Hello. How's everyone doing?
Good.
All right. My name is Jeff McGuire. I'm the democratically elected first selected for the town of Vand Kingdom of Andover. Sorry about that. All right. I'm going to open this meeting, but I before I do that, I'm going to let everybody know I expect this meeting to be conducted with civility and respect for everybody that's involved. People may sit there and disagree on the issues, but I expect civility. Okay. All right. So, I'm opening the budget meeting that the electors and citizens qualify to vote in the town meeting in the town of Andover are hereby notified that the annual budget meeting where the town of Andover will be held at Andover Elementary School Gymnasium 35 School Road on Thursday, April 9th, 2026 at 7 p.m. for the following purpose. to choose a moderator for said meeting to
receive the budget for the fiscal year July 1st 2026 to June 30th 2027 as prepared by the board of finance to approve a budget for referendum for fiscal year July 1st 2026 to June 30th 2027 and then to adjourn copies of the budget are available at town clerk's office online and here are available if you need one this meeting is being held today on April 9th. And right now I'm going to turn it over to the board of finance and the chairperson Robert.
All right. So we'll open up with nominations for a moderator for this committee.
Nominate Walmart.
I'll second one.
Okay. Sh motions. Scott has already second. We have anything further? All right. If you can do a vote by hands on this one.
All in favor?
Congratulations once again. Wow.
All right. I'm going to open up with a little presentation that the board of finance has created. Hopefully giving you a rundown of the budget and the context you need to evaluate it. We have a little PowerPoint here. So, I'll run through this as quickly as I can so I don't waste any of your time. And when we're done, we'll entertain questions and motions and just by charter understanding motions can be made to cut something on the budget, but there's no increasing anything once it's cut. After that, whether they pass or fail, this budget will then proceed to referendum. Budget motion passes and alters the budget. If it doesn't pass, nothing. All right. So, we'll have further read. So, little rundown on the process. We we're going to go through the process of how we put this budget together and how it all came together to create the document that you have in your hands. And we have we have our revenue, we have a summary, we have calculation which I'll get into a little bit later. It's a little more complicated this year and some samples to give you context for an assessment is what this budget would do. So the process we get preliminary operational capital budgets from all the parts of the town public works etc. We get from the board of ed as well. we look at all of that. The board of finance did review the budget request from AES. We proposed to them that they consider a smaller
increase. They explained to us in response that no they really need that 11%. So they rejected that and brought this budget to this hearing. The board reviewed everything we could on the town side. We held a hearing a go where we ran through a draft version of this. This will be expanded from then a few at that meeting. And then we have this meeting here after which we will have the referendum the first Tuesday in May which is the 5th. So here that's the bottom line numbers for this budget. Rail and that's our levy and our share which is 12.65%. It's 4.25 million which is a increase of
about 3%. The town budget and that's this is an aggregated budget. This includes the ops and the capital. It's going up a little under 4%. And the endover BOE request AES they're asking for 10.91. This comes to a total of about 5.4 in expenditure. That doesn't necessarily mean that's a tax. Here's the split between the three components of our budget. Cut out side about a third as a little bit higher, RAM a little bit lower. And we'll get into the reasons for that as this goes on. So on the town capital side, we have a number of things that we increased. I would say item number two is one of the
bigger ones. Just salary increases. You'll see a lot of 3% increases in there. We also have, as you know, probably some staffing that we're having to bring in a new administrator, an assistant for that administrator. We've had some turnover, so we're addressing that. We're also trying to build out programs at the community center with its director and we did make a few small capital cuts this year to try to offset some of this stuff. The other thing the town is facing and you'll see it on AES as well is a large healthcare cost increase for our healthcare insurance for our employees. And even those who don't take it, they see a payment in lie of and that is tied to the cost of a singing plan they would otherwise take. So that's hitting both the town and the
school. The consortium we're a part of. Apparently that was the best they could do this year. So this is the town side again. Austin Capital. This 5-year look back. This started as me trying to remind myself where we came from, where we're going. So you can see here the year-over-year change from the last 5 years and then cumulative number and then our proposed increase of all about 4% this year. If we were to pass this budget over a 6-year period would be up 28% on the town side of that. So the annual board of education brought their budget. It's about a $5 million request as you can see about 11% increase. They are requesting a new teacher for the first grade. They lost well they have the school psychologist part of that issues the loss of a grant that was paying for half of that contractual salary increases. I already mentioned the loss of grant money, special education costs and again that 21% healthcare premium increase that gets pretty hard on the school side. Here's the AES budget history. These are the amounts passed for the school budget over the last 5 years. You can see in 2020 we're bottoming out. As you may know, you enrollment had declined for years preceding that and then has started to slowly rebound. So you see some increases last year as you know and some of you know was a 5% increase. Originally requested 8.8 that didn't pass and became five. So cumulatively over 5 years is 17%. If this were to pass, you come in at just about 30% over
six years. RAM. So RAM's total budget is 34 million, which we have that total that says 5% share. They're going up 3.4. There's a complication this year with RAM in that they recently discovered they had too much money saved up over the years. is apparently an error that's been running for about 5 years and they owe the various towns that are part of it money back. Our share of that with interest is 258,87615. We are to get that back in some fashion this year as a reduction in our levy. However, the levy number you see here on
this slide is what I would say is the actual number. That is the levy that feeds into their $34 million budget. To take the 258 off confuses the issue in my opinion. So we left it at that for now. But when we get to the taxation part of this, we take it into account. So our levy, as you may know, is based on a ratio of the students from each town that go to RAM. We are probably close to our need in terms of the students we had ran versus the other two towns. So once again, and this has been happening for years now, our levy percentage dropped. So even though the president is going up 3.4, our levy does not quite go up 3.4. We're down to 129 students of the roughly thousand that are there. This is the levy history for as you can see it's down quite a bit and this has to do not with their budgets going down but again the ratio of Andover students to run and marble. Now the proposed increase this year for us is about 3% for our levy. However again with that offset the result is a negative number. So we kind of get a break but it's a oneshot thing. We're getting 5 years of excess money back. That's not coming again next year. So just keep that in mind. So over the last six years with this budget to pass,
they're down. Our levy is down, I should say, 18 1.5%. But on this slide, as you can see, their overall budget is up about, you know, 9% over 5 years and would be 13ish if we were to pass this budget. if you were to pass the rail referendum as well. So, we also have to look at revenue and then figure out what our tax rate is going to be. Now, there's a Connecticut state law that's been in effect for a while that we've never run into before where motor vehicle mill rate is capped. So, if we cross a certain threshold, we have to split the mill rates. We'll get into it a little bit more later. and how I calculated that and again this is theoretical we don't set the mill rate until after a budget passes our revenues are up slightly we get some interest income we get some grant income education cost sharing now that's not an increase we get like clockwork every year and I don't think that the amount of it has changed in at
least 5 years it's about $2 million it's a huge part of our funding that we get from the state and our permits fees, you know, when you go to the top and what have you even so property tax revenue that can be affected by, you know, it's not a revalu. So, we're not getting a huge change on the grant list or anything like that, but you know, if houses are built in town, that can increase the any governmental revenues, that's I think the grant money in the ECS and everything like that. our charges for services and our interest income is estimated about 150. That obviously depends on exactly what the interest rate is in our account. This is a 5-year look back of what we've done via taxation. The amount of money that this town has raised from its residents over the last 5 years. Cumulatively over 5 years, our taxes have gone up 2.7%. This year, this budget requests 6.7. So if you incorporate that, if this budget were to pass over six years, the taxes would have gone up 13.42%. So last year's no rate, if you look back one, the middle column here, as you may recall, is 31.59. That's underneath the threshold for the auto thing. So it was a one combined bill rate. That's where we've been for many years. But this budget, if it were passed, crosses the threshold. And so in order to calculate it, first thing I did is I looked at the R,
calculated the maximum we could get out of that based on that cap, deducted it from the total taxation you would need to fund this budget, and then apply the rest to the remaining grand list of real estate and personal property section, your houses basically. And that comes to 33.5. That would be the real estate number. So, we thought it'd be helpful for context to look at what these numbers translate to for your tax bill depending on how your house is valued. If you see on the left, we have a couple of different examples and then the mill rate last year, what the mill rate would be this year again if this budget passes and the differential. So if your house has died at about 350,000 and by the way in case anybody is unaware the way it works is your house is assessed and do an assessment usually about five every 5 years. I think it got bumped back one year. We'll do it next year but we do it about every 5 years. They take what your house is theoretically worth on the open market and apply 70% of that and that becomes your assessment. So if your house is worth $500,000 on the open market, you're assessed for 350 and then the mill rate's applied. So you would have paid 11,56 last year. You'd be asking for 11,725. This year, meaning your taxes would go up 668 for your real
estate. Cars much smaller obviously. We just ran a couple different numbers here again. And you can see the differences are pretty minor. But you would combine the two. I don't know how many cars everybody has in town. I'm fortunate that I have one old car. So what we're going to do now is we are going to entertain questions there. All three boards are up here. So we can have people come up ask a question. We can also entertain motions. And again just to reiterate if a motion passes the budget is changed. It goes through a referendum that way. If it doesn't pass ultimately the budget knows you didn't hear anything. So when you come up we're going to give you a microphone. We're going to ask you to state your name and your address so that the meeting minutes can be reported accurately. I'm going to turn it over to Walt for this part of the meeting. That's my shield. Okay, Linda's going to help me. She's going to go around with the microphone because in this room, if you don't have
the mic, I can't hear you up here. Neither can members in the boards. So, if you have a question or comment, if you raise your hand, we'll get the mic to you.
Gentleman in the back, you raising your hand. I see it's been up for a while.
If you could state your name and address, we started so that the town clerk can get it in case we need the information.
And we're trying to keep comments, questions, free.
Oh, really simple.
just hoping hi Michael Greenhouse. what else is needed? 155 road. number can you go back I think two or three slides just where you said the taxes increase over 5 years was 2.7%. And then I said the proposed is 6.7 and then you're saying over 6 years 2.7 + 6.7%. kind of I was the calculation
the I think it well it was a Frenchy formula so hopefully the math is correct but I will double check it right now on my phone
that was you get to
you can't add percentages together you can't add 6% 5% from 11% doesn't work address please
Sarah Becker 20 road I just want to say thank you to the board of select command and the board of finance to the board of education and to all the members of the public that are here tonight. We are all here because we care deeply about our town and about the people. We are also all fortunate enough to live in a place where we are able to express our opinions and make our voices heard which is not the case in so many parts of the world. This is democracy at work. Now tonight we're going to offer some opposing views. We're going to argue. We're going to debate. We're going to disagree. Some of us will have the outcome we desire and some of us will not. The good news is this is not the end of the democratic process. Nothing tonight is final. So, as we debate, argue, and disagree, let us all please remember that we are all here because we care so deeply about our town and that we're all neighbors. Let us speak kindly, courteously, and respectfully. So it's to model civic engagement for the next generation. Thank you all for being here. 72 Pin. I have been an educator in our elementary school for 19 years. I go on and on about all the amazing things maybe the school has done for children. Not to mention the amazing successes that AES graduates have achieved. My guess is some of you already know that and for others your mind is brand new. So I want to speak tonight as a taxpayer
and as someone who represents the people who don't have a voice here. Nearly 20% of the residents of Andover are under the age of 18. They don't vote or act on opportunity to speak to these meetings, but they are directly affected impacting by these decisions. Year after year here in the state of Illinois, the school budget is burdened on taxpayers. Here's the reality. The success of the school keeps our property values up. While the school does need to be fiscally responsible, if you've attended Washington or recently, then you would know that handover is the lowest rate spending in our peer group. What we need
to hear are solutions to the tax burden. And we need to hear solutions to the tax burden and real plans to increase the town's revenue. That doesn't sound like a school problem. That sounds like the problem our leadership's been working to address. As taxpayers, we need to change the narrative. Stop asking about preschool and start asking how do we grow our tax base. Our leaders should be seeking economic opportunities rather than pointing fingers. I agree. We should be asking our residents, especially those on fixed incomes, to continue bearing the weight while doing nothing to expand the base. Whereas the plan is to attract the families, new businesses, new revenue streams. At the January board of education meeting, when
the superintendent proposed the budget with a 1% increase, she recognized that was high and began making suggestions to use the school to increase revenue. We should be doing the same thing. And that doesn't have to be a choice between preserving the town's character or supporting the school. Many of us chose to live here for the natural beauty. But preserving what we love doesn't mean doing nothing. Without thoughtful growth or risk of become risk becoming a town that can't sustain itself. Growth doesn't have to mean overdevelopment. It can mean small intentional steps of strengthening our town while keeping its character intact. So please help me change narrative. Let's get out of the cycle of cutting the investment that actually make this town attractive. Just want to get back to the question asked earlier. I checked for math. It's right. I know it doesn't
look right. But if you just take the bottom line number that the increase the 1.2 million and you compare it to the you know that one that's how you get 13.42. It is it is right. Why?
Questions about the budget. That's what we're here for. Answer the questions about the budget, not personal statement. Basically, everyone has a chance to ask.
Hi, I just have a question about the
name and address.
231 billion. question about the request for a full-time psychologist. So, I'm a teacher. I just want the information. is it my understanding that you guys halftime psychologist and then that grant was lost and now you were seeking a full-time position or is it a full-time position? Like I was trying to figure out where the full-time position came from.
So she is almost full-time. the hours were increased when we received the grant, but but that is what is needed for the amount of hours for testing and for student support. We don't have another person aside from that school psychologist that's providing that support for students. And I believe the grant was was it 53,000 54
3
was it 44
,000 for the past two years. So followup question clinical services through IEPs are provided by the psychologist not by like a school counselor or social worker.
So that's the only service provider for that service on IEPs.
Yes. Thank you.
Next is going to be a short meeting. She's comfortable with
Kathy De Roer 232 Bear Swamp Road. So my question to the board of finance is in the unassigned fund we have $2.1 million. That's money we've been taxed on. And in this budget, you didn't apply any of that towards a $2.77 mill. and I I really think you should and asking me why you didn't do that in this budget.
Sure, I can address that. a couple things. Yes, the last audit shows that we have 2.1 in there. one of the things that we've been working on is, you know, the last audit using Jupiter, I think 25, right? So, I I'm not 100% certain from then till now if it's up even a little more or what have you. Last year, the board did choose to apply $190,000 as a fund balance and we didn't do it this year. I would say there's two reasons for that. First is, well, I remember having a conversation last year before Eric left about the state recommended amount that a town has in reserve on a side fund balance. And apparently the recommendation is two months of the year, one sixth of your budget, that's 16.67%. The 2.1 million we have is about 15%.
Now, as we talked about during that meeting, our town is that's a that's a one number for every town in Connecticut and Towns Fair. Our town doesn't have all the same risks as the town as a flood plane on the coast. So, 15 may be fine, but there was some concern about reducing it. Also, we thought we should take it to the town. and that's kind of that is an option we have. Should this budget fail? We could come back to that issue and say, well, maybe we take 100,000 from it. Everybody should just bear in mind basically a tax to tax at least the way it works is every 100,000 is a percentage point roughly, right? Because if you look at last year's taxes, it's almost bang on 10 million, right? So, we did look at that. We considered that on the board. We had a
discussion on it two, three meetings ago and said, you know what, we didn't feel comfortable putting that in at this stage. But we we didn't think of that.
Got it.
So, the state of Connecticut recommends 10 to 15% of the annual operating expenditures. So, if we look at what we're looking at this year, 13,684,000 at 12%, that's 1.6 million that we can have in or should have in unassigned funds. That's at 12%. At 10%, it's 1.3 million. We got 2.1. This is money we've been taxed on and I'm I'm for the budget. You did a great job, but we need to use this money is my opinion.
All right. The only thing I'll say to that is I'm not sure where the disconnect is between the bold I I do remember the 12% 1215, you know, something like that being the recommendation. and was a little surprised when Eric said last year that he had heard that the recommendation from it's probably OPM had gone up to that two 212 16th number. So I'm a little uncertain as to what the state is on that. It used to be many years ago you may some of you may remember we deliberately drew down on them because we had so much saved up that we were
being told that at the state level we might have a problem getting grants. So I'm always trying to rightsize that honestly and I'm happy to look at it again should we need to go there. But at the same time one thing to keep in mind too is we have our money a lot of our money on every fund in the state account. It's called a stiff account. It's our it's the savings account the state sets up for towns to use and provides actually decent interest as opposed to what we used to do in the past if we had our money and check the accounts made nothing. So that interest income you saw on a presentation of about 150 a year that's predicated on how much money we've got in there at savings rate. We draw it down. We also in fact have an income stream. So it's kind of a balance but I hear thanks for the question. Hi, I'm Eli Brooks. 55 the Solar Road. I'm looking over the budget and I see a transportation increase 27%. So, I didn't know if you can go into that a little more and why you can't take part of that increase and give it to the school. 27% seems really high when Ann was only asking that board of education is only asking for a little over 11. Can you just tell me where which section that's under the children?
Actually, she was looking to the school budget. So, oh, it's the school budget. I apologize. Like, why am I looking to tell my phone? Yeah.
All right, hold on a minute.
Have we looked at that line item in the school budget?
Yeah. You have?
I'm asking the board of education board finance. Have you looked at that line item budget?
It's in there.
Okay. So, listen. I I'm just going to tell you, we've had a lot of stuff going on in town. Not sure if everybody's aware. Town administrator, treasurer, assistant to the treasurer. there's a lot of things going on and I I don't think we we should be looking and as Kathy Roachers was asking about how to pay for this budget. We should be looking at how to sit there and financially and fiscally handle this budget because it's not just this year that this will be an issue. It will be next year. And for everyone here who thinks that I might be against education, that is far from the truth. What I have a problem with and honestly I've had a problem with this for years is that the prek which is daycare just
let us understand it's dayare dayare this is my issue
here's my question
here is my question
I have been told for multiple years that that part of That part of the budget is covered 100% by grants and tuition. I have asked the question multiple times if it is covered 100%. I'm asking the board of education that does the tuition and the grants cover 100% of that cost.
Can we have the board of edit actually talk about the transportation number?
Yes.
I won't address those comments. Rama, you'll absolutely address what you just asked me to, which was the question that was at hand. Thank you, Mrs. Brooks. And the question at hand was about transportation. I think you're confusing the fact that yes, the school does rent a vehicle from the town, but it doesn't appear in the town's budget. It appears in ours. You are absolutely right. We do offer we have special transportation. and I think that might be the confusion is that we don't use that vehicle for free. we're charged $3.50 a mile for that. And because we are, that is added to that. So that is the transportation costs for the children to take the bus as well as special education costs. And any student that is outplaced, we're also responsible for those transportation
costs. So, what you're looking at under transportation is our transportation costs for students that go elsewhere, the transportation costs to get kids here to Andover Elementary School, and the rental of the town vehicle to cover the transportation costs here for special education services. That was the difference there. Thank you,
Valerie. Can I follow that up? What was the cause for it to have gone down so much from 25? We follow procedure. If you have a question, raise your hand, please.
Go ahead.
She's deferring.
Anna Josh from 260 Air Swamp. I I'm asking to see I think it's reasonable to see line item salaries for teachers for what we get bottom line. So bottom line for teachers it says what the salaries recommended. So I'm asking for a bottom line of where that number came from. I think that's a reasonable request. I don't think that number came out of the air. I sure hope not. and along similar lines, I think it relates to the question related to preschool, which was an unreasonable I think answer in boomings on the crowd and we were asked to all be respectful of each other. It's a mathematical question as to what money is coming in and whether the money that's coming in covers all of the expenses for that particular program for the school. So I think it's reasonable to see the numbers line items for where that number comes from. people might be adding things correctly. I think town residents should be able to see line items for where the bottom line is. Which line items are totally the bottom line. It's not an unvisible request. And it was stated that you're not with respect to not going to answer that question. Are you choosing not to answer that question because you don't want to? Are you choosing because you're barred to
answer that question or because you don't have that information? That's that question is related to the the preschool question. But to my request to see the line items for the total salaries for where that bottom number comes from, I think that's a very very reasonable request. So I understand that you may not have that on hand obviously, but line items, I'm sure we're added to a spreadsheet somewhere to get to a bottom line. So if we're trying to be fiscally responsible and understand where those numbers are coming from, I think the public should be able to see line items for getting these tickets. So yours was a very valid question. Thank you really asked. I respectfully so. So I appreciate that I will answer your question because it was a question. Thank you. You're welcome. So you'll notice if you look at the town budget and art, it is not none of it's separated out where you see the five public works workers what they did. So on our side you wouldn't see every single teacher.
I would request that then the town in general every single line items where those totals are coming from.
So I hear that as next year that is what the board of finance requests. Absolutely. By all means, every Why for next year? Why not for this year?
Why can't it be done for this year? We have a month before we go. Well, I hope to vote. So, why why can't we see those? I We Where did the number come from?
Well, that that I will explain to you. That's where I was getting with that. But if that's the request of the board of finance this year for them to see teacher number one, teacher number two, public works course number one. If that is what they requested, that's what would have been done. Let me answer your question. I would be glad to when the salary line items put together, we start every year at zero. And what we do is we list the employees, Jod and I, she start for our finance person. We do what's called a salary projection. We start that in November and we look to see what we project or what the salary, what the employee number is, what the roles are, first grade teacher, second grade teacher. We look then at the contracts. We have negotiated contracts with every single member of the school community. We look and see is this
person moving up to step two? Did they go from bachelors to masters? You know, step one, step two. We create a spreadsheet then and that spreadsheet is a projection, a salary projection spreadsheet. That is where we get that number from. That is absolutely the proper way to do it. We start again every year because we want to make sure that that projection sheet is accurate and where those numbers come from are the contracts that have been negotiated. And we're very lucky because our teachers contracts is been negotiated. So we know three years out from now what we can expect in nonurp we're three years out from now we know what we can expect. So that is very helpful. In terms of the preschool salaries, I urge you to look back at all the financials from the board of education meetings because every single board of
education financials has one every month that tells you we bring in tuition $249,000, $6,000 a child. We also are the recipients of the early start which used to be called school readiness grant and we are the recipients of a smart start grant. So if you add up the two grants as well as the $249,000 there's $435,000 that comes in. That is where those eight salaries are paid from. And so I would remind everybody that preschool is not an option. It gets brought up at every board of selection meeting, every board of finance meeting, and every board of education meeting. The financials are
there. I urge you to look back. Those numbers never change. The only thing you'll see is that there's a word in front of it that says anticipated. It says anticipated because preschool, it is a different entity from K through six. If a family decides that they don't want to send their kid any longer to preschool and they pull them out in December, that is no longer revenue for us. If a child turns three during the course of the year and they decide that they are coming in, provided we have space, that will be a change in revenue. So the word anticipated is there solely for us to understand that those numbers would change. So, I guess this would now be a question directed to the board of finance. Has the board of finance asked for a line item spreadsheet from the board of education?
Sure.
For for not just for teacher salaries, support staff salaries, but for all salaries to see where these total bottom line numbers are coming from. If we're trying to understand if if if we're trying to understand where these total numbers are coming from, has the board of finance asked for these line item figures and has have they reviewed them to see that the line items total the bottom line? All right, I'm going to let them answer that, but we really used up these three minutes.
So, this issue I personally didn't ask for because I view that as a board of education's primary goal. there have been members of our board who have desired more data from the super but my take has always been that the role of the board of education is to put together this budget and explain why they need what they need and so I had not personally didn't feel the need to have this teacher salary disagregated and show every single one in the same way that we don't typically show again public works or anything else like that line by line. We do have it on the town side that we can reduce this budget. but that is the situation between the board of ed and board of finance. I we get a presentation from them at during the budget process to say this is why we're asking for an increase. We're asking to hire teachers. We have contractional increases etc. And this is the line next door. So no, I did not ask them to give me each teacher.
Is there still time to do so? Well,
I'd have to I'd have to work with them on that to see what we can do in
a month, right?
What? yeah. All right. Probably three or four weeks. So, between now and 55 comment on that,
good evening and thank you everyone for for being here. My name is Doris Maldonado. I live at 33 Citill Spy Mill Road and my daughters are eight and three. while I'm speaking as a parent, I'm also contracted by the Connecticut Early Office of Early Childhood and Eastern Connecticut University as a parent ambassador for children 0 to 5. And over demographics are telling. with a median age of 52, our long-term stability depends on the younger families coming in who choose to move here and stay. Right now, we're last in our region in per pupil spending with over $418,000 in cuts since 2020. Even as enrollment is growing, our families feel this. We want families to stay in Andover because of its potential and it's a great community to grow our families with confidence. We should not lose enrollment and per pupil state aid tied to our students. How are we how are we protecting our children and our our community and future of our town without a competitive school budget? The school building is one of the the few public places in that serves all of Andover residents, our seniors, our community members, our community groups, our children, and is accessible for people with disabilities. Investing now is
a question.
Yes. How are we protecting our children and the future without a competitive budget?
Is that from the board of finance or the board of education?
The board of finance.
Thank you.
Well, I'm not saying that the budget we brought before you, but it's the one that the board of ed believes in fact protects the best interest of the kids and against the education we need to take care of. That's the reason it's there.
It's 11% increase.
It's 11% 11% increase. I don't understand why you're saying we're not protecting the interest of our students at 11% increase.
Maybe my name is Georgia Conrad. I live at 117 Lakeside County. I have a pretty easy question to bring the phone a little closer.
Now that we have the panels on the roof of the school, shouldn't we see a reduction in electricity? I thought there was there was a projection. Hang on a second.
So, it's going to take at least a year before we start to see a reduction from that. They are still in the process of interconnecting them and they're not actually completely active yet. So, so hopefully next year, yes, we will see an increase there. Yeah, it's a 0% increase is what we're anticipating. So,
hi folks. Scott 168 Road. I have a question for finance. How do these numbers compare inflation? Have you done those calculations? The percentage increases here. How do they compare with inflation per year?
Yeah. Yeah. So when I first looked at the did those five year low facts I did look at CPI which is the government's inflation calculation and the average CPI increase over that 5year period that I have on those charts was 4.44% I believe that's off the top of my head was about just about shy 4 and a half each year total and a half something like that.
It was it was higher it was in the 20s. Yes. I don't remember because I don't have that chart up in front of me. I didn't include it with this. There was just frankly amount of space. But yes, that's correct. And as you may remember, we went through some pretty rough years there. we had that one spike 8 9% inflation. and the CPI calculator picks that up. So if you look at if you were say went to the social security website, they use CPI to calculate their cost of living increases every year and you'll see explained there how they do it and it's it's very
comparable to that as well on the social security website. So you can either look it up there, you can just Google up CPI calculator and and look it up yourself. But the the increase in memory serves per average was about 4.4.
Okay. So, but the total is somewhere in the low 20s. If you look at that bottom number there,
yeah, I I I have a chart somewhere. I have to
bring the details to the chart. This this budget even with, you know, the large increase in education budget, the overall budget is still quite a bit lower than the total inflation cost over that same time. Correct.
Yes.
Okay. Anybody wants to know, I'm going to pass this around. I've I've done some of this research and if you want to say see what I found it's it's in there. I'll pass this around want to see it and if you download it before I I just updated it even so downloaded last year. Good evening. Rod Lang Road.
Question is for the board of editor. We're hiring two people we're looking for, right? We're hiring for a psychologist in a sixth grade. Is that what we're looking for?
No. No. We already have school psychologists. It's the same person that's been doing that job for three years now. it's just that about half of her salary was covered by a grant and the grant is going away. So we we are hiring one sixth grade teacher is what this budget is asking for.
Okay. The other part of my question is today I was looking online and and I saw there was an occupational therapist position posted the 24th of March for somebody to start July 1st.
yes that would be for summer school for special education and that's due to your retirement.
So the the service that we're paying because it says services that we're paying now 45700 for therap for occupational therapy. So is to that or is this under that?
It's a it's a totally different area of special education like physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, they're all separate entities. That's covered under this bucket you're asking for.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
hi, my name is Michelle Lawrence. I live at 149 Lake Road. there's a lot of acronyms being thrown around and ask special education teacher. I think we really should clarify some of this. So, I can't clarify it. So, I'm going to ask if somebody could clarify IEP, the need for a psychologist in special education. And why not psychologist? Because it's not for medical diagnosis. We're not getting therapy in school. is for kids to actually access their education. Okay, which is by law what we have to do in a public school and what an OT is and why we need an OT
in school for a kid to access education with equitable. Okay, these are things we need to know if we don't know them about education. we should ask those questions not as to why we have to fund it. So Valerie, could you please answer those questions?
I will give you the quick version because I know a lot of people don't have the same special education. the quick version is yes. In fact, every school has students that have, special needs, and some of them you can see, some of them you can't see, some of them can be, taken care of in a regular classroom setting. Some of them can't be taken care of in a regular classroom setting. Some of them require adaptive stuff, technology, equipment, transportation. Some of them don't. Some of them are just academic. But what we are required by law to do is to provide trained and certified people to administer those services. That is non-negotiable. That is the law. And we do get some funding for things like that. Special education funding and other things we do not get funding for. But it is the law. When we say OT and occupational therapist, you must be an OT certified person to perform those services. When we say GT, that's physical therapy. You must be a licensed and certified physical therapist to provide those services. there are other areas where you have a choice of support service people. Maybe
a social worker could conduct that. Maybe a psychologist. We only have one. We have a school psychologist. Most other schools have multiple people that will service these individuals. We only have one person that services though. We have a speech therapist as well as an LP. when we say IEP, it's an individualized educational plan. Again, it is a binding legal document. And when a team gets together and decides what that child requires for services, we don't get to say, "Let's talk about that for a second." We may or may not be doing it. As a matter of fact, when we make our schedule for how much we need in OT speech, we don't just make that up. I don't know, three days a week. No, we look at those IEPs and they very specifically say this child receives a half an hour three times a week. This child receives an hour twice a month. This child receives consultation services. We make the schedules then. And when we make the schedules, it tells us, it dictates to us how many hours of service in a week they need of these services. So some years we will see a reduction in PT services because we have less service requirements. Other years we will need more services. And when that happens, I don't have a choice. We don't have a choice. we must find somebody to provide those services is non-negotiable in every school district not just so that is how we would make the schedule for what goes into a budget for all of our special education services they are mandated there is no options no hopefully that answers your question
here
Hi, I'm Jose Rivera. 33 develop they said to keep the statements. I just want to say that the reason I moved to this town was my family priority among the staff school system. And from what I'm understanding and the experience I've had since we've been here is handled over per student expenditure is the lowest in the region for our surrounding neighbors. So I think they've met the criteria of doing what they need to do for their annual budget. as to what was said earlier about getting the line item for salaries, if that's going to be required about from the board of ed, that should also be for the town with public works. it should be across the board. It shouldn't just be on on the board of education. did not appreciate the statement that was made earlier about prek daycare. Totally disagree with that. Was very offended by having young children. But at the end of the day, order finance does their budget. Everyone does their budget. The question is what's going to maintain our community keeping our home values stable and from my perspective and board of ed from superintendent down has done an excellent job and what they're required to do and I support the fundament hat's what we're here for to answer questions. at this point in time.
Good evening, Edward 63 Road. I'd like to call a question.
Going on. No one has made a motion, but I'm going to let our town attorney has opinion on this.
That's absolutely correct. No one nobody's made a motion, somebody could make a motion to approve the budget and then if people want want to change it, they could make motions to amend it. That's the way it's supposed to work. And you call you can call a question after that. It requires a twothird vote though to to get the vote. Okay, good enough.
Jo, I'm not going to make a motion right now. I was going to ask the board of finance a couple things. I know that as a former board of finance member, I was very interested in how things were going to go this year and wanted to, you know, watch every meeting. I know that at different times you all had different opinions on making some cuts because bringing forward you know a 6.7% increase by taxation and then you know a really big expenditure increase that the town was going to be married to. You had some options. You know I kind of want to align with Kathy D. Roser said earlier was brought up that maybe you could put some fund balance against it or a lot of you were in favor of possibly cutting some of the capital funds this year for the town. I don't know if people are aware but the capital funds what you see on this budget page is what's contributed each year but the town has accounts that have a lot of money already in them. So you wouldn't be bankrupting the town by asking for a small reduction. so I guess my question is why to keep the taxation down why we wouldn't have done that this year in the year of transition when there's probably
not going to be a lot of projects going forward.
All right, I'll take this one. So we did make some small reductions in the capital budget. As you saw during the presentation, the capital budget is down. we try to do justice with that. the reason is you're correct we have a variety of funds in town. and we did in fact look at the nearly completed 2425 audit and for instance if you look at the budget you know we used to be putting in for several years $50,000 a year into this multi-use building fund. I looked at the audit and you know we built up something like $400,000 on that bond and some of the things that we might have used it for we got some grant money and what have you. So in the end after debating it we decided to zero that out this year. It doesn't mean the fund wasn't wasted. We're not going to load 50 grand into it this year. Similarly we made a small cut. Didn't love it but made a small cut to fire equipment fund because we looked at what we had in there. We look think about the obligations that we have. We have a lease on a truck. We have I know I have a request coming for a compressor, but we have enough money in there. We thought that we could get away with a
small reduction assuming that fund. We did leave a number of these these funding levels alone. And for reasons for that, I'm just following roadway. I think we made a lot of progress over the last 10 years since roads at this town. And I want to keep that going and board us in agreement on that one. We didn't really have any designer cut specifically also because the 385 you see there that was a fun move last time last year to turn it into budget three. So it used to be 410. We left the trees alone again. I think we've done great work there and it needs to be funded. Bridging culvers incredibly fun. We do have a bunch of money built up in there. You might be fooled by it if you go to look at an audit and say oh there's something 600 someone thousand. The reason for that is bridge and culvert fund is designed to deal with bridge projects in town that are our roads not state roads and whatnot where we can get grant money 100% reimbursement when we do long hill road we're going to ultimately get all our money bridging funds for those that we get 50/50 grants
for them for half the cost and I'm being told that something like that one of those projects could run us a million dollars So, we're trying to build that fund up. Cutting that would probably be irresponsible. So, we didn't do it. We increased a little bit in open space, but if you look at the chart, you'll see a couple years ago we put 50,000, cut it down to 10 last year to get a budget through, but we put it back to 25, not all the way back up. But we thinking to ourselves, the whole purpose of that fund is to build up some money so that the piece of property were to come on the market that the town could get. We need a mechanism so that we can actually go and utilize it. So we're trying to
plan for the future there. So the building maintenance fund was the other one. We got an increase request. I believe that was when we got the budget from the Boris selectman and we decided yeah that there's some justification for that. it has to do with car garage work on an old building, you know, that we think we need the funding for. So, we did look at the general funds. It's just it's a little difficult to cut these things down knowing that we have these needs 10, 5, 10 years down the road. And I'll just say one more time about using fund balance to defay the cost of taxation for a year.
You can do that and we've done it in the past carefully, but bear in mind it's a oneshot thing. It's not revenue, right? So, you have to be careful. That's why we did what we did on the capital budget.
Sorry.
I just want one clarification before we go any further. The motion end debate. Basically, I need a motion to send the budget to referendum. And if that passes, that's the end of the discussion.
Can I just make that motion? I don't need a microphone. And gentlemen, old commentary road. Can I make the motion to push the budget to referendum?
Second.
Okay. name or address the person making the motion have been very successfully microphone 28 road second Mike Greenhouse 155 road
okay at this point is there any discussion on the motion
o Hearing none,
I'm going to call for a virtual unless someone objects.
All in favor of moving the budget to referendum, please signify by saying I.
Those opposed, say nay.
Nay.
In the opinion of the moderator, the eyes have.
Those four.
I make a motion to adjurnn.