can make motions to change or reduce or whatever the second is important it's really a informational session and feedback session not okay yeah anything that's binding whereas on the ninth if we get clearance you know we're going to referend that's the big gotcha okay so the people will come to the gym on the n9th and they'll vote yay or nay and we
either go back or we go to referendum that's right number two April 2nd the budget hearing will that also be in the gym no it's generally just a virtual meeting that's an open okay yeah and just want get this all in my calendar yeah and the Reason by the way I asked that question earlier about special versus regular meetings is that the regular meeting agendas are more flexible so we have that 26 that last meeting of the month we have the ability to to screw around with our agenda in ways that we can't with it's a special meeting it's kind of locked in so that's good to have that there right right so the the formal rules are that if you are holding a special meeting you have to post the Agenda 24 hours in advance and it cannot change after that okay the the regular the the meetings that are posted in advance the regular regularly scheduled meetings you do have the ability to change the agenda in the meeting if you choose and if you remember we have this additions or changes the agenda so that allows us to do that but that's because it's a it's a pre-scheduled meeting you know people have plenty of notice special meeting you know prevent boards from kind of you know hey we're going to meet Tuesday you we'll keep it quiet we'll just CL it on the board in the town hall and we're just going to meet and run something through and so it's just part of the open you know transparency you know
laws intention to I it just so happens that it's really good that we have that meeting that's right before the budget hearing you know so we if we do have some things come up that that people haven't thought of we want to change the we need to stick stuff in we have that and I would say that if we can our goal would be to come out of our meeting on the 19th with a pretty good idea that you know the board is the board is comfortable with the numbers as we have it so that after the public
hearing on the 2 at the end of that whoever provides input you know we would we would just you know unless there's something significant that would come out of that which is you know the purpose of the meeting to listen to the input from the town then we would just almost be a formality to vote on the budget we've already zero downa yeah yep agree usually that's kind of where we are sometimes it's a little we're figuring out at the last minute yeah Joanne so we have a few more meetings to do some work is what we're saying you know like I know this is great to have Eric's not going to be at our next meeting we will take a look at this we've been talking to different people but like I said I knew we had the 12th
the 19th March 26 being regular I had written April and like we discussed we had April 3rd as a potential budget Workshop if we needed yeah but hopefully I feel like we have had a lot of meetings we're just so far ahead of the schedule than what we usually are usually we would have the town budget meeting like this year it's going to be April 9th and then when is the the ram referendum that this whole Charter change I know is it's May it's very early in May May 6 okay is the town write ref and RAM ref both on the same date yeah May 6 both of them correct you know and it's I definitely know the thought process behind why we did this because there's going to be a full month in between where people aren't really unless they're hashing it out in the papers but you know there's not usually we're talking about it it's a hot button topic and it's on everyone's mind you say may closer to May because we're still you know we're finishing up in April this year we end on April 9th if it goes to referendum it sits until May so oh May 6 is Tuesday okay but you're assuming you're gonna get through on the
first shot we really don't have a lot of time Joan I mean no but we have several more meetings to to we have three more meetings gotta get there the 12th the 19th we have a regular meeting on the 26th don't we sometimes do things it's really the 19th and the 26th where we're going to need to wrap this all this up because we have a presentation on the 12th that's going to eat I mean I'm looking at my calendar right now it's it's pretty tight yeah it is well it always is and well the charter changes the charter changes definitely sped things up a little bit for us but it is what it is and honestly I think we've made some pretty good progress but I I do think the 19th and the 26th could be you know pretty major meetings where we really have to grind through everything yeah exactly yeah B presentations are longer presentations and now you know we'll get our time to yeah talk about things as we like to because the ram presentation will you know we're going to listen to it and it's pretty much done and we'll see what happens yeah and then I I don't I don't want to I have one more question that I have for Eric y goe since he's here I don't know if we're done discussing the other I just obviously we've done a lot of talking and this is in a big overview of the salaries and different things I just you know when you sent us all the back up so I could remember you said we'll give you the the updated sheets and everything looking at and we don't
have to put up a spreadsheet I don't want to say a name I just don't know how with looking at the union documents and the salary numbers that I see how we started with the assist Treasurer salary nothing personal where it is right now it doesn't seem to fall in line when we're all doing the addition and the multiplication and figuring it out if you want to discuss that discuss that in executive session yeah I I mean it can wait you're here tonight and that's does anyone have a problem with us going I mean we it's just one question all of the other things line up but that one doesn't line up not trying to you know we've we've talked about well Joan I would say if you want to talk about it and yeah we' make a motion to go into executive session I make a motion that we can discuss this in executive session and we can invite the town manager in with us please it's no problem we just were trying to make figures you know we were looking for the information hey Liz second second any discussion all those in favor say I opposed any extensions no okay we'll move into executive session so Eric's going to put members of the public into the waiting room we'll stop the recording okay Eric just let us know when you're ready y