So want to welcome everybody. as you know this is the tri board meeting. It is required by the charter. It's a new addition that we must confer with the board of finance must confer with the board of ed and the board of selectment by October 15th with respect to the to the budget. so we've got an agenda that outlines that today. It's fairly open but that is our topic today to talk about budget planning. so we'll need to stay on topic those items.
Okay. I'm going to call the meeting to order at the 704 roughly. So welcome everybody. We'll stay the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. so just as we did before in our last tribe board meeting we have asked an independent person to act as moderator. So that has agreed to be moderator and I'm going to go ahead and turn the meeting over to them. Okay. first thing we did last time and and I'd like to do again is we just went around the room and introduced ourselves. So, if we could start with Eric and work around and then we'll we'll hear from who the public is to wrap up. That'll get us started tonight.
Okay. My name is Eric Anderson and currently I'm the town administrator.
Bill D. Rogers. I'm on the board of finance.
Mark Ricker, chair of the board of finance for about one week.
Joanne Heber, vice chair of the board of finance for a couple more meetings. Robin, board of finance.
Jed Larson, moderator and planning and zoning chair. Jeff Mcguire for assignment.
Kimberly, board of finance. Liz Lopez, board of finance.
Louis Goodwin, board of finance.
What's your name?
That's Jacob. Finance, too.
Yeah. Terry, can we go across the back door, please?
Terry Smith, finance director for Andover Elementary School. Valerie Berno, superintendent, Andover Elementary School.
Linda Fish, president of Andover.
Elaine Bookart, I wear a lot of hats, but right now I'm just recording this meeting.
Bob Hamburger, Thorn and all your sides.
Marcy Miner, Andover President. Diane Grer, concerned citizen.
Thank you. I just want to point out for the record that I thought Linda said president of Andover. Oh,
you can have it.
I wouldn't want that.
You can have it.
So, first item, first item on the agenda is the public speak. Anybody from the public like comment at this point?
Marcy,
I'm wondering if this is a tri board meeting. It seems a little shallow. I don't see anyone from the board of ed and one person from the selectment.
Is there a requirement for a quorum?
This is an odd meeting. So, we have more board of selectmen. Jeff Murray had sat there and said that he was not going to be attending. he sat there and said he had other commitments. Scott Persona is sick tonight. So, I did not hear anything from May or Carol. So, I'm just letting you know. And as far as the board of education, I know we heard from Caitlyn.
Yeah, Caitlyn agreed to come any of the three nights,
but she couldn't come tonight.
And then something came up and now
No, she listen Caitlyn had a birthday party for her son. I get it. and all the rest of the members.
There was only one other member that had planned on being here and they have had a medical emergency tonight.
Okay. And that's that answers that
just for for procedural purposes. This really is I think a board of finance meeting. So we have tomorrow I think we can consider that and we need to hold the meeting perfectly for the charter. Any other public comment? Okay, we'll go on to the next item which is the board of finance outline and revised budget process and timeline and draft plan. I guess I go ahead and address that overall give summary.
Okay. Okay. so you have printed form here. This has also been distributed to the board of selective and the board of finance and the board of ed. So this is a proposed outline of the budget process and primarily the the budget timeline. So starting on October 15th we're having this tri board meeting for the charter. This is required. I'm just going to read through this for the record. the week of December 1st, budget worksheets go out to the department heads, chairs, outside agencies, with the target of returning those worksheets in the within the town. This is the town budget primarily return those completed worksheets to the town administrator's office. Okay. some details there. the town administrator will distribute the draft budget workbook for the general and capital budgets ready for the board of finance and board of selectment by February 2nd. Okay. the date here stated is the board of education to submit budget to the board of finance. Okay. So there's a note here that this is required. I think it's the term, you know, in terms of the charter, I noticed that it falls on a Sunday this year often because it says x amount of days before before the end of the year fiscal year. February, March starting Wednesday, February 4th, meeting weekly. This gives the board of selectman, board of finance several working meetings before the April 4th public hearing. So we would need to we hold a series offormational meetings Okay. it's March 18th for finance. We have to vote by then to send the meeting to schedule the public hearing. we've got the public hearing scheduled for April 1st.
That's tentative, but it's a good target date given the time constraints for the annual top budget meeting. And per the charter, the annual meeting must be the second week of April between April 7th and April 11th. I think that this is actually April 6th through April 10th if you go Monday through Friday. So I think these dates are actually incorrect.
That is 6th through the 10th.
6th through.
So yeah, this is again informal, but we would put this in there. and then the with the target of the townwide budget referendum and the RAM referendum on May 5th, 2026. Okay. I'll just note here that I did get a request from Caitlyn the board of ed chair that the Wednesday went to April 8th does conflict with the board of ed meeting and she wanted to be able to move it. so that would certainly be under consideration. I think if we did I traditionally we've had it on a Tuesday or Wednesday or Tuesdays were kind of kept their mind but we did have it last week last year thing and co coincided with a board of ed meeting of course which causes some scheduling issues. So this is a proposed schedule. in general we need to follow this outline pretty closely. A lot of these dates are prescribed by the charter at
least in terms of the number of dates we must complete them by in advance of the town meeting and the fiscal year.
Okay.
Yeah.
I had a thought like I just interject about the first vote and then the second December 1st the week December 5th. as many of you know, Eric is leaving us. typically he would send those out to the department heads, right? The the requests for their preliminary budgets. and that's two weeks after he leaves.
Correct. finance department is well aware of that deadline. And, Chris Harky, Per Kelly, we'll get those out to the department at some time.
Cool. Yep. We'll make sure that that gets done. And so since you announced it, Eric just turned in his resignation. And so I can't tell you how upsetting that is to me and what a loss it is for the community. So I hope everybody understands that that it's a significant loss to the community that Eric is leaving. Great for Eric because he's going to another rural place and a place he'll enjoy and he's gonna get paid a lot more money. So, congratulations Eric and thank you for everything. back to your list, the board of education did request that that date be changed. So, I recommend that the board of finance change it to the 7th of the 9th. we will make sure that everything gets out on time. We we have a board like meeting to sit there and work through Eric's resignation. And one other thing that the board of education asked is that they asked for time before the town meeting for specific questions and answers related to their budget. And let let everybody understand here at this meeting, the board of education is sitting up front with us. This is a town budget. It's everybody There will not be and I don't care who sets up the room, the board of education will be there. They deserve to be there. They deserve to answer questions. They deserve to to deal with the issues there. So if it doesn't get done and anyone shows up to that meeting, they have tables. We we need to all be up
there, every one of us.
Great. Okay. So please accommodate the board of education and the request move that meeting be June 32 Tuesday. Yeah.
do you have any idea whether you have a preference on 7th or the 9th?
It's Tuesday or Thursday before or after the board of ed meeting.
This is April, right?
Yeah. I mean, we don't need the answer right now. We'll we'll probably try to finalize the schedule in our board of finance meeting next week.
I would say the 9th.
The 9th.
Yes.
Understand? The Thursday.
That is a Thursday.
All right. If you want to check with the board and or I can send an email to Kate, we can we can just validate that. Shannon,
you know, we don't we don't have to write it in stone. If we decide on that schedule, we can change it if we need to, but obviously planning purposes. Just here to get that out there. Okay.
Any other questions on the budget process and the timeline? I would just make a statement if I could. last year was the first year that we put this into play. and a lot of the things that are on here, it is, you know, it's aggressive compared to what we did in the past as far as having a lot of meetings and having a lot of input. I mean, nothing's going to change. I mean, with all the changes that you just announced and the changes, Eric, am I correct? Did I hear I joined the board of selection meeting late but did Cheryl hand in her resignation to the treasurer?
She did.
Okay.
I just asking a question. I mean I didn't know.
So she will not be involved in the budget process and putting the spreadsheet together and all of those kind of things.
she will not. You'll get the initial spreadsheet from Chris Herrick Kelly or you'll do it yourself as a board of finance group.
Yeah, I mean it'll it'll be up to the board of course. And then I know that there were issues and different selectment had said things that they wanted done. you know, since we're talking about the process, it's not for me to say that, you know, just to, you know, a couple mistakes were made and people have preferences of how they want the spreadsheet presented, but it'll just I'm just putting it out there in a public meeting. It'll be a difficult year with new people on board with the announcement that was just made and, you know, other people handling those things, but there'll be a lot of bias on it, I'm sure. just this was already hard to me from being on the board four years and really liking the timeline you used to have a little bit pushed back just to have some time to digest it but
hat's all I mean and then the beginning meetings are supposed to be kind of collaborative between the board of select men and the board of finance I know I think we had one member of the board of selectmen Jeff came to our first meeting. Perhaps there was others. That's just from memory. Is this year the process going to be possibly a little different with having more members present?
I'm going to be attending all of your meetings.
Yeah.
Just like I'm doing with the board of education, I'm going to be attending the board of finance meeting.
I think that's
as an ex official member, non voting, but fully participating.
That's awesome.
It helped me to go to all of the meetings so that I heard things and the ladies do too. Kim and Liz are always present. It just helped, right? Didn't it help with the process?
Yep. Yeah. No, I love that. Thank you.
Okay. Next item on the agenda is expectations from the board of finance and the other two potential spending targets.
Okay. I guess I got to address that. That was pretty straightforward. We did have a vote. This is a non-binding recommendation. Of course, each board has to come up with their own budget. but it is our proposed expenditure limit that you not increase the current expenditures more than one 1.5% of the current expenditures for fiscal year 26 27. So we know that's fairly aggressive but u you know that's a reasonable party. Okay, I'm going to move down to item four. Board of Education Superintendent identify major items that affect future costs in the 2627 budget year and projecting the next five years. Demographic input.
Yeah, I need one space. Oh, it's okay. Okay.
So, just because I know we want to make sure we stay on the top of this part, I have a few notes here that I'm going to refer to and I did copy them. This isn't anything official. This is just Val's notes on the bottom there, but I know that some people are visual learners. And so, if I'm referring to something, I wanted you to have that in front of you to be able to refer to. So, don't hold me any mistakes that are in there. it's just I think I have another seven. it's just that I know that this is our opportunity. I talk about talk about things that are drivers. And so while we were all together while we were all together, I was a little surprised that we or talk about Target before this there's a few things that I I would like us to just be able to talk about together. going into this budget season, I've been here six years and I know that sometimes during the course of the budget season, things get a little bit skewed in terms of what
real numbers are, what aren't real numbers are. So I've tried to really put this together so that I am speaking to all of the real numbers. so the difficulty is that we I've been here since 2019 2020. we also I want to say we have a a a habit as a town sometimes of making it seem like when we're looking at the budget numbers, we're comparing apples to apples when it comes to the school and when it comes to the town. And I want to show you a few ways that we have to kind of hopefully open up and look at that a little bit differently. So, I've listed here the Andover Elementary budget increases and the town budget increases for the past six years. it helps to explain, I think, a little bit why the school winds up sometimes with very different needs during budget season to accommodate the
specific facts surrounding our increase. So the first one for example you can see we were at a negative4% in 2020. in 2020 when I got here there had been a reduction in students. How did they make it through that year? Well that was the school year where they closed in March due to co so they would have not been able at the end of the year to necessarily accommodate all of their expenditures but they did close in March. There was there was a great deal of savings with closing in March. You see the other ones there, the zero, the three to four. I don't have to read the individual ones. Two and five. On the town side, there were other needs. There were absolutely other needs. They went from two to one to 5 to two to a 15% increase and then down two points. So when we're talking about why the school would have a really hard time accommodating such a low target, we do have to consider the fact that over the last six years. we've seen over six years a 12% increase over the course of six years with an average of two then per year and we have been able to
accommodate 26.77% increase on the town side. And so because of that I think there's a lot of things expenditures that haven't been considered on the school's side. If you look at numbers here on the bottom solely because I believe that during budget season oftentimes we do have some residents that will say school is overfunded, the school is overfunded. And I want to be able to make sure that people understand that that that is a little bit of a misnomer. And I'm going to show you three other things in here. It shows you from 2019 to 2025, there has been over the course of those six years $500,000 increase to the school's budget. On the town side, the increase has been 886,000. So, we do recognize as a town very oftent times that the needs are not the same from one side to the other. So, we do we do we do do that on a regular basis. On the next page, I have minimum budget requirement. And I would like the board of finance to be able to speak to that this year when we go into our town meeting. if you don't know what minimum budget requirement is, and I know a lot of you do, but some people don't, minimum budget requirement is the state's ED12. And it takes into consideration the average school. This been in effect since the 1970s. It says unless a town has a loss of a school,
you close the school or you have a significant decrease in the number of students, it requires local municipalities to at the very minimum, at the very bare bones minimum, keep your budget the same. And we haven't talked about that a lot. And so as we go into budget season, if we could talk about that, that at least is always off the table then. and we wouldn't have people misinformed. I' I've put in some into my notes here, you know, just some ways that people could look that up if they want to, but minimum budget requirement, it it does have municipalities budgeting less for local board of education than it did the year before. So, that's like always the starting point then for a town. the only change can be we've had like a significant loss of students. So if you look at the bottom of our MBR there that's here for 2023 you'll see a5.98 reduction of residents and that is to the 712. So on the top you're looking at two different budgets 2.3 I mean 4.2 and 4.3 for a total of 8.5. They look at K12. So our ED12 is a combination of our budget and RAM's budget and it looks at only handover residents for this ED12. And so because RAM had a loss of
students on the bottom they say okay we're recognizing a loss of 16.9 students and therefore that budget would be able would be able to be reduced for that minimum and you were in compliance. Everything was fine. But I point this out so that going into a budget season, we have increased by, you know, 40 kids over the years. And so the MBR every year does go up anyways by a certain amount. if the MBR is not taken into consideration and a town passes a budget that does not meet MBR, there could be a loss of ECS dollars and ECS dollars, which again is not necessarily something that we talk about. It is in the audit. know that it is in the revenue source and sometimes we do say ECS dollars but that's $2 million that comes into the town for educational purposes. And I put this in here because I do know that the board of finance a couple years ago and last year grappled with whether or not that money was going to be the same amount in planning. and both myself and Eric had mixed messages given to us
as a superintendent and a town administrator about whether it was going to be held harmless, but it is held harmless. So, this here and next year, thankfully, it'll stay at that 2.004 million. So, we can keep that in mind. Now, I I I did reference an article in here, not for any other reason, not to say I can't believe somebody said that, but I put it in here because I wanted to point out that these things at a town meeting aren't legal to go less. So, I would ask that whoever the chairperson is, Mark just said it won't be him. Bless you.
when we make the statement at the beginning from the charter that says a reminder that you can't add to at that town meeting, we always remind residents you can't add to it, but you can vote to decrease a budget. I really think that it's important so that we don't have people riled up that we point out to them that the school's budget it there is a a a bottom point to that. It can't go below what it was last year. so that a resident doesn't make a claim or make a motion for something that could get us in trouble because that would have gotten us in trouble had that one gone through. We would have had a legal issue with not meeting NBR. and then we could have had a loss of ECS dollars. So, I do think that that's important for us to add that in there. I also would ask the board of finance and the board of select committee because you guys have been getting together to also consider the fact that that number that we put on the ED12 is what we say we
spent on educational dollars. So when there's money that's been returned these last couple of years from RAM, if it gets put back into the general fund, we do need to be cognizant of the fact then that we haven't spent what we said we spent on the ED12. If those dollars are no longer educational dollars, they're put back into the general fund and not spent on education because if that happens, we also could wind up in a situation as a town where we're saying we've spent it on education and we haven't. So those are those are things there. Now, if you looked at MBR too, and this was important, I pointed out our number of 500,000 on the front on purpose because the formula they use here for ECS, if you notice on the next page, this page that says on the top, the basic ECS formula,
which which page are we on this?
Right here.
Yep. the very minimal that they use and we all know that especially small towns the poor people spending usually about 20,000
but hang on one second right there right there
you got it in the first paragraph there is
the very minimum that they will use at a state level is that 115 so I'm pointing this out because our numbers have gone up in the past six years by K6 because they only do K12 has nothing to do with prek Okay, K6, our numbers have gone up 40 kids. So, the state would have adjusted our MBR. They would have used that 115 formula and they would have adjusted us 461,000. So our number on the front page that I gave you there of we've bought out 500,000 in six years is very much aligned to what the state would have said over these past six years is a minimum minimum requirement. So, we're not far off and I'd love us to be on the same page when it comes to informing the the taxpayers that in fact that is very closely aligned to what they would have said at the state with MDR. If you went up 40 kids, we would look at that at about 461,000.
So, with that said, still going through my notes here. Sorry, I
have a question.
That's K through six, right? Kate. Oh, yes. See, we've had 80 new kids, 40 of which are K6.
So, so your increase, wait, your increase is 40 children over how many?
Six years.
40 K6 kids.
406 kids total, Jeff, but K12 is all that FBR looks at.
Okay. Because I I I mean I came to your meeting the last day and I actually did the analysis and went back to your your records that you actually post online for your and you only increase K through six by five students over the last three years. But that's all you post on your website is just the last three years.
No, I I'll show you right here.
Take take the prek off.
No, we're good. So I think so can I just say you said 40 kids from what year? So the 20 2021 year or
the I I arrived in 2020 so I have numbers in here. I'll show
you're saying 2019 2020.
Yeah. I I Yeah.
Okay. I I
just want to make sure we're looking at the same report.
Yeah, it's in here. Yeah. So the other factors that are really important that I want us to consider on the next page is insurance. I have been disappointed that the insurance consortium which the town itself is signed up for our insurance consortium has nothing to do with Baloro or the school before I even arrived the town of Andover was part of the consortium and it's a great consortium and it is Heedron and the town of the school and over the town over in the school marbor the town of the school and Ram it's those entities I ask to be a part of it. We have to be a part of it. The town has signed us up for this. So it's not a situation where the school can look elsewhere for
insurance. We must be a part of the consortium. So I feel very strongly that as a town then we're requiring my budget to be part of that that we do need some support for that and this year is a tough year. I have been to all 70 meetings since I've been here in six years and I've been a little disappointed that only one time have we had representation and I've asked for representation because it's a tough situation to go through all those numbers and it's very important in board of finance because if you look at my $750,000 in insurance and Eric's insurance and Ram's insurance this is 12% of the whole town's budget. Okay, it's like 1.2 2 million with what we pay for the school for the town
and our portion toward the levy at ramp.
Is this health insurance? Benefits, right?
Health insurance. Yes.
So, health and dental. Yeah. And I ask one question since you brought it up and I understand districts and towns will shop around time to time. I understand. However, the town is locked in and the school's part of that. Yes. Is there a number of years that it if it's that big of a thing?
I mean it's I know that
he thing is is the insurance consortium itself we have like said eight entities that vote and the thing is is that as a unit just like a board of finance board of select or board of ed as a unit we vote and so if at some point we need to go elsewhere and look for something else as a self-insured consortium we can do that but it requires all of us at our monthly meetings to be able to do that and we have shopped for certain things for stock loss insurance. We've, you know, shopped over the years for things. in some years we fare very well and we come in low and other years we come in high. It depends on how many of the members of the consortium are are high and that's if it gets to ridiculous am you know like you have you've given us a good overview of it. I definitely dove into insurance during you know the budget season this year because I thought that what we saw was a lot and I don't take over your portion.
That's okay. So I'm just saying, you know, so that the town has say it gets out of control as it is for everyone. They can't go elsewhere.
Well, so we have two votes.
You have to vote with the town, the board of ed.
No, we we have two votes. So ramp because of the number of people that are insured gets two votes and then Heid Town of Board of Ed, Andover Town of Board of Ed, Marorrow Town of Board of Edm. I might have forgotten them before. So, those are the votes and we have great I mean we have a great consortium but I would love to have somebody from the town there on our monthly meetings because this is a lot of money like I said it's 12%.
12% otherwise I'm the only vote and I've been the only vote you know for a very very long time.
So that's important to me because I I think that when we come to you guys then people don't understand I cannot change that number in our budget. we are tied to that consortium. So, ABS, we have $750,000, and we have about four times the number of employees on the insurance as the town hall does. There's seven or eight, Eric,
on the town's insurance.
Eight. Eight of them. Eight people.
Well, I think less than that, actually.
Yes.
Cuz we
Yes. We incentivize the hell out of people not to take the town's insurance. So we have I think currently either four or five people that take fee in lie of instead of the insurance.
So yeah. So when you're considering a 1.5 starting point, understand I put the numbers here for me. We had a meeting this past week and we were told that we can anticipate 16 and 12% increase this year for the consortium. Yes, I about died. I thought, "Oh my goodness, I have four times the number of people on the insurance." And so the issue with that then for the school's budget is if you take 750,000 and you add 16.5% to that, we're looking at a 2.5% increase to our budget with nothing else different except to cover our insurance. On the town side, you'd be looking at a 0.04% increase. So that's huge. That's apples to oranges. It's no comparison. You know, the town could easily easily, not that they want to, but the town side could easily be 0.04% in a budget, and we can't. So, that's difficult. Likewise, the largest part of any school's budget has to do with our human
capital, has to do with our people. We have a lot more employees. Again, there are seven full-time employees on the town side. We have a lot more than that. We have, you know, again, that's the largest portion of our budget. We're talking about, you know, five times the number of people that are there that are employees. So again, if we look at this with an average pay increase of 3%. Contractual obligation to the size of the school would be 1.5% right there. So we are already talking about 1.5% for contractual obligations and salaries and 2.5% if that insurance premium goes up to 16.5%. And again I have no control over the insurance. I can't look elsewhere. Wish we could but we couldn't. So, I also do know that once Terry and I sit and and we've only started to do this because it's October, which is earlier, but when we look at some of the changes, we've had a lot of teachers have babies and get married, which is all wonderful news, but of course, when that happens, we look at the insurance and say, "Okay, they just went single to a family plan." So when we do that and we consider the
increases that we know about, we also know that we're looking at a total then of 5% right there for just those two things for the contracts and the insurance. So we also did say last year, everybody knows we've been saying it all year that we will need that sixth grade teacher this year. and so we definitely said that last year. So when you add those things in, we are looking and that's nothing else because we've just begun this process as you guys know. It's October so we don't have numbers and things. It's not apples to apples. So this is this is big for us. You know, it's it's it's difficult. I understand that. But I think when we look at the combination of the three budgets, ours our means our our expenditures do have to be looked at a little bit differently. And the last thing you know in my notes here for because you said you wanted to look at things in the projection for this next year costs is that our budget our operational budget is 100% expenditures. So we do a budget and we know that from day one to the last day of the budget season that money is going to be money in and money out. It's all on expenditures. That's what our budget's based on. We don't add any funds.
So there's no savings funds or things like that. So to cut you're actually cutting a bill that you know that you're already going to receive. Where we are different from the town because it's happen to Orange is I'm not saying we're the same is about 70 75% of a town budget when you're considering what their needs are. About 70 75% of the budget is expenditures. Things that you know for 100% sure are going to be expended during the course of that year. That's where they're different than us. And then about a quarter of their budget is funds. It's it's those savings accounts for projects for later on, which makes sense for a town, but I'm just saying that's where we're not the same. So when someone said you've got to cut a a 1%, sure it hurts, but you're cutting it from something that is not 100% sure already in expenditure during the course of that year. So that's where we're very different. So in considering those things, I know there'll be a few questions on this p last page too. On the last page, this is available obviously every month at our board meeting. This is the October 1st enrollment. So this will back up our MBR. This will back up the fact that we are moving forward in terms of size. This does show you that sixth grade need currently in October. And it does show you and I circled October only because when the state looks at enrollment, they look at October 1st. So that's why I circled October and you can see it was 175 back in 2020. and it's 247 now. If you minus the prek on the top
for MBR purposes on the right, you'll see that's 186 K6ers. Ram has 128 712ers. So yep, we were up 72 kids by October of this year. in the sixyear span 40 are K6ers and so that misnomer that we are way overfunded I hope you look at the MDR I hope you also consider the ECS dollars I hope that you consider the fact that there are some of these variables that I can't control like insurance and I do want people to see that when you look at the K6 budget moving forward on the bottom there that if you take our budget and you divide it by our number of kids. Why do I have 7,000 less than? So again, the question on here was looking at future costs. Those are our future costs, the salaries, the insurance, a lot of things that that we don't even have on here yet. But for us to start off in something that doesn't even cover a lot of those other things. So I think that these are things that I hope that the board of finance and select will consider. And Shannon, I don't think you have anything to add. No, I just great presentation. I was going to get at exactly what you got under the second to last page, which is I was part of the contract negotiations for all of the the two different certified and non-certified. we have an average for both of them, which frankly barely means cost of living adjustment with all that's going on of about 3% per year. so if you take
both of those into account, it's 3% across the board among basically all of our employees. That's before we get out of the gate and add in the insurance. So when I heard 1.5, I I knew that was just wholly unreasonable as far as our ability to meet that goal. we can't do it based on our contractual obligations as much as we would like to.
Can I ask a question? So you got this sheet, right? This is your student enrollment, right?
So in 2020 2021 on the 175,
there was no prek at that point in time, right?
Yes, there was.
There was
there was prek. Do you want the number?
there when I arrived, we had two classrooms. they weren't completely full, but we had two classrooms.
Okay. Can you get us that number?
Sure. as that would be helpful because if I take the prek out and recurring number I only get 11 student increase. What? I'm sorry. What?
So, I used 247 because if I remember correctly, in future previous conversations, you had always told us that prek would be self-funding and self-supporting with grant funding and tuition. And I don't remember it being in place back in 2021. So, that's five, six years ago because I only remember
PreK.
Yeah.
Oh, yes. PreK has been there since 2016 or 17.
All right. So, my my bad. I would I'd like to know the number on 175 because then that would tell me what to add to the 11.
I I will make sure that during our budget season that number that that chart that's on the top that shows you by grade
Yeah.
will be a part of every single one of those presentations.
And and then one last question and Shannon if you could and you went on we get to the next board of education. You only have three years of minutes. and I know that the board of ed keeps the minutes at the school. Can you sit there and bring up maybe that they should be kept the town hall and the town clerk's office when you fill up so that if people want to go backwards and look at minutes and see what happened in previous board meetings that it's available because we cannot go over to the school and get that information and the only thing I see online information is that
excuse me
the information is available at the school
but you can't go over there during the middle of the day. We're responsible. We are responsible. if you look up any of the state statues in terms of records, we are responsible to keep those records for a certain amount of time and to keep them there. So, if you want your person to make copies of anything, I'm more than happy to open up whatever they need to to make copies, but our our records are are kept there.
No, I I do understand that. And I do understand that other boards will sit there and, you know, you have a book and a binder and they're online. If they were all online, this would not be an issue. But they're not all online.
Well, where we're different, Jeff, is that in a larger town, there's a central office
and a central office for schools. It's always kept there. Unfortunately, I am central office, so they're kept where my office is. So again, I'm really not trying to be challenging, but if anybody needs anything copied, they can come and take them from where I would be considered central office.
It it it would just be
asier. It would be easier if there was a separate copy in the town clerk's office.
Again, the town, if the town clerk would like to copy them, I'm amendable to that item. Okay. But our ours is stay with us. Thank you. Y
if we were to ask for them via email, would we receive them like in a PDF packet?
Sure.
Okay.
tell us which ones you need. I absolutely will get them for you.
Okay. I have a question. you mentioned are you expecting to hire expecting to hire another teacher for sixth grade? Now
for next school year for the budget for next year.
So right now it looks like
we have 28 children right now.
Well, there's 25 children in sixth grade or in fifth grade. No.
Yes. There's
25 children in fifth grade. So next would be 25 because right now I I I was looking at the the current enrollment. because right now yes fourth and fifth grade we did separate them and we that's our intent is to keep them separated moving forward to keep two to to keep two because once you merge the back and you're looking at 25 to 28 or 29 kids we find that with this group of fourth fifth and sixth grade kids and the needs that it's it's it's a necessity for us. It's a necessity to have 25 children separated into two classes. A grade six when they're going to be moving on to a big this particular group of children. Yes, we would have done it last year, but we didn't need to do it with this group of sixth graders with the use of intervention. So, keep in mind I do have a track record here in the past six years of not only saving money by combining classes when the group of children allowed us to do that. they didn't have a lot of needs if you remember correctly. I had two years of a two three combination rather than adding an additional class because with those children we could do that. It wasn't the most ideal situation but we made it work. We had a combination for two years. last year with the sixth
grade that was there and the fifth grade last year we did have larger classes last year. So for some students it works. I do have, I think, a good history of making sure that we meet the needs of all the kids. And sometimes having 28 kids in a class is not an issue. I'm not a proponent a proponent of saying that class sizes have to be very small. I I don't believe that. Sometimes they are too small when you get you know, to the weeds of things. But I do believe that we are ready to have that second class next year for those kids and their needs. It's like a period before the grade behind it, it's about 36, right? So, if you're right, Robert, we kicking the can for one more year at the expense of the needs of these kids going into sixth grade. and and we know Robert that separating them for anybody who watched Taylor's presentation at the board meeting and you know I urge you during the course of this year to watch more of her presentations. we have already seen in the first two months of school a difference having those two fifth grade classes. We've seen the we do the beginning of the year benchmarks, the middle of the year benchmarks, the end of the year benchmarks. Those teachers have already seen a difference with us having those classes at a more reasonable size. They're thriving as opposed to last year. So
I sixth grade last year.
So you know
stories from
How old is your what grade is your
She's in seventh. She started red.
Yeah.
But she had some things to say about her class and Okay.
Yeah. So, so yes. So, and again, I like I said, I do have a track record
of saving money when we can if it was something that we could do with emergency classes. trust me, it wasn't popular with parents when we had to take the two three combo and we did it for two years. I think Robert, you had one that was was there at the time as well.
and it wasn't their first choice, but I did explain to them, you know, how we were going to meet the needs of the kids. In fact, we did it for two years. and it was appropriate to do it during those two years instead of asking for another class. so you know I I do stand by that sometimes. Sure. you know 25 or 28 kids in a class is appropriate. It just isn't with these upper grades right now. Working in a school too. We need to know it's not just teaching the kids and preparing the material every day. I mean, I personally think 11 is too small because you want socialization and that, but the phone calls you get from parents, the the followup, the meetings, everything you
have to prepare with for each individual student. I would never believe anything over 20. I mean, I think 25 is really pushing it. That's just from being in a school, taking all the phone calls, knowing what these teachers have to prepare each and every day. It's a lot. So, if that's there. So
yeah, anything in the 20 over 20 for a teacher, I don't know how you do it. But
you know, maybe there are, you know, like you said, a group that don't have a lot of needs or individuals or parents that are calling every other day that want to talk to the principal about what the teacher's doing. There's that aspect that we do need to bring into it, too. You know, just from my experience of working in a school system. But to that point, Joanne, if you look, I know it might be difficult this year for us to say, "Okay, we're going to support the school and we're going to do that. We're going to as a group say that's what we have to do is bite the bullet." But if you look then at this enrollment, we'll
have taken that hit to go back to the two in every grade. But then if you look at the numbers, it'll be a very long time unless we build huge projects in Andover. It' be a very long time before we would ever have to visit revisit I should say adding a third class someplace where years ago there were three classes to grades when the numbers were high in handover. And if you look here, you'll see that that's not something that would probably be in any of our lifetimes. in looking at the budget, we would have done that work and we would have gotten to that point and we would have the sufficient number of classrooms for K6 and we'll be okay then. You'll see that there's a lot of room to grow then after that. So, we'll be okay looking at that the following year or years after that. So,
so if we go through this list, could you could you just tell us so I can write next to the the grades prek? How many teachers are there?
There's four classrooms. So, there's four teachers. series.
That's not part of his budget. That's That's not a part of his budget.
Look at the second to last.
So there's there's one fourth grade.
No, there's four.
There's two
fourth grade classes each.
Oh, I see where you're at. And so each one of these, so there's four teachers on the first line and then two teachers in each one of the other grades.
Correct. And you know what? I will correct. I see down here never corrected this and and and I've never noticed it. So that's my bad too.
fourth and fifth, she never corrected that second to last. Right. because it's only the second month of the school year. So
but yes, there are two there.
Yeah. So it's two two and one in sixth grade.
Correct.
And your goal is to have two in sixth grade next year.
Yes.
And keep two teachers in all the other grades. Jeff, if I'm correct, and I'm I don't know that I mean, we'll get you the exact figures. When we first started prek, and I don't know what it was by the time of 2020 or so,
we had approximately 20 kids in it. each classroom had, you know, less than 10 when we first started. We did have I don't know if we went one immediately to two but we had only two classrooms by the time Val arrived in 2020. So if we take that and it's 20 to 25 students in preK by that point and we take out the 60 students now we've had an increase of 30 35 to 40 students. So not the 11 you're talking
I'm not listen I'm not debating the number that Valerie told us of 40. I'm just trying to get to the number trying to find my age.
Yeah. Because my end like we could come and look at this Shannon and go in 2023 2024 we only had 206 students and the next year we had 240 and that entire increase that entire increase was prek.
No because follow Jeff follow that 206 in October
down to June.
Yeah. on on that sheet. I circled October because the number that we have to report to the state is an October 1 number.
But if you look from August to June, every year we had kids come in here.
Correct. And I understand that and I can live with 219, but the difference between 219 and the 240 was all prek. You had a huge jump in prek.
That was when we opened the
correct. You opened up and you did all the competition and all that. So that's why they're minus from my 186 up top.
And that's what we
have to look at.
Yes.
Any other questions?
Any other questions on the school budget?
I have your your sixth grade class. So you want to split them up. Are any is there a parah in that class right now?
There is not. What we do instead is there are academic subjects where the team splits. So the fourth, fifth and sixth grade is in fifth and sixth grade is in one wing and there is a fourth classroom that is used for Spanish and when it's not used for Spanish, it is used to work with other smaller groups. So this is where we've been able to put a band-aid on this for this year is for example when they do math. When they do math there are students that are at one need level, there are students at another need level and we have the math interventionist that will work with students in one room and the classroom teacher will work with students in the other. So we're able to right now split groups for certain content areas to work in smaller groups because a lot of those students have those individualized needs anyways. But it's not an ideal year. and like I said, this is the year that we are also looking at those students that now in the fourth and fifth grade have been split thanks to the fact that we got the
new fourth and fifth grade teachers there and we're seeing them thrive and so that's going to continue through through next year.
So if the class is split, are you planning on hiring pairs for the classes split? when you split the sixth grade class.
We don't hire paraprofessionals. Our school does not have paraprofessionals.
Nope. We don't have regular ed parent pairs.
Okay.
In our school, all of our par profofessionals in our school and we, you know, we we have a very small percentage of parents in comparison to a lot of neighboring towns. All of our parents are hired for a specific need. Maybe it's one child that they're hired to work with. Maybe it's to accommodate a few children that have a particular need written into an IP or a 504. So they might work with different students during the course of the day, but we don't have in our building any par that is there just as a regular education parah to work in a room because a teacher has a lot of kids.
so you now have Okay. So the but the preschool has they have four bears.
They do and that's not in the general budget. That's the tuition, but that's because the law requires that when you have a certain number of students in the prek room, you must have the parent professional.
Got that.
Yeah.
But you hired extra pairs this year, I think. How many do you have now in the school? Just out of curiosity from six parents in the K through six
in K through six, I believe. Yes, six.
And you're saying that each of those are
have assignments related to children? Yes.
That's why the need for the second sixth grade class coming up. If there is a 504 student or if there is an IEP student, their document says what is required for support. And so yes, those six pair of professionals
are basically assigned to one student.
Not necessarily one student. They said they're assigned to students that have identified needs. they might have identified needs for maybe certain subjects. So,
so, so if you were a pair Liz, you may be working in one classroom with one student in the morning because it's the math time and that particular student requires support in math per their IEP. Okay?
But then in the afternoon, you might be assigned to another student and then another grade completely someplace else. Or that classroom has two or three students in it that say they need support during reading. No.
So, it's not necessarily you have one student, but maybe there's three in that grade and you're assigned in the afternoon to go in and work with the teacher because there's three students that are identified.
So, you know, it it is I'm a former special ed director. So, part of the process stands for individual rights educational plan, right? So, yeah.
And then it's written the documents.
I No, I know you understand that. I've never been It's 8:00 now. I would like to move on to the next section and if we have time at the end, we can come back and have more function.
The next up then is the board of selectment and county administrator. Identify major items and affect future costs for the 26 27 budget year in projected next five years. Eric, if you want to take it since you're still getting paid or you want to do this?
Sure. So, couple things that are looming. One, we're notified that, the north northeast cog is no no longer going to provide animal control services that we have. that's a little annoying. the reason why this is critical is we're going to have to find another town that's willing to take us on as a shared service. And the the reason why we don't just take it back internally is that our animal control holding facility is so far out of date that we would be looking at building a standalone building. animal control facilities are required to be air conditioned. I'm sure that
and there is an expectation from the state that if there's not a full-time monitor there, there's at least a part-time staff person assigned to the animal control facility. And given the number of animals that we take care of on a yearly basis, that's a crazy, you know, there's no way we're going to devote one person, you know, have a part-time employee down there every day. Most of the days there's no dogs there. So, that's that's something that we're going to have to deal with as a shared service. as of July 1 of this year, the new ASME contract will be we will have a new well, I'm not saying we'll have a new ASME contract because usually we don't end up negotiating them until well after the year because the union doesn't bother to negotiate with us for that few employees. But there will be a new ASME contract effective
July 1 of this year 26. Correct. So, in terms of other things, overall fuel and electricity both do not seem like we're going to see major spikes in them. on the electrical front, the legislature has been hammering away at at utility company. which is kind of ironic because it was mostly the legislature forcing them to do energy efficiency product projects. and accept a certain fraction of nuclear power and other things which drove the rates up in the first place. not that I don't agree with the intent of what they were doing cuz I do. But it did have a big effect on consumeris and they're backing off a lot of that now. So I think that should over the next couple of years stabilize our electrical costs hopefully. if anything they should be decreasing slightly. Fuel costs obviously are very volatile. you know we by switching to propane we've reduced the overall cost for fuel for the town hall relatively considerably. And the town hall now has the capability to be heated and cooled both without those split AC systems and with a a propane boiler at least on the heating end. And we did that cuz that hedges our bets on fuel costs. The propane's running really high, you can use mostly ductless splits. If propane, you know, stays relatively low, it's more efficient to run off the boiler in the winter. So, I anticipate our costs for energy are going to be pretty stable. so from the town's perspective, the biggest real concern is capital projects because that's that's essentially what the
biggest variability is in our funding. the two biggest dollar value projects that we have going are Bunker Hill Bridge, which is about 75% complete at this point, and the bridge at Longill Road, which will start next April. both of those are fully funded between federal dollars and state dollars and money from the Investment Jobs Act, which is federal dollars. So those those are in pretty good shape. We did delay the replacement of the culver/bridgeidge on Lake Road episola. and hopefully we can make it another year without a significant failure of that structure. you know the end wall that is completely gone. it very definitely does need to be replaced, but the engineer seems to think we can drive over it for another year without having a catastrophic collapse. So, that's what we're doing.
have to keep that in mind while I was driving around. That's about a million dollar project for us, right? It's a 5050 grant.
Yeah. So, that's a 5050 state funded project. We have been putting money away in the bridge and culbert fund annually and as you noted in 2023 part of the reason we saw a big increase on the town side is we started increasing the funding for capital projects
to get more of those done. so by the time we do the bridge in 2027 at current funding levels, it won't take an increase in funding. you know, but we will have to keep money into it at that point. hopefully in about a year and a half when we're substantially completed with the Longill Bridge, the money that we're currently using in that fund can then be rolled into the next culvert project. And to put it in perspective, there are still six more culverts that are rated poor or failing in the town of Andover, and most of those are between half a million and a million half dollars projects. So, we are just simply addressing them at the rate at which the public is willing to give us funding and hoping to stay ahead of catastrophic failure. the only one that's really failed completely is the one on Hutchinson. as many of you know, that's been necked down to one lane because the both lanes are not safe anymore. So, we've neck that down to a one lane road. and it only affects a few residents. So, that's really been the push on the town side. in the bulk of the increase in spending on the town side has been been capital funding. can that be trimmed? It can, but it just slows down the rate. you know, and for the most part, our goals have been to stay ahead of major failure events. we have had some really good successes. we starting in around 2020 we considerably upped the annual budget every year for tree trimming. we've also been
incredibly successful with getting Eversource to collaborate with us on roots in town. So, if you look at it over a 5-year period, we put in about $250,000 into tree trimming and we got a resource to contribute around $400,000 to our tree trimming down. And as most of you have noticed over the last few years, we've had very little storm related damage in the town. and I've always judged it. We have 34 miles of road. The rail trail runs through, you know, we have 5 and a half miles of rail trail and most storms today, we're getting twice as many trees down on the rail trail as we're getting on the whole rest of our trail network or our whole road network. So, we've been very successful with that. the other thing frankly that the town faces which everybody faces is the cost increases in equipment. when I look back in 2019 we bought a plow truck for around $193,000.
The one that was purchased before that was $137,000. the one we bought after that was $260,000 in a plot truck today is you know well over 300. In fact the last vehicle we got we stopped by Peter builders which were a better vehicle just simply because the cost basis for buying them was was too high. so it's on the you know the the capital end. we've kind of held public works to a capital budget and that's been working reasonably well. you know the the cost of liquid asphalt has stabilized the last two years. There was a huge spike in it which really drives the cost of paving but that's leveled off the last couple of years because that tracks very closely with the cost of oil. so hopefully that stays fairly stable. the goal is to continue to shim and chip the remaining roads that have not yet been shim and chipped and there's about a quarter of the town in that category. Those should all be addressed within within the next year basically. So we will have done one cycle of leveling the roads and shipping them. the next big thing we're going to have to consider doing is a chip seal is a band-aid. You can only do that so many times and eventually you have to start, you know, either just repaving or reclaiming and repaving. and that's an expensive proposition. Today, reclaim
and repave is about a half million a mile and we have $34 million for 34 miles of road. So, you can do the math. That's a pretty expensive proposition to do. So, at some point, we're going to have to start switching over to a plan which is, less shim and chip seal and then selective rebuilding roads. you know, we don't have a lot of roads that were built properly from the ground up. We're an old colonial town, so most of these roads were cart paths. you know that that never really had a proper sub base. So So that's the part of our
issue. we've done an awful lot of work addressing drainage throughout town. you know, we've had some pretty major improvements. the next kind of big project public works needs to tackle in terms of road work is a I'm killing me. It's the road. Having a brain fart here.
which way?
Sure.
The road off of Burnout Brook.
The road.
not Way Road.
Ridge Road.
Ridge Road was poorly built. we've looked at the drainage extensively. I think we can rebuild part of that road without the the good news is that the the culverts in the road are you know our concrete culverts and the pipes are concrete. It just that the original design of the road was really poor. we have problems plowing it every year. we break springs on the plow truck every single year, plotting that road. so that has to be rebuilt and built correctly. but we're probably we probably don't have the money right now to do a full reclaim and repave. So, what we're going to do is basically just reshape the bad parts and then shim and ship the rest of that. So, I think we can live within the existing public works road work budget. the one thing I would say, I'm not saying we have going for us cuz it's not a advantage, but because we didn't have a public works supervisor for most of the summer, we did not do the second half of road work. So, we do have, you know, a fair bit of money sitting in that fund. but remember, you know, one mile of reclaiming one mile of road in Andover would wipe out a year of our
road work fund. So, it doesn't get you a whole heck of a lot. we have several other major capital projects that we are in the works. The first is the improvements at the athletic fields. so we currently have a half million dollar steep grant. for the pickle ball courts, the new playgrounds, and a pavilion and lighting for the pickle ball courts. we were also able to get a $250,000 legislative appropriation. and we previously allocated money from our multi-use filin fund, about $150,000 for that. And we also got a $10,000 Hartford Foundation for Public Giving grant for that. so that project will take up every bit of that money. in fact, we've shifted some of the work back from the contractor to public works so we could get it under the aotment that we had for that. So all the money for that project is either state grant funded or it's money that the town has already put in a capital fund. the next real big project on the town's side, other than that, there's two additional projects. The first is the tear down of the old firehouse/cenior center and replacing that with a garage. that project, we do have a state grant to fund a portion of that. town meeting has already allocated some money from the multi-use building fund and my suggestion to the boards has been that we use our LOIP state dollars to fill out the rest of that and if we do that that will not affect any ongoing taxation and then there's kind of two more big projects. the first is finishing off the community center, finishing off the basement, and then secondarily the generator that is located at the
fire department. that generator goes back to 1990. so it is in need of replacement. And one of the problems we've had in this building up to this point is although we're ADA compliant when we have power, we're not ADA compliant when we don't have power because we don't have the juice to run the elevator. So the goal is to put in a single generator that runs all three buildings. It runs the community center. It runs this building and it runs the firehouse at full capacity. That allows us to use the town hall as our emergency operations center, which it is. it allows us to use the community center, as an emergency shelter and keep operations going, and it allows the fire department, to function. Now, currently, we're awaiting word on whether we've gotten a legislative appropriation from the federal government. we've asked for around $300,000 from the federal government and it made it through the Senate Appropriations Committee. but it made it through the Senate Appropriations Committee last year, too, and then they didn't fund any appropriations. So politically, it's anybody's guess whether they're going to come to some kind of agreement, pass a budget, and fund appropriations or not. So if we get that funding, we would use that funding plus an additional $250,000 in state legislative appropriations that we got that we will have as of July 1 next year. So, the good news is the three big projects that we have rolling right now are funded from either town money that taxpayers have already paid
into permanent funds or state or federal dollars. So, we've been pretty successful with that. and then the last thing that's hanging out there is the multi-use pathway. Okay.
Can I sorry to interrupt you the the whole generator linking the three buildings for that project. How much is the total cost for something like that?
the generator alone is about 300k something like that. cuz it's fairly large generator. Now, we've already kind of prepped everything and that when we built the community center, we paid for ahead of time and we put in all the conduit for the electrical and we ran gas line buildings and we have a gas line and we put the extra two propane tanks. and we have an interlock between us and the fire department. So, most of the year the fire department fills their tanks, we fill our tanks. In an emergency, there's a valve that opens all four tanks so we have full capacity from the generator to back up all the buildings. so we've done all the pre-work and we will have installed the automatic transfer switches in the community center and in here. but it's still an expensive project to to do.
The funds you said you were taking it from, that's why I'm like I need to know how much this whole budget.
Yeah. No, it's it's no pressure. and then to finish off the basement of the community center. And that's going to kind of depend to some extent on the board of select and making final decisions hopefully in conjunction with the community center staff as to what exactly they want to program that for because how you finish it off is kind of dependent on what you're going to use it for.
And that's in future years. You're giving us an overview of projects, not just this upcoming year. Correct. so if we get the federal legislative funding, I would assume we would go out to bid sometime late May, early June. assuming that we have the state funding sometime after July 1 and that would be a project done following next year. So next budget cycle. and the last thing is the multi-use pathway that connects from here down to the rail trail. so we're a little bit stalled out on the design. We would need to come up with and budget roughly $100,000 to complete that design. we did apply for what's called lots, which is a transportationbased funding from the Department of Transportation that's passed through the Capital Regional Council of Governments. So, we have a $2.9 million essentially construction funding that we've already gotten. we've gone through the first rounds of comments with DOT. We've addressed them. we need to send it back and get their
final commitment to fund letter, but we already have a preliminary commitment to fund letter. the way those programs work is we're on the hook to do the design and and then we can 100% fund the cost of construction. the other good thing about the capital regional council of governments is that if the price increases because you know we did that we submitted that a year and a half ago based on prices at the time. the COG is pretty reasonable about accepting price increases for projects like we may get comments back from the DOT and they may require us to do improvements for for them for Route 316 which drive the price up. If that happens, we can go back to the CRO with the expectation that they will increase
the budget for that project. And I remember asking you about that particular project because that's a biggie at our meeting when you presented on our last meeting. That one's in the future because there's so many things that have to happen.
And I I mean I know this is
Yep.
You know,
if you're lucky
probably I mean you you liked this and have been
into that. But so you said we had 100,000 that would be to finish the design element of it.
Yeah. Is that the full cost of a design or is that
No. So, I don't want to take
So, I secured a $100,000 legislative grant a couple of years ago
and I used that money to do essentially the big picture design, pick a pathway, and then produce a preliminary design to go for funding. and then I had a bunch of money left over and I applied that money towards the design and survey work. So the $100,000 in truth, that's probably closer to $200,000 in design work. Okay.
but a h 100,000 of that would have already been a legislative appropriation. there's a second pathway back through here which I know is going to take cooperation from a lot of entities. We've let out the design contract for that that also went to town meeting. that's a 20% town match and roughly an 80,000. And I suspect that design will take about a year. and if the town was smart in a year, you would turn around and apply to lots of funding because you would have a full-blown design and if you got full-blown, if you got lots of funding, that would be 100% on construction. So, you could theoretically do that without spending a dime on hand over tax dollars, which is usually my objective. So, that's what we've got going for projects. So, we are spending a fair bit of town money. I'm not going to deny that. But we're also spending millions in state and federal dollars, too. So, we're getting an awful lot done for what we're spending.
That's it. Unless you have other questions for me.
Any other questions for Eric?
Thank you. Thank you for all your hard work and getting all those grants. And
I know
e have other problems with the town that we're going to at the board of finance. Eric leaving leaves a huge hole and we have to determine as to how we're hiring. So the goal will be to go out and get an interim town manager, town administrator, but how we sit there and look at the position moving forward is going to be different because there's got to be discussions as to the compensation that is paid on that position. So right now it's at one level. We may not be able to get a qualified person at that level. We might need to make some adjustments, but that's also something that has to be taken in council. When you look at next year's budget, you're going to have potentially an increase at that level. also, one of the priorities that the board of of of selectman has is the community center and it's maximizing the, availability of the community center and what benefits are leveled for the seniors and for the rest of the community as far as using that building. I would hope we would come to you guys with some plan as to what we could do to sit there and make better use of that building and like I said, extend the hours because that's really the biggest issue for me. to make as much use of it as possible and Eric's done a great job of getting funding to sit there and finish off the building. So, as of right now, the kitchen is not complete because we don't have the hood in place, but we're going to sit there and work to get
that done. Once the kitchen is done, all the lunches can sit there and be dealt with out of that building, and it can also be used for rental purposes. So, we have a senior center and community center to consider. So those two are the two things from my end because reality is from a town level we have been very conservative as to how much money we're spending. I don't think anyone can sit there and look at the town level and go it has increased because we've added additional employees or we've added a significant amount of services. The only thing that has been added from that perspective is one additional person in public works, which I think is extremely effective and has gotten more done for the town in the
last five to six years than has been done in the past. And then the employees over at the community center. There hasn't been any increase in staffing levels at the town hall and there hasn't been any increases at the library. So those really are only our two increases from an employee base for the town. agree or disagree, Erin, from what I'm saying to you?
Yes. Over the last six years, we've basically shifted a series of town hall staff to part-time. So, we've reduced town hall staffing overall is, you know, significantly lower than it was six years ago. We have added staff to public works and we have added staff to the food settlement. Okay. And so from from that standpoint, I don't think anyone in the community can sit there and think that we are going to the board of financing asking for any significant level of increase that hasn't been justified as to the service level that you receive as as taxpayers. So if not, I'd really like to know about that. So but you are we are going to come because we are going to have problems replacing Mary. It will not be an easy situation and it will be financially impactful for the town and we're all going to have to get together and understand that if we want to keep moving forward because my fear with the community is that you know chaos in every organization causes problems. We can see it at every level of government. We can see it in any business. You have chaos in your organization, you cause problems. We've had a slight bit of chaos within our boards and within our town. And it's caused problems. And if you all can't see it, you just look at Eric's resignation. It's number one on my list of things that I knew were coming that I didn't want to see ever happen to this town while I was sitting here. So, I am
telling you, we have problems, you know, and I'll go through it. We've lost our Department of Public Works director. We've we've lost our our maintainer, our best maintainer, our oldest maintainer. We are intend we're going to lose our treasurer. Okay, we'll sit there and deal with that. And we have other positions within this town because of some of our chaos self-induced that we have to deal with. But really, we need to sit there and be really cognizant of the fact and work together as boards. But one thing, you know, I I participated in the board of education meeting and I understood that there was there's freedom of information requests being pos positioned back and forth between departments within this town. That should never happen ever. I was so disappointed when I found out that the treasurer sat there and gave the the board of education a Freedom of Information request for information. I understand what the treasurer might be after, but submitting a freedom of information request against another board or a town group is not okay for me. And that the board of education in turn sent freedom of information requests to the town is not okay for me. And so I am just telling I'm telling you all as boards, we either work together and share all of the information so that we can make good decisions or we're going to have bigger problems. And I'm just letting everybody know those big problems are coming. And one of the things we have this disconnect on capital projects and listen, I won't even go into that. I'll just sit there and tell you every board needs to understand what that board's
responsibilities are. every board, even my board, we need to sit there and take the time to understand what our responsibilities are. So, we we we we do play in our roles. We respect the other groups. We do what they they need to do what they need to do, and we need to do what we need to do. But every board has to understand where they're at. I look at my board as we are the group that sets the priorities for the town and we sit there and come up with a budget for capital projects and we come up with a budget to operate the town and do the basic work that the town needs to have done. We walk that budget to the board of finance. You guys determine if that budget is acceptable for what you can raise in taxes from the community. Right? You sit there and say these things are good or these are bad and we then take it back and we work within those parameters of what you're given. Eric has done a phenomenal job of working within what the board of finance has provided us to provide levels of service that are acceptable for the community. Right? But I will sit there and tell you as long as we understand all of our roles, we'll all work together as easily as possible. And we should never ever if I hear of another Freedom of Information request going back and forth, I will be so disheartened because that's not how we should work. Great. Share the information and even if you get what you don't consider to be a a reasonable answer, maybe some board is unreasonable and they do, we all work
with it. It's not it's not a negative. I I don't take it as a negative, but sharing information and understanding what we're after is really critical as this town moves forward. And it's really, you know, from a town's perspective, board of select perspective. I cannot tell you how upset I am at the changes that have occurred. And Eric, I do thank you for all you've done, for all the grants that you've sat there and got for this town and all the work that you've done to try to sit there and and make us better off than when we had a first selectman sitting in this chair. And I thank you for not making me do it because I will tell you and this is what everybody in this town needs to understand. There will be people coming and saying, "Let's change the charter again and get away from the town
administrator." Do not do that.
That would be disaster.
It would be an absolute disaster.
It will be steps backwards like you cannot imagine.
We're already losing knowledge here.
You didn't even touch on it, but you know, we're gonna chair and vice chair
from November. I listen those are that's the board of finance right there too. So
it takes so long to just get the knowledge you know that you learn but Jeeoff I like that you brought it forward that you want to look at the position. I feel like Eric in his role had to do so much, you know, like and I mean we
are we're too small to ask for what I'm saying they're saying you're not going to get multiple people in your position. You're going to get one person. Well, what we have to decide is what type of person does the electoral come to? that I already know in my head it's either it's either we overpay
and we pay more and get more in a in a reasonable
range because Eric what were you in position you've always you've said it to me multiple times what how far down on the pecking order are you telling administrators Tom
I'm pretty sure I'm the lowest paid one in the state
that is because the board of finance does a damn good job we negotiate It's just we negotiated toward Eric negotiated on it's bad. so we have a problem.
Yeah.
And just understand that the the the the opportunities are raise the pay on pay, you know, maybe reasonably close to what we're doing and get a less qualified individual. And and honestly, I will sit there and just tell you it probably took you what, two years to get good at it?
At least
I don't know that I'm good at it.
No, you you are very How long did it take you to get reasonably comfortable in the position?
A while. Couple years.
To me, it was a couple years.
First,
well, but remember the the first problem was we had a public works that was disaster. So I spent the first year essentially being the public works supervisor until we could get an actual public works supervisor and that killed an enormous amount of time. you know, so that was a structural problem we had at the time, you know, and and frankly that occurred because at some point the board of selectmen decided to get rid of the public works supervisor back when there was a five to six person public works department and the only way they could do it without running a foul of the law was to eliminate the position. So they took the most senior public works employee at the time and said, "You're now the supervisor." and that was that was frankly a disaster. He was a great guy. He worked his ever loving butt off for the town, but he couldn't use a computer. He couldn't use a smartphone. He couldn't send texts. he couldn't use email. and that's who we had running public works for, you know, 10 years. you know, and at the same time, the board of selectman wasn't investing in equipment. So that killed a specific once I had that off my plate and I had a public works supervisor in place that could run that cuz that is the biggest single department and expense, you know, on the town side. Then it was pretty quick. I just needed to free up the time.
That's what I meant about you doing too much. I think your knowledge is extensive of the town and like the land and like rules and you know that there's the management part and the financial part and then the public works part. You were involved in all of that. So you probably brought it to the point where when you have those structures at the top like Jeff says like if you how many people are in your public works department right now? I feel like the town has lost so many employees.
if we're back up to we're four today as of November 3rd, we will have a new public works supervisor staff
because I know you probably have. So you have that, but then you have the treasury finance side, you know, and then you like overseeing it with your Yeah.
But you were in all the ground roots parts too, like on the roads and
you sat here and listen to Eric tonight like we have at every board finance meeting, right?
Go through the administrator's report. It's mindboggling what the knows and does every week, the hours he puts in. People have no clue what we have compared to the old days. this man's knowledge, just what he reported to all of us tonight. Yeah. Deep right now is the best way to put it when he's gone because it's going to take a long time to fill those shoes. I don't know if anybody gets that, but I've listened to what he's done, the reports that he gives at every board of finance meeting and my head just spins that he knows and had a grasp of all of this. So
without
good lotion time and no burning
usually without those people who you know complain about air or this that and everything didn't go along with them they don't know what he does they know all the hours that he put in them a week. So the other thing I'd like to chime in about with what Jeff was saying about you know how he pays to staff this position. We had a prior administrator I don't know how many people were here I was on the board.
Yeah it was it was a while back now. people may have kind of forgotten because CO was in between and screwed up time, but that didn't work out. Let's just put it that way. and we didn't pay we didn't pay a lot and we got someone who frankly couldn't do the job and we had to move on and luckily we flipped into Eric. But, you know,
no, we we compromised
to be really honest. I don't know if you know that Eric was elected to the board of select and we compromised because we we as a board worked together to put what we thought was the best possible person into that position understanding that he did not have the true qualifications that were even written into what we were doing to be the town administrator. But we understood his character and what he was bringing to us. And we as a board understood there would be growing things. So we have to understand that as a town we could try to do it this way and go through growing pains again, rego through what we did and maybe not get the right result or we could try to over compensate, give additional compensation to that role and try to get somebody with a the better qual not not not better than Eric but more qualified than
you can get a better administrator than me. I have no doubt about that. I see in some of my peers capabilities that I don't have.
do you have any recommendations or setcommendations?
Yeah, but what he's going to tell you next is how much money you have to pay to get
right. But you're not you know the the town just has to understand that if you want that you're going to have to pay for that. you know, and you're going to have to search nationally. you know, the the job I interviewed for in Dalton, I think there was only one out of the five interviewed candidates that were from Massachusetts. they did a nationwide search. They pulled people from plenty of states to make their decision. and that's what you have to do today. you there is there are too many there are too few administrators and there are too many positions open and you're competing against all the other towns
and unlike Connecticut most of the towns north of here most of the cities have town manager forms of government even very small towns I mean Waterville New Hampshire is a population of 850 their town manager makes quite quite a bit more than I make here. you know, you just got to antie up if you're going to be competitive in that particular market or you have to try something unusual, which is what the board did with me. And maybe that'll work, maybe it won't.
This is an unusual town, though, too. I have to say from living in other towns, there's never been a town like this with so many opinions, so many people getting involved, so much venom being spewed all over the place, people being not respected in meetings, people. So, we all have people talking things behind people's back when you think things are fine. I mean, there's a lot of ugliness in this town. Let's be real. I hope they antie it up and I understand what you want to run this town. There's not a there's also some real bad things that go on in this town that it's so small.
I don't think
it's so small for and against people that give of their time and their free will.
We are all volunteers. Absolutely.
We all volunteers, but a lot of volunteers like to throw stones.
So, you all have to understand that if you're going to be in this position,
negativity.
Yeah. Well, you know what I like is data and information. And if I can get the data and information, I as a business owner and even though this is not a business, I can make a business decision. I can give you what is right for the community.
Right? It might not be right for a given department and I respect that and I can listen. You know what I have a problem with really and I will tell you my managerial style. I let everybody go. You do what you want, right? I can handle bad news. You tell it to me to my face. I can sit there. I can sit there and live with with bad news. I cannot live with people lying.
And I cannot live with people not giving me everything that they should be giving me. That's my that is my that is my end all beall in my work in my life. I can respect a bad bad decision. I can respect that you made a mistake. Just tell me. be forthright and don't make me go dig and do other things that I have to do. So in this town we do like to throw stones. There's been a lot of back back channeling. Back channeling causes chaos. Chaos is incred has ensued.
I'm just
No one listen. No one listens. No one listens. I don't know how we get back.
Sorry. Sorry.
That was just It needed to be said. I like the fact that there's a love fest for
but but I I get where we're going and I do think it's important that we work together. We're transparent. It has to happen.
Professional
not going to work.
But let me be clear. I didn't believe the town is over because of the salary. I left the town over because of the chaos.
Okay.
And that has to be understood by the rest of the community.
Yeah. That's sad. I'm sorry that was very sad.
Okay. Well, I think we I think we have shifted to board open discussion.
You did.
And u any other topics that we should include under
Well, while we're talking about clean people, I think we have significantly underpaid our town clerk for many, many years. and that may eventually affect us as well. I know for a fact that there were many years when our county clerk went without an increase in pay. and I think that may have affected a decision there. I don't know. but I think we're we're looking at a comeuppance there as well at some point to have qualified people.
It's an elected position.
I know it's an elected position. We also have to pay or we're not going to be able to fill the position. If it was appointed, I would 100% agree with you, Shannon. But because it's an elected position, it has little different parameters. That's not to say we shouldn't try to pay a reasonable salary, but it is a difference. If if we had gone through the charter revision and we sit there and had to appoint a town clerk, I would tell you flat out we'd have to be raising the compensation. Yeah.
No problem. But because it is an elected position, that's less of a problem. It's less of a problem. We lost an assistant clerk over that very reason. And
we lost the assistant clerk because she couldn't take the position.
No, another one. Never mind.
Okay.
Any other
Are you Wait, are you talking the assistant Tom Clerk or the Tom?
Assistant Tom Cler.
The assistant Tom Clark. Okay. So, you said the town clerk. So, the assistant
I said No, you said Tom Clark.
She said I heard assistant assistant was the second time. The second time I only got two more.
So we have raised that salary considerably.
Pardon?
I said so we have raised that salary considerably.
This is just we have
finally they said they did at the last meeting.
It was
any other board open discussion relevant to the budget development process? Please be please be consistent with what your requests are for all departments and hold the town accountable to what you're asking them for and what you're requesting and and I am so sorry and I am going to attend your meetings. You guys have to ask questions if you don't ask questions of every board of every group and all and I will point to the board of education. If you don't ask questions of the board of education as to how there's and they they need to educate our children properly but you have to ask questions. Don't be mean but ask questions.
Okay. Anything under correspondence? No correspondence. Not this one.
We move on to public speak. Any guess?
I'm gonna come over here so that I can be on camera.
A few things to say. see if I remember all these things because I didn't take any notes. first on the subject of the board of education and the accessibility of the meeting minutes that you talked about, Val, I heard what you said about maintaining the records and following the procedures and I appreciate what what what you informed us on, but this is 2025 and not 1925. And the expectation is that within a reasonable time period, those records are going to be scanned electronic and available online. Jeff, I think you need to decide how far back that needs to go in a reasonable c. You brought it up the she's rules and requirements,
right? Let me let me just finish what I'm what I'm thinking here. You have a requirement you that that you need to go back a certain amount of time. you should define that. And then whether it's the board of selectmen, whether it's the board of ed, whether it's some volunteers that we appoint, we take those records and we digitize them and get them online because that is the modern expectation for any public meetings for any public records, not that they sit in the filing cabinet somewhere, that they are available 247 electronically just like every other meeting is. So that's that's the first point that I that I want to make. the second also having to do with the school and this is just more for historical purposes and a little perspective. You've been here six years I believe you said and at one point you talked about the population in the school and how it was a certain size and we're never going to see that size within our lifetime. When my son entered
kindergarten in 2010, same year that Jeff's daughter entered, a year later after after Shannon's son, there were about 330 kids in the school. The standard cohort was three classes in each grade. I think I remember there being one grade that had four classes. seven years later, and there was no prek at the time, so this was all K through six. Seven years later when Michael graduated in 2017, his was the last cohort of three classes and we were down to somewhere around 200 210 somewhere around there for for the school population. The population hit its nater I think about six or seven years later at about 170 if I remember right and now we're back up to
240
250 is that including prek or okay what is it without prek just
or 190
okay so most of the growth that we've seen in that inter intervening time has been prek it hasn't been through
yeah okay so I just want to point out that this precipitous drop 50% happened in seven years or so from 330 students down to below 200. Okay, that when it when it hit hit its bottom. so or maybe a few years later in a decade. Okay, so it is altogether possible. I don't know what socioeconomic factors would take but it could happen within our lifetime. So just you know if if history has shown us anything it's that we can't predict history.
So comments about school. Now I want to switch over to Eric for a moment.
and you need to start wrapping it up.
Yeah. Okay. I just want to ask and from the 10,000 foot level when it comes to to roads, let's stay out of the weeds. How long does a road last in this town? What's the operational lifetime for one being put down new to the time it needs to be wholesaled and paved? Is it 20 years?
if you start with a good subbase and you pave two courses on a road, in other words, you start from like roughly 20 years before you're going to do a major reconstruction unless you're doing intermediate pavement preservation, which is the goal. and 34 miles of roads. So if we were to just stretch it out linearly, we'd need to do a mile and a half of roads a year. Just in rough numbers,
need to reconstruct.
Yeah. Okay.
Yes.
And it's half a million dollars a mile.
Correct.
Okay. So you're talking threequarters of a million dollars a year just to keep up with the roads.
But that's not including the preservation you would be doing.
Yeah. in the same
just pointing out it's a lot of money
and it's a sustained kind of predictable expense over decades.
Okay. And last, again, well, this is board of selection, but pertaining to Eric, my understanding of how you replace somebody like him, at least the way that it's done, been done in the past, is that you impanel committee within the town, a recruitment and hiring committee, and you go through the process. I've heard it mentioned by more than one person that that's something that can be outsourced to professionals, that there are professional recruiting organizations. That's expensive, but it may be another approach for you guys to consider. So, and I think I covered everything.
Thanks, Bob.
Thank you.
Any other public comments?
Yes.
Oh my god, we're going to miss Eric. This is all coming a little too late.
Any other public comments? And I had one and I was expecting, you know, a lot of good information from Valerie on on the school budget thing. What I didn't hear was capital improvements and and that's you maybe I missed it in there somewhere but you know last year we heard that we were looking for bathroom elevator and pave the driveway and I didn't hear any of that in the discussion that I was
the elevator's been done during the course of this past year the driveway was put off so we are going to put it off again as Eric mentioned there's lots of road discussions that need to take place so At one time they discussed doing our driveway at the same time as the driveway down here. So, and then the bathroom was funded already. Like a lot of the town projects, that money is sitting there. So, that shouldn't I'm glad you mentioned it, Jen. That wouldn't be something that we would be adding in addition to our operational budget this year moving forward as we see it. So,
but do we have are we looking five years out? Okay.
We are. I did just receive, we talked about this at the board meeting this week. I did just receive the new capital template from Eric. thanks for doing that before you left. and so I will continue to create the schools using the same template at our board meeting. I had presented the fact that I have started that with a couple of sub areas and it'll follow the same exact model as the one that we received this week from the town. So that moving forward the boards will have that and it'll be all inclusive. the towns and the schools.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome, Jim.
Any last minute public comments? Looking for a motion to adjourn. Motion.
Second. Second. Okay. All in favor?
I I Thank you very much.