who live okay thank you everybody this is the town of Andover Board of Finance meeting for Wednesday March 13th this is the budget Workshop meeting so it's not technically a special meeting in the sense that yeah I guess it is a special meeting in the sense that it wasn't originally scheduled with the with the published calendar so hey Joan so just a couple of comments especially this is for those of you that are newer to the to the to the board since this is is because this is a special meeting we cannot change the agenda or may have any substantive discussions anything is not in the agenda now a lot of what we'll be talking about is the related to the to the budget and that's a pretty wide open Agenda for us but that just to just to make that point that if I reel somebody back in it's you know if it's something that really isn't directly related to the agenda then I you know we have to kind of steer clear that but if it's something we need to talk about it would be fine to add it to the next agenda and as I think you all know we're meeting every week from here on out unless we determine that we really don't need a meeting in any given week and then we'll see how this all goes so in tonight's so I don't think it's an issue even though we're going to we're going to switch around the agenda order of items so that we can have
the discussion of the ram budget the presentation and also talk about the DPW mower so that Jay and S Goin can head on out don't have to listen to the rest of our discussion over the budget Eric is the is the DPW thing likely to be real quick or is that should we have him go first or should we have the ram discussion first do you have any thoughts I would say probably Ram discussion first okay and then Jay because I don't know whether Jay's will go long or not it just kind of depends on what the board of Finance wants to know or hear or think or do okay that works for me okay so well first thing order of business though is to call the meeting to order which I've done we'll go ahead and recite the Pledge of Allegiance ready a pledge of allegiance to the flag the United States through the Republic it stands Nation indivisible liberty and justice okay thank you so our next agenda item is public speak Eric do you want to see if we have members of the public you want to speak as far as I can tell the only
member of the public that's here is Kirsten Kiren if you want to unmute yourself this is your your opportunity to speak no thank you okay you're all clear Mark okay thank you okay then we'll go ahead and move on to the presentation of the ram proposed budget Colin so in your hands so Eric are you gonna allow him to share or do you have y you should be able to share right now I well first of all good evening everybody Dr Colin MCA superintendent for Regional School District 8 are you able to see the PowerPoint slideshow your screen right now we're seeing your background we're seeing everything seeing your screen yeah so if you run slideshow if you click share window you should work out that way yeah I'm G to try to this is where technical this is why I shared it with Eric just in case I had issues
so yeah if you can't I can pull up the the presentation you could just tell me when to click forward yeah Eric why don't you go and do that I apologize I'm I'm that probably would be the easiest thing for us to so you you've got it then in front of you now Eric I can't I want to make sure that we're good to go yeah we're seeing it y you should be seeing it now great well wonderful I appreciate it sorry for the confusion I'm I'm used to Google meets because that's what we use in the world of education so once we get outside of Google meets it gets a little it can get a little wonky for me I apologize but I appreciate your flexibility so you know again good evening everybody I appreciate the opportunity to be here again Colin mcar superintendent for Regional School District 8s I'm pleased to be here this evening to present the proposed administrative budget for the 2425 fiscal year to members of the Andover Community I want to make sure that I acknowledge and thank Andover
board Andover citizens who serve as members of the regional a board of education members Kirsten eron is is one of those people and I believe she's here so thank you Kiren for being here being supportive as well as Scott soy yet appreciate the work that they do for the district and I I think it's also to point important to point out and mention I appreciate the work that you all do as elected officials for the town of Andover to support the community Eric if you can go to the next slide it' be great please got it great thanks so the proposed budget for 2425 is currently 31,900 and represents an overall budget increase of2 2.64% this amount is a combination of a net operating budget of 31,42 40 and a capital budget of $498,900 specific information without first communicating with them about those changes we will be having a board meeting on M this coming Monday night where some discussion around the budget will be will be had and I will certainly make Mr Anderson know about any changes that have been made excuse me to the Region 8 budget and I know that he will share those changes with you so what I'm sharing with you tonight is where we are at this moment in time but again we're looking at
some es to the good in the sense of I'm anticipating being able to reduce that current budget ask next one Eric please andover's current I'm sorry andover's member Town Levy from for 2425 is based on the percentage of Andover students that are enrolled at Ram currently and currently that percentage is 13.34% based on this percentage Andover would realize a decrease of 89,990 $86 for the operating budget and a decrease of $1,127 for the capital budget over the current Year's budget for a total Levy decrease of $2,123 next slide please so the audit of the 2223 budget for Region 8 was completed and accepted by the board in our February meeting the board voted to allocate the maximum allowable amount of the Surplus to the district's capital non-recurring account which is 2% of the total operating budget for for last fiscal year and that equals a dollar amount of $69,700 these funds have been enabling and will continue to enable the district to address longstanding issues related to our athletic fields the additional $ 830,000 $212 in Surplus is being alloc ated as a
credit offset for each Town Levy for next school year and in total this credit amount for Andover is $119,800 making the town levies decrease for next year a total of$ 320 $923,000 so certainly good news for Andover next slide please Eric so there are several drivers which are which are having a an impact to increase the proposed budget for Region 8 for next over the current years or for next year over the current years and those budget drivers include things such as health insurance I'm sure that you're talking about this already at the local level currently we are budgeting for a 16.5% increase as I'm sure that you know you Andover is a part of the insurance Consortium that Ram is a part of as well and so the decision as far as the member T the the increase for insurance is made as a part of this larger Consortium and right now it's at 16.5% we actually have a meeting of the insurance Consortium tomorrow where the final number will be established for next year so that number could change if it does if A Change Is Made we'll know it by tomorrow morning around probably 11 o'clock in the morning but but that is certainly right now at an increase cuz our our change from last year to our current year was a 2.5% increase so that is a a 16.5% increase is fairly
substantial we also have salary increases which are affecting our budget for next year we have special education outplacement special education transportation we have software costs utility costs instructional supplies and General Supply class as well those are all things that are associated I would say with General inflation next slide please Eric if you would please so the proposed operating budget also includes some significant reductions the notable reductions include primarily the principal and interest on our bond payment as I'm sure you all know the high school was built approximately 20 years ago and we are nearing the end of our bond payments for the high school renovation and that was done again which was done through bonding for next fiscal year the total principal and interest payment will be $421,500 from the current fiscal year and and we're going to stay at that payment amount of around $420,000 until the bonding is paid off at the end of the 2627 fiscal year so we're nearly the end of the bonding period which is obviously good news so it's a substantial increase there we're also seeing a decrease in general education Transportation which is being reduced we're seeing a decrease in purchased and Professional Services and the other significant driver for our decreas is is the fact that we are we're kind of flatlining
with our financing cycle for our district Chromebook and Technology so we about four years ago we put a cycle into place where we knew that at the end of this cycle we would be on a a relatively steady funding and so we're seeing a decrease of about $60,000 and it should stay relatively steady because of that stabilization plan that we put into place four years ago next slide please Eric so this chart shows the percentage distribution of the proposed budget by each object category in relation to the total budget and and as you can see and certainly not surprising I'm sure to you all 71% of the proposed operating budget is allocated to employees salaries and benefits and these are fixed costs associated with Staffing our schools next slide please so the funds proposed for next year's capital budget represent really a small percent of the actual needs which right now is around $3,318 th000 of total identified projects the proposed capital budget for next year is $498,900 decrease of about 4 $42,000 than our current Year's capital budget the proposed budget will enable the district to improve our Safety and Security posture continue to continue to address Rel issues related to the maintenance of our buildings exterior and replace aging Furniture fixtures and equipment and the development of the capital budget was a collaborative effort between District administration and members of the facilities and finance subcommittees next slide slide please Eric so this table provides a history of
budget increases for Region 8 and as you could see the district has a demonstrated history of physical responsibility school districts across the state and country are contending with Rising costs and challenging Economic Times and I'm pleased that the proposed budget increase where we currently are at a 2.64 is is reasonable when you consider where we currently are from an economic standpoint as a country next slide please Eric so this table provides the per pupil expenditure for secondary school districts Regional School Districts region 8's PPE increased slightly from last year however we do continue to provide a a high quality educational experience for our students at a cost that is amongst the lowest in the state for Regional Secondary School Districts next slide please Eric so it's important to talk about en because it does have an impact on our budgeting process the graph show this graph shows the districts October one 2023 enrollment since 20 since 2015 as well as our projected enrollment through the 3334 school year so they we always project about 10 years out for the October 23 report to the state district enrollment was 1,188 and as you can see the current projections do indicate that enrollment will decrease slightly through the 2526 school year before increasing to numbers exceeding our current enrollment in four years next slide please
Eric the October 1st 23 enrollment at Ram Middle School was 369 students enrollment at the middle school is projected to remain steady for the next three years before increasing in the 2728 school year next slide we're going to talk about the high school so the high school enrollment on October 1 2023 was 779 students High School enrollment is projected to experience a slight decrease through the 26 27 school year before eventually increasing and eventually surpassing our current enrollment next slide please Eric so this is our pre to grade 6 projected enrollment and it's important to note that over the next 10 years the elementary districts feeding into RAM are projected to increase their combined enrollment by over 300 students and so this graph shows those projections of the combined Elementary districts of Andover Hein and marbor through the TW 2033 2034 school year the projected enrollment growth at the elementary school districts that feed into Ram indicate that Ram enrollment will continue to grow beyond our current projections and what I mean by that is as you could see the the
elementary enrollments are are going up and so that means that that growth trend is going to is going to continue to go into the middle school and high school over the next several years even beyond our current projections next slide please Eric so in closing I would just say the proposed administrative budget reflects the efforts of the district and School administration department coordinators other staff and the Board of Education to put forth a responsible budget that maintains the highquality education that you all are coming have come to expect and and appreciate from the ram from Ram and and and and we're proud to be able to provide that to members of the Region 8 Community the budget is a result of several months of collaboration between school and District administrators Department coordinators and staff and is intended to provide the board you all as Board of Finance and and board of Select members and the general public with a clear understanding of the district's programs and priorities the administration and staff of the district are grateful to the support of the of of our board the local communities of Andover Hein and marbro and the work that you do to help ensure our students are receiving high quality education which prepares them to make meaningful contributions to society our board of education is scheduled to meet on April ail 1 to adopt the 20 uh4 I'm sorry the 2024 2025 budget and then obviously it would go to referendum in May that concludes my presentation and I am certainly happy to try to answer any questions that members of this group have for me okay thank you Colin I just want to make a couple of comments just prefacing any questions from the from the board of Finance I
think most of you are aware that the Ram budget is both developed and voted on and they both voted on by the board of of the Ram Board of Education it's also voted on publicly separate from the town budget so it is a completely separate process clearly it affects the taxpayers the town of Andover so we we appreciate the opportunity to to hear about it a little bit and understand it what this also does for us when we look at projections they help us understand what the future impacts may be and I don't you know Colin didn't have it in his presentation but I understand that the percentages of Andover students is expected to rise too in some of the years coming so that's going to have an impact on our budget as well so just something to keep in mind but it is a separate process from our budgeting thing it doesn't have any direct impact in our budget it just have it does have an impact in our mill rate where we we collected taxes from the town taxpayers so that's that's part how it goes here so if you have any questions about that we can
certainly talk about it so so anybody have any questions or comments for col yeah Rob yeah actually it's something you brought up but I wanted to drill down on it if we could the enrollment projections and Andover share thereof you know it was it was useful to see that you know we got about four or five years here where it's going to either drop or stay level before we get back above the current enrollment but the composition of that enrollment of course affects our budget pretty dramatically this year in a positive way can you I don't know if you have the figures handy or can provide them later but it would be cool if we had a projection for our share in those years as well yeah so so it's a it's a really great question I don't have those numbers at hand Rob but what I can certainly do is make a note to share the Andover specific projections with Eric and then he can share those with with you all as well I'm happy to do that you characterize it really accurately right so I think this is the second year in a row where the trend is is beneficial to to the town of Andover right so declining Andover enrollment which is leading to the fact that you're seeing a decrease in your member Town Levy a fairly significant decrease to your member Town Levy I I
I I'd have to dig up a report that we received from nezda which is who we utilize for our enrollment projections and I'm happy to provide that report to Eric I'll just share the entire Report with Eric thank you very much of course yeah I mean one of the things that's been concerning with me is that you know although we're down to you know under 14% as a percentage of the total Levy when you look at our prek through 12 total enrollment it's 16.9% which is another way of saying our prek through six is greater as a percentage than kind of the mean which has been about 16 and a half per. so you can kind of assume our Levy is going to go up into the 17 to 18% range at some
point when that equals out so that's just something that we as a town need to be aware of Bill s your hand up it just seems like and maybe I I don't understand but at the same time our enrollments will start going up we'll also be paying off the bond so that will help offset and not make such an impact on us as the enrollment goes up yeah I I can't I can't really I can't really speak to that I I I think that you know you're right we're we're looking at finishing you know payments in the bond over the next as I said I think what did I say 26 27 year 25 26 year 26 27 yeah so so the other thing that I would say though is Andover is not alone and I'm not I'm not saying this to provide Solace or Comfort right I mean you know I you guys are spoton your your enrollment projections are going to go up the thing that I would say though is the other Elementary districts enrollments are anticipated to go up as well right so so it's not like
Hein and marbor are going to Flatline and stay relatively steady and Andover is going to see a spike we're seeing a spike in enrollment if I'm remembering what the jections are are correctly we're seeing a spike in enrollment in all three of the elementary districts so so in totality so I don't know how that's going to affect your your percentage specifically I think it's it's going to be hard to to to put to pin that down and say oh well you know here's exactly kind of what the trend is going to be from a percentage standpoint sure other questions comments Joan I just have one quick question kind of a followup to a question I asked last year so I figured now was my opportunity just were you able to bring in any of the diversity and Equity training and the PD line that
we talked about this this year and then are you moving forward with that next year sure that's that's a great question and you know it's funny I I did a presentation I did this exact same presentation with Hein last night and that same question was was posed and the the the spec what I would say from an answer is is going to be in general I don't have dollar budgeted specifically for equity and inclusion professional development or programming for students I have I have money budgeted for professional development for for for faculty and staff and and certainly we are we are utilizing some of our professional development time to to to provide PD for staff related to you know providing you know you know increasing our staff's ability to be culturally responsive the reality is is that our our communities are growing
more diverse not we're not seeing jumps in percentages of 10 and 15 and 20% but we are seeing increases in the number of diverse students and families that we're serving in the ram community and so what we are targeting our professional development on with staff is we're we're spending a lot of time talking about how we can make sure that we are prepared to be culturally to to have cultur respons pedagogy and conversations with our students because we know that that diversity is increasing in the district so it is definitely something that we're working towards doing and and that is I would say that's a marathon not a Sprint I know that I posed it last year because I know there was a line item where you had said well we plan you know we we put the dollar amount in and then we'll have the programs so do you think you had some programs in this current year budget that oh absolutely yeah so we we have a yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely yeah that's thank you Colin I know I asked it to you last year so I figured let's go again thanks great question other questions for Colin Louise that you're raising your hand yeah I'm curious if the increase in population of the elementary kids are you seeing or is there a way that you know if there's going to be an increase in the social services outplacement in the F in the near future because of the increase are are you say are you talking special education outplacement special education yes yeah so so we collaborate very closely with our special education departments you know in the in in our district we communicate
and collaborate on a regular basis with the Elementary District so we'll talk with the special ed directors in in Hein and over in marbor or the administrators if there's not a specific special ed so we we do we're we're we're very fortunate that we take the students that are at the elementary level who are currently outplaced and we basically anticipate that they're going to remain outplaced for the following year right and so there are opportunities for us to realize savings there could be students that are currently outplaced right now either at the elementary schools that might feed into RAM or current Ram students that are currently outplaced and through the IEP process or the PPT process those students could potentially return to Ram right and which is what we are really legally obligated to try to do our responsibility for special education students is to educate them in what's known as the least restrictive
environment which means as close as possible to a regular education experience as as as any non-disabled peer and part of that Surplus that I talked about I mentioned that we had a surplus that again were is is really helping out the three towns with that credit offset a part of that Surplus is a result of students that have been able to return to Ram and and that you know that had been outplaced and we brought them back in District and we're always working to do that but we do budget accordingly for special education out placements when kids we know at the elementary level are going to be aging up and matriculating into the to the secondary schools thank you sure of course okay anything else for Colin okay I guess that'll do it so thank you very much for your presentation and good luck in the end of the school year and the budget season so well I I I just want to say that I appreciate everybody giving me the opportunity to come and chat with you and again I
appreciate Kiren being here to support as a member of the Region 8 Public Schools Board of Education I wish you all the best of luck I know that the budget process is not an easy one and you have a a big task in front of you but I appreciate your support for the the the Andover students that attend RAM and all the students that attend Ram I I wish you the best of luck with everything and have a great night thanks appreciate it thank you yeah bye okay so we will go ahead on to our next agenda item this is to discuss the DPW mower Eric do you want to lead in open that one up sure so at this point the request for both a DPW Mower and a request for a new equipment trailer has been presented and accepted by CIP and the board of Selectmen agreed with it also so now it's coming to you as a board of Finance there is money in the current budget to outright purchase the trailer so that's presumably what we would do and then the other item which is the the mower is exceeds what you know what we have available in the public works Capital Equipment fund so we would be looking at a a purchase or a lease
arrangement for that and that would require a town meeting so prior to it going to a town meeting the board of Finance would have to agree in concept ccept with financing the Beats of equipment and recommend that to a a town meeting as the board of Selectmen did so it's really kind of in your court the information was in your packet J Tuttle can probably explain it far better than I so that's kind of where we're at if that makes sense yep so Jay I guess we'll hand it over to you it's all yours all right thank you good evening everybody as Eric said the more it's in your packet and I'll bring it up here if I can share it on your screen on respondence share all right does everybody see that yes okay and everything was in your packet now yep bear in mind what I this pack packet here you know I sent you both the Trail the roadside Mower and the trailer so part of the financing that's explained in this includes the trailer but we would back that out of this so when we went to get quotes on the roadside mower we're also looking for some financing this company was recommended by the dealership they're an independent obviously separate and they are Source well approved so I reached out to this gentleman and talked
to him about it and the good thing about this is this company will allow us to if everything is approved they will allow the town to take possession of the piece of equipment prior to any payments so when money becomes available come July one that would be the time for the the first payment because it it helps municipality secure equipment when equipment is available so this is the finance option for both pieces and for the single I was not aware about the other so I don't have that dollar amount at the moment but it's somewhere I I'd have to look it back up it's around $47,000 instead of the $56,000 a annual payment for the roadside M if you guys s like to do this option lease payments you mean backing out the trailer cost yeah yes yeah so the trailer cost is around around $110,000 so like for five years yeah what's that so like 50 total right five years of 10 right correct yeah yeah and there's no reason that we can't Finance them both it's really up it's really up to the the board of Finance what you want to do ultimately because it's a future obligation even though we would have the money for the first payment now we would need to go to public
meeting to approve because we can't the board of Finance can't independently approve a finance if we were purchasing it outright and we had the money currently in the budget you could approve it all three boards would have blessed it we could go out and you know I could sign the contract for it tomorrow but since it's a finance Arrangement that would have to go back to the that does have to go to town meeting for for final approval Eric can you remind me what did the board of Selectmen decide on that because like you said they I know they asked you all to find the money for the yeah to take part of it out like you said the trailer and just Finance the mower right so I would actually have to look back when I listen to that and I knew something got taken out and they yeah so we we we took out and separated two smaller pieces of equipment that was Jay presented essentially a request for four pieces of equipment but two of them were small enough that they were below the capitalization threshold so the board of Selectmen agreed and we just purchased those outright with funds that we had right which left the trailer and the roadside Mo okay so what you're basically proposing is to purchase the purchase the trailer and finance the mower is that what I'm understanding is
the that's well I mean theoretically we could do either we could Finance them both or we could purchase the equipment trailer now outright and finance the roadside mower presuming that we don't have to make the first payment till July both of those would options would work okay can I ask Jay a question of about the trailer and this is just from listening to the presentation at the you know when he presented to the board of Selectmen I thought he was say I know they have a trailer now that you know and I listen to the whole thing and I understand the needing to upgrade the equipment but one of the points was you said that you can only use the present trailer with continuing to make repairs and repairs in town what would be the big need I was sitting there thinking because of course I can just listen what
is the big need to go out of town with this trailer all the time well if we have a breakdown with a a piece of equipment that we have to take to to a dealership to for repair like if we got to take the back hold the skid steer you know anything that another truck actually you know anything that if we can't drive it there we have to tow it there or we have to hire somebody to come in and trailer it so and the other thing is if we need to pick up supplies catch Basin supplies drainage you know concrete products we frequently go out of town and buy you know sometimes we just get one or two you know catch Bas we can throw it in the back of a truck but if we want to get a whole load you know supplies basins Basin tops different concrete put on the trailer yeah if I if I know I just wanted to ask that question that makes total sense so you go out of town a lot with the trailer if when we need to yes yeah and currently we can yeah okay and if you look at the pictures you can see there's a lot of items needing repair replace mowers or the trailers in bad shap so and that happens is there if we looked at maybe recovery sale or like a used sale value we can recover if we
sell the used equipment yes 20 it's in there right yeah on on the mower on the mower itself well look before we get to that part so one of the things that if this passes and you know is accepted you know and we're able to capitalize on a unit that's in stock now there's savings obviously and that's in the pack it's it's explained okay you know from one to the next but as far as resale value I mean I'm just going to skip through this unless you guys have some questions on the different mowers so as far as the resale value on this we're figuring somewhere around1 15,000 to $20,000 you know 10 to 20 there it is y the dealership doesn't want to do a trade in on it they really wouldn't offer us that much on it but the machine if we did some looking around and checking what's out on the market right now as far as auction houses and Who's got what
for sale you know you look things up on the Internet the machine right now in itself yep it's old it's tired it's still a working machine if we're going to continue to use this machine and maintain it we're going to start putting some real money into it and at that point you're going to own it for that much longer at some point it's worth nothing you know and right now it still has some value to it and I think that's a better you know we get some savings on a machine right now and newer machine and we can also capitalize on having some value in this and try to recover some funds and put those back to Capital Equipment if if the town so chooses and as far as the trailer is concerned $1,000 $2,000 it's old you know it's almost it's going of be teeter totter and whether somebody will buy it give us a little money or we'll get just as much for scrap unfortunately can I ask a quick question as regarding leasing versus buying so with the leasing option part of the attraction is that we can get it now even though we don't have the budget money set aside if we wanted to buy it out right you know if we decided look
you know what we're going to do we're going to rework the budget we're going to stick a bunch of money in the public works equipment fund and buy it outright for 240 Grand would we be able to do that and take possession right away or does that foreclose that option because it's a different purchase process I didn't even I don't know if the dealer would do that that's what that's what I was kind of figuring but I thought I'd ask yeah I I would you know because the the dealer is GNA get secured payment from the finance company right so as far is I I honestly don't know how that they're not taking r word for it they're getting a finance deal for a bank yeah yeah yeah this this
company that NCL they you know they do whole bundle packages they can like they're taking the roadside mower from one pie equipment one company and they'll take the trailer from another company and bundle it and they'll take care of both parties they can you know you know we could throw a truck in there we could throw something you know that's how that that financing company Works they specialize working with municipalities and governmental agencies Jay so this on your list of priorities that you would like to have purchased do you see this mower I mean I'm only going from some of the questions that were asked at the BOS not that I'm an expert this is high on your list as you're just trying to you know yeah that moving forward yeah Yep this was part of the the modernization plan and if I you does
anybody have any questions on this I can go to that plan if you want to on this pres on this packet I get out of for my question yeah I just I think I'm in the bigger picture mode in my head I understand and I appreciate you always coming to the meetings and speaking to it yeah so I guess down when it gets down to when we're deciding overall big picture I you're here tonight so at least we're hearing yes this is very important to you like this is something yeah and I I get that no that's that's all I need for my this is for prioritizing later on yeah so this is part of the modernization plan we're probably if my I'd have to look back at it again when we put it together Eric initiated and then I tweaked it a little bit and then we worked on it again together but I think we're a
year in advance right now as far as what the original plan was we're right at that year mark you know one side of the other as far as and it's it's it's time it's an opportunity thing it's time we're starting to put a lot of money in it last year we wanted to put if you recall we wanted to put a new mower head on this machine and we had some other equipment needs that some major expenses we delayed that and we fixed up and actually we're looking at it right now this Arbor right here needs replacement and this Arbor alone is about $7,000 but the unit itself is also fatigued and we've had to do welding a lot of welding on it over the years so just this mower head is about $22,000 is so that's about what we were going to spend last year I think we $25,000 we up to but we didn't do that we needed that money for some truck repairs and some other things so we delayed it and now here we are where this other machine became available some decent savings so that's one of the reasons why I'm trying to you know I think it's a good point to take care of everything thank you I like the idea of financing it and spreading it out yeah comments so you know just as a procedural matter I think Eric explained it clearly if we choose to finance this which I think would be the logical thing for us to do we would be passing
this on to for a town vote a town meeting so that's all that our vote doesn't commit the town to it it basically just passes it on to the town residents to make their decision on this option does commit us to us once we have that approval so we don't want to take it lightly but at you know my my own personal perspective is that as Jay said this is kind of part of the upgrade plan this thing clearly needs to be replac at some point sooner rather than later and I I get the sense you know the data is there about the maintenance cost and stuff you can see that in the packet we're starting to throw good money after bad at some point so it's it's probably time seems like it's a reasonable payment plan to me that's my take any other comments yeah the only thing I would say is that if you looked on page 52 of the packet
one of the things shown there was the original equip modernization plan we put forth in 2018 and got everybody to buy into and now we're basically six years into that plan and you know we've been able to kind of stay ahead of the curve but one of the things that's been hurting us is the costs for equipment has gone up really really dramatically over the last five years but if you look at it there's some pieces of equipment we purchased a little later than we originally forecasted and some things we purchased a little bit earlier we were fortunate in the 2018 1920 era where we had unexpended fund balance that was fairly significant that we could use to jumpstart the plan and we did so now we're into the the mode of just you know we're not buying stuff as fast and we're spacing it out
more and we're having to finance it to stay within the the capital allotment of 125,000 a year so that's kind of what what we're on as far as a plan goes and since a lot of the equipment we're talking about buying is more expensive than that you know plow trucks now being you know 260 270,000 bucks a top to use the finance yeah they're not GNA go down that's a good point yeah okay further comments or discussion Mark I was just going to ask at this point after hearing it so this evening we could Mo mat R we know oh that's okay go ahead we know that there's needs to be a town meeting there's a lot of things that the town needs to be deciding on as I kind of put in that email to you guys today I mean we we know that I mean it's just kind of so should we motion to are we at a point that we would do that tonight to motion it think add it to there's no further discussion or question the next the next yeah the next point would be we either move on to the next agenda item or somebody makes a motion one way you know to approve the purchase and finance option just a quick question about that motion since the figures we have for the
financing option include the trailer and we have we kind of we know roughly is 47,000 or something like that would be the payment for just the mower itself do we need that specifically we leave that vague and just say in the motion or is that a problem you know what I mean if we're because my understanding is what we're doing here is we're going to buy the trailer and Lease the equipment and it's kind of dependent on you as a board of Finance given that the lease company will allow us to wait till July to make the first payment we can do either we can take either approach we can buy the trailer out right and just Finance the mower or we can Finance them both as a
package and I don't have strong feelings either way I mean it's simplifies it from my standpoint if we lease the whole thing if nothing other than we have the specific numbers for that to put in the motion right yeah we don't need the the trailer if we decide to purchase it would not be a town meeting item correct Eric that would just be a purchase right because it's in the fund already yeah yeah I mean y somebody can make a motion to do either way I was going to say what oh sorry what if it goes to town meeting and they say no we still need the trailer right so I don't know well if they said no I mean the board of Finance could still later authorize the Traer trer because that's within your purview okay and it's yeah and it's in the fun we have the fund balance to do it yeah it's not really clear to me what
the cost of financing is but yeah I it's not a huge amount of money it's over five years so I don't think there's going to be a huge material impact for the town by by you know financing it if you give me a second a couple I can look it up quick just going to sure just gonna have to mark from your experience would you know going out to the town for referendum is it something that would be easier to pass if it was a lower amount in other words just buying the mower instead of Mower and the trailer I mean is it going to be easier for people to say yeah well let's just go ahead and spend the money I hate to see it get shot down you know I don't I don't think there's really any I don't think I've been since I've lived in town you know six seven years I don't think there's been a town meeting where a piece of Capital Equipment has not been approved okay so I don't really have a you know perception of what would be more palatable to the town Joanne just quick followup question question because I really feel like the board of Selectmen was was directing their wants and needs of how this is handled and passing it forward but I I guess were the were the final thing but they did have a definite direct way they want they were hoping it would get handled I know Eric and Jay were both at that meeting I listened to the whole thing how much is the total for the trailer Eric and or Jay on which trailer but like 40,000 roughly for the trailer seems to be
roughly 40 yeah I feel like they were hoping that got bought outright that was their plan because they didn't want the financing they knew with the equipment with our new and I'm just sharing with this with all of you because I think you all should hear thoughts of what everybody was hoping for too they know that we have the plow trucks coming up we're committed to different things there's the fire rescue thing that's coming in you know I know that's a separate budget but we have a lot of big things going so their thought was trying to purchase find the money to purchase the trailer and then Finance having that one lump payment going like the five years you know so that it didn't eat up that whole budget every year with the plow truck and the you know the cycle that we're on with that I I'm sure I heard that I don't want to be an expert but about equipment or anything but I know that that was their thought if that helps with what we do not to interrupt yep go ahead Jay so the for five annual payments the roadside mower alone at the 23, 874 and change is 47,000 32776 for five years so roughly 474 for five years okay that that's the cost of financing yes that's for just the roadside mower alone and then the combined is what what
you have in the packet that sounds like some are you talking about the payment or the cost of financing payment when I say cost of financing I mean what are we paying extra as opposed to if we wrote them a check today you know oh I didn't do that 203 is the raw cost right yeah 203 874 and 474 * 5 is 237 so you're looking at3000 4ish how much you're paying over an interest over4 35,000 oh so it's like 8% or something maybe I didn't see the percentage in there in The Proposal is it in there no he didn't give he didn't provide that to me just there you you got to figure that stuff out yourself until you why would they do that helpful yeah that's why we're here to ask those question right gotta ask those annoying questions that's that's ouch it's a little higher than I but okay but it gives us the issue is the flexibility issue that we can take possession right away yeah yeah well and we're not going to frankly just not in a position to write a check probably for
200 ,000 right so I mean even if we bake it into the to next year's budg we jack that fund up it doesn't become available till July one right yeah so that you we'd have to be we'd be waiting for months yeah and unfortunately this you know the the machine is available now it's an instock show unit if it were to sell to somebody else then you know price only escalates from there and then we're with waiting you know 300 plus days before another mower is so in the thck of the Season yeah it it's just it's available now and it's the same thing with the trailer you know the the trailer is 35,000 the first option and the other
trailer is 366 you know for option two given that cost of financing I'd say we avoid we avoid financing any more than we have to absolutely agreed absolutely agreed now would we be looking to buy the trailer ASAP then out of this year well right in other words it would be actually take place now in this budget well fund obviously yeah there is the trailer option number one the trailer is currently in stock and if I if it were to sell at 6 to 8 months lead time at that you know I don't know if the price would go up at that point but and then option two is only eight weeks lead time which isn't that bad and that's $336,000 and we would take this out of the Capital Equipment fund we would yep so we would we we kind of we may want two motions here or a two-part motion right to authorize the purchase of the trailer and then authorize $7,400 by payments thereof to finance the M exactly y exactly all right anybody like to make a
motion I'll go ahead and make it so I move that we approve the purchase of the trailer as requested up to what was this higher number 37 up to 37 up to 37,000 to be taken from the Capital Equipment fund and then that we also authorize the financing subject to approval by the town at town meeting the financing of the new mower at you know five payments of 47,4 I second the motion Bill seconds any further discussion all right hearing none all those in favor say I I live any opposed we have any extensions okay motion passes thank you very much okay all right thank you Jay appreciate the time yep thank thank you for your time and thanks for all you do and good luck with the rest of the night just getting started okay very good thank you everybody okay we will move on to our budget Workshop Workshop session so as I I mentioned in my email I think you we've got several of these scheduled I think we're doing a little bit better job in the files that are being presented of
annotating the details and we have in the past so I appreciate that both on part of Eric and and the various departments and the board of Selectmen so we'll we'll do our best to kind of make this as efficient as possible Eric I guess do you want to hit the highlights then maybe and just go through your discussion of the top 10 changes sure I can certainly do that let me share screen okay you should be looking at an Excel spreadsheet right now yeah make it just a tiny little bit smaller can everybody see that yep yes okay so the first thing I wanted to say is the majority of the big increases in overall spending and don't get me wrong there is a lot of increase in overall spending on the town side but the majority of it relates to Capital funds so the biggest single item is the Andover elementary school cap Capital fund as
you know the board of Finance approved adding a capital fund for the endover elementary school that is still under your control but that is for that is recognizing that it's a town building in in terms of capital expense you know much of that is on the town side not on the schools side so currently my recommendation was which the board of Selectmen has agreed to is to put approximately $100,000 a year into that fund in the short term the there's really kind of two things or three things that are on their their real priority list the first is the repair of the bathrooms in the original wing of the building there are one staff bathroom and then one set of male female bathrooms for students have been off limits for the last 6 months because there's a significant Plumbing Leak and unfortunately some of that's in the crawl space but some of it is under the slab and that is gonna that's going to be an expensive proposition to fix so that is the first thing is that we start you know annually capitalizing that expense so we can start start knocking off some of the big expenses and I've had a discussion with the school one of
the things I've said is that if we're going to be putting money into this the school has to prepare and show us a true Capital plan because the only way we can figure out how much we should be expending is to understand over a period of 10 years what are the likely issues I mean stuff comes up but what are the major issues that we're likely to need to address so that is the biggest single n is that one the the number two is the total budget for a community center so in this number includes essentially the cost of staff and the operating costs to have a whole new building with a director in place so that is the the second kind of largest you know nut that we have and that is assuming a full-time director you know and allocating money to cleaning and money for utilities and and programming
essentially some money for programming the third biggest one which is an increase of $75,000 is to fund the repair of the Culver at Lake Road at on Lake Road at Bola we have a state local bridge grant that will pay for half of that project but that still leaves the town owing somewhere between $800,000 and $900,000 and we're hoping it's closer to the $800,000 but you know there's kind of no guarantee is because Culvert replacement costs have been kind of out of control the last you know three to four years so our goal is we've been putting money in that fund now this will be the fourth year so we have some money established we're increasing the money this year and next year and combined that should be enough to replace the single you know the one Culvert at Lake Road we still have two other coverts that are classified as you know critical slash fail one of them is on be Swamp Road which is a problem because that's a dead end Road and there's no other Alternatives if that one fails the other one is on Hutchinson we do think we have an alternative a lower cost alternative to not addressing that Culver but what I'm saying is that our costs annual costs for doing coverts is not likely to go down in future years you know as soon as we pay this one off we're going to be putting money into addressing the next failed cover and that's going to extend you know for at least you know the next 10 to 15 years before we've addressed all the ones that are in the poor or failing category Eric yep so is that something that I mean we don't I don't
see money here to start building up for those other two projects or however we decide to do the second one but I mean if it's a fail I think the way you explain it to me is a number one or a number two which means it's about to fail be swap I I mean when are we going to start putting money away for that I don't see that in this in this expenditure or am I missing it no you're not missing it so where I think we're going to put a big chunk of that away is as you know Bunker Hill
bridge is slated for replacement starting this coming February so basically one year from today we start funding that bridge and then immediately and so we have a pool of money that's about 400 50 or $460,000 that we have in cash now when that bridge is fully complete the town will not have paid anything but what we do have to do is we have to pay the intermediate bills and then we get reimbursed by the state and federal you know government which is why we're keeping that account there as soon as that bill Bridge is basically paid off off we go immediately into doing the same thing for the bridge at Long Hill which is again fully 100% funded through state and federal grants but we're required to pay the contractors and then get reimbursed so we're going to need that money for probably the next three and a half years maybe four years at the end of that period of time we'll have about $450,000 we can repurpose and my intention would be to repurpose all of that for future Culver work but the other thing to keep in mind is we're only going to be
doing coverts at the rate at which we can fund them we can get grants through the state local bridge program because frankly you know we can't afford to pay the full cost of replacing these you know we have to be working in the realm where we're at least grant funding for half of the cost so I think that's probably realistically four years down the road and we're going to Hope like heck we don't have a major blowout in that Culver we have had some sink holes which we patched and we're prepared to do similar to what we did on Bunker Hill if we have to which is dig real quick on both sides of the Culver and then fill the whole thing up with flowable fill and then pave back over it for a couple of years until we can fix it right so I'm nervous about it you know and and I have there's no way I can guarantee we won't have a failure certainly if you look at Colombia and all the surrounding towns all of them have had to deal with emergency major Culver repairs in the last year or so because we've had so
much water but so far we've been kind proactive in our maintenance of these things so we we've avoided and we've gotten lucky you know some of the major issues yeah that answer that question sure does thank you good and just while you guys were talking I looked at the fund balance stuff we have about 438 in the bridge fund that Eric was talking about and we also we have this fund that Eric's got marked is not sure whether it still exists it's about 2 7,000 if you were to put those together if we were to transfer the money over you'd have 464 almost 465 potentially available in future as a nest egg for these massive Culvert projects right and and I am also as soon as the Times Farm Bridge officially gets closed up by the state we're transferring all of the balance of that into the the assuming the board of Finance agrees because ultimately it's your your call but assuming you're okay with it we'll transfer all that into the bridge and Culvert fund and I'm actually relying on that money plus the 175 we put in each of the next two years to have enough money to complete that one Culver right and that's 85,000 correct so that get about 550 right if again if we transfer the the what was it the town that fund that you had identified is kind of just sitting there Town garage fund so if you put those all
together you get to 550 yep and we can we can talk about the pluses and minuses of of where to put that money but yes that is something that we should be considered so that's item number three item number four you know we have a huge increase in health and dental insurance costs this is predicated on two things the first is an overall between 16 and 177% increase in our average health care costs and then the second thing is an assumption that if we hire a new full-time person for the Community Center that person will likely be a one plus one so I mean I'm not assuming it'll be a full family plan but you have to as a baseline assumption budget for you know a person who has a spouse on the healthcare maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be less than that maybe we'll get really lucky and they won't need health care at all you know but we have to budget for that right the planning and zoning commission has requested that and the the board of selectmen's gone along with grudgingly adding $50,000 to the existing open space fund if you have questions about that I would suggest you talk to either the town planner or talk to the the chair of Planning and Zoning commission Jed lson adding
$50,000 to the multi-use building fund that's a fund we haven't funded in three or four years we had originally built that fund up to pay for the community center but we were able to pay for the majority of the community center with arpa funds but we've now kind of agreed to spend some of that money to finish off the community center at a prior town meeting we've agreed to spend a portion of that money fitting out in in finishing the senior Transportation Garage on Center Street and then presumably the town at a town meeting will approve the town match for the Steep Grant we got for the recreational fields that will fund the playground and the pickle ball HS so with that we basically exhausted every bit of money in the multi-use building
fund so my suggestion is that we start annually putting some money into that to keep that fund solvent so we don't run it down to zero the treasur has basically said that although she's not going to increase her hourly rate that she charges the town the town has not budgeted for anywhere near enough hours for her to do her job as the town treasur and so she has requested a an increase and her salary the line item for the the the assistant treasure clerk that is would be an increase in hours from 30 to 33 a week which the board of Selectmen decided was appropriate upon the recommendation of the finance director Eric can I ask a question right on that one sure because I know and and that was my question you know I did see that still on here so thank you for
clarifying why it was such a big increase because I know that they talked about you know I think there was a big increase asked for but then it came up that it is a union position that was just negotiated and so is it fair for me to ask if it's been talked about if they want to increase their hours I mean I liked that compromise but well to be honest I and I've been authorizing her you know one to two hours a week or a little bit more to keep caught up anyway so I I think this is actually a realistic it would be realistic to increase her hours you know somewhat so that's an approach I think is realistic given how many hours she's actually working no I I can appreciate that and I have some knowledge of that as you know so I'm glad that that's the compromise that came up I know also that you know so with the treasurers line too you know because I think once she finished her big project for the town thank goodness for her like Spence said and the board of Selectmen and our things she you know finished her job there I know I believe the assistant clerk was very helpful to her during that stage too because of course like the assistant clerk said to me in person you can't go forward without going backward so they both came into something that was really not a good place to be they've not only you know you know fixed
whatever was wrong went for you know and now are moving forward so that being said knowing that the assistant treasurer would probably need to work a few more hours because there is a lot of work involved how many more hours is the treasurer because working only five a week it must be difficult when they have to collaborate how many hours is she willing to put in for this increase you know it would come close to doubling the amount of hours she works for the town on average so that would be a significant increase and and in truth I think right now we're still still pretty underst staffed overall you know in that department that's probably other than me personally that's probably the most underst staffed portion that the town has at least in in my opinion I would suggest at one of the budget meetings this spring we should be able to get Cheryl on a call and I think that you know because I've basically let Cheryl manage that department and manage her and and her assistant so it probably makes sense for you to hear from her directly rather than me exactly what she thinks she needs for for that budget because I'm just I'm basically being a proponent of what she's told me
she thought the other thing I think we're going to have to face is that I mean Cheryl is not burning up to stay the town treasure I think if we had another option she would be more than happy to step down I mean she has retired from every single other thing an obligation rather than us and I mean she's committed to living in Florida half of the year so I think we are going to and and part of the reason why I definitely want more money allocated to the on the treasurer side is because I think in the
next year we're going to be forced to look for other options whether we want to or not because I don't think Cheryl's you know Cheryl's certainly not staying for years Eric not to I I couldn't agree more having had you know a few conversations with both of them and being involved when they hired her yeah we're so lucky they're there getting I agree with you getting it and I feel like a lot of work and the amount of work that the assistant does now incorrectly and getting many s you know obviously through the direction of the treasure has gotten all the systems in place but still when you're the worker B position it's a lot of time for that assistant treasure so I see you know watching the last thing fail that we tried with the school and the whole thing and I I couldn't agree with you more so I think this is very important so I just wanted to kind of see what the background was with that and that would be great if we could have Cheryl on so that everybody could hear her thoughts because yeah and that's all we don't need to be labor it anymore I agree with you I mean they've done a fantastic job both of them getting the town in order along with you yeah so thank you great financially yes yeah next one up is salaries for senior transportation so this has been a little bit of a struggle between myself and Kathy pazi who runs senior Transportation because she has been adamant about keeping that budget level but it just isn't realistic because we overrun that budget every single year so
you know I went back for the last two years and said okay on average how many hours of driving do we account for in a year and what do we need to budget for that you know so I upped that budget a lot kind of over their objections but just because you know she can keep budgeting $27,000 but that's not what she's spent so what I'm saying is you know if we're going to drive 20,000 hours or or 2,000 hours a year which is what we do roughly you know we need to set about you know $44,000 in the salary line at there is one employee that's getting a significant raise and here's why our longest serving Transportation driver who is Ellie was hired kind of under the old regime at a very low hourly rate and because we could wouldn't get any other drivers that would accept that hourly rate all the three drivers after her that got hired got hired at a much higher hourly rate and it's not really fair to pay Ellie you know 16 bucks an hour when everybody else is making considerably more so one of the things the board of selectman agreed to do was just level fund all the drivers so the hourly rate for all the drivers is identical you know so the rest of them go up the 4% that they agreed to for non-union employees but Ellie goes up more so that her so she matches can I ask a
followup just on that just so understand what you just said is it a I'm surprised how much we transport our seniors you know for such a small I had no idea is this only because I used to transport my senior parents to all their appointments and take work off of it is this a a requirement that we do this I mean I think it's great and I would never take it away but is it a I I just have never heard of this so is it a requirement that say my father had a medical appointment he could have called his town and boom they would have brought him so it depends it's not an absolute requirement and remember we're also getting even though don't budget it in this line item we're getting money back from the state or from the federal government through a specific Transportation program to provide this like a lot of towns have What's called the dial ride program that's a specific Federal program we do this kind of as an alternative to that so but yeah we do provide overall we provide a lot of services to our our seniors but we also have a disproportionately aging population compared to the state in in a lot more compared to the federal average age so that's part of the reason you know the average age in the country is 39 and the average age in Andover right now is like 51 so we just have a lot more people that need it and we have a lot lot more people that are in that
category where they require you know much more transportation services and I have no problem with that at all I think it's wonderful that we do it I just wondered if we were required as a town to do it because we have a lot of seniors yeah correct wish I knew about it sooner y other than that the next item up is you know I would really like to be able to hire somebody part-time to function as a project manager in the way although this shows up as a $15,000 line item part of this is the fact that I've agreed to kind of go without a dedicated admin assistant and just essentially pay Kate a stipend to do both jobs so Kate makes a little bit more money but overall all that saves about $115,000 a year by not having a dedicated admin assistant because the thing I need most is the project management the other stuff I can cover but I just physically don't have enough time to run all the projects that we have going so either we slow down the rate at which we're doing stuff you know or we get some assistance at that so that's that one quick qu sorry that then we won't go back to it but real quick so in the long run cuz I for being involved I know how spread out you are and I speak to it and you're you know involved in everything you're at all the night meetings all of that which is commendable okay can I just ask what this I I'm wondering I just feel like as an admin assistant myself I save my bosses so much time and energy by being organized efficient and streamlining
everything so I have to wonder in the long run and I think it's great for Kate glad she's still doing it don't want to take anything away but would it help free instead of having a project manager if we had someone organized that could take all your calls get all your stuff you know what's the balance of that maybe working out better and then yeah yeah I mean I I I I contemplated it I mean the the things I absolutely don't want to do you know because I've been stuck doing that before too and that that's sucked because I'm not very good at it is set up the meetings for all the boards and commissions you know deal with minutes deal with the website deal with some of the Social Media stuff that's one of my biggest headaches and one of the things the board of Selectmen was adamant that when I took over that we do we we make do a good job of communication so Kate's pretty good at that so there's no question I can Pawn all that off on her would I like to have a full-time assistant absolutely have I asked for one multiple times yeah but I kept getting shot down every time I asked for it and then I really kind of took a step back this year when I started the budget and I said as far as my time goes what's the limit what's the biggest limiting factor in me getting stuff done and really it's the time dedicated to where where I feel I'm failing the most is in keeping
projects moving you know because it's not grant funding because we've been really successful with that so we got the money but we can't move the projects along like it's taken me basically almost two years to get both the major HV projects for the town hall and the fire department up and running and you know we're going to be in construction on those well we're in construction of parts of that now but you know that's a lot bigger a delay than there really should have been and I'm a couple years behind on getting the senior Transportation garage built now not all of that's in my control a lot of that is shipo so some of that delays out of my control but what we need most is project management and people actually running construction projects for the town and so that's kind of why I'm saying I would rather reinforce that than give me more support from an admin assistant perspective I would like both but I just know I'm not going to get it no I appreciate that I was just I know with the funding do you mind if I ask is it well maybe we should ask personally I don't know what the stipend is for Kate to do the extra duties so that's what I'm trying to balance you know
stretching every and I understand they don't mind doing that so I don't want to take that away I just I I've often talked to you about like the time like I see you everywhere doing everything and and now that you're proposing this other position I would have thought maybe you could have been the project manager if you were out more or even so that and and I'm getting into the weeds so we'll move on but thank you for talking about it yeah I I mean hey if I ever found an admin assistant you know that had a decent amount of project management experience I'd go for that but the likelihood of finding that is about zero so I didn't know if that could be to me that could have been the Public Works supervisor because I know we managed you
know we raised that level of that position a couple years ago too so I guess but I I'm not trying to manage anything I I just kind of look at the leaders at the top you know and what goes underneath so yeah I I would say Jay is probably as stressed out as I am trying to get through his day so I you know best you know best I would really hesitate to put more on his plate could he do it yeah but what would he not be doing if he was doing that that's you know okay thank you and then the last one is I I was just looking at so the the long-term needs for the fire department so we agreed last year that we would put forward essentially a million dooll financing package for tanker and that that's going to cost the town roughly 100 and a quarter a year for the next 10 years there is a fair amount of money in the the fire department's Capital fund right now because we've built it up over a number of years we're going to spend about a $100,000 of that fixing the HVAC stuff in the building and I'm probably going to put a little bit of the cost of the propane tanks you know in that fund I'm hoping to not have to tap that fund for the backup generator money for the three facilities I'm hoping we can grant fund that through FEMA but I can't guarantee it so just looking at their overall budget we've been funding it at you know between 80 you know 65 80 in other words I've asked for 125,000 every year last year was the first year we actually put that in previous years we kept cutting it so
but but given that we're going to have one single payment looming for 10 years that's going to essentially account for 100% of that of our $125,000 that we're putting in I think that needs to be upped because they are going to have to replace their compressor system there are a bunch of other additional Capital needs and that's assuming nothing goes bad so in other words I think if we go up to 137 we can survive with that budget presuming that they can sell both the rescue the heavy rescue and the existing engine you know which they're trying to do now replace it with the squad have one less total vehicle in slightly lower overall maintenance costs if that makes sense so that's the last so if you look at the overall increase in our budget about $500,000 of the increases is the stuff I've talked about right there so the vast majority of the the increase in what we're asking for is represented in those 10 items at the next budget I would be happy to go through the start going through the budget line by line if you want to do that I think that's appropriate but the majority of the expense change is right there in those 10 items go ahead Rob hand up just a question regarding the multi-use fund building fund yep so I guess my question is you don't want
to run it down to zero because you some of the things that we're talking about maybe using that fun money on I'm wondering if they're really Capital like running the community center or like you want to put money back in there to use for what exactly that's capital rather than operating right we're in terms of running the community center that's in the community center budget that's separate right where where we're going to need a significant amount of money for that building is we're going to build it for under a million dollars but the whole lower floor is not going to be finished off it will be drywalled it will have ceilings and walls and it will be insulated but it will not have bathrooms and it will not you know have anything really other than Heating and lighting so that's part
and the second thing is we are not building the kitchen out at all we are going to have four bare walls in the kitchen you know and we know our our final bill to actually build out that kitchen you know is going to be in the the 65 or $70,000 range so that part of that money for the community center and the reason why the the board and actually the board of Finance agreed a year ago to designate that money was because we knew to get under the million dollar cap we were going to leave that out do that I remember I remember us funding furnishings and things like that that's that's not including what you're talking about now you're talking about more material upgrades to the facility in the future well if you consider kitchen Furnishing no no what I mean is I mean we had agreed to I think a specific amount for literal Furnishing but did not fund something like making the kitchen a kitchen isn't that right or am I misremembering well I I I think that you know so we had basically said we were going to account for somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 for fit out of the building that's not Furniture that's not tables and chairs that's primarily the kitchen and then potentially finishing off the bathrooms in the basement those are the big expenses associated with that okay so well we did that were we under the impression we had enough money in the fund to do that but we're not and now we're saying maybe not no we we very definitely have the money available for
that we have enough money to cover finishing the community center number one yep number two the additional C the town match essentially for the grant we got to finish off the senior Transportation garage and we have enough money for the town match for the Steep grant for the pickle ball courts and the athletic field upgrades but having done those three things we've essentially run that fund dry and so what would be left would be the the first floor stuff you were talking about like future why I mean I I I can't predict necessarily what the town's going to want to do in terms of major
building capital projects but I mean conceptually what we've said is that the building maintenance fund covers ongoing maintenance you know in the multi-use building fund covers big improvements I mean you know you could consider you know some of the stuff at the school eligible for that fund too it just it depends you know that's not a me call that's a you call and a board of Selectmen call but that's essentially what that fund was set up okay all right thanks I was just trying to get my arms around what we're what we're thinking that we we need to build this fund back up to do so that helps thanks I think it's huge this year that we see the actual balances that are currently in the funds too I don't know what okay yeah I had that up earlier it's it's helpful you know like there's 300,000 in the fire fund for instance it's awesome seeing it I'm so glad this is going to be so helpful because we were always just trying to theoretically add where could we maybe take a little now we see the actual balance and like Eric and you just asked Rob what's spoken for already so this is going to be huge you know it's kind of laying the ground work before we so yeah thanks so like for instance the fire fund you know we have 300,000 in there we got 75k is for the HVAC upgrade the truck payment if we load in our usual 125 that Nets
out so we'd be down to 225 and Eric's saying well put put another 12 in there or so you know just to to get us moving that helps kind of conceptualize where you're trying to go so thanks for this yeah let me just I'm still trying to pull that up so we can all look at that and I had all the I have so many tabs open right now I know that's that is my problem exactly I have it up I mean you know sure you can share it I just got too many budget windows I can't find the one I want okay oh there we go I got it oh you got it okay good okay
so this is basically this shows current balance of everything we have and what we're proposing funding and I can kind of walk through that conservation and development we had been putting money aside every year to to fund the every 10th year plan of conservation and development so that fund had gotten built up over a bunch of years we made a decision last year instead of funding a specific consultant for the PCD we would just hire a town a Consulting Town planner so now I'm spending from that budget for last year for for this current year and for next year to offset the cost of the Town planner so in two years instead of
budgeting you know $36,000 a year for the town planner or a little less than that 24,000 we're going to have to budget an extra like I don't know 10 or 11,000 a year so that's that reval Reserve every five years the town has to do a revaluation of all real property personal property and everything that expensive so what we've been doing is we've consistently been putting $166,000 a year into a reval fund so we have roughly $80,000 available when reval comes which is roughly the cost a little bit more if we do What's called the full measure and list a little bit less if we we opt for a cheaper option and that's usually the board of Selectmen that decides which route that goes Town garage I'm pretty sure you as a board of Finance had had recommended you move the money from the Town garage fund into the building maintenance fund a couple of years ago so I was actually a little
surprised to see that pop up still on the books I thought we had actually eliminated that fund we do have one big expense we're going to have to bite off on on the Public Works building at some point well two expenses one is the generator for the building is 56 years old so that's a little long in the tooth and the second thing is we're having a lot of spalling of the exterior brick and we either need to stucco the the building or we need some kind of solution to decrease the deterioration of the building but I don't want to talk about that right now okay multi-use building fund we already talked about currently there's 417 in it but we've already you know the town has already agreed to spend money from that for the community center and at town meeting has already agreed to put money into the senior Transportation garage and then we have the match presuming at a town meeting that the residents go along with it our match for the Steep grant for the athletic fields Building Maintenance fund you know we built that up over the last three years right now we have about $135,000 worth of approved projects that are underway so we're not not all of that is going to go to that I'm going to need to draw from this fund to pay the contractors when we do the work a lot of that we're going to get back from loen
which is a state fund mechanism that's available to us but right now I need all of that money as a swing to pay the bills until we can get reimbursed by Lo siip remember we also dedicated $330,000 of that to redo the windows and the doors at the end over Museum as part of our blood money to shipo to get them to agree to allow us to tear down the old building right so part of that is taken up and about $112,000 was allocated to the bleacher project which should be done in the next couple of months so although we have $150,000 basically the majority of that is spoken for in the short term although we'll refund a good portion of that once we get money back from Lo Road Improvement in tar combined we have a fair bit of money in that account our spring because we didn't chip seal last year our spring chunk of Chip sealing is going to be about $180,000 so that'll take a big chunk of that the remaining of that money will be about $60,000 worth of guardrail repair that we need to do I mean we need a lot more than that but that's what we're going to take off from this chunk and then we're going to start doing the same shimming program we've been doing the last few years and a second round of Chip seal later in the year so although we do have a pretty big balance in that right now You can anticipate that money will be spent including plus the 410 in additional funding will be spent in this budget season we try to leave
around around $150,000 in that account at the end of the year so we can get a jump on the shimming of our roads to get that done before July one because it's easier to get contractors than it is right after the fiscal year starts so that's that tree removal currently it says we have 44,000 but tenant has been in working for like three weeks straight so that number is probably depleted pretty considerably we annually spend pretty much our whole $50,000 allotment we keep a little money in reserve in case we have a big storm right at the end of the year but you know that's in the $68,000 we will spend the rest of that money and we've been leveraging that money because we've been getting the utility company to work with us and pay for for a significant fraction of the overall tree work we're doing in town in fact not this year but last year we spent $50,000 and the utility company put in like almost $90,000 so we were we were able to get a lot more done than what we had budgeted for so we that's been really successful equipment reserve of that 119,000 you can subtract 585 because we have just made the truck payment so that remaining money
will be the money that we pay for the trailer and then presuming we do the lease then when we refill the money this year we immediately do the first payment for the the roadside mower School Improvement fund a fire department fund like I said that's about 300,000 about a 100,000 of that is spoken for right now our payments should start sometime in this this next fiscal year so we'll have $125,000 a year expense just for you know just for that one Squad vehicle but they also need they have a bunch of things that do need replacement they are going to need to replace a lot of their air packs that's a really expensive you know that's over $100,000 $140,000 something like that to replace all their air packs and then the second thing is that the the compressor that they use for refilling the air packs is at its life expectancy so in the next couple years that's going to need to be
repaired so I guess what I'm saying is that although we have $300,000 in that you know we could spend that really quickly you know just on Necessities pedestrian bridge fund we're still trying to figure out how we can because this was targeted money that the the town was given for a specific project like when we built the pedestrian bridge but since we don't own that bridge anymore but it was grant funding given to us it's a little unclear on how we can spend it one of the things I was thinking of is that if we do the connectivity project down Route 316 we do have to make some modifications and change grade right next to that bridge and I think it's close enough we could say that's all part of the Bridge Project and spend that money on that that's the only thing I could think of again Times Farm Bridge fund that $85,000 my intention is as soon as the state finally gets around to closing that project we're going to transfer all of that money into the bridge and Culver fund so we have enough to to do the project Bunker Hill Bridge fund again that will be the swing fund money for the next two Bridge projects which is Bunker Hill bridge and then immediately after that Long Hill Bridge you know and and at some point we should start talking about how and when we're going to what we're going to do for financing because at some point we will during those
projects there's a couple big expenses we're going to pay pay like when we get the prefab Bridge trusses where our you know our one Monon payment is going to be a lot more than $400,000 conversation for different day bridg and covert fund we talked about open space fund that is under the control of the Planning and Zoning commission that is the the fund to create open space to put it in perspective the open space fund you know that the the money in that accumulated over around 25 years the way the the way it works is if you subdivide a piece of property the town has the option of either taking a piece of that property for open space if it wants it or getting fee in lie of open space so the majority of that money was paid in by people subdividing in town and that's the towns where the town took the fee instead of the open space so it's accumulated very slowly land costs are you know are pretty high the the Planning Commission wants the ability to jump on a desirable piece of open space most towns fund open space through General taxation so they've requested that Severance fund this is a fund we're
required to have that pays for let's say an employee that has been here more than 10 years and has accumulated an enormous amount of sick time they're allowed to be paid out one quarter the equivalent of one quarter of their sick time plus it if they have extra vacation time and things like that so it's a an Actuarial thing we're supposed to be maintaining is a sufficient Severance fund we ran it down to zero about four years ago when Eddie and Tim Higley both left in fairly short period of time but collectively between the two of them had worked almost 60 years for the town and they both ended up getting fairly substantial payoffs just by virtue of having worked here so long hey Eric just one question on that is there a cap on I heard you you know quarter of whatever you can do but is there a cap on a vacation time that you can accumulate like do they have a certain number of days I forget that I should know by yeah vacation time there is yeah it's for most employees you know it's basically the max you could accumulate in the year so it's between two and four weeks for most employees oh in a year okay yeah you right yeah so like how many weeks you can so it's for vacation it's between the most somebody could r turn in a worst case scenario an employee had been here more than 20 weeks held over one whole five held over five days which
he's allowed to from a previous year he could theoretically turn in five weeks of vacation and get paid for that okay so that's that's that's pretty St okay thank you that's all that's you know where where we take a hit is that per the union contracts and I think it's actually in the personnel policy too if you've been here more than 10 years you can take however many days of sick time you have accumulated unused you can get paid off for one4 of those that you have and there is a cap but the Cap's pretty high so that that's where we end up getting chewed up in costs and why we have a sance fund yeah understood thank you Public Library fund that is the fund that that's not Town money that was a donation to the library we don't actively fund their Library fund that
was a generous resident who died and left the library quite a bit of money in the arpa fiscal Recovery Fund that's what we have left of our initial arpa grant that money is basically fully encumbered for paying for the community center so now that I'm losing my voice that in a nutshell is everything we have for Capital funds at least all the big ones you know that have significant amounts of money questions further questions and or comments guess one comment is with respect to the open space fund that's a kind of a pnz thing right we might want to talk to pnz about what they're thinking about you know what they're marking that for in their minds since it's what they will ask it for 50 and there's 234 in there now so you know pretty significant chunk of change in comparison to what there's in there now so I actually if this this is what I think this is and I think Eric you already explained it I'm inclined to agree if memory serves years ago there was be property that came up for sale it was Dirt Cheap the town didn't couldn't pull the trigger because we had no money in a fund and we lost it because of that and if this is something that would allow the town to pounce on a piece of property that would really work for US expand our space Maybe along the rail trail or what have you you know I'm in but I kind of wantan might want to hear from them about what they're thinking maybe we can set something up I don't know yeah if you want to hear from
the chair of the Planning and Zoning I think he would be happy to talk to you about open space fund and and needs and requirement for that when is the last time we spent out of that Eric because it was a topic among the board of Selectmen too you know when they knew they were putting forth a big spending package that will'll eventually get to I'm sure in another meeting I know we're in the overview so they kind of debated it too kind of like Rob is talking about they're like you know they're in favor but is this the year to put it in with all the other expenses so and I'm glad to see we do have a sizable total already so by by looking at these balances it just gives me a clearer picture so right so the last thing last kind of two expenses that we spent on was last year we paid for a appraisal of a property off of shotti Mill Road and we actually applied through there's a state grant program where the state helps towns and municipalities purchase open space to meet the state's
open space pools in that particular case we would have put up every dime we had in the open space fund Joshua's trust would have kicked in some money and the state would have paid 80% of the costs to buy the parcel we were trying for on shoty Mill unfortunately that got sold to a private buyer before we could go through the finish the state Grant application so you know we spent around 8,000 on the What's called the yellow book appraisal which is what you're required to do prior to basically before you can apply for money through the state you have to do what's called the yellow book appraisal and then you have to get a second appraiser review the first appraiser data and also sign off on it so it would have been bigger than it would have been more than 230 whatever our balances in there yeah the the total purchase price was around 750 I think 800,000 something like that how many acres do you recall yeah that was about 160 acre parcel you know and it it also AB buts about 37 Acres of town property that is landlocked so that would have given us a a about a 200 AC contiguous
chunk had a bunch of wetlands on it but they were very important Wetlands which we wanted to conserve anyway so that's one example prior to that we bought land off of Lake Road if you know where the rail head the rail trail trail head is on Lake Road we purchased that and we purchased about a 3 Acre piece in there out of open space we that and how much was that would you say I think we spent about 35,000 on that okay so it just varies on the properties and different no and no that gives a good overview thank you yeah and and we also we had gone after a piece of property owned by Town Tom talbet that was off of long hill and we ended up not doing that because we couldn't afford we couldn't afford the property so then we tried to see what whether we could buy the development rights and the development rights would have taken basically every bit or more than we had in the open space fund so yeah I mean if if we're going after big chunks of property you know which is what our plan of conservation and development calls for you know we're we are going to need additional funds in that if we're going to be able to do that I just want to say thank you Eric you did a great job of explaining all of these line items for us so thanks okay are you good with this can I stop the share on that yes good with me okay okay okay well we are about two hours into our meeting here we've covered a lot of ground I would propose that we consider adjourning and then you know carrying
on at our next meeting with the review of the budget any more specific questions that come up we also need to schedule the and over Elementary School for their presentation which I should have reached out them I probably should have reached out them see if they they can do next week if not we'll do the following week see what's convenient for them so anybody else have anything that the pressing that they want to re discuss tonight I just ask oh go ahead bill go go ahead Bill oh I just ask you Rob has there been any more development in your talks with Shannon yeah I yeah I actually texted her tonight saying you know we need to Circle back we haven't been able to link up I've been super busy at work and I I get the sense same for her but I I did you know in part because I I was reminded by the fact that in this budget we're we're
potentially loading $100,000 into a fund we have no policy for so I texted her and said we really to meet so I'll work on that guys but I don't have anything for you right now just a point of order we really shouldn't be discussing that on the agenda sorry the only other thing Mark is is what I brought up before which is the pnz thing if we want to hear from them if we want try to schedule something with them yeah if you if you'd like if everybody else is fine with it and they don't need it that's fine I just raised it as a potential thing what is what do you guys think is a board I mean it's I don't think it would hurt to hear from them would be a first for us I think since I've been on the board to kind of understand what they do I do in general terms I that explained it pretty well and I've been a part of some of the discussions about or
at least have been Observer when some of the discussions on some of those partial issues have come up I agree it's been a little bit discussed in some of the meetings I've been in and then with Eric kind of bringing it together the kind of things we're looking to do with it and the one part of it that I think is part of financial too and part of budget is I know eventually that you know they talk about the affordable housing and that kind of thing and that would be a reason that they would have to get lots of land if they want to start getting that a place to think of where they could do with whatever so if they did a condensed like if we limited them to and I don't mean to be yeah overview because times we get going on things and then we yeah yeah that would be my thought a quick 10 minute presentation yep yeah they probably are at a regular meeting you know might not be a bad idea to do it but we'll kind of see where we go where we are yeah I mean obviously as would be the priority here get that we have budget document so we you know we have line on we can go through it I looked at it earlier but yeah we want to hear from Val or whoever to present that budget to us the way we heard tonight from Ram so if we can do it next week great if not then the following I agree all right I guess I do want to point out we do have one other thing on our agenda and that's the approved
the draft audit you know I don't know if anybody has any concerns over what we presented it would make sense to go ahead and get that done unless somebody has concerns over the audit as it's written it is part of the packet if you want to have more time to review it we could certainly take this up next week it's I don't think it's urgent right is there any pressing on approving it or receiving it we could certainly do it next week we just got absolutely have to make sure we've done it by the end of the month because I want to submit that the only thing I would ask that the board is that you read through the corrective action plan that is that I sent you that was proposed by the school because I am very unhappy with it but that was my question yeah at the end of the day you know [Applause] it's you know the audit is one of the responsibilities of the board of Finance so I mean I I want that you know I want your judgment on that not mine to go forward can we move can m I would kind of go with both of you if we could put it off for one more week I've read all
of it and I was just going to ask the question about I know we wanted to do better with getting that submitted so by the end of the month would be okay yeah yeah our our current extension runs through the end of this month so as long as we hit submit on you know give the auditor the go- ahead and we have the corrective a corrective action plan we agree with then we can we can can go ahead with it and if you did bring in the the school next week to talk about the budget theoretically you could have that discussion with Val also you know about the corrective action plan is next week's meeting a regular meeting that we can adjust the agenda or do we want us put that on their no it's a special meeting I think so we would we would want to have that in advance if we want to talk about that we we need to have it on the on the agenda that would be my point agenda correct when will you make finalization of the agenda do you do that on Friday do we have till Monday well technically it has to be posted 24 hours before the meeting but I prefer to do it a little bit earlier than that in case of a screw up so we could do it next Monday you know that gives us enough time to get it posted on the website and posted the in the town clerk's office if we if we know we want
to talk about it we can just we can add it in there I don't know you don't but we can just have review you know it seems like if we're gonna have the you know we're gonna have them here anyway we might as well if anybody wants to talk about their corrective action plan we should just put it on there just you know yeah I mean we we'll go ahead and put AES on the on the agenda I'm not positive they'll be available but you know that's we'll get do you want me to reach out tomorrow I'm happy to do that sure yeah yeah I'll take care of that and then I would reach out to Valerie and Celeste Willard OH yep absolutely yeah they they said Celeste so yeah include her for sure absolutely I'll do that tomorrow then I'll let everyone know I did read their corrective action plan on for you all have but obviously then if we G to put that on the agenda for next meeting everybody try to take a look at that yeah yeah yeah I mean from my perspective what they're proposing is that they give the town financial information once a year September after you know three months after the year is over and I don't that to me does not solve the problem that that we have think it would be great to have a discussion imagined your objection to it I wasn't you know I'm not surprised to hear you say that we' want to hear
from them what their thought process is on why that they feel that's necessary or appropriate or whatever so understood can we can we actually make changes to that or recommend it because that's their corrective action well remember too that the corrective action plan technically is my responsibility the reason why I pwned it off on the school is because all of the audit findings were things that were not under my control they relate to things that either occurred in the school business office or relate to the fact that they haven't shared information so I can't write a corrective action plan because last year I wrote a corrective action plan to correct this but they didn't actually do that so since they didn't do it it doesn't do us any good I think it great to have an open discussion with all the stakeholders there because that's what we were talking about you know let's just you know we all I agree with you at least they did present us with something we'll all take a look at it on a fresh brain and then come to the table and if
we can luckily hopefully get Val to come too next week you know she could be busy but I'll propose it to her tomorrow then we can kind of try to Roach both things is your any penalty for them not doing what they were supposed to do they were cited in the audit you know I mean we had multi-year the town right got cited for years before we sorted out our finance office right right with due respect to the school they've had some trouble in their finance office you know so did we right we've got that I think we've got that sorted now thankfully and their argument is like that they're
sorting it they or or they're almost there or whatever it took us years longer than we wanted it to take for us to sort out our nonsense so and and nobody you know in the end we didn't have our heads taken off although we were getting close I think at one point the corrective actions we wrote I think were were appropriate though that's that's one thing to consider we didn't get them effectively implemented with the treasur necessarily in place I think that was the CH we had L going on whatever you know it's turn over we had all sorts of problems yeah yeah but we I think it is appropriate for us to make sure the corrective action plan makes sense I haven't had a chance to review it so yeah have a look and you know we'll talk about so yeah let's figure out if they're available otherwise I'm good Mark I agree I think my brain's full yeah I'm happy to motion to aurn second okay so the board wants from me at Kim right sorry yeah sorry go on Eric ask sorry on we got too many too much conversation goes got Eric go ahead so as I understand it Joanne's gonna ask AES to be available and present at the me next meeting if I can line them up do you want to hear from
Jed at the next meeting and what other deliver do you want from me at this point for that meeting opinion availability for the next two meetings in case I'd like to stagger it if possible as1 P the another if as comes back and says we can't do the next me we can do the one after then could we slot jet in that kind of yeah the meeting on the 27th is a regular meeting you know it might be a better one for planning and zoning that's a good idea yeah fingers crossed we're able to get Val because then we can abro appro you know next week and then we can approach some of kind of a you know we'll talk about the budget first let her present she does a good job at that and then hopefully we can discuss a few of the things that we've wanted to discuss openly and you know get her input and
feedback as to why so without keeping going because then we'll keep this meeting nope I'm in approval of everything you all said and then I'll Eric in terms of You Know Your Role I mean I don't know exactly obviously pass on what whatever you get from Ram in in response to our questions I had one question I actually meant to ask this before I'm totally St my mind on the revenue side on our on the budget spreadsheet you P you gave us I don't know if it's an error or if it's just sort of a TBD but there's one column that doesn't make any sense to me where it doesn't seem to be putting in the tax revenue to the total revenue and so it it shows up as a negative 366 per reduction in Revenue oh no you know do you see what I'm talking about well when you look at it just check on that when you have a chance oh yeah okay so so in the previous years's budget what we've done is because you've passed a mill rate and we know what we're asking INX ation that money is plugged in there yeah there's nothing in the line for essentially current year we're not accounting for current year taxation because we haven't set a mill rate so it's that number that's in red is is since it's a it's a notional we don't know yet number right that's that's what the difference is just from the standpoint about current year taxes
just because it's in red is that the conern I'm I'm missing it no no no if you go to if you go a few rows down Mark what confused me was Revenue subtotal one yeah 226 yep know 200 like it's it's wildly down from 10 million and St I see I see yeah that's what confused me yeah so yeah if you look at the formula not adding number not putting it in yeah if you look at the formula it's not adding it okay got it right and I went to I went to screw with the formula and I I I broke Excel apparently because
I'm I I got all sorts of error messages so I just thought I'd raise that but that's what I figured Eric I just wanted to know okay thanks yeah so the reason is if you put it if you add that in so it calculates at the bottom and you have two equivalent numbers you get kind of a circular error yeah because you generate that number from the previous sheet which then feeds this sheet and it doesn't it has no starting that's the error I got and I was like okay this is beyond my abilities right that's why that is the way it is I I was very very confused but now I'm I'm good all right thanks yeah so we we do have agend we
do have a motion in front of the board to adjourn not yet I have a question about the budget or about a joury yes let's vote on the motion to adjourn oh okay we have it before the board and we shouldn't be discussing other things if we're not going to adjourn okay oh any discussion about adjournment I hearing none we'll vote all those in favor of adjourning say I I I okay all those opposed any extensions hearing none okay the meeting's adjourned we'll continue the discuss discusss make a note of your of your thoughts and questions and we'll have to