show on the road. Can we get the recording? There we go. Very good. Welcome everybody. This is the regular board of finance meeting February 25th 7:03 p.m.
We will start with the pledge of allegiance for the second time tonight. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for its stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Okay. Thank you. All right. So let's look at our agenda. So this is as everybody may recall a regular meeting. So after we do public speak, we do have changes, additions possible if if anybody has that. so let me just quickly do the public speak then. Brienne Liier
just listening right now.
Okay. Welcome Linda Fish. Long time no see. How you doing?
Okay, all set.
Okay, very good. let's see. Marcy, you're still here. you want to have anything here?
No, no, thanks. I'm good. Thanks.
Okay. Joanne, I feel like I just talked to you.
And I promise not saying more. I'm here to listen. I said my piece. Thank you.
Very good. and then we do have some board of selectman members here who you know, we were just in a meeting, but I could quickly ask you guys Scott, do you have anything?
I'm good. Thank you, Robert.
Okay. Thank you. let's Carol, do you have anything further?
Just listening, Rob. Thank you.
Okay. No, no worries. I think that's it. Let me know if I've missed anyone, please. okay. So, yeah. Do we have any proposed changes or additions to our agenda?
I was trying to keep this one relatively tight.
yeah,
in fact, I was I would argue since I haven't gotten an update on it that we even strike 5D. I just don't know that there's anything to discuss there right now. And we have other things on our plate. we can kick it to a later meeting. I'm and 5C. I don't know if we really have anything further on that either, but we can just leave it on and tick them off. I don't care either way, guys. Anybody got anything? Any any thoughts? No. Okay. Well, let's just proceed. so, we have next up is town administrator's report. Now, I think Jim had sent us a copy of your your report for the select board. the last select board meeting,
right? And I got some updates on all of it. So, I'm it's it's actually good to show progress, right?
It is. It is. Floor is yours, sir.
Thank you. So, Jeff had already commented on the the first item, the I sat in and to Joannne's comment about the search committee. It was a very serious group and they did do a lot of work and they asked some in-depth questions. they certainly didn't you know pull any punches in there and they did a good job with those four candidates and I only I only sat on the first two rounds. I know two were put forward so I know it's in the board of selectman's hands now. the veterans field grant this is remember there's two grants involved with the vets field. There's a steep grant which is going to cover the it's half a million dollars is going to cover a lot of the pickle ball courts and a lot of other areas. The the legislative appropriation grant is what's referenced here. That's $250,000 for the playcape basically. And at the time we had received we were kind of in waiting mode. We had received a financial assistance agreement. We executed it. We were waiting to get it back and that kind of
holds up everything. Well, the good news today was I received the fully executed agreement. I now have the requisition form and so I will be spending time with Jeff, but I'll be spending time on that so we can put in for the the three quarters to date, which is 1875 on that grant, the first three quarters of that grant. and it's coming in good time because we do have a supplier that's looking to get paid on the playground equipment. Jeff and Jeff, we're going to take a look at some numbers on the senior transportation garage, another steep grant. I did talk just so the state knows we're we're involved. I talked to the the rep on that and he told me, you know, when you do go ahead, you have some outlays with that, but we can put in we don't have to wait till the end to put in for the requisitions. We don't have to expend all the money to get the grant back. We can do it periodically and actually faster than quarterly, which was a bit of a surprise to me. I thought quarterly was the the fastest you could do it. So, that was good. that was good news there. we had received paperwork from USDA on the the the generator that's going to service fire town hall and the community center backup generator. it's a USDA grant. We were contacted by someone out of Boston who's kind of the liaison on that. And I've been waiting. Today must be a good day. they must know it's my second to last day. that rep finally got me got back to me today after a
couple attempts and said, "Sure, she can meet next week." And it's important we can't really do that application. And again, this is an odd thing with the federal grant. It was a federal earmark. So, we've got the money, but now we have to apply for the money. It's kind of an odd odd process, but you want to do the application and the project narrative in the way they want to do it. So, it makes sense to listen to them and follow their lead on it. so bid openings did take place on February 3rd for Longill Bridge. since that time, now again, this is a a DOT funded project. they hire a consultant to do the work on that. And before I started, there was a an RFP process for construction inspection services firm that was awarded to the same firm SLR that did the Bunker Hill project as it turned out. So since the bid opening, DOT is still and their consultant is still kind of pouring through those bids. You know, it's supposed to be lowest and best to get the job for the contractor and they're still verifying numbers. There's probably about two and Jeff was in the room for this. It's kind of an interesting process. Two, maybe three that are in the running. And as soon as they verify who is the best and the lowest, they will choose that and we'll we'll know that. But SLR is now on
board. We're awaiting their contract so we can sign it. the snow is not really holding things up because the planned notice to proceed on that project was going to be April 1 anyway. So, maybe the snow will cooperate with DO's process and we'll be ready to go time.
Yes.
Hey, Jim,
can I ask you a question?
Sure.
I'm trying to understand SLR versus the Connecticut State DOT. So, you're saying the Connecticut State DOT is going through the bids and they need to verify their numbers
of the contract. Say that again.
Of the of the contractor of the project, the general contractor on the project, the bridge builder. SLR is the construction inspection services firm. They make sure everything is done correctly.
Okay. Thank you for that.
And we just got an email from the Army Corps say there's a lot of layers in this in this in these bridge projects.
Yep. Okay. I just needed to get clarification between those two steps.
Yeah, I may have confirmed.
Go ahead.
animal control, Jeff kind of alluded to it. NECOG was going to drop non-NECOG towns from services. You all know they have decided after some push back at a meeting that was held about a month or so ago to to allow them. but they are raising the costs considerably not only for their member towns but for non-member towns. So that's again a suggestion what direction the board of selectman wants to go. There are not a lot of avenues out there for for animal control and and it's it's it's not a cheap process that's for sure.
and are we are we non- Niko?
We're not Niko. We're Crag Capital Region
versus Northeast. Yes.
Okay.
so we are working on the Mnt financial change of signitories and global administrators with my departure. in fact, once again, the day before I leave, we got some emails back to to to do that to appoint new signitories on the on the checking account. So, there's an affidavit that has to be filled out and we'll we'll take care of that tomorrow, too. public works is you know the the big issue was a statewide you know kind of der of of salt coming in to the port of bridge Bridgeport and it's it's it hasn't improved any. So what Eric has done is kind of mix some salt and sand to kind of get us through. I think he's got a, you know, they keep promising shipments and they promised one this week and
after the storm hit, they now delayed it till next week. But he did kind of demand they give him 200 tons of just of some salt just to to keep us going. the budget will reflect that both overtime in salt expenditure and overtime in public works will be reflected in that budget for this year and it's only the end of February. So those are still preliminary numbers. the draft POCD, plan of conservation development, had been updated on February 17th. If this was announced previously, if some of you were able to go to it, I hope you were. If you were not, if there's a public hearing on March 17th, so you can comment on that. If anyone doesn't have that u that draft, I can send it to you. I think I've made it available to certainly the board of select, but I don't know if I've included you folks in it. The Percy Cook Trail, that's the trail behind town hall. that's kind of it's getting close to a a crossroads in my last sentence there that we need approval from BOS to move forward. preliminary design is done by the end of July. Barton and Logan Dice will be providing us with 30% design drawings. And the move forward is now that we know what it looks like
and now that we have a design in place, do we want to go forward back to deep for a recreational trails grant to fund this project? Do you know do do we have the buyin from the town on it? And what what I'm I've asked Kevin to do is if they have room in the schedule for the next meeting on I guess it's March 9th to have him give kind of a comprehensive update because Kevin Grindel is with BNL and he presented to the board of education and if the board of selectman maybe back when Eric first embraced this thing they may have presented but it's it's time for an update there. small thing, the sustainable committee has requested that we mount the bronze designation that was received by the town in the lobby of the town hall and I had asked the board of selectment if they had a specific location. I believe it was the community room. I don't think Willie has gotten around to putting that up yet. Then there was an issue with the transfer station with one of the compactors. We took care of that. That was during that very frigid weekend or week. And the good thing about Cassella is when you have a contract with them, they take care of their own compactors and and and equipment there. So there was no no charge for that. One of the items that I've been dealing
with which has been kind of constant and maybe some of you have been affected is is snow plowing and mailboxes. got a lot of people calling me say the town knocked down my mailbox. What are you gonna do about it? Well, there is a policy in place. The board of selectment adopted it back in 21 and there is a form they can fill out and submit to public works and give pictures and try and get the town to do it. But the the hard and fast rule really is if a plow hits your mailbox, the town's responsible. If the plow throws snow on your mailbox and it gets knocked down, you're responsible. So, I can't even tell you how many I thought I was done with them after the
last storm and then it fired up again on
there were a bunch down. I mean, mine I think it was the last storm. Mine got knocked over by I think the bow wave of the plow, but luckily it was it's a it popped off. It's a plastic thing and I was able to stamp it back on. But I saw neighbors all over the place with their mailboxes down. I I really It probably was mostly the snow being pushed, not the plow hitting it. But
yeah, absolutely. And that was a was a lighter snow the first time. I thought we I thought actually was
Yeah, this one you would have thought, but you know, I
So, any questions? That's kind of the that's the update off that. And most things are moving forward. And again, I'll sit with Jeff tomorrow and map out where some of these things are.
Jim, I have a question.
Sure. with with the Percy Cook Trail, was that where the town would have to kick in 50%.
I'm not sure on the specifics because that was going if it's if it's I gave Jeff a memo on grants. I can tell you
that's a an 8020 grant.
8020. They usually are 8020. The 5050 grant you're thinking about is the culvert across from Cheni over Cheny Brook.
Okay.
And that one we're working on. We got to find a different way.
Okay. Good. Thanks. Okay.
Thank you for that. All right. If there's nothing further on the town administrator's report, we have some things in old business. I don't know if we're really going to do too much on all all of these, but review of budget to actual and check register are the first two. Now, we don't have a don't think we have a full packet here, do we?
We have an agenda. We do. Yeah, we have an agenda, but again, because of the snow and some people being out sick, I think this week, we didn't get our packets, so I don't know that we can do anything there. so, we may just have to push that. Oh, Lisa, you're muted.
on now, but I gave it I sent that budget to actual that was in your first email today, tonight, this afternoon that I sent.
Oh, I'm sorry. okay, let me look at that. No, I wasn't sure what Kate had sent before she left a couple weeks ago and then she's been out so I wasn't sure. So, I just sent the budget to actual.
I didn't know if she had sent the register already.
And you sent that today?
Yeah, at about 4:00 maybe.
So, I see
should you got the others I sent right?
Treasurer's report. Is this Oh, there it is. I'm sorry. I think I think the the ray line of the email threw me off because it was preliminary budget and it said it says it's actually no before that there's one that's the ray line is preliminary budget but the actual document attached is the treasurer report.
Oh
that's why I missed it. Lisa
no worries.
I keep having problems with
a couple people's emails are dead. They're not working. So I've got a I'm trying to get it and make sure. Yeah, there's a couple. And one of them was yours. Wouldn't let it send, but I wondered if it was the size limit, too.
Okay.
So, I'm not sure.
I got I mean, I got the email. I have the email. It worked.
yeah.
And, you know, all our emails should be accurate on the town website under the board of finance. I think they're all
Oh, those are Yes. It's the There's two private emails I think that
Yeah, I just dropped the just dropped my private email off of there. I used to have it on there because when I was very years and years ago, I had some technical issues getting my town email working and that's long gone. My town email works just fine now. So, just don't worry about it. Just drop that.
Yeah, I was left with a list of both. So, I've been sending it to both.
I understand. okay. So, obviously from that little exchange, you can tell that I haven't a chance to look at this. Is there anything that you would want to call our attention to that in terms of anything being out of whack that you that you've noticed?
just looking at it really quick.
There's a couple of quick salary questions I have, but I'm just wondering if they're in the right line.
I see where clerk fees are way over budget.
Yeah, I did see that, too. And I wonder Jeff and I were talking about that and I want to make sure that the trash sales the bag sales are in the right line. I'm not sure. So I've got that
edition stickers
the stickers.
So we're we're not sure that they have been posted the deposits have been posted to the appropriate revenue account and we'll work on all that. There's also something in there, Jeff, that says 490 penalties collected, and that was a large amount. So, I don't know what that is.
Not sure.
490 is related to an assess somebody had their land valued as wooded 490. Carol would know more about the term, but
490 and it's either farmland forestry and they guarantee that they won't develop for 10 years. So if they do so or sell, they pay the penalty, the assessor rates, prorates the amount.
Yeah, I looked really quick and it said something about 490 penalties collected. So I'll have to look into that, see if that's where it belongs. A few of the office supplies are up slightly, but they're small. They're like a $200 budget, so they're not really up that bad. the medical drug testing is is way up at for Town Garage and I'm not sure if there's been a lot of hires, but there's something in there from CCM. so I've got to look Oh no, that was yeah, I've got to look into that because there's there's something in there that doesn't look like medical drug testing. Also on public works grounds, your the memberships are high, but it's cuz there is training going on for a tree warden. So that looks a little bit high. It's like 844%.
that temporary public works salary in line 4399 department that looks a little high there. I'm sure there's something behind that that I'm not aware of because I just arrived here.
Are you looking at the profit and loss? Is that what you're looking at?
Yes, but it's called actual.
Yeah, it's profit to loss, budget to actual.
It's a probably a different report than you've gotten in the past. Receive it.
Okay.
Yeah. I'm having a hard time keeping up because I don't know what line number, what page we're on. If you
if we were just on page six,
y Okay, look at the department number like I said for 4399 public works.
That's on page seven at the bottom.
Seven. Yeah.
Yep.
Okay, I'm with you now.
And then look over in the far right column percentage of budget and it says 844%. So that's really high. That's way over.
Oh, okay. Gotcha. Oh,
yeah.
All right. And the temp salary, I see that too. 315.
Yes. Yep. Yeah. So, I'm not sure why that is.
The other one that was much earlier on was assistant town clerk that was above
Yeah, there's a couple salaries in there.
I think we talked about that. I'm just I'm you know, right off the top of my head, I'm not remembering.
let's see. Just I see. Okay. Medical drug testing. Yep.
in fire
snow removal. We That's showing up. That's expected. We talked about that.
the snow removal that really isn't too bad because this is only till January 31st.
It's going that's going to get worse.
Yes, it is. It is unfortunately this through the 31st, but these this February has been brutal.
Yes.
Yep.
it is that's you know just is what it is literally. okay. let's see. My apologies for just sitting here going as I scroll through here, but office supplies, but that's just a pittance.
yeah, I'm not what's veterans
legal professionals. Is it legal professional?
Legal is up a little. Yeah.
Planning in the planning and zoning is 118%.
What page you want?
Why would that be? Why would that be? Planning and zoning. The legal
Oh, I'm sorry.
that's page 11.
Thank you.
Page 11. Yeah,
I had I had quite got to 11.
Okay. Sorry.
Okay. No worries. No worries. Legal professional under P&Z. I see it. 1,870 over. budgeted for 10,000 and we're at 11870. I mean I correct me if I'm wrong. That could be disputes
over assessments.
No.
Oh, is that what that
is? Not assessments. Okay. Sorry.
We have an ongoing we have an ongoing lawsuit through
and we'll have I'll have more information for you next month. I've been trying to sit there and deal with the attorney on that issue. And there's also a an issue related to animal control and it's going to be another problem that's going to come up larger in February.
When you say issue issue related to animal control, we're not just talking about how we're handling the increased cost that we were just talking about.
No, no, that's a you're talking about a legal dispute issue,
correct? Okay.
There is a there's an active animal control lawsuit that animals were taken from a resident's from a resident and it's it's progressing through court. So, I'm trying to get a handle on who's controlling the attorneys and the attorney's fees.
Okay.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's something that our insurer is generally, you know, would handle or not. No, it's actually a it's a it's actually the resident was arrested. I mean, it's a pain and and I'm just seeing the bills because I'm signing the checks. So, I'm trying to figure out why and who's on who's in control because we do the animal control through
the Northeastern Conference of Governments
and the attorney is one of our attorneys that does mostly the planning and zoning work, but I'm just wondering who is controlling their hours. So, I'm working on it, but it's gonna Okay. So we can expect a larger overage there. contingency. you know we budget 50,000 every year for this. it looks like we've spent we've used $2,000 out of contingency. I just don't recall what that was for.
What page are you on there?
Oh, sorry. Page 12. This is transfers 990. the first line
contingency. We have a $50,000 contingency fund every year. That's this is what we do. And typically to tap that, I always thought we were asked. So I just I mean $2,000 is not a bank breaker, but I just don't know what that is.
says it's a tax abatement eligibility.
Huh. From contingency. Is it written out to the chief?
Yes. Well, it says for Andover Fire Department.
Okay. we we're going to need to look at that, Rob. I don't believe it should be there, but it was probably the easiest place for the finance department to put it.
it was back in July.
It it would have been I have to research it, but I would think it's a the chief of the fire department lives in Colombia. and doesn't get doesn't avail he's not availed himself of the the tax abatements that we provide for the fire department. So, it's probably the way that they compensated him. But I do believe that the board of selectman approved that because of the longtime service that the chief has put in for the town. So, let me look into it. I'll get back to you next meeting.
Okay. I appreciate that cuz I just don't, you know, again, typically if we're dipping into contingency, you know, we get briefed on it. That's all. you know, that's, you know, if that's the answer, Jeff, I understand. I I vaguely recall that situation. but yeah, get back to us on that, please.
We just need to find a better place to put it. It's not It's not where it should go, but
Yep.
the treasurer and the and the Well, I mean, for me, just looking at it, literally scrolling through it tonight, that's what I've got for questions on that. Does anyone else see anything that they want to raise since we have Lisa here to help us and Jeff here to help us? All right. Hearing none. All right. So, that's budget actual. Do we have do we have the check register or is this
I wasn't sure if it it was sent. So, I did not send that.
I don't see it. if I if anybody else got it, fine. But I don't see any email about it. I know that our usual
Yeah.
person was sick yesterday.
Yes. Y
So, we just may not have it, which is unfortunate, but let's let's kick it, I guess, then to next meeting. We do what we can. so, I would say we move on. We don't have a check register. There's nothing to do on 5B. Donation request. This was something we're probably not going to take any do anything with this tonight. Lisa, you may recall we had a brief discussion about this. We had a resident in town who was asking us about could we take in credible donations. And one of the things we had talked about with our prior treasurer before they left was what could we do about this given that the town is actually attempting to consolidate its accounts as much as possible and so forth. I think given where we are in the budget process and everything that's going on, this should be tabled.
I don't I doubt we've had any chance for to get to that. so let's just kind of let's pump let's let's pump that for a month or two, get through the budget, and come back to that issue with apologies, of course, to that good town resident who wants to help our town, and here we are. We can't even figure out how to do it. so yeah, we'll we'll move on to that bathroom renovation. I haven't been focusing on that right now. I don't have an update for you. so again, I have nothing new there. I know there was some I I had heard some chatter about walkthroughs, but that's I I don't know the exact status and frankly right now the main thing with the AAS that we're working on is their budget, not not that. So again, I would propose we move on from that for now. We can come back to it. Of course, we're going to come back to it. That that's we're not we're not done with that. okay, the only other thing so new business is blank here because I mean really it's it's budget discussion. And we can do that either now or or board open discussion. unfortunately as we discussed in our last meeting in the joint meeting we don't have a lot to work with at this moment. So we can maybe have a we can maybe discuss more during board open discussion but I don't have unfortunately I didn't put on but I also don't know how much we're going to be able to do on that. So again, I would maybe move on to seven. there, and this is me, I couldn't
make the CIP meeting. I know they had one. I know there was a request from the fire department. I do not know the details. I had emailed Fred, the chair, asking for detail cuz the the minutes didn't really tell me and I haven't gotten an answer on that. So I'm going to have to come back to you guys. I don't know exactly what CIP heard and did in their meeting. Unfortunately, I was out of out of town. I was in Boston. So, I couldn't make that meeting.
so under lean reports, well, we didn't put it on there. We didn't put AHM.
You went you went you went pretty quick, Rob, on that.
Yeah.
The fire department presented a bill to CIP for 100 $100,2952 for
Okay.
the compressor to fill their tanks. So that's what they did. I'm not sure in the minutes if it got approved. So
was it a repair or is that a new item?
That's a new item.
Okay. I'm just
Can you repeat what that was and how much it was?
The compressor for filling their propane tank is the item. And Jeff, sorry. Can you repeat the number?
It's their air tanks.
Oh, they're air tanks. I apologize. I thought it was the propane. their air tanks. so I'll read it I'll read it from the notes. Fire department compressor request. Wally Barton presented a quote and answered questions from committee members. The current compressor used to fill the it's the scuba but the safety tanks for fire department members to go into buildings with their masks on. dates to 1991 1991 and some parts becoming obsolete. The committee discussed the request and decided to entertain it again in a in a future meeting pending receipt of additional quotes. So what the CIP members did was said you provided us one quote for what I told youund and $100,000 and CIP is asking them to get additional quotes and they'll they'll go back at it again.
So okay,
let's see what fire department does. Why wasn't this brought up when at the time when they were buying all the new equipment for the the face masks and all that other Sounds like it's connected, right?
It does kind of seem that way. I kind of agree with you, Liz. We'll have Wally
a little slight of hand. A little slight of hand here.
I'll ask I will try to remember to ask Wally that and on the not call it slight of hand. What I would call it is the fire department and public works are the two most capital intensive departments we have. So, the fire department will consistently come and repair their their equipment. So, whether we can spend the money at any given point in time is really the question that you guys will have to sit there and deal with. But they're always going to come. I mean, hopefully hopefully it's not I mean, we just bought a new piece of equipment, a million- dollar truck for them. They consolidated two other pieces of equipment. They've got new tanks. They're gonna they're asking for a new compressor and you can ask Wall-E at the next meeting what's next.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he's going to be presenting to us on the 4th. I will ask him about this, you know, give us the rundown. I miss the CIP Rally, so help me out. And also, yeah, what's coming down the pike for capital? And of course, this ties back to my you my desire to get our arms around what all our funds have in them now. so that we can properly figure out what we got to load in to properly save.
You'll you'll you'll be able to get all that data. The the tax collector being out on PTO has put a little crimp in other things as well. So because she's the she's the primary revenue generator. So, all of the information that has to be put into the system by Lisa and her team will get done in the next week. You'll get that information by your next meeting hopefully.
Great. And I can tell you Lisa is is up to date on I mean we do have way too many bank accounts that that will also be something that will be brought to this board. wanting to consolidate bank accounts and also try to do more with our our our stiff dollars because our interest rate is declining. So even on your budget you have $150,000 revenue line item that's probably not going to be $150,000. We're going to have to make some adjustments to that. But we do have money and other funds that if we sat there and consolidated those bank accounts, kept the funds open and understanding that that's where money is supposed to be allocated, but make ourselves make that money available to us for even a opportunity to earn interest will help us reduce taxes.
Absolutely. We want to get every dollar we can into that stiff account. lacking a packet. I don't believe we have meeting minutes to look at. So, another thing I think we have to punt.
Yeah, I did type the the little blurb to add to I think it was the December minutes that we talked about.
You had you didn't like the December minutes, the lack of detail, I think you wanted to add.
Yeah. So, and I did forward it to Marina. I think that was the process to forward it to her. And I thought we were going to have it in our packet to discuss today. if you want, I can forward you all that that blurb or we can just wait till next month. I mean, I think punting is fine.
I'm I'm fine to I'm fine to wait for that. my main concern is you know for these next four meetings is to get through everything we can and you know the meeting minutes we can we can sort later honestly unless anybody disagree I mean I don't want to run rush out here but that just seems like the right way to go to me. Yeah, meeting minutes are I mean in my opinion
they're important. It's important and and we important to get things documented but a month here or there is not going to
right we we have our meetings recorded too which helps
o okay so let's punt that so that takes us to board open discussion which so here Louise I wasn't clear did you want to talk more about AHM and this might be a good time to do it or were you good were you kind of good with what you'd given us and want us to just kind of look at that and talk about it in a further meeting. What was your thought?
I think actually it's probably best if you look at the presentation because I did ask a lot of questions in it and trusted to give me good answers. So I want everyone to kind of review it and put their own spin on it
here.
Yeah, maybe we can talk about it next time or
Oh, we can decide on it next time. That would be great to get one more thing.
Well, when is the vote? Don't we have to have two people go and vote yes or no to their budget?
I'm not sure when the vote is. I think it's more of I'll have to find that out.
Sorry.
Yeah. So I think that's why two people go and it is the budget is a 5% increase.
Yes.
over last year. It's actually a little bit over five. It's a little bit different for each town. ours I think because ours is the lowest, ours equates to the equates to the larger percentage. So, we're a little over five% increase.
I thought it was a little less than five.
he said it was a little less than five, but
he said it was a little less than, but I do the math and it's a little over.
Yeah, we have on our spreadsheet is 5.08 if that's the accurate number.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I recall. Yeah, he did say that. You're right, Heather.
As far as the voting, as far as the voting though, as I remember from last year,
I we present it to the board of finance. We look at it and we decide whether we want to go with that. That's that's our vote and that's for Andover. So, it's not it would be just me and
May, right, if she can attend the next meeting. But it's more we present it back to you guys.
When is their next meeting, Luis?
That you guys will be attending.
They didn't mention that. I I normally just get in touch with them. I mean, because Jim did not go to that first meeting when I went to this last meeting. It was an update.
Oh, Linda knows.
Linda. Linda, do you know?
I had to get the unmuted.
yeah, the meeting was and the meeting and the vote was two or three weeks ago and nobody from the town of Ando Andover, the board of selectman or the board of finance showed up. I believe the town I don't know who was contacted, but I know contacts
had been sent out.
So this by the time I heard about it, I don't I don't I think it was all over. So this was a special get together they had the other day for it was supposed to be Louise and Annne Crema and Anne wasn't there so Louise was the only one there to talk to Cress Cresa Tresa. So that's what I know right now.
So they held the vote on they held the vote for to support the budget before they did the presentation.
No, I guess there was no vote. The presentation was two or three weeks ago. I'm sorry. And nobody from the town of Andover was there,
right? There might have been a vote if they had been,
right?
Yeah. But the town of Andover can read the material and get back to the AHM and tell them how they vote.
Okay.
Right.
So I I think we're going to want to do that in, you know, the next two meetings. One of the next two meetings.
Yeah. So the the five though I think was for the three towns together. So one of them was over five, one was less. That's how we're like 4.84.
Five was the the total.
All right. Hang on.
Andover is something like 4.8 when you get down to the real nitty-gritty.
Yeah.
Okay.
So
I think five one of them was over five.
One was less. And so it comes out to 4.84 94 or something like that.
Okay. Then our then our budget spreadsheet has the wrong number. Then if that's the case,
I don't
cuz it's computing out to 5.08.
5.08 is what I computed on my own Excel like I populated into an Excel
what calculation I that's what I came out with for Andover. But the other thing too is what she had said in the presentation was that one of the towns wasn't happy with the increase with the 5ish% increase.
She didn't say which one,
but I personally think 5% is a lot. maybe I mean for us, I'm trying to remember exactly how much it is for us. Let's see. Looks like about $65,000. by the way, the number in the spreadsheet's right. According to this document I'm looking at here, the the municipal YSB formula document has us at 112389 and last year it has us at 106953. So just sorry for so $55,000 sorry of an increase. Is that right? Yeah, just about 5436. That's the Sorry. Linda, are you are you asking to join us again?
Yeah. I just, you know, I used to go to AHM and my husband's the president, so I used to be the person that went to all the oversight committee meetings and there's new people here and I don't know if they realize that this is a nonprofit organization. Most towns have to pay full price and really we're paying between the three towns only 37% of what the full bill to co run AHM you know costs. So
yeah,
you know, it might be going up 5% but we're still getting a deal.
I mean that that was always my understanding and kind of take on AHM that we're lucky we're kind of lucky to have them. But yeah,
I also understand, you know, it's a tough budget year and you you do need to ask the question. Okay. 5%
and they are nonprofit.
so they do their best with grants.
I guess the big question would be fundraisers
if we really had an issue. I mean, what's our alternatives, the realistic alternatives for going in another direction? You know, if for some reason we wanted to do that, what would that even entail? So,
you know, let's let's let's you know, we have that presentation. We should look at it
and see if we can talk about I'm guessing the 11th might be the better day for us to talk about it. The 4th, we've got two presentations, one of which is AES.
I'm just guessing that that's going to take a lot of that meeting. But if we can get to it the fourth fine, we can throw it on the agenda. And if we can't, we can boot it to the 11th and try to take action then. My only concern about that, Rob, is when when does AHM need our votes either, you know, to in support or not of that?
Yeah, I don't want to blow their timeline. I completely agree with you. I It sounds like it's a bit ad hoc because we're already kind of behind. Can you check, Louise? Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely.
because if we need if we need to take action in the fourth, then we just bite the bullet and we do that.
Okay. Okay, sounds good.
I mean, unfortunately, Liz isn't going to be there, which is the downside, but we'll have to
That's okay. I I can I can trust you all to make a good decision.
And I just have one more thing. if
I don't know how that's going to impact AES if we were to reduce the but reduce it or even stop doing that because they get that one and a half percent one and a half people during the week as support. So I'm not sure.
Right.
Well, there's a discussion we can try to remember to bring that up with Valerie on the 4th. and I'm not
because I know I've talked to her about AHM before, but I don't rec you know, there's a lot of information and I don't know if I've retained it all, so it's probably best to ask the question.
Okay.
Sorry, Louis. Go ahead. Liz, go ahead. I apologize.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I'm not suggesting we opt out of AHM. I'm not saying that at all. Just I want to be clear about that.
Okay. If anything, my point is, do we want to support the 5% increase or do we like one of the other towns say it's a little bit high?
Right.
That's that's all.
I wouldn't be surprised if Hebrin had an issue just because they're like half of the budget.
Yes.
They've got such a bigger town.
Well, yeah. I think I think Hebrin's staring down a large ed increase as well.
yeah,
I I can't remember the the number, but I think their their board of ed is coming in pretty high, too. So, I wouldn't be surprised situation.
My other thing about the AHM is since I'm not going to be here next week because I'll be on a cruise ship and most likely won't be calling in. and I know my only thought about AHM is I know that in past years they had I don't know 5 days a week they had assistance there in the school in AES
but in the past three years they cut that back to the the minimum which is we get a person and a half is it a day I mean I'm sorry a day and a half
a week a day and a half a week
of is it mental health a mental health provider or
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I think it is. It's either out or evaluations. Linda, do you have details that?
hi. Yeah. since the current administrator whatever Valerie
superintendent
she's the one that put it down to the smallest limit that the schools has to have. And again, it's per state statute that we have a mental health or my mind's gone, but yeah, so she cut it down to the minimum.
So that's why you had more before Valerie. I don't know her reasoning, but you did have additional services before she was here.
She may have shifted some over to the school psychologist or something. I we can ask her about that. I I I feel like I've talked to her about that. I just cannot access that brain cell right now. So, apologies.
Actually, can let's bring it up on the fourth, guys.
Can I ask Linda one last question, Linda? Because they reduced it down to that. is that the money that the town is putting in for that paying for that person for that day and a half of that person? pay for that day and a half, but you're also paying for help at the high school, too.
Okay.
So, our bill includes the elementary school, the junior high, and the high school.
Okay?
But the elementary school is not asking for additional services. They just have the smallest available to me. And of course and of course ahm does the evals for you know birth to three
as well
just just so I understand I mean the this bill looks like it's being generated off of our number of students.
So
it is
I mean there's no there's no
adjustment for the limiting of the services that we receive it there's
because there's still the junior high and the high school.
Yeah. But what I'm saying students.
What I'm saying, what I'm asking is
if the bill is based upon students and we would be,
you know, you're not giving us a reduced rate because we're only taking a day and a half.
If you pro I can't look at it, but if you looked at the bill from before Val and then after Val, you might see it four or five years ago. But I'm no longer attend the the AHM meetings and I just know that but it's all and but then the whole bill if it's $10,000 to run or $10 million to run AHM they they figure out like we're a third and somebody else is a quarter and somebody else is whatever.
I mean
d that's how they apply the bill. I got it. And and I would just tell the board that, you know, the bill five years ago was 89,000. The current bill that they're asking for is $112,000.
Well, I I know also that the services have increased at the
Yeah, this is the thing that I think Louise sent around today
kind of showing and the one thing about this is this this is just Andover. It doesn't show us the other towns, but it shows kind of our usage
rising.
I guess the thing to to think about would be okay, but what how does that compare visav Hebra and Visa V Marra?
Okay. If
I don't know if we can get that
something used to say municipal services or formula or something and I'm just trying to think off the top of my head. It did list all the towns and what the t the population and the cost for all the towns.
We have we have that and we have this other thing called Andover resident usage fiscal years 2013 2014 and fiscal year 2015 2024 2025. Sorry, I'm probably getting the numbers messed up. And the secondary document is is not a budgetary document. It's a document that gives us kind of numbers for people served over a fiscal course of a fiscal year in Andover.
Yes.
And you see it's rising.
Yeah. Right.
The thing I guess to to kind of go with what Jeff's talking about or and Liz is asking about would be is if if I assume there's a comparable document for Hebrin and a comparable document for Marro and you could kind of like look and see okay is is the levy division that's kind of it seems like a quick and dirty of way of doing it the way they do it which is just the based on the number of students. I don't know how much difference it would make, but if you if you had the data for usage rates in both towns, maybe you could make some argument that well,
okay,
based on Steve if it was included in the packet and if it wasn't, I can have Tresa send it to Louise or she can talk to Tresa and get it. If it wasn't included in your packet,
that would be great. just so we you know just forformational purposes I'm certainly not proposing anything at this time but
it sort of speaks to that question I think if what's the actual usage rate versus just a just kind of just doing it based on a ratio of what your student populations are.
Yeah. But I I guess I don't know. I'm just trying to think back. I I'm just going to pick a number. 20 years ago they were trying to figure figure out a rule to how to divide it between the towns
and that made the most sense.
Oh, I I you know, again, I'm not proposing that we do it a different way. I'm saying that
I guess I'm saying that just from a getting information standpoint so that you could even think about whether it makes even a lick of sense to talk about doing it that way.
Let's get the info and then can noodle around about it. But I mean, my personal take on ahm has always been very positive. I, you know, I remember when my kids were toddlers and we, you know, went to some stuff with them and had them evaluated for this or that and, so I personally think they're a valuable service, but yeah, we're we're looking at every component of this budget in a year that we know is going to be tough. So,
well,
I I hope I hope nobody takes this attack. It's not meant that way.
No, it's too expensive for the town to go out on their own. even Columbia
Colia's grade school and I don't know if they have junior high school
they actually buy services from AHM because it was cheaper for them. They're better economically than going out and getting their own clinical staff,
right? Having their own school psychologist and maybe assistant or whatever they'd need to to hit whatever they need to by statute. If that's the case,
if if if that is the case, can you get a full budget for them? Because what we got is just how they calculated out the Andover, Hein, and Marboral amounts, but if there's extra, that would be helpful to have the full budget like this is what we're spending, this is what we have coming in from the three towns, from other towns.
I don't know, Louise. Yeah, there's this there's a pie chart. It doesn't give you real
a lot of that.
Say that again, Louise.
I'll ask Tresa that.
Okay. Thank you.
I get it from her.
Yeah. The only thing that I see in the annual report that they sent us that Louise shared with us, I think it was you know, town municipal support is 43% of their budget, 43.2%. And then they've got grant money and they've got program revenue/personal service agreements. And I bet you that's 28.2% of their revenue. I bet you that's where that is. If they're, you know, if they're getting money from Colombia or what have you.
And those personal service agreements are the ones that if you wanted to do more than a day and a half, you would be paying the school would be paying it out of their budget. They would have to set up one of those agreements. So that's the money that's coming in.
Yes. And Hebrin has extra services and if if you want
pay for borrow borrow too,
right?
Yep.
I'll ask.
Yeah. My question is my question and since I'm not going to be here I'll throw that out there is are there are there services that AHM can provide that might take the place of other services like I know they've got at AES so they used to have a person in there five days a week it's been cut down would it save them any money you know say from a psychologist standpoint instead of hiring a full-time person with benefits and whatnot, you know. I don't know. Maybe it would be just as much or more. Just thinking out loud.
No, definitely. We can definitely raise that. I I'm with Valerie on the fourth. that seems like a perfectly reasonable question. I I feel like I've asked it before and I just for the life of me I can't remember her answer. So, hey, better to hear it in front of the whole board anyway. rather than have me try to relay it and it's a game of telephone. okay. So, we'll try to get a little more info on that. I will we'll we'll put it on our agenda. We'll hope to continue to get through that and hopefully get ahm an answer soon so they're not just
waiting on us. you know, we don't want to be the only people up against it from a scheduling standpoint. I don't know what their schedule exactly is, but we should find out too long. Yeah, let let us know.
Okay.
let's see. Yeah, I don't Their annual report is only three pages. It didn't really It was more of an infographic than anything. So, yeah, we'll see what we can get. all right. So, as a board, I mean, I'm reluctant to start trying to chew through the budget spreadsheet that we have at this time. One one part of me would like to start chipping away at it, but part of me is like that, you know, these numbers have to be tightened up. There's a lot of question marks here. and I don't know how much value we add by starting our process now on this
spreadsheet. You know what I mean? any thoughts on that? I don't I don't want to be the only one, you know, just taking control of this. If if people think that we can get into this thing and, you know, do something useful, then I'm willing to spend a little time on it tonight. what are your thoughts? What do you think, Liz? do we want to just maybe review it a little bit so that maybe the newer people could take the newer people
Nick and Heather can Nick and Heather can kind of if they have any questions they can ask and then maybe they kind of go over it on their own. How does everybody feel about that? I mean, not to drag out the meeting, but
I'm happy to do a high level kind of review of it. And and one thing I will mention to you guys, and I kind of brought this up in in the prior meeting, is that this isn't kind of the full spreadsheet that we're used to getting. This is a preliminary document, and the full spreadsheet usually has more tabs and more calculations and everything, and we'll get there, right? So, for now, we're just looking at the first pass really, right? And some of the numbers that are in here may be more solid than others, but yeah. So we have as you see at the top of this document does everybody have it up and available or should do say a sh do a share screen share.
Yeah. Can we do can we do a screen share and I mean I I thought I had it's open in it's in Excel right?
Yeah I we got it by Excel. I have mine up. I don't know. Let me look. I am such a technical wizard here. oh share. Let's see if I can do it. sending a request to share.
You got this.
I think Jim may have to let me do it.
I'm looking for the
I think I can allow you.
You're good. Try.
Okay. let's see. Presenter layout content only. I don't know here. Let's do this and we'll see how this goes. I'll just do this. Okay. Can we see this? Is it reasonably accessible to you? Sorry.
Yeah, that's good.
I'm going to put this down. So, get out of Get out of the way. okay. So, this is this is what we've got. And I should add that this number here I fixed. This is my copy. I think Oh, no. Is it? Yes, I think I did fix this. I had there's a couple tabs. This is prelim budget summary, which is the tab when you open it first. This is what comes up. But it's fed by this. The first tab, which is prelim budget. This is the detail. Okay. let me go up to the beginning of this one. starts with revenue. mostly of course that's our taxes. the only thing that I don't think we've usually done with revenue and I want to ask the treasur about at some point is where we account for or if we account for something like Town Aid Road. But in the revenue, typically what we've got is our our tax money and then there's revenue I think another revenue line later that gets us our that puts in the ECS money which is a big chunk of money over $2 million for education cost share that we use for our educ you know to throw at our education costs. sorry I'm scrolling too fast. Let me go back up. Intergovernmental revenues is
probably where that is. Yes, ECS funds. As you can see, there's our $2 million there. most of these other ones are pretty small. As you can see, I think these these all look like they're either flat. I don't know if these are even projections or if these are just they haven't been changed. and they're and that's exactly what we're going to get. The one that I'm not as familiar with is this one 23 MRSA revenue sharing. So at some point in this process I may ask about that. that seems to account for
maybe the whole jump in revenue almost.
So
yeah, I wonder what that is.
yeah, we may we may want to come back to if anybody can chime in with if they know what that is. otherwise maybe for another meeting if you could.
That is a definitive. We did get a notice from that and alls it says is supplemental revenue sharing
and MRSA can I'm sorry. Can you remind me what the acronym is?
because I don't know.
Municipal. I don't know, Jeff, if you know that. Municipal Regional. I don't I'm not even sure.
All right.
Let's investigate.
What? Jim,
municipal revenue sharing account is a program
that provides funding to municipalities based on their property tax revenue. Oh, is that like a Is that when they made the change to the car taxes?
Yeah, apparently. Yeah,
that's what it was. They remember they capped the mill rates on car taxes and then there was push back from a lot of towns about that and I think this was the solution.
That might make sense.
So, that is the amount that they've said for 27. So, the governor's proposed
27 budget. Yep.
Should it pass? Yeah,
which is always the tricky bit. Some of these numbers, guys, and this is something our newer members may or may not be aware of, but there it is often the case that we finalize our budget. It is almost always the case that we finalize our budget before the Connecticut State Legislature and the governor have sorted their stuff out. And so there is always a certain amount of uncertainty. Sound like Dick Cheney, known unknowns. you know, where you think you know, but you don't know for absolutely certain. And sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and take take a chance and we should be conservative with those kinds of numbers.
Yeah. Yeah. I know I just noticed the ECS funds.
Yep.
I don't think that's correct. 2526. I don't think that's correct. 501,000.
This is This one's This is revenue versus expenditure
so far.
Yeah, that's what that's in progress.
That's this year. That's this year. Never mind. actually this is last year's actual sorry
I'm going backwards I'm like okay I'm looking at previous
yeah honestly this column is confusing it's it keeps it keeps confusing me and I go back to the heading and I'm like right okay I get it but it it keeps doing the same thing to my brain Liz
okay
it gives you elements maybe we should move it I don't know
but now that we know I'm fine yeah
and and as we discussed I guess this number is flat we're not you know that's that's pretty much what we're going to get. but you know, okay, good. We get a little bit of money there. That's nice. let's see. This is all I don't know if this is accurate, if this is just building out from last year and and just assuming that because we don't have a difference of projection, but these are all exactly the same.
Yep. It's just from last year,
right? So, I don't know if these numbers are really the numbers. So, we'll maybe move on interest. Jeff talked about this this, you know, look, if the interest rate in this stiff account drops, maybe we don't get that. If we get more money into the account to compensate for that, maybe we can get back to that number. are we on track? Sorry, I, you know, because the fiscal year, it always breaks my brain a little bit. The 86,814 that we have, this is through the end of January, right? If we extrapolate outwards, are we going to make it to our 150 that we were expecting for last year's budget?
Where are you?
I am in investment interest.
Okay.
And you've got, you know, there's the 7125 to 13126 number in there at 86,814.
Now, that's
not
six months, right?
Seven. seven seven so and of course if the interest rates changing I don't know that I could we can't just extrapolate straight from that so maybe I'm asking a difficult question but
you know are we going to make it to 150
you're you're going to be close and the issue is going to be how much money we have to move back and forth like right now we can't move any money because we can't move any money back and forth we're going to get there and it's that is really going to be the key. So, the interest rate is declining slightly and it's all about how much money we keep there.
So,
now what do you mean by moving back and forth?
We have multiple bank accounts and for years we've been trying to consolidate down and get as much we can into our stiff account. And the the thing that's confusing and and and again for for Nick and Heather's benefit, there's a difference between the word account and the word account and the word fund, right? You could have an account with tons of money in it, but that account that that account has months that we're tracking for eight different funds, right, that we use in town. And in the past, in the distant past anyway, we had a bad habit of every fund we had had its own darn bank account and it was all these little checking accounts and it was not the way to do it. We've done
I think we've made a lot of progress on that, but I don't think we're done. But Lisa can speak to that as she gets more and more into this. I think right now I don't know if you're in position to
Yeah, I will tell you Am I muted? No, I will.
No, you're not.
Okay, I will tell you that there are still entries to be made, but because I have not received a report, I cannot do it. I've reconciled the banks through December. I'm still missing something from a department. and then this will be updated. So, this is not this is only updated till partially December 31st. So, you may, like Jeff said, you may still get there and I'll know better once I get that report.
Okay.
Rob, can you can you scroll up just a little bit?
Sure. How far up you want me to go?
the ECS funds.
Yeah. Here. So, if that's if that's 501,000 for 7 months, how does that get to
Yeah. to
I don't know that it come I don't know that it comes in. It might be a little irregular and we may we may have gotten something that hasn't come through yet based on what Lisa just said. I don't know. Lisa, do you have a thought on that?
let me look at that and see what's in that figure. But I
can't remember how many installments we typically get, but that number suggests four.
Is four, right? So,
and so we should be at two,
right? And at this point when this was January 31st, if that wasn't because let me look right now and I'm looking
231.
I strongly suspect that the date we've got
when this was Yeah. When this was done yours was done, there's now been another 501,000. So, right now 1.02, right? Okay. 02. Yep. Right.
Thank you.
Yep. Good catch. I thought it was something like that and I guess I just moved on. So anyway, all right. Anyway, that so that obviously look this is by far and away our our big number. these numbers we'll have to tighten up to see if we think these all need to be left here based on past experience. But as an example,
like look at that, right? versus what was budgeted. We're we're already we're in seven months in. So, I'm not quite sure what's going on with clerk fees, but
okay, remember we just talked about that.
We did. We did. Sorry.
So, we're looking into that because we agree there. It does look a little off. So,
that looks wonky. So, we'll figure it out.
Yeah.
And then at the same token, trans the next line, transportation transfer station is the other way. So, maybe there's something going on there, right? That would be that would be logical,
right? See what that column does for you, Rob.
It makes you stop and think. That's what that
he moment I complain about it. There it is. There it is. I got it. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll take I'll take
It just kind of brings you to reality to this situation you're
No, no, no, it's a very good column. I think it was just where it's placed that
Yeah.
Just screwed up my brain. so right okay so then we get down to that's our total revenue projection and again there's some numbers in there that are not necessary so don't take this here as gospel this increase
but we're projecting you know it's it's not a huge amount of money either way but we're looking at 12.8 in revenue basically and then from here on out we're into expenditures right the obvious two big ones the schools this is as I mentioned this is the corrected you can see I copied and pasted it I had it from an email with it underlined so you can tell me that's me monkeying around but that is the right number I promise so that's the change for our levy to RAM 2.9 is the you know unless the RAM board event makes another change which I I don't know that it would happen. That's where we are at with RAM provided it were to pass referendum and that accounts by the way their ops and their capital budgets which are voted on separately. So there's always that possibility to to keep in mind AES which we've extensively discussed that's the that's the ask we'll be talking to them next week. this is just the calculation which we know and then this aggregates them as you can see and then the rest from here on out until we get to the bottom where this gets added back in this is now line by line every town department and I you know this one the for me the one that's obvious here is for you you know this this here we talked about this in the last meeting assistant and project manager or one assistant or whatever. It's been talked about for
years. when Eric was here, for sure, there was, you know, repeated discussion of help with project management for for things like writing grant applications and whatnot. I remember that was one of his things that he felt like he couldn't get to enough. So, Borisman will take that up and we'll wait to hear more. this here, I don't know if this is this salary line item for the town administrator themselves is a this is just a placeholder number, a guesstimate, not something that's been seriously discussed. Is that true, Jeff? Because we're hiring somebody new. I don't know.
that salary is going to be a question mark. It could go higher, it could go lower. that's something the board of selectmen, we haven't talked about it. I talked about that with Lisa today as to what that should be. But until the board of selectman meets and until they hire someone
Yep.
understand.
I just want to characterize it for people on the board. Would it be fair to say that we see in this in this percent change for personnel stuff if we see 3% 3% 3% 3% these are kind of TBDs?
You have certain numbers there.
Some of them are contractual, right? Some of them are contractual, but they're not. They're We have tried to do a pretty good job at the town as to the the union contracts of only being 3%. But each one of those lines needs to be adjusted. That's why we are working on the fullblown payroll summary similar to what you had in your document last year with all of the line ite all the the departments and you know are they salary are they hourly what's the increase contractually what's the increase that the town wants to offer non-UN employees and we'll have that all built and drop into what you're looking at right here. Okay. so this is a small line item, but I the thing that jumps out at me is is our friend this this column again. So we have this apparently a grant a line supported by $5,500 grant for historical document restoration and we had a budget. Oh, I see. We had a budget of zero. Hence, we spent zero. Sorry, this budget increase. So this this number isn't a 0% increase. It's infinite. We're increasing from 0 to 6,500 here. Okay. So this would be in addition to the grant. So you'd have this would put
together would get you to 12,000. Is that am I is that netted out or is this with the grant and we are only putting in a thousand?
Where are you at? What are you down?
Sorry. Sorry. We are under town clerk. The last line of town clerk historical document restoration. If you if you if you look at that, that's it's a and we got to make sure that we have the grant because what I would do is go back up to the top and go, is there that grant even listed there? But in my head, Rob, what that is is if they're getting a grant, they're sitting there saying that that the historical document work is being done in the clerk. In the past, I know and if Carol was on, she'd she'd be much more apt to explain, but they did a lot of scanning of documents so that they could sit there and keep some of the documents that they had previously, old documents on digital and we need to look at that. So, I wouldn't focus that if that's supported by a
grant, then
the grant might the grant might require that we actually do something with it.
It does not. Can I I'm sorry. Can I just
Please do Carol. Jump in.
There's I questioned that last year because it was always $1,000. So, that $5,500 grant should not be in there. It should be listed and reported the following year if the grant is actually applied for because one year they did not the state when there was they needed more money. They did away with that grant. So it should not be realist listed there because the people are being taxed on $5,500. it it should go back to $1,000 and then if the grant is applied for received should be reported the year that it is received because it depends too on the time of year that you apply for it. If you apply in the spring, you will not get that money until the following fiscal year. So there's there's two application periods, fall and spring. And if you apply for it, you will get it as long as it the funds are there. But it should not be listed. That should go back to the $1,000 because the town always funded $1,000 for that because if we get a $5,500 grant and our project is $6,000, we had that money in there to make up the difference. Okay, because now looking at this again, as I had myself all turned around, it looks like we budgeted 6,500 last year and haven't spent a dime. At least according to this,
they
so something's off there.
They did do that. They did do that, but because the what was spent was just a $5,500 grant. So,
okay, we'll have to figure that we're gonna have to figure that one out. We'll put a little.
Yeah, nothing has been spent this year.
Okay. okay. right. So now, sorry, moving on. Obviously, this is again a lot of salary stuff that we don't really know necessarily. This is I imagine this is one of those it is what it is issues. you got to maintain your software and the contract is I assume this is the best we can do and so we're being asked to increase this a little bit. It's not it's not a ton of money. It's a by percentage it's high for the tax collector's office. again it's again these are software maintenance and salary. That's pretty much the the whole shebang the software contracts do seem to jump up, huh? registars, I think we talked a little bit about this in the wanting a little bit more in here, but again, ultimately a modest relatively modest increase. I don't know. Again, some of these numbers are just flat 3%. I don't know if those are contractual or not. I think these would be non mileage big jump off supply. I mean again big jump but in in the context of it being $100 and remember in you know for elections you know obviously we've expanded things
with elections and based on expanding you know early voting and everything like that.
What's the mileage for for the registars? Is that for training, driving to training and whatnot? Anybody know?
Yes, it is for driving for training. It's in the document that they've provided to tell us why they're asking for a little bit more money.
Okay. I I don't know if I saw that
document. Yeah, there was
it was sent tonight in those attachments.
Yeah, this is it's
department info sheets. This one here, department info sheets. Oh,
and in here there's a registar's document.
Okay.
I have not had a chance
I haven't I didn't have a chance to look at it, but this is the explanation.
It's a onepage document.
Conferences increase by 100
mileage increase to further differences to conference. Yep,
there it is. So, I think this did go out to our full board. So, you guys should all have it. It's just I think it was easy for me to bring up quickly.
Yep.
Let me know when you're good, Liz, and I'll back.
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. oops. There. Back to here. Okay. So, that's elections. builder department. This is a not a huge one. Yeah. This is all basically salary stuff. Yep. Yep. tenant office building. So this is you know again this is going to be salary and maybe some supply and contract stuff. Oh this is literally this isn't the this is none of this is this the salary. Sorry. This is all services stuff. Okay. This is actually a decrease right now. Hopefully that's real.
The main thing as you may note is this right here. We did upgrade some things in the town hall. So
yes. Yeah. And I don't know if that's why, but
we did a heat pump system, hybrid heat pump system. I'm
guess I did a forecast. Yeah. And again, I looked at what we spent so far this year in that column and I said, "Well, this isn't going to even we don't even need what's in the budget." So, I forecasted the number of months left.
Yeah. If you look at that Yeah. You know, again, that the modern heat pumps have gotten more and more impressive. I say this as somebody who just spent a ton of money putting them into my own house, so I hope that's true, but it does seem to be true. and huzzah. Also, if memory serves, it's a hybrid system. So, when it was really cold that week, I mean, maybe you guys actually switched over to propane. I know it has that capability. but that's pro that would be that's makes total sense that number should drop. That's exactly what we want to see. advertising looks like we're just staying flat. Looks like we're spending well actually I don't know if this is a seasonally really seasonal thing because of budget votes or or election time and otherwise we don't really do much of it but we're almost expended there.
So
insurance I assume this is this is not this is not health this is all the other insurance. This is Kerma. This is like property casualty.
I don't know if we're comps under here. That kind of stuff.
Yep. Yep. And we haven't heard from them yet, so I don't have an update on that.
I would say since I work in the insurance industry, this number is almost certainly going to rise. How much it will rise is your guess. I doubt it's as bad as what the schools are seeing and what the town's dealing with at the 15% with the health insurance consortium, but it's I also sincerely doubt it's going to come in flat. So, let's mentally put an asterisk on that one right there. And this is benefits. And this is where you're going to get. wow, that's a it's a nice jump.
yeah. I wonder why.
We're still working on that. That's Jeff and I are still working on that. We talked about it being a little high. So maybe it won't be that much. But it all depends that is all dependent upon what you end up with a pay for a payroll.
Right. Exactly. Because it's it everything you do to salary then propagates down to benefits. And so
because it's all keying off that salary number. So and then this one we all know about. This is the one we've talked about for months now.
that's hitting everybody.
Yeah. Yeah.
this is the retirement. Doesn't look bad. Hopefully that's a good number.
Don't believe any of them.
Yep. Okay. So, so this is the this is a we're walking you through here, but yeah, take this all with a grain of salt, folks. Sorry. but maybe there's some value in just seeing this seeing it and going through it a little bit.
I mean, center this one in particular has to be discussed by boardman. Sorry, Jeff. Go ahead. It's like the health insurance. Some of the I I think we're going to be low from the town perspective on health insurance this year. basically because of who left and who was taking insurance and you know so that that summary will be will be prepared. But take all of this with a grain of salt until we can get all of the payroll information put together.
Absolutely. and now if I'm correct, you know, the staffing levels at the community center and whatnot, that's another thing that is pending discussion and decision. Yep. Okay. We'll leave that at that then. There's nothing much to say about that because it's not really real yet. janitorial supplies, I guess. Whoa. I mean, this is this is a nitpick, of course, but that's what we do here. You know, it looks like we haven't really spent much.
The kitchen is not operational. We need
we need to put in the hood and the venting system and everything.
There you go. Yep.
Okay. Okay. Fair. town garage. Not a lot going on there. Actually, it's a drop. Hopefully, that's true. fuel, oil, electricity. Love to see it. Excited to be a part of it. Let's do it.
Rob, for a second,
could I just go back to the advertising? There's two $300 entries for job postings that are in the advertising totaling $600. So, that's probably
we are in fact posting for lots of positions, aren't we?
Yeah. Probably that's probably why.
Yeah, that is.
And a lot of your activity was back in November. So,
right. Well, maybe. So, something to think that, you know, not that this is a pig light item, but, you know, we may end up over there. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. where were we? We were town garage.
what was I? Sorry. oh, yeah, we talked about general. Okay. Town garage. I don't see a ton here. You had talked about this one already, so not much to say. You already brought it up. thanks again. Like I said, this is great.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yep. Be nice when this is finally done. But, you know, there's not again not not a lot going on there.
no, sorry. This is the one I'm thinking of, isn't it?
This is the one I'm thinking of. The old firehouse. So, we we're dropping this. That's good. Again, it's just electricity for like an alarm system, right? Maybe some lighting. I forget. Anyway, let's see.
Auditor. here's one where I would think to myself, are we going to get that flat? Probably not.
I don't know. We don't do multi-year contracts with them, do we? The auditor?
I've done them in the past. I don't know yet. I haven't dug in. And I don't know if Jeff knows
I remember, you know, this has been going up. It's not I mean it's not going up as you can see. It's not going up at like this dramatic rate, but it has gone up each year. So this is last year's number. It may this may you may have to consider that number to be low.
It's possible. I did it. I've done a five-year contract before, but I don't, you know, I don't know.
We've had we've we've had trouble getting our auditors, so I don't know. So, I I think we're year to year with them. That's my guess, but we should look into it. Dennis's retainer. That's in Oh, and and that needs to go up. I don't I don't think that's all Dennis. I tell you, Dennis's retainer needs to go up. So, we'll we'll put in for that one. So, we have other attorneys we have on retainer.
Well, that stuff like I I'm not sure who's all included in that. Like, if you could look, Lisa, in that line item for legal retainer just to say who's in it.
yeah, let me look. Let's pull it back up. Retainer. attorney Dennis O'Brien, Kanan Escalera, and male. And those are the only two that are in there.
And
I don't know that other one.
So the other one was that was related to employment issues.
Okay.
Right. so Lisa, that's one that we need to look at.
Okay. the appropriate line item that it's going in.
Okay.
Right. Even if we need to create a new line item because there's a retainer which is a flat number and then legal services and we probably should create additional accounts. This is looks like a guest. We bounced around a bit and we don't seem to have spent anything on it this year for the town engineer. but in the past, as you can see, we've spent more than 10,000, but we put we looks like we budgeted 10,000 and haven't spent anything.
Yeah,
that's right.
Yeah, I'm just double checking into February. Yeah. No, we haven't spent anything yet this year.
Okay.
And you have to remember that Eric was leaving and the projects we had going on were the bridge. So, I'm sure that Eric had some some projects that he was expecting to use.
Probably more from a standpoint of surveying work, you know, that type of work. we've got a decrease here.
That's That's only right.
That's only one of the three groups. So, we've only received, I believe, the Crag bill that you have,
right?
We haven't received the bill or the expected cost for CCM or cost,
right? because they're all see the line the descriptive line there and it says capital C O CG CCM and cost and it's only one that I've
right so one out of the three yeah I'm guessing yeah okay yep
I know something came up about the animal control in town
what where do we land on that because I know
they the the description we got I think in the last meeting was that originally we were going to just be cut loose, right? Deal with it yourselves.
And there was push back and now the the difference well we'll keep you on but we're jacking the cost way up.
It's it's lower on the report.
Yep. So we'll get to that
on Oh it's still to come. We haven't gotten there.
Oh, it's lower on this this budget.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Gotcha.
You know what? I don't want to lose place. Let's
public works.
Yeah, we'll get to it. It's there. But yeah, the the narrative answer is that
hey increased their their billing to us. You know, they're saying we're just going to charge you a lot more.
Great.
Yeah. Well, the other option was even worse, I think. So,
I know I know. Build a facility, hire people.
Let's not take these necessarily as set in stone or anything. we need to get updated info. this one I guess is real because it's per contract.
Snow removal OT. So, this one is, as we just discussed, this is going up because this isn't through like we're already here, right? And we just had another snowstorm and so we're going to be well over there. So, we have to decide whether we increase this budget or we say, "Okay, we had a bad year, but we're through it." And
you know, we've had years where, look at this. Right.
Yeah. It's right now it's over by $17,000, the end of February. That that date there, January. Yeah. But I mean, I don't know how many no more storms you're going to get. This is this is throw a dart at a board stuff in terms of budgeting because it's all dependent on
the weather and you could have a freak storm and
all of a sudden you're behind. so we'll just have to
throw our dart at the board and decide, you know, do we want to make this 25? Do we want to make it 30? And roll the dice. We we'll see. but we'll see. We'll get more updated figures on this. So, we have, you know, one thing you could do whether it's really advisory advisable to do is you you could take the three year once we have this number, you know, up, you could do a three-year rolling average kind of thing and and use that as your guesstimate.
I think it's interesting if you look at the sand.
Yeah, we don't always buy it. We don't always We weren't using a ton of sand for a while.
Sand. I'm sorry. Yeah, I meant salt. Oh yeah,
we've only spent 17,000
because that women delivering,
right?
Right. Wait, do we not pay till delivery? Is that it?
I mean, there was a delivery in January of 17,000 and then your delivery in February was only 3,000.
So, they're only giving you a minimum.
It was
the delivery in February was also 17,000.
So,
I don't I there's one in January. I don't see one, Jeeoff. if there's one. It's just it's not entered into the system yet.
we discussed it this afternoon. It was an issue on the input. So
Okay. Okay.
So what what you're seeing is Salt is going to pick up because he's going to he's going to attempt to fill his shed to get ahead of next year. I might sit there and work with him a little bit, but he does have orders on on ready to go. And the other thing is you're gonna see an increase in sand because he mixed the sand and the salt. So you'll see a lot of sand around on the roads which you haven't seen in past years.
And that was just to try to extend our salt stock.
Yep.
I think that's a wonderful idea. I I'm sure there's some ying and yang to it. I know obviously nothing about it, but I looked at the cost of sand compared to salt and
it's awful messy. Yeah. Yeah, I get. Well, they're going to come and sweep anyway at the end of the season, right? Regardless.
Yeah. I I get it. Obviously, we'll have some spring stuff feeding into this, but it looks like we might be coming under here. for mowing. Beautification. Apparently, we've spent almost nothing. but in the past, we've spent it's bounced around.
You got to watch beautifification is going to go up because they're going to put the other sign in
the sign. Yep.
All right. And your mowing contracts are going to kick in in the spring.
So those are for the the field down along hill and
yep
some of the side roads the side issues that were being mowed the small spaces. So anyway you have that and you have the sign that's going to go in. So those I imagine will get closer to the budget.
So those might be these might be reasonable.
You got mulch coming too. Yeah, probably. I mean there was a couple times of mulch last year. I don't know if you'll do it this year but that's in there too,
right? More electricity savings. Huzzah.
Wait, another question about the beautifification, Jeff. Yes. Just quickly, I know
last year when that sign went in or the year before, whenever it was, there was discussion about the way it was oriented.
And I know that I remembered them saying, "Oh, yeah, they'll fix it." Because it's it's facing the road and it should be it should be like perpendicular so that when you're driving by you see the sign. And I just wondered if you had heard anything more about that if I mean, is it a done deal?
It's not not two-sided.
Oh, it's not. Oh, I thought they were gonna make it two-sided. I thought they were gonna come in and do the other side. No,
no, they were going to do a an angle, but what they've decided to do and what's been decided to do is put another sign down the other end of the of Route Six. So,
like an in and out.
So, well, actually, they're going to both be ins to be really honest. Just coming into the center of town. What we should do is spend some money on that concrete wall and do a mural. So, we got to find a grant related to an artistic mural to put on that concrete wall. and then maybe sit there and put in a nice, you know, wall seating area so people can go up and hang out on the trail.
That would be nice.
We'll figure it all out, but it's got to be done with grant money because that's how most of the stuff is got done.
So,
yeah. Okay. I was just curious. I
was remembering things.
When you have the library come in, ask ask Kathy D. Roger should because her and Elaine Bukard have been spearheading that time.
Oh, I should talk to I should talk to Bill and Kathy about when we have her can get her in.
Yeah. Well, we need Bill back. Get get his butt back from vacation. Get him on there.
Yeah. You know,
she's usually in the background. We can just go. Hey. All right. So, looking at the transport station here. it sure looks like we're headed for an overage. No, no, no. I'm sorry. No, that's my own eyes betraying me. No, we're doing fine. 117, not 171. Scared myself there. My bad. Sorry, everybody. electricity again. You know, this is our this is our bright spot.
It's buggy. We keep seeing it. Tremendous. we obviously these are last year's numbers and looking at past years it's they've actually gone up so I would assume that these are preliminary placeholders and that these are not necessarily real if you look at so here we went we were at 2500 then we're at 2800 then we're at 3600 although The actual expenditure isn't that bad.
Yeah.
In fact, we've got zero for has waste. Maybe these maybe these numbers Oops. Let's not do that. Maybe these numbers are going to be okay. We'll see.
But something to look at, I guess. yeah, let's let's let's come back to that, I guess. So this is the trooper. This is like we talked about this before. We're kind of at the mercy of the the state troopers here. We we don't get to pick our trooper. right
and we pay what they tell us to pay basically.
So and it depends on seniority of the trooper if memory serves. And
you know sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we don't
right and we can't say we want a newbie. Nope. you get
no the union I think they get to put in for it and it's based on you know who wants it seniority wise
Rob if you want to go back to that recycling
yes this year
last year's bill was in May
so that's probably why
eah thank you that will do it so yeah maybe this is probably okay but at the same time since we've seen rises in the past we might want to think of these is potentially low. All right. So, trooper fire mission. well, this is just
Well, we got to talk to W.
They'll give us that number, right?
Yeah. Well, is coming in on the 4th, so
Okay.
Yeah, that is his number for this year. That's the number he said.
Yep. 169. Yep.
I mean, obviously remember that that department the the the real meat of of their spending is often not this number, but rather capital.
Yeah. This is I mean volunteer fire department. There's not a lot here. These numbers are exactly last year's numbers. I don't know if that's right.
Well, that's what he submitted. He just wants to fill that position. So,
okay.
Yep.
As long as that's up to date, it's fine. yeah, these are these are no changes.
I have a question.
Yeah. for the fire marshall. Can we Is it possible to do shared services with another town for that instead of having one person?
I thought we were getting a really kind of good deal already with him.
Jeff,
we'll look into it. We'll we'll look into it, Louise. But if memory serves me is that we we tried to sit there and do something like that and it was difficult to sit there and try to fill that spot and you know the fire department has done a pretty good job of working with us to fill that that spot. So
kay
so here we finally get to animal control. I I don't see an increase here. I thought we talked about how it was going to be going way up.
Let me look at the
That doesn't look bad at all.
No, it's it's this can't be right because we just got told that
Yeah,
we're not getting our old number.
Yep. This was We've gotten this since Did I not put that in? Hold on. Look at the email. Yeah. Now they're saying 19,602.
Oh,
you know,
all in all,
sorry.
All right. 19,602.
Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's a big jump, but you know what?
I mean, we can't do it ourselves. This is the reality.
Do it ourselves. It's a bargain.
It's frustrating that, you know, but
Yeah. Yeah.
And if we can look into we can think about it as a as a long-term
Yeah.
What can we do? But
we couldn't hire someone for that.
We'd have to build a facility.
Yeah.
Correct. And it has requirements like code requirements that
weing building a completely new facility, I think.
So this is like a dog warden and everything. Okay.
Animal. Well, yeah, that essentially. Yes. I'm sure they do more than dogs, but yeah,
like foxes and stuff that come,
but I expect it's mainly dogs probably. Yeah.
And we we use it so intermittently is the thing.
So, it seems like a lot for that, but really, if you think about what it would cost us to hire an individual
with all the salary and all everything that comes along with it and putting in a facility, I mean, we'd have to build it because we don't have one. What we used to have down down there, I saw it. Yeah, you can't you can't put an animal in there,
right?
So, do they handle deer? You know, when deer gets hit on the side of the road.
I don't know
because that happens quite often.
That's a good question. In upstate New York, you took it home and had lunch.
Yes.
Yep. You know, when I hit a deer, I called my friend and said, "Hey, you want it?
I'll be right there. Yeah. So, it all depends if you know people.
but yeah, I don't know if they handle that.
Yeah.
What am I doing? Come here. So, we have a couple of jumps projected here. Increase in fitness programs and others. Is this this is like more community center usage basically? Think
I think they want to add more programs
and so programs cost money.
Yep. No, I get that.
Okay. So there's your jump
most of it anyway. Some of there's a few other things in here, but that's that's that's the meat of it.
Senior transport. just everything but the salary right now is just using last year's numbers. It doesn't look like in fact it looks like we're doing rather well overall here.
And I forget what this is, but it's 250 bucks and I'm not sure it's that important. which obviously we're playing paying into something there.
Amplify mental health. That sounds familiar
cuz like I'm familiar with us having, you know, we're in the Eastern Highlands Health District. I don't know if this is associated with that because a mental health I mean that's partly what AHM does like so this is obviously something different.
Yeah, that's so specific. $250.
Yes. I'm not quite sure what it is.
Yeah. Can we look and see if
it's not much money. We haven't spent it. and it's not
so I don't know.
I don't remember that at all. I don't remember.
Let me go back. I can go back to 2324 and there's an amount that was $440 spent.
So, let me just go back. I'm not quite sure what this one is either. See,
amplify. It just says amplify.
So, I'm not sure. It must have been a program or something. Amplify mental health in Glastonbury. Oakwood Drive in Glastonbury.
Amplifying school mental health literacy.
That's what it went. That's what the $440 in 2324 was made out to. There were two $220 checks in 23, August and November of 23.
It sounds like a training and we'll have to dig into it.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Yep.
and then do we know what access is?
Looks like we spent it.
Last year's exactly bang on a thousand bucks. Join us and learn more social services.
I believe access is the fuel assistance in Willilamanic and I believe that's what we contribute towards that.
Yeah, we're in a we're in a group there. Yeah,
I know.
Yeah, it's in Willamantics. That's all I have is that's the name of the group in Willamantic. I have to look it up.
Okay. They provide home heating oil assistance and
there you go.
Bunch of stuff. So, but Lisa, didn't they give us a letter? That's more that was more of a requesting that
what this year.
Yeah.
I don't have anything for them. I just probably put it in there because that's what we had last year.
But So, do they usually request Jim? I I don't know if they request annually.
All right. I'd have to look at last year. Last year
we already talked about
call to ask.
Okay. The call to ask. Okay. Thank you. so yeah this is so this whole section I mean a lot the the most of what you see here this is the senior program stuff and and then bits and bobs elsewhere
let's see
so then we have the library
sorry I I had a qu the senior program is this like I was just wondering if someone could kind of explain to me like really high level what the senior program is
various activities for the seniors.
I don't know if they do some do they do some trips and I think it's separate that there's senior lunch but I think that's a separate line.
but in this
go ahead
they have activities and people that come in and provide activities at the senior center. some of them are subsidized by the town and some of the items the seniors contribute a little bit to. So I think that's what they all are
and and the benefits anyone who's a senior in the community or is
that wants to use it? Yeah.
Anybody that wants to go I I go to coffee and crafts on Friday
when they have it. when it's not shut down by surprise.
yeah,
got it. Okay. I was just
Yeah,
I was just genuinely curious as all. Sorry.
Yeah, that's Yep. they do bingo on Wednesdays with the senior lunch. they do all kinds of, you know, fun little things. I'll I'll get them to I'll get them to send out the monthly brochure to the members of the board of finance. I think it would help. There's
Yeah,
I do believe they have it in PDF, so it'd be easily accessible, but they also have they also have a nice version that they give out in paper for us old dinosaurs that like paper.
I'm with you with the paper. That's why I go down the town hall every Yeah. Where where's the line item for Liz's printing costs?
Hey, Nick.
I'm kidding.
No, it's true. It's true.
Yep.
Nick, it's Louise. the the t the it's also a community center. It's not just senior center. So, there are things for you know the younger folk as well.
So, you might want to check it out.
Now, do we use the same line item for that? like it's labeled as a senior programs. If we have other programs, is that is that back up in this in the community center budget? I did I didn't see it. I can go back up.
That's a good question.
That's a good question, Rob, because there are, you know, like family bingo at night. It's not just for seniors,
right?
In your program. Yeah.
Actually, Louise, I have a question for you. yeah,
Sunday, Lisa and I happened to be in the town hall and there was an activity going on at the community center.
What was that?
As I understand it, I wasn't there. That was Joe. Actually, it was the Pinewood Derby
for the Boy State Boy Scouts.
That's awesome.
Told you somebody had a tie on. Yeah,
we we were we were wondering what was going on.
Yeah. Yeah, they do that every year.
Memories of badly losing a car race.
I would think I I'm wondering if some of the stuff that's not for the seniors since this line is labeled senior citizens. Is some of that stuff labeled in the recck department?
I don't know. I was wondering. That's what I was wondering, too. Me, too.
Well, we're going to get rec recreation commissions coming up. We'll see. and I don't see a big change there. before we do that, this library, like I just said, I I need to get in touch with Kathy and ask her to come in, but you know, they're asking for some increases here.
Yeah, I I'm curious about
more specifics about the library operations. Like, it's a number, you know, and I'm like $28,000. what what comes with oper you know library operations knowing nothing about library operations
I mean they
well they do programs there too I think and they also have employees obviously great but yeah you payroll
that's facility that's facility maintenance that's everything
utilities yeah
so there's payroll and then there's
just a big number library operations is in I'm I mean, they'll sit there and give you a breakdown, but I'm just telling you, it's it's the utilities, it's it's the landscaping, it's everything else that they pay to
furnace cleaning. Yep.
Okay. I I I never knew what it was.
Carpet carpet clean. Yeah. Window clean, alarm service, building repairs,
air conditioner cleaning.
Yeah.
Okay. So, this is maybe a little out of scope, but they have building repairs. Where does their capital budget come from? Like, if they have big repairs at the library, the library's actually done a very good job of like they they we need to put something on our next board of selectmen. They want to do something and they fundraised for it. Nick, their their group is very active in trying to not spend tax dollars and to sit there and fund raise for things. So, if they have capital or budget maintenance that's outside of the scope, we'll take it out of the budget. There's a budget maintenance line here or building maintenance line and we'll split that around a lot of the town buildings that that we sit there and we'll maintain. But if they have something big, they'll fund raise or they'll come to us and they'll we'll pull it out of a different building fund.
They don't tend to have an annual capital budget is the answer. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to remember the last one we I was I remember being involved in it all was we were talking about at CIP. They had some windows they needed to
point windows.
Yeah.
Because it's such an old building, they
Yeah. through the whole pointing
lead pointing whatever that that whole issue is that it's required but that was the last big thing they did and and they've done a lot of a lot of landscaping at that I mean Eric actually the connectivity grant that did the sidewalks and the wall around the library about two years ago. So but they're they're a very a very active organization in town, the library committee.
So, Friends of the Libraries, right?
Friends of the library.
Yeah. That's nice.
So, with the reccomission, there does seem to be an increase here in programs. There's not a lot of detail. It does say something about additional concert. So, I don't know. I actually don't know that much about the rec commission. but that, you know, I it doesn't doesn't seem to me like this line item is what we were talking about earlier. I don't know that it's in here. but this looks like a real number with a budget request and an explanation. So, this is this is their numbers that have come in. I don't know if that was in that packet. It was kind of hard to tell because for some reason they submitted
two budgets and I don't know if two people one of them's got blue ink and the other one's got black ink. So I took the one that seemed most recent. did I put in there I probably I might have missed this one to put in for yourformational pages. It's something with the Andover community garden budget request. Okay.
So, and that's 3,785, which is that community garden.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a big increase. I could get that to you. I didn't send that right.
It's a $225 increase, 6.32%. And I don't I don't think I have anything on it. Carol's got her hand up. What's up, Carol?
Okay. So, the community garden the recreation commission is not in charge of the community garden budget. It is just put under the recreation commission. There is a separate committee that handles the community garden budget. Okay.
The recreation commission, we just asked for the extra money because we would like to have an additional concert over the summer or in the fall. And we also asked for an additional $900 to cover half of the cost for the community and senior center program where people can register online for their programs and things like that because we're going to work with the community center for registering our different sports programs and that.
Okay. Thank you for that. So that's maybe why I got two of them then. One from the garden center and then one from the rec commission. Okay.
Right. Because Jeff makes sense.
Jeff would have submitted that for the community garden.
Okay.
Lisa, can you read what Jeff submitted from the community garden? Did he get any?
Yeah. for the 3,785,
right? Yeah.
That's in there. Yeah. $1,800 for an irrigation system, $100 for a rotor tiller rental, $75 for rye, $750 for neem oil, $200 for plants for the window boxes, 300 for seeds, $250 for berry bushes, 150 for orbit digital irrigation timers, and crush stone for 250. We obviously didn't spend our budget this year. Well, I mean, again, we're not spring yet. So,
yeah, I was going to say it's not springtime, so they probably haven't yet.
Yep. That's That's seasonal.
We just got about $500 bill for seeds.
I I I guess I don't know. I'm going to sound very unpopular.
Well, listen, I don't necessarily think you have to sound unpopular. I think what we have to do is get Jeff in here and ask what level of commitment there's been from the rest of the community on the community gardens.
I just why can't the people in the community that want that need gardening space and want to use that space that's already built and it's already beautiful, why can't they bring their own seeds? Like why is the town and I know we're not talking a lot of money here. I know we're not talking a lot, but why is the town paying for this? Just just my opinion.
And also, Liz, I don't want to interrupt, but I agree with you on the seeds. A lot of times you can get those seeds free, but they're like one year old
seeds. And most of the people that are doing stuff like that, they kind of bring a lot of times they bring their own their own plants in there. So I don't know where all those $500 worth of seeds goes.
This has to be something that is just discussed in a global it's
not a it's a small it's a it's a large amount of money but small amount of money at the same time. We just have to figure out if there is enough community involvement to justify spending people's tax dollars on it.
Okay.
Yeah. I would be happy to have them come in and talk to us. I just I don't know
the guy who does it and I don't have contact in Can you could somebody else, you know, help me out with that and reach out to him and see if we could make maybe our 318 meeting?
I I I can do that. Jeff is a great guy. He's done so much for that garden. He's
I I have a vague recollection of him talking to us once before, but I Yeah, if we could see if he's available on like the 11th to the 18th.
Okay, I'll I'll check with him.
Okay.
Just to do like a little summary or can explain,
you know, and those are and those are dates, Liz, you'll be back, right? So,
yeah,
questions. Yeah. Yeah.
Let's see if we can hit one of those two dates.
Okay. Thanks, Louise.
Okay.
Thank you. This is an odd little line item.
Miscellaneous memorial.
I it it seems to be something that bounces around.
Yeah.
who runs that?
I don't know what it means.
Carol, do you know who runs that? Are you talking about Memorial Day?
Memorial Day miscellaneous expenses. Yeah. committee and what we do those are for flags the flags that you see hanging on school road and 316 as those flags need to be replaced this is the fund that it comes from
so and we also use it for we have the wreath that we put down on Veterans Monument Park so that's what that is for and it also covers cemetery flags We buy 144 cemetery flags each year and they're placed on all of the milit all of the veterans graves.
Okay. Well, so I could see how that could bounce around because you may have one year where your flags are kind of wearing down and you need new new ones,
right?
Okay. Well, I don't problem with that. As long you know, if that's the number that's needed, whatever. flat. Well, mostly flat board clerk. We just we this is something I presumably under discussion. Hey, look at us. We have a clerk. We need a clerk.
We do.
Are you not Are you not Rob, that's a question because I've had this question. Are you not getting your minutes transcribed or or dealt with anymore?
Yeah, we are.
We are.
Okay. All right.
We were talking about there was one transcription that Liz had looked at and thought lacked a little detail. want to add to it, but we might have some further discussion about that in future if we feel as a board that we'd like to see a little more. But no, no, no. We're getting
Okay. And just as a question, it goes through it goes through Kate to Marina and then back to you, Rob.
Well, Kate usually just puts the minutes in our packet.
Got it. Okay. So, I don't know exactly what the process is between those two. but yeah, it's usually it's Kate I rely on to to get that in our packet for us. this is basically nothing and it's flat. board of assessment appeals. Again, these are such tiny numbers. zoning board of appeals again same thing. Economic development commission is tcc membership it. All right. I'm not quite sure what's going on there
huh? I guess we haven't been spending it.
See if they wrote anything.
Yeah, I wrote down with a question mark on it, but there's no Let's see. I don't know why it's down. Was there a Was there a sign or something that went up? No. Oh, that but
a welcome to Andover sign this year was that was last year maybe.
Yeah. And then we have the second sign, but this here I mean it's a it's a huge drop. So then we didn't spend unless unless it's still come because we haven't put the sign in. That's probably what it is. So this Okay. Okay. Because if you look in the past, that's what it is.
But now we need to look at the beautifification amount. Right.
Put those together. Yeah.
Is there an overlap?
Okay. These are some commissions in town. just need more clerking I guess for more meetings. Britains and wet wetlands. Okay. so it's a big percentage jump, but I mean it's $500. And there you go. Total. So that is and that's remember this is with whatever we've this this is words are hard. Four and a half% is is what it looks like right now. And again that number is fuzzy as heck. Don't take that anywhere.
but that's that's the town's operation budget, right? And then we have to look at, you know, and this is where, you know, there's a lot of important stuff in here that we're going to have to talk about. The one that's pretty locked in obviously is this one because that's the lease on the firetruck. I mean, I think that's the minimum because that's the lease on the firetruck
and the plow.
H
and the plow. Don't he still have the 127 on the plow?
quite possibly. You mean is it you're talking about
we'll have to look Yeah. Not not the fire engine. The fire engine. We have that locked in because there's a 10-year loan on it.
Yeah. There's a lease.
The one underneath it is I believe the same issue. The 125.
We have to look at that. I don't know when it expires.
Yeah. but yeah this one this one there's nothing you can do about these numbers basically these this is just building up for the next reval we have to be doing that contingency this is what we put in every year this one will I think bears some discussion as to where we're on where we are on that and and what's in the fund and what we're using it for. so this here again it's a this is the lease amount but then the next question is okay Wally what are you coming down the pike for fire department equipment do we start you know and what's in the fund now and what are we looking like if in five years we need you know something do we have the money and does you know or do we need to do something with this number road improvement this is you know this is a little bit of an interesting fund because it's we're using it every, you know, we we tend to be using this every year in addition to our town aid road money. Put those two together. That's the road work we do. we usually try to do about 400 a year. last year we ended up at 385. As you can see, it was 410 the year prior. Tree removal we've had a lot of success with partnering with Eversource. Eric was pretty rightfully proud of the progress we've made there. 50,000 has been the number. And frankly, given the progress we've made, I I think we've spent, you know, really good money there. But we should probably at least ask once we have a town administrator or maybe talk to the public works guys what they think. I don't know who's the best
person to ask as to whether this is the appropriate going forward number
given where we're at.
H
Scott Fone is the best person to ask for that right now.
Okay. Well, you guys are going to talk about this stuff as well as a select board, right? So, and he's on there. So, let me know if he has if you, you know, if you guys have thoughts. Bridges and covers. I say here's another one. This is my personal, you know, the one I the big one, the one I'm worried about, you know, as to whether or not we got we're going to be able to deal with all the bridges and covers because the the costs of this have really risen. building maintenance fund. I can't remember why we cut this down, but we we very much did. So, I had to think about that. I can't remember.
AS Capital.
You had cut it because you had to reduce the total.
So, that's where it came out of.
I don't Okay. I'm trying to remember. I I don't recall. I remember us cutting the road. I don't remember us cutting the m the building maintenance fund, but Obviously, we did an open space is a as you can see it's a it's a fairly well that looks like we cut that down too. This is another one to look at and to see what are we actually using it on. What do we have in there? Is this an appropriate level or did we cut this in desperation to pass a budget and does it need to be looked at? I think it
Yeah, I mean it's entirely that all makes total sense. My my memory was probably because I was all traumatized about cutting the road fund and I forgot the other two. I hated that cut so much. okay. So, and then down here you get your your totals. and as you can see with these two, you know, and then it nets out. And again, this is a this is a this isn't a real number. You know, right now expenditures are at 5.9. We have a little revenue bump. So the actual if we had the amount to be raised by taxation tab, the mill rate tab, it wouldn't be this number here, but it would probably be close because this number's up. You know, you got to account for the revenue. So that's what we have so far, guys. the if those of us who remember, you know, last year who were here, as you recall, you know, there's a little more to the spreadsheet once we get it fully built out. but we'll I'm sure we'll continue to work with Lisa and get there. But there you go. There's your first walkthrough of our budget. And I don't know about you, but I'm fried. It's 9:20.
Yeah.
I'm slowing down here.
Yeah.
I hope I haven't put anybody to sleep. but we have a lot to do and I think it was at least I hope Heather and Nick I hope you guys found that helpful.
I did. Thank you.
Okay, great. I'm going to save this RG. Okay, this is obviously not the chart, but I'm I like to have my own to play with. So, this is mine. It is my spreadsheet and it is mine. Okay, I'm going to stop sharing, guys. how do I stop sharing? Bloody hell. Stop share. There it is. Thank you. All right, that's all right. So, unless anybody has anything further, I'd like to move on to correspondence and public speak. correspondence. I mean, I guess I would mention that I think hopefully you've all seen it by now, but we've had additional legal opinions come around and be presented. I think that's all I've got for that for that item. And so I'd like to move on and do a last round of public speak. let's see. Where are my participants? Who's left? So, apologies for the length of the meeting, everybody. that's going to public speak. Brienne, I hope I'm saying your name right, by the way.
No, nothing at this.
Okay. Thank you. Jenny Morurell,
nothing. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. And Joanne,
all set. Thanks, Rob. as always. Okay.
many people left.
H,
not many people left actually. Carol. Carol as well.
Oh, yes. Sorry. I I keep thinking select board member, but yes, you're right. Carol, do you have anything to add?
It's okay. I'm all set. Thank you.
Thanks for the info you gave us tonight. It was helpful. Okay.
about Jim.
Do I have a motion? Oh, well, Jim. Jim is
this will be our last meeting with him tonight.
Yeah. Okay. That's that's a very good point. Jim, thank you for your service and I I hope you enjoy your new place.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. It was great working with you and I'm a little cook too today. So,
we're definitely definitely going to miss you and never forgive you for leaving us.
That's why he had to move to another state. in any event,
he had my vote.
He knows how it works.
Had my vote. all right. Well, yeah. So, good luck with everything, Jim. And, can I get a motion to adjurnn?
I'll make a motion to adjurnn.
Excellent.
Was that you, Liz?
L second.
And you you motioned.
I motioned.
Sorry, I have my the when I shared my screen, it screwed up my vision of everybody. Hi, I'm doing
motioning. I'm motioning. In any event, all in favor, please.
I,
I.
Many opposed. Good. Thank you all.