oh I'm sorry okay you no you go ahead I have the wrong agenda up my okay I apologize for that I'm going to call to order the Andover town of Andover special budget meeting budget Workshop meeting for Monday February 10th starting at 607 and our first call to order or first item on the agenda as a pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all item two is public speak we'll start with Kathy and Mike pazi you have anything no we're all set we're all set thank you Jeff all right you're good Joanne Ebert all set just listening thanks Liz lat just listening thank you Danny holsclaw I just tuning in thanks okay I didn't miss anyone did I all right we're going to go to item
three budget workshop for fiscal year 2025 2026 proposed Town budget Eric can you put your cop be up on the screen certainly okay okay are you seeing we are okay all right I know in the email that you put out to us you went through the items that we had spoken about at the meeting to get this so I'm just going to read these for everybody in the public we made a reduction to open space Capital fund reducing it from 50,000 to 25,000 we requested an increase in the senior lunch in program budget from 6300 to 12,500 and we asked for a reduction on the rec commission budget which really wasn't a Rec commission budget request there was a there's a wreck budget for $6,000 and there was a capital Capital request from the rec commission for $40,000 for basketball hoops in the AES gymnasium and we asked her to remove that and then we asked for pay and compensation increases for non-elected non-union employees to be set at 3% to match a union contracts and there was another issue related to it so Scott an is there anything else when you got this that you reviewed that you want to discuss I I'd gotten a few questions from some other residents that we looked at it on line I guess one with about the trooper I know that we've got a new one coming but what were the actual costs in the past year so we have an idea of how how much that actually cost not just what we the other question I had last week I asked about the mowing
the 26,000 for mowing and I know we said where the mowing was being done but I just is wonder why we get charged we have to pay that in addition to just Public Works employees is it not Public Works employees doing the mowing or why is there a separate budget item for that sure I can probably answer those two questions so if I believe last budget year the cost that we actually paid for the resident state trooper was 127,000 plus or minus 100 or two but it was 127 something this year and they estimated that this year's budget they gave me a a budgetary estimate of 135 which is roughly what's in this year years or what was in last year's budget we don't remember they only Bill us one time a year and often it's not till after our budget is closed and they don't make up until last year they haven't made final determinations as to what the indirect costs they assign to the resident trooper are so it's
always a floating number so last year I guessed or for this past budget I guessed 140,000 which was you know roughly 5,000 you know higher than what was in what they were proposing subsequent to that our resident trooper left we have a temporary resident trooper that temporary resident trooper is one of the Troopers that's trying to get the job but there are I believe nine applicants for the position so we really and we don't have any say in that so for instance if our current resident trooper the guy who's our temporary guy if he became our permanent guy the state estimates that our annual cost would be $153,000 if we get one with less seniority it could be as low as say $125,000 the most we've paid has been almost $170,000 when Daryl Tetro was our our resident state trooper because he was really senior so the answer is I don't know I can't tell you within $20,000 how much that line will actually be $140 is kind of a midlevel guess I could be under 20,000 and I could be over 20,000 what what happens then with any discrepancies what do we how do we solve that what do you mean how do we solve that well don't solve it it gets rolled into the unexpended fund balance and it's usually credited as a reduction in
the tax the following year okay so it does get reduced the next year then or if it's if you end up with somebody who's really high salary we have to adjust other things or what do we do well then we take it out of well we've got a couple ways you know the first thing you always try to do is if you have a line item in a department that's over you try to take from within that department first but in his case since the resident Troopers line item is really two things it's salary and then a couple hundred dollar in supplies you can't do that so the board of Finance would have to motion to transfer money in from a different part of the budget to cover the access and that's how we deal with all the overages okay as far as mowing goes no we don't actually have the equipment to do field mowing we've always the the major part part of the the mowing that gets done for the town both the athletic fields and a lot of the areas like the cemetery and things like that we do SUB that out
the field mowing which is the biggest component of that we sub out to Hein parks and wreck because they have the parks and wrecks people as well as the equipment to mow and maintain that and then up to this year and over Landscaping has handled a lot of the town's other mowing events and frankly what they charge us is less than our labor rates to do it so it doesn't make sense for us to do that ourselves all right thank you are we gonna have early voting this year Eric yep I believe so I believe it it's not mandatory for everything but for most elections now some level of early voting is required and how much depends on what what type of event it is we going to have money in the budget for that well the registrar's office thinks they put enough money in the elections budget to cover for it the grant we're probably unlikely to get money from the state we're not anticipating getting any further revenue from the state to cover that usually when they do one of these unfunded mandates they only cover it for the first year and then they pawn it off on
the towns so the registar budget is enough to kay I saw Jeff Murray joined Jeff we had gone through what Eric provided Us in his email for the what we talked about at our last meeting do you have any specific questions that you want to address with Eric related to the budget that he's presented to us have we talked about senior lunch yet or we still got to talk about that we can talk about that I mean we I I sat there and said that the increase in the senior lunching program was $6,300 to $12,500 okay I misunderstood that then at the last meeting I thought it was an increase of $1,200 so thanks for clarifying no my my request is that listen we un we we underfund that I mean the reality is the seniors are paying more than they're collecting for that which is fine we just need to bulk up that line item because yep Jee I understand that and I saw Ann's comments to that as well the only thing I would like to add to this is that if we make it a like a dirt cheap like two or three dollars we may have people signing up and not showing and I just don't want the town to fund these lunches when we have no shows so we need to come up with some kind of solution to make sure that
people commit when they say they're coming to actually come and and attend the because it's pretty wasteful when we have to get rid of some of these lunches that people don't show up for so I would be I'd be welcome to hear any recommendations that anybody has on that maybe even Tess can come up with something but yeah I've just heard there's been a lot of complaints about no shows lately on these luncheons so I just want to make sure that we have people that are going to be committed to it and maybe prepay a couple weeks before to get that discount that's just my recommendation I'm in agreement with you I don't disagree from a standpoint of you know people want want to have the benefit of certain things they have to sit there and and show to us that they're going to show up for it as opposed to us paying for things and then throwing them away or donating them further so Eric let's sit there and see if Tess can get together with with Kathy and the rest of the group to sit there and see what might be a a reasonable plan to make sure that we don't have people not show for luncheons and have problems with
wasting money there yeah because you understand Jeff like if people have a little stake in the game they'll they'll show up but if they if it's like it's free or it's like a couple bucks they're gonna be the hell with that I'm not going to show up so we just need to make sure that we somehow figure out a way to do that and then maybe even ask a couple other towns how they're doing it because if they have really reasonable fees as Ann suggested maybe we should find out how they're doing it and see what their no show rate is right I can even remember a different kind of situation but when I was teaching they sometimes would get a a bus to transport fans to go to a game and what they would do to have avoid no shows that they had to pay a fee to sign up and then if they came they got the money back but at least that way they had everybody come or they had the money one of the other so you know something like that like signing up ahead and either giving them a discount at the time or when they showed up it might help I had one other question with seniors and that is that I've heard this the a uses the senior vehicle to transport some kids and they pay for that where is that in the
budget so that I Revenue that just goes into miscellaneous Revenue it's not a big enough line item that we ever put a its own separate line item in the budget for okay I mean we could you know shouldn't it go into the for the senior bus you have a line for that so you have senior Transportation well it's not going to be an increase to the budget line item no but I mean if it's important enough to have it in the budget there I would think we would show the revenue coming Ino because some of those Revenue items aren't very big yet they're listed it can be included Eric in a separate line item for budgeted money but it's
what is it $15,000 no not that much probably sub5 I think for a year because I mean what we're we're essentially all we're charging the school because again it's all Town money anyway we're just simply charging them a per mileage fee for use of the vehicle that that deals with the maintenance costs and in the operating cost and fuel for the vehicle we're not making a profit off the school we're not trying to you know and they Supply their it doesn't it doesn't I mean that's I mean we're saving the Town Money by doing this so that the Board of Education doesn't have to go out and contract with with Easton to sit there and drive a child exactly yeah so but the revenue line would not even go there it would go up top it would have to be an extra L be top that's why I looked it would have to be an extra line but it's in the miscellaneous income if you know I would love for every organization within the town to show all their revenues in an appropriate way so I'm kind of with an I would love to be able to go to all the groups and sit there and say show me all your Revenue
you know across everything so that we can understand how we're charging residents or or parents for different different programs so Eric create a new line okay that Eric my question is is what is the total increase for expenditure line items for for this proposed budget and you got to include the capital too so discounting the revenue money how much are we increasing the expense line items you mean just on the town end of things just on the town end of things y let's see go over to sell am and add that's the easiest way to do it is take it off the the town budget so though that seems wrong yeah backing out the capital backing out the 40,000 you end up with a budget that's $280,000 700 higher than last year okay so if you go to the first page on this just so I'm trying to understand my numbers education so if I look at those two numbers budget excluding education so the 2024 budget was 4 4,302 627 am I reading that correctly yeah and then the next one be right something in there is incorrect let's see j44 minus
[Music] j44 yeah that does not seem correct yeah I'm wondering why you got a 7 and a half percentage change when we've C down almost a million dollars I'm sorry I'm sitting there looking at this and I'm going I see I and listen I did it separately looking at each individual increase decrease because to me I want to understand I want to understand what is fluctuating so significantly you know and like I mean we don't do a hell of a lot but I look at the capital and we decreased the capital from the prior year by about $75,000 I mean we're still doing everything that is requested but even that I'm not sure made total sense to me because I looked at your Capital spreadsheet and I gotta look at that again does that come through the only two real items we've lowered the capital expenditure so far are the open space fund and the building maintenance fund those both yeah I mean because I go through the individual sections and I don't see anything that sticks out to me so that has to be addressed because I don't if I look at your spreadsheet and I just take the basics of what I'm doing I think I'm doing it correctly I think the increase is about 50 Grand that's what it looks like so I don't know where that big of a number is coming from it can't be 50 Grand because Personnel costs themselves in indirect are up close to a 100 where is that section what is the the number employee benefits yeah both employee benefits so the salary is built into each line item but you can see if you go to
employee cost total and you go down to the totals you can see the year-over-year total cost is up quite a bit across the board and we talked last time about what things what drove those increases you know the big ones are changes in Staffing at the senior center number one is the biggest driver and then changing Mark Williams from a maintainer one to maintainer two is a big chunk make me to manipulate your stuff put put it on lock down my friend that is one of the things I don't like about using Excel for this is it's very easy to make a calculation mistake and this is a really interconnected ocument well I'm assuming the treasurer is assisting you with this correct right of course I just got rid of everything else I did righty cost well it's something that we have to deal with because if you're saying you have a $200,000 increase and a number is that we're seeing is different it's hard to it's hard for me I mean I'm pretty sure that number is correct and is generated wow well anybody else why I sit there and work on my my analysis of what Eric is telling us I mean I think the bottom line there there's two bottom lines one the overall mill rate is going up pretty significantly and over Elementary School is scheduled to go up 88.8% Ram is scheduled to go up 3.9% and that D number doesn't quite jive with what Ram has reported but there's a reason for that is that last year Ram gave back to the towns pretty much everything that was in that every bit of money that they got back that they underspent for the previous
year they gave back to the town so even though their budget didn't go up that much year toe our actual increase in what we SP spent on the levy went up so our increase in spending is going up 3.9% even though our Levy percentage is going down if that makes sense I know that's a convoluted way of saying that you know in the town's total increase is around $280,000 well I I personally would like to just fixate on our situation like where we're at from the town and where our 20% of the overall budget Falls right because always I always look at this as it's 20% it's 20% Ram 20% AES and there sorry 40% Ram 40% as and it is 20% the town and that includes our well I shouldn't even say that because then you I look at it as operating budget and then you incorporate on top of that the capital expenditures and we're all fairly equal right 4 million 4 million 4 million correct I cannot operate in your spreadsheet that you have for personnel costs because whoever built it merges cells and you cannot get to the proposed salary line and move it over so I can't sit there and see if you have significant changes in any given area quickly because whoever built this merged cells well that one you can blame on the the treasure not on myself try what are you what line are you concerned with because I can probably answer your questions well if you really want to know the biggest thing I'm concerned with I'm concerned with the front page
of this shows a $52,000 increase and your other summaries show 230,000 incre and I can't find it so that's what I'm concerned about understood and every time I try to do something within your employee cost portion of this I mean I'm just telling you flat out from my standpoint if I was on the board of of Finance I want to know the change in the line item and nowhere in anything that you do you put a percentage change I could care less about the percentage change I want to know the dollar so you could have have a a 100000% change and it's $1,000 and it it falls under my threshold of worrying about it but then you'll have something that's $100,000 and I care about it so nowhere in here do you put a dollar change which I did for the operational budget for our line items and on page one the main page and I come down and I I thought the change was $52,000 I look at your numbers I I see the change and the change is $50,000 and then you go to this other mill rate calculation right and you come to $ 28,749 so I'm trying to understand where that number is coming from and well I can sit there and see it if the main budget so well I can tell you where it it is then if I look at that page that mill
rate calculation page the budgeted number that you have in here for 2024 2025 is 4,720 that does not agree to the front page of the main budget so your your proposed budget total of 4,3 53 328 does agree this 4,072 582 does not agree to the front so we got to figure that out Bronto and if that's the case then I've got to see what decreases from the budgeted number and then what total dollar changes happen where and and I agree with you I'm assuming that the majority of these changes will up in the employee cost section but I it's not helping me evaluate like where I where we should put attention so that's the question was the budget last year 4 million3 or 4 million how about I go to the town website and I look for the document like what did we vote on let's see if I go to Handover and I go to minutes right it's not allow me do so last year the budget to be raised by 10,000 to be raised raised by taxes was 10 million 50 and 750 10, 50,7 that's according to your spreadsheet well according to last year's approved spreadsheet spreadsheet approved by the board of Finance if I look at last year's budget spreadsheet so where does that fit Us in so that corresponds to Total by taxation at the bottom there so that matches that value which is pretty much what I look at well Eric you're gonna have to sit there and and look at he you're going to have to get with the treasure and get the budgets to the well what would you like to do Eric what would you like to do I would like you to ask you to get with the treasurer and fix that number
and I don't understand I mean I know what you're doing you're taking your total budget of 12 million a and subtracting it from the amount of the A and the ram budget and you're coming up with a number for the town but that's not a green so we have a meeting with the board of Finance I mean let's go this way for everybody else does every anybody have [Music] any specific questions other questions related to the items that are in the estimated 2024 budget I have something on the employee cost go ahead Eric on Willie Bells the last number there is 23,000 last year he made made 27 is is that a reason for that so yeah that that's a good question when we started with the community center we had I had no idea how many hours it was going to take them to maintain it so I guessed kind of high in that budget and we're just not spending as many hours cleaning that building as we anticipated so even though his hourly wage for cleaning will go up the total cost we were just over budgeting that last year because it was new building we didn't know what we were going to be spending what did he get paid last
year well we're still in the middle of the budget process sorry we're still in the middle of the budget cycle Scott so we won't know the total I mean in terms of hourly wage or in terms of what well just his total the total cost of him is going to be down 4,000 from what it was from what we projected yeah before we knew what it was going to cost because we basically went from cleaning two buildings to cleaning three buildings but we had anticipated that that building would be closer to the cost of cleaning the town hall than the cost of cleaning the library if that makes yeah so if you don't have other Corrections here the one thing I would like to discuss is I did have a conversation you know I I have been working in the background on J Tuttle trying to see whether we could do something to get him to stay so my question is would the board be willing to consider a an hourly rate increase of more than 3% for that position if he agrees to stay for two more years how much more I mean what he'd like is a 5% increase each of the last two it sounds like an awful lot to me you can find somebody else without having to go that high what was that in we can find another employee for that I would think we could find a replace without having to pay as much as 5% increase every year I mean he gets a pretty high salary anyway what if you counter offered them and offered them 4% let's talk about that one and and why are we doing this because he's
going to retire or thinking about retiring similar to the town clerk there's an advantage for him to retire now now under the current retirement system versus waiting two years and retire when he ordinarily would have retired so the question is is there something we can do that makes him reconsider his decision because I mean the reality is he's already filed the paperwork to retire so what I'm trying to do is do something to convince him not to do that because regardless of what people think other people think I actually happen to think he does a pretty good job of his of managing those responsibilities far better than anybody we've had in the last 20 plus years but maybe you all think differently well my take on it is we develop talent and we bring people from you know maintainer one up through the system so it would be my hope that we would have people in public works currently that would be interested in assuming that role eventually so we should have some progression pass for those individuals if then if that's not the case please let me know I'm really happy to have gotten a lot of reports in 2025 that weren't looking like they were from 1970 but what we had previously and and if we could keep Jay at a you know I think 5% also is a little bit much but maybe if he would go with three and a half don't you guys already have him I mean I'm looking at this spreadsheet it's 4% salary raise yeah so what's there because his contract runs [Music] another well maybe it doesn't senior chat let me go down to where it is oh yep that one never got changed down to
3% but I mean all bets are off because you're going to be if you don't then we're negotiating over a new person anyway so listen we're talking $2,000 to keep someone that is the $2,000 extra money to me is is well worth spending to keep someone that unless you feel unless you all feel strongly that you're going to get a better candidate so now he still might retire anyway right Eric or he's already put the paperwork in well he's already put the paperwork in I asked him what would sweeten the pot and what would make them reconsider let's talk about that one offline but our all of those changes made internally here [Music] so kay all those proposed numbers don't have math to them they're just numbers
put in the system okay questions Eric you have to sit there and get me the I mean you have to send to all of us a spreadsheet that gets the front number to agree with the mill rate calculation so that we can and move off of this page for me and go back to the mill rate calculation well first of all this mill rate calculation isn't going to be correct now anyway there's going to have to be two Mill rates because the town is going to have to bifurcate because we're going to be over the mill rate the max mill rate the state allows for Motor Vehicles so that change would would be made anyway understood but that still doesn't mean that as you slide down to the budget by entity calculation that you have down here yeah that that number in f29 agrees to the front page right up f29 that number right needs to agree to the front page on the main budget right or we just eliminate that number off the main budget you can't do that all right I I will call you tomorrow on that I I'll actually take my spreadsheet and look at what calculation is okay does anyone else have any other issues related to what you want to address with Eric on any specific GL atoms o how many of us are attending the budget meeting with the Board of Education or the the board of Finance on Wednesday I am I will Scott you g to be able to make that is yeah okay Jeff Murray are you gonna be able to make that or are you trying I will I will not okay all right
so Jeff if you're not going to be there is there anything specific that we should address with the board of Finance or with Eric at that meeting I would just like to examine the the center director position and and I just want to question why we're adding that to a full-time position when we're not even using the hours of the assistant so if we're using her hours and we're still seem like we're behind then I'm all for or would support increased in those hours but right now since we're not fully using both of those positions effectively I don't see any reason why we should make that a full-time position okay anybody else have any issues related to that specific line item I mean obviously so right now that's moving from 45 to 61 and the assistant is moving up the percentage of the increase that we were giving so I mean Jeff if I was at the town meeting and I saw that the assistant wasn't using her full hours and we wanted to increase it the full time I would be asking a lot of questions and I think we just need to find out why we're making that a full-time position in the first place when we're not even using all the hours of the assistant okay we can address that definitely with the board of Finance as to how they want to sit there and move it
forward so I don't have a problem with that addressing And discussing that one Jeff thank you else okay it is almost 7 o'clock time for our other meeting so where are we one second item four public speak I am not going to do public speak related to the budget meeting unless someone raises their hand and wants to sit there and have a discussion or I mean I know the people are on it Kathy plazy any public speak related to no thank you Joanne Ebert any public speak related to what we were discussing Jeff thank you for the for the moment I just want to say something quick because I like to kind of quantify it or qualify it in the in the Forum that it was talked about so I'll bring it up you know in the meeting on Wednesday as well I won't go in depth at all but I do look at all of you that were on the meeting tonight as the management side of the town of course and I know you take your job seriously in all of the questions that you were asking and you know espec especially focusing on the employee benefits or different things that are that are
coming up so I myself too will take the time to kind of look through things because I do have some questions where I couldn't get the numbers to Jive and just the one thing that I did want to bring forth with this issue is a lot of the Town employees or the things that you were discussing tonight that you are the management they are on the union side which I know you know and so I will bring to Eric on Wednesday if if he was matching the exact contract amounts that were agreed about or if he was you know moving them up and then the last thing usually when there's a union employee and last year they brought on a new maintainer and the argument was made I know a lot about this kind of Department you know having two sets of two guys so you had four guys and then you had your supervisor that you also discussed tonight usually there's the budget was decided on based on bringing on a maintainer one you know to round out the crew so to speak in every town I do work on one this is nothing against
the person nothing personal but to get that item added he was brought in as a maintainer one at a lower salary so all of us you know to just get it passed and pass the budget so tonight it looks like you know there would be an automatic upgrade which I've never heard of in a different town usually you buy your time sure we want to have qualified people but to add 12,000 to that one line item is is kind of asking a lot so I'll be interested in looking in that you know even myself in the Union I belong in I know that I'm qualified to do higher
work or whatever but I have to wait till there's a position open it there's a bidding process there's a hiring process so that's all you guys are the management there's the union side so to just see the 12,000 or 13,000 added is kind of a lot to take in just that one little part thank you Liz latch I know I'm I'm almost set thank you Danny hos CLA is the other individual no no thank you no comments okay all right I'm going to make a motion for adjournment can I speak can I speak no this is not the regular meeting so hold on for one second if you would right I'm gonna make a motion that we adjourn adjourn this special meeting schedu special meeting the Andover Board of Selectmen related to can I speak on the budget though can you do it during public speak in our regular meeting because those were the five individuals that were there at the beginning of our meeting so we're running over sure that's fine okay I appreciate thank you I make a motion to adjourn second it all those in favor I okay so we are going to get right to it give me one second please okay I am gonna call Eric can you stop the First Recording sure I mean can we do can we do two recordings yeah we certainly can okay