great thank you everyone this is the special budget meeting of the board of Finance for I almost said June 12th February 12 2025 little wishful thinking there maybe we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order and recite the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you we will go on with our agenda it's pretty simple tonight we have public speak opportunities we'll go into the budget workshop and then adjourn so is there any member of the public that would like to speak again I think we'll run through the board of Selectmen and give them individually an opportunity to to contribute if they want so don't have to speak now but you can if you like so I see Carol I see B and Samsung Eric do you want to kind of roll us through see okay so I'm gonna share my screen hopefully this will work hold on a second do we want to do public speak I'm gonna ask Carol and yeah Carol anything to add public in the public speak portion I saw you unmute but I didn't hear anything so assume no go ahead and jump in if you think you do okay and then Bata nothing at this time thank you okay thanks and then I see a Samsung SMG not
sure who that is smg9 okay I'm gonna guess none there Eric why don't you go ahead okay well actually we'll go through the just hit the board of Select minute if you have anything to add Jeff any any comments before we start no we had reviewed this already and made some adjustments as to how Eric initially presented the budget to us at our before our Monday meeting we had an hour session beforehand I was working with Eric a little bit before to hopefully add some clarity to the numbers and you know make them a little bit easier to understand for everybody the public and the other board members so I think Eric is pretty good but you know always remembering and you guys always always treat it like this it's a living document so there might be some changes that need to be made you know even some items that Eric might have in
there already that might get adjusted just because of financial information that we receive later on so but you guys are good you know how to handle it and I do think that Eric's number and his spreadsheet is is better now as of 10 minutes ago okay I'll go in order Scott anything any comments or anything else I'm good for now thank you Mark okay thanks and Ann I'm fine thank you okay and I don't see Jeff Murray so we'll go ahead and continue Eric floor is yours okay so let [Music] me pull up okay hopefully you're seeing a a spreadsheet yeah I'm GNA start with the mill rate calculation page because I I think we want to start with kind of bottom line first and then talk through what we have on the sheet and then kind of go from there we all know last year there were a couple calculation errors in the spreadsheet so but these numbers are consistent with what was approved last year as a budget that's why the column says fiscal year 20242 approved budget so what we're projecting is that the total expenditures increase from about 12.8 million to about 13.5 million that's total expenditures and if you scroll down to budget by entity you can kind of see the magnitude of each of the three main elements that make up our budget this was the number I had from the end over element school which is a difference of around 381 million or $381,000 the ram budget increase is $60,000 dollars and the increase in the town budget is $12,000 dollar you know in round terms which gives you a total increase in expenditure of $643,000 about 5% and as a percent wise the the portion
that I'm responsible for which is the town budget is increasing about 2.4% now when you look at total estimated Revenue you could you can see the total estimated revenue is down a little bit and when we get into into the Weeds on the main budget page we can talk about what's going up and what's going down the thing to keep in mind is that most of the estimated Revenue that we get comes from the state of Connecticut the state of Connecticut does not have a budget ready to go well the governor has a budget I believe the Senate has a budget but they're a long time before agreeing on a final
budget So currently the biggest thing that affects the town of Andover is that the governor's budget decreases ECS funding to the town which is the educational cost share by about $889,000 but he's also proposed that cut two years in a row prior to this and both times the House and Senate the finally agreed on Bill restored that funding so I think that number may go up by that $889,000 value but I don't know at this point I as a placeholder for use of fund balance I put in $190,000 I think we probably actually can use quite a bit more fund balance if the board so chooses because I think we had a pretty considerable Surplus and we're being audited right now so I'm hoping in a week or two I will have a stronger number you know for what that could potentially be and then it's up to the board to decide how much
of that excess from the previous year they want to use from the fund balance to offset the cost in the proposed budget the line for abatements and exemptions that has gone up considerably but that is pending the public a public meeting where potentially the fire department is looking to increase the value of the abatements to fire department members it's been allowed by state law for a number of years and they've asked the town to consider upping that to increase retention so that would increase that budget line item a fair bit the the bottom line is this budget ends up with about 10,678 to be raised by taxes which is a significant increase from the last the last time ground most of you probably already know on that point if you look at line 13 the grand list for the first time in a long time is decreasing and the grand list itself has decreased about 2% and there are two causes of that the first is that there hasn't been a lot of new construction so there's not a lot of things adding to the Grand list and changes in federal or state law which granted a much greater exemption to disabled some disabled veterans is a Ed in the mill rate and also the switch from the way Motor
Vehicles were you know were taxed before has changed this year to a straight MSRP plus a depreciation schedule so those two things decreased the grand list considerably by somewhere around six million bucks so it's a pretty significant jump and the bottom line is when you carry that all the way through if you had a single estimated mill rate and we'll talk about why we're not going to be able to do that this year that mill rate as proposed would be about 34.1 so that is a really large jump that's a mill rate increase that's that's quite substantial so we all have to be aware of that going in so the reason why we can't have a single mill rate this year is is because the state has capped the mill rate for Motor Vehicles in other words in and we can talk about how we present this and we may eventually want to put all that data up here and build it into one you know one part of this budget but for now we left it at the bottom because people are are used to looking at a single mill rate and I was concerned it would make people more confused if we started throwing multiple Mill rates out there but the bottom line is to be raised by taxes you know this is the
number of funds to be raised by taxes if you cap the mill rate at 32.482947 the grand list for taxable motor vehicles since you know what this number is and you know what the cap is and you know you're going to be overall in the cap you can figure out how much money which is column d39 will be raised by motor vehicle taxes that means everything else gets raised by personal and real property taxes so that's the 9. six number and then that yields a mill rate on personal and real property of 3429 Ms so even greater jump than just the single for the if it was just one mill rate does that make sense to everybody because I know this is the first time as a town we've had to deal with a lot of towns have had split Mill rates for multiple years but over has not makes sense any questions from the board of Finance on there it made sense to me it was also explained in Eric's email from earlier little bit me thank you okay Joan you name yeah I mean obviously I'm gonna have to digest it I you know like Mark said everything made sense I had been looking I wish I took the time to read it but I will and is this is one option you're saying if this budget passed as is we would have to to make it work we would have to go with
the split mill rate well unless we can bring the total mill rate for the town down to 32.4 s which I don't think would be practical or we don't have an option because the state says you cannot tax Motor Vehicles at greater than 32.4 okay okay thank you okay so that's that and let's talk about what things let's let's go back and be I just want to say this before I forget because Jeff Murray we didn't get to it at the last meeting but I know Jeff Murray was adamant about increasing the line item for senior Transportation to enable the town to to undercoat the senior Transportation Vehicles annually to cut down on corrosion and pay for a scheme to wash and that total was about $3500 to do those things but we adjourned that meeting and went to the regular meeting before we get to that so I just want you guys to hold that in mind because I think the board would probably Board of Selectmen would probably want you to include that in the budget which would increase it somewhat okay everybody with me so far yes Joan has a question sorry just one more question on what you did say I'm sorry I just couldn't find my notes when you were because you know you know a couple of us have been at the board of Selectmen two budget hearings already so I kind of had things in my head before
that I would have brought up and now I'll I'll redirect but your your number that the town was going to increase by as far as far as you know the higher you know we we knew AES was going up 381 you said Ram 160 and then you said the town in round numbers will be increasing 102 that's a big change from what you've been presenting previously so did we factor in something that we're not aware of because I you know in my notes it it was over 200 thou like 280,000 I thought well so there were two things one we had a calculation error in one of the previous spreadsheets and two before the board of Select at the board of selectman's last meeting the board decided to remove the extra $40,000 that the wre commission was hoping to get to update the backboards and they took some additional money out of out of the capital budget so total they decreased the budget or in round numbers about $80,000 and the rest was a calculation perfect thank you Eric because I knew you know that was a high number I knew there was some errors you were going to make so that was a result of the corrections that you made okay yeah thank you so deductions yeah
yeah so let's talk a little little bit about what things you know what are the big causes because I I'm not conversent enough in the school budget to make any commentary about that I want to talk strictly about the town budget so overall the town budget is an increase of about 2.4% you know so moderately reasonable you can make a decision whether that's accept cble to you or not as a board and and we can talk about the details so within that overall Town budget the capital portion of the budget decreases about 6% or about
$75,000 as proposed and the operating part of the town's budget increases around $180,000 so up in the operating down in the capital netting out to you know just over $100,000 $112,000 in the town budget so what are the contributing factors first and foremost you know the the town runs somewhere around a million doll you know in person in direct salary so if you take a 3% raise as your kind of Baseline that would be about a $30,000 increase roughly to the town total Personnel costs and we can look at it later there's a tab that's that's specifically for employee costs that rolls into the rest of the budget there are so so the but the overall salary increase is on the books currently at about a 7% increase so what are the contributing factors to that you know the the largest single contributing factor of that is the proposal to make the senior center director a full-time position the number two the second largest one that's about a $116,000 you know difference the proposal to make one of the Public Works employees from a maintainer one to a maintainer 2 that's about a $122,000 change the increase for the senior center assistant and then a stipend for the finance assistant so those that comprises the majority of the difference between the what a 3% increase and what the total increase that's proposed are just just the point of just for the
board for reference you don't have to necessarily memorize all this Eric summarized this it his email if you hadn't had a chance to look at it you can look back at it and it's all there so go ahead sry so the other thing is that there's a total benefit benefits increase this year of 23k which works out to about a 5% increase there's there's a bunch of factors that lead to that you know and and there is a a healthc care and murf tab in the budget that we can go over that kind of explains and walks through that as most of you know the healthc care Consortium which is one of the the large contributing factors to this is is has increased 8% this year per the Consortium and you know a lot of our members have health care so that's one of the contributing factors and it's also a contributing factor that it tracks with the benefits track with total salary and so since total salary is going up a 7% increase there's also a larger than 3% increase in benefits
and you know we'll have plenty of time to dig down into the Weeds on that does anybody have any questions on that Sho I know that and I want to preface this by saying I'm only addressing a couple things tonight because I know we have the board of Selectmen here and they make big decisions on salary and things like that I don't pretend to to want to do any of that just for the board of Finance members that weren't at the two previous budget meetings that a few of us were some questions did come up and I've already roached a couple things in my opinion that should maybe be looked at and you know I just want to what do I want to say I just want to bring it to their attention you know my
thoughts on it I mean this is something that I do for a living you know I work for a town Myself and I know how things are done so I don't know if this is the appropriate time you know I want to say that to Mark bringer because he wasn't there but I did make a point the other night at the budget meeting just things because I think a lot of the budget and increases that are going to happen across the board as we see it's it's a big undertaking this year last year there was a 16% increase this year we're looking at another big increase for the taxpayers so I feel like it's my job to bring things forward if if they're not agreed upon that's not my decision but I was put on this board for a reason you know I think if there's specific things Joan probably the best thing to do I mean one of the things I think that we should keep in mind for today's meeting and I I kind of wanted to mention this earlier is that we should try to Pace ourselves I feel like a lot of meetings so but I think once we get to the detail of each section and subsequent meetings then would be the time to kind of bring up specifics that you think like hey I think we might want to look at this CH potential change in this lineup 100% but Mark what I'm saying is I think that the things that I wanted to bring up will only be you know I don't
think it's anything that we can decide on I think it's decided after today and then it's brought to us well we can decide on line items not specific salaries necessar yeah I'm only gonna bring it's GNA be quick I promise but I was prefacing that for you because you haven't been present at the other two meetings where a lot of people were so I didn't want you to think I'm just diving in so now I I was trying to keep myself at so all I was going to say and I I'm going to speak to this really quick like Eric said some of the big changes are you know and I I am a union member and that's how unions operate so last year we did bring on this maintainer we understood Jay came on we all took the time to listen so that they could have two groups of two guys he was hired this has nothing I'm sure he's a great guy sure he's a good worker anybody that's hired in a union job generally is higher qualified you know but comes in kind of as the low man and then Works their way up so all I want to say as someone that got voted on this board and something that came to my mind that I was surprised that all of a sudden we would
just elevate a person to a maintainer two generally there's a procedure that happens there's an opening people bid on it you get it you advance that way through the year so our town kind of does things a little bit different so that was just surprising and as we're looking for places that might get reduced eventually that was a big ask you know the guy was and not talking about him it's just a $122,000 what also goes along with that is the murf and the retirement so there's that so I had an issue with that I think that the people that only can decide on that are the board of Selectmen they may only be here tonight so I feel like it has to get out there it has to be something that was thought about and then we know that Jeff Murray did bring up and I brought up at a previous meeting too that last year we voted on the senior center director salary being capped for a full-time person at 50,000 and now you know again whatever decisions are made at a higher level I'm speaking to management now because they're the management Eric does their work for for them so the management brought on a person for a
certain salary but part-time hours and now they're looking to create another full-time position so that's another big chunk that the taxpayers are are taking so that's a consideration that's not a union position so I don't feel either way about that that's a decision that'll have to be made you know and then the last thing that I'm going to just propose to them I promise I don't have a lot to bring forward tonight but these are the Personnel things are to make sure that I know privately in emails in the past when people get the stiens you know everybody's getting their 3% increase I believe it was said Eric you know I've done this that the you know does the stien then become part of their salary and then the town is responsible for the combined thing when they do the retirement so all of these things factor into raises every year you know positions get raises as 3% if someone's getting a $66,000 stien are we also paying murf on that or did we I thought
it was decided we didn't so that's a question trying to get to these quickly in Personnel matters and then what has to be looked at as we saw the big increase in the health benefits that was brought forward as far as I think it's 240 ,000 I feel like I've made this in private a lot of times it needs to be out there we understand that health insurance is a great benefit I'm glad that we offer our great employees health insurance when they need it whether they need single or they need family good I onboard people at work I've never met a person that didn't need insurance that signed up for insurance they're either on their parents policy until they're 26 or they are you know they need it they're of age or they're a family providing for their families so they take insurance I feel like it's time to look at where we could save the town 25,000 where we're giving this fee in Le of taking insurance which is no other town does it I've done my research you know Hein does it at a very low level we just do it at such a high level that that it works out and I'm sorry Mark I know you don't want me to get in the weeds but i' I've researched this long enough and it's my only chance to talk and appeal to the board of Selectmen we are actually when we pay people in Li of insurance an amount of $6,600 you know it goes up every year too I want them to get a waiver I want them to get a waiver of like $1,000 continuously but that's 25,000 right there that you know I would like the town to seriously consider looking
at that as a change not for these good employees that already get it if I was on the union side and someone offered me $6,000 because I didn't need insurance I'd be doing my happy dance but I just think that we're overpaying for that I've talked to Eric about this I used to have conversations with Adrian people it it adds like $6 an hour to certain people's wages you know it's $127 a week you know I've done the math for every single you know some people it gives them a raise of almost $4 an hour it's just a big thing so thank you Board of Selectmen for indulging me I've sent multiple emails to no avail but no other town does this I've researched all our area towns except for Hein who does that you know minor amount so I'd be all about a minor amount and saving the taxpayers money there thank you that's it okay any other questions for Eric before he goes on and for the record that was a board of selectman initiated thing not a Eric Anderson initiated thing although Fair I've been gr gratified how many
employees have taken it yes absolutely okay let's can we go ahead and go back to where you were and thank you for my moment on that I have a lot of support let me let me ask a question Eric where in your document does it show so every been get to how many people actually take advantage of that so if you went to the tab that says healthc Care Plus murf you can see a list of everybody that is eligible for Health Care the their Health Care status whether they are single family or fee in lie of you can see that we currently have four people that take fee in Le of at this point Joan we'll look at all those thank you so much Jeff I really did research
other towns and it's not that I I want to give them a waiver but I think we it's get and it goes up every year it's just getting to the point of so high that you know and it's it's really increasing a lot so thank you the only the only thing that I would say to you and that we need to look at and I'll do the math is that if those four individuals took healthare at the level they could what is the total cost we in I it there Jeff but as someone that enrolls people no one is going to because they're going to pay out so much more by taking it and if they need it that's a gamble I'd be willing to take you know if people need it you may get three employees in a row that need it then you get three that don't okay I'll take a I'll make sure we take a look at it thanks okay in terms of other notice notable increases we did adjust today the resident trooper line item up so Trooper Brett cook has been selected as the next resident state trooper for the town of Andover he's definitely more senior overall than Sebastian Nessie was so the state police did give us a their budget office did give us an estimated cost for him next year of $153,000 which I then substitute into the budget so that is an increase over what we had a lot last year of 133 almost $144,000 I would caution you though that all of those numbers are subject to
change because they never completely decide what their indirect rate and what costs are going to be assigned to that Trooper until very late in the budget year and often after July one so but that's the the best best estimate I have for the cost of that the other thing that's a significant change is the cost of the brush pile removal many of you know we've had that discussion in years past whether we make that a Permanent Fund and fund part of the cost every year because we tend to only grind the brush pile either every second or third year but it's starting to get pretty big so by the time July rolls around we will definitely be needing to do the brush pile so that line item is either zero or $8 to $20,000 and it keeps going back and forth this year happens to be the the $118,000 one so that that's a pretty big jump in the budget so in terms of of big chunks that is the majority of it so what I would like to do is just really quick so when you start looking at the spreadsheet itself you kind of understand how this works is that you're currently we're on the mill rate calculation page which is kind of the the bottom line numbers for the town the first tab in line is the main budget
tab and if you remember we all got beaten up a little bit last year about not actually corresponding to the columns that the charter required so this this looks a little different than last year but these are the columns required by the charter I had the the treasure put it in that format so the first part of it is the income stream those are broken down into property tax and everything related to property tax this number in blue is there because it's linked to the previous sheet this number flows from the mill rate which calculates how much current taxes you know we have to generate the other thing to keep in mind is we have to certify a grand list in you know by February 1st but then a lot of things happen that affect the final set of bills that go out to customers so we set a mill rate based on this but in the intervening time we may get more veterans exemptions that fill into that and we may people may add Motor Vehicles which may increase you know or there may be things that that decrease that so even though the mill rate is based on the grand list as of February when the the
actual bills go out they don't always total up to exactly this number because the final things on the grand list as of J July one are always a little little different than what is on the grand list at you know earlier in the year in February when it's done okay so I just want to make that clear so the other thing on here is that Cheryl has asked to remove some of the some of the grant funding that we were accounting for in the main budget because she feels that money is going into permanent funds that roll over anyway or multi-year funds and shouldn't be part of this budget so that that's kind of her guidance there's a little bit of that built into this budget it doesn't make a huge difference the
other thing in terms of lost revenue is the fact that we are not working with Veil East anymore so the amount we're receiving for rentals that we're an anticipating is down pretty significantly versus before so investment interest it appears right now that we're on track to collect more than what we're proposing in interest by 20 or so thousand but that's a very variable Target because we don't know what the feds are doing to the interest rate and that affects the interest we get from the stiff account so this is hopefully a relatively conservative estimate of what our investment interest will be in this year anybody have questions on that other thing to keep in mind as far as I know the the board of Selectmen is not considering increasing the fee for the transfer station that is something they they could look at if they so chose if they wanted to increase revenues and the same thing with fees for building and land use you could increase the relative cost of BU building permits if the town so chose if they wanted to bring in more income to offset some of the increased expenses okay so big expenses you know these are the education budgets they are you know those are fairly substantial but they are what they are and they're not something that I have any control of you the board of Finance can make whatever decisions relative to that they want so that's the major part of or or that The major portion of Revenue under expenses these two combined is about two thirs of the total budget are wrapped up in those two line items basically $9 million so that's a fairly significant thing we have to deal
with enrollment is increasing at Andover Elementary School at Ram the Town's Levy percentage decreased just a little bit this year which helped our numbers but when we account for the ram education number from last year this 4,150 that in that number included money that they were giving back to the town from their unexpended Surplus so their actual budget their budget budget was higher but their budget minus what they were returning to us brought brought it down to that value I don't know whether they're going to consider that again that may decrease that number but I don't know I haven't seen any indication that their board is contemplating doing that they could be doing it in the next couple weeks because they just released the ram audit which I can forward to the board if you guys want to see that questions up to that point just a comment Eric so we have next week we have the AES district will be presenting their budget on our meeting on the 19th and we'll try to get Colin sometime to maybe stop in and just go over the quick quick review of The Ram budget as everyone I think knows that's voted on separately from
our budget but just so we have that opportunity to hear from him so I did ask Colin to present at the meeting that I am going to miss in March I think I had forwarded that to you I can get you the date of that I don't know it off the top of my head and he replied that he would be available there if you wanted to bump them up I'm sure he could probably accommodate that yeah I don't remember seeing a copy of that but yeah sometime third week in March or second week in March I'm not sure but okay yeah I think it was the second week of March yeah Mark I I had thought that the superintendent had asked to come in March March 19th did you say next oh I'm sorry you may be right Joan yeah so I don't think we're expecting and over Elementary yeah it was it was much later because we're waiting for them to finalize right yep yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm sorry good catch yeah no problem okay okay so and now I just want to talk to you about structurally how this
budget is developed so when you're looking at this spreadsheet and we'll have plenty of time to go over every last line item in the main budget but I just want to talk to you about kind of how everything flows through this because there's a lot of tabs in this budget there is a main employee cost tab which lists all of the employees although you'll notice there's a couple things where the the cells are merged one of them is the senior Transportation drivers because I find it's easier to just track total dollar driver hours in a year and base the budget off of that because all the drivers make the same amount of money so that's that this sheet lists everybody and it's colorcoded by what
their arrangement is with the town so if you see you know it's colorcoded elected officials as you know the salary for elected officials is a board of Finance decision ultimately the board of Selectmen has to approve Union contract so the light tan are those people that are subject to a Union contract the old the green ones are employees that are basically hovering right at the minimum wage so we hope the increase that we have built into this budget will keep them above minimum wage when minimum wage changes next January so but we're not sure because we don't the state doesn't announce what the new minimum wage is it's indexed off of inflation so depending on what inflation was there's a chance those employees will get a little bit of a bump
you know that's not accounted for in this budget so does anybody have any questions about how that's developed the board of Selectmen has made a decision that they for the non-union employees that the the target is a 3% salary raise so that is what's what's built into pretty much all of these unless somebody has a prior a standalone contract in which case then the terms of the contract Prevail okay so that's yep just a quick question sorry my eyes AR gonna see I and this is very quick I know that the the town clerk had resigned and that's an elected official so and I know there's there's thoughts and talks you know from the other evening of what might happen are we or will the board of Selectmen decide whether they keep the full salary in this budget thing or they reduced it based on I don't know is that a factor at all or we're just keeping a placeholder at this point so at this
point I'm just keeping a placeholder I put a little note that I'm waiting on a board of selectman decision how that plays out okay so I did not include since we're going from a town clerk that has been here a really long time and was getting a longevity bonus for that from the board of Finance I made the assumption that since we're not going to be able to hire or elect a town clerk that has experience that that you probably wouldn't reissue that so I took that out of the budget I left the salary intact okay and the board's going to have to decide you know how they want to proceed on that that's not something I have any no thank you yeah I just wondered how we how that was going to be handled so you covered that I know there's that's depends thanks okay so you go from employee cost to down to the next tab over which is Healthcare Plus murf and these then are only the people that are eligible for either retirement or health care you know or both in this case we don't have any employees in that 20 to 26-hour non-union category that would be eligible for murf but not eligible for for Healthcare you can see in column o the status of everybody now sorry as you as you touched on that can you clarify for us is it up over 25 hours they're eligible for insurance now is that the cut off so yes over 26 hours is eligible for health insurance there is one exception
to that M that is there's one Union employee that had it already prior to the previous Union contract right and the union was not willing to give that up so that employee rain okay she got grandfathered in I'm just yeah just for the rule and then for murf you were just you just said it I'm just making little notes again for murf is 20 hours or more yes and that is state law that is not something the town can modify going for board there is the legislature and the state comproller office have been Wheeling around a proposal to come up with a new tier for murf that's available for towns for new employees if you look at the murf town contribution currently it's 16.71% which sounds exorbitant but the problem is that similar to the state of Connecticut having radically underfunded the retirement plans for state employees which is under underfunded by around $40 billion doar right now Statewide the murf program the municipal enti retirement program is underfunded by about a billion dollars so yeah with a b wow so of that 16.71% only about 5% basically is actuar for somebody that's employed right now and the 11% is making up for the fact that they underfunded the thing so dramatically in the past so just so you're all aware
of that unfortunately the town really doesn't have any practical way to break right the murf contract I know I looked into it when I first be worked for the town because I would have much preferred just a 401k instead of murf but that's just Eric and I had researched that too just real quick because this is the only night on this trying to see because I know a lot of towns have gone into the 401K or defined you know yep toine contribution just to save money so it's something that right I I'm not even going to go there I know we have a small amount of employees but that's interesting so you can't get out of it even if you wanted to no multiple towns have tried to get out of murf and the state of Connecticut has sued them over it and sobody so far nobody's prevailed against the state in court in fact the town's labor attorney is involved in suing the state over multiple ones for multiple towns but so far I don't believe they've been successful and his advice was don't try it then that's my follow-up question was why it was so important at the time with those stiens that people earned like if that is really considered their wages you know that's not for the job and if murf gets taken out of that too but again these are weeds that I went down before and I
thought they were taken care of but thanks Eric okay so the next tab over is employee benefits and so you'll see a lot of pages that look like this so for for most of the major categories in the major budget there's a subsequent page like for instance if you went to the administrators tab you would see the line items for the admin istrator in all the budgets and these line items are linked in flow directly to the budget so at some point when the board of Finance takes over the control of this spreadsheet as you're producing your final budgets just remember that this is where you make the changes except like for instance if you look at salary the salary for these positions are linked back to that original employee cost okay and then when you get to the employee benefits these all pretty much link most of these link back to the healthc Care
Plus murf which is how those are calculated so again you would make the changes in employee cost that employee cost change would trickle directly into the Healthcare Plus murf page which would flow into the employee benefits which would show up on the main budget so just be aware that these spreadsheets are all totally interconnected between the the sheets and you can kind of tab through so those the employee cost to healthc care to employee benefits kind of move linearly you know if if that makes sense and then from from there on over these are all the subtabs that the town has in the budget that link to the main budget sheet and part of the reason we do this is we give the individual department heads their own budget sheet to fill out and then that data gets
put into here and should show up seamlessly in the main budget so administrators tab this is the finance office tab there's one for the town clerk again you know we don't I don't think the board has made any final decisions about when or how that's going to be be done although the board did indicate that they wanted to see whether we could have a Employment contract with Carol so she can continue to assist in the town clerk's office even though she's officially resigned as the town clerk and you know that will be subject to negotiation yeah Eric the the assistant town clerk is I and I heard talk of her the other night has she been on board for like a couple months now or longer not quite two months just about okay thank you yep so tax collector that's that one so tax collector assessor you know there are some increases in both qds and vision this time around and also if you look on here it says what things are calculated directly so we went in in one of the things the board of Selectmen had asked us before was to put it so that you could look at a department budget and that in included all the costs of the department budget so this sheet shows for that employee what the total cost is for that department for the salary it
shows the Social Security and Med health and dental and retirement so you have all of that in one shot within the the sub budget so if you want to get at total cost for that department this is kind of where you can can see it so the registar office the elections and most of in most of these cases the notes Here came from the Department they weren't generated by me they're what we asked all the Departments to give us a proposed budget and then also explain you know in detail and I'm happy to share all of that with with the board of Finance if you want to review all the individual requests you certainly can just depends how much information you want to have so there's one for elections building department can I ask a question on all these got his hand on one quick thing your murf number yeah murf number is wrong there but this murf number is calculated separate of the main budget
so this doesn't but yeah I already noticed that's 15.85 and they just announced the new number so we will correct that we corrected it on the main page but this doesn't affect this is calculated separately from the what's on the main budget so what's on the main budget is right okay so just so everybody understands the murf number comes from the healthc care and the murf tab the main employee cost tab these are just summaries for the Departments but you want to make number correct so you got to change that formula and that number so that the board of Finance understands the the totals yeah looks like it looks like it's hardcoded in each tab so you're probably gonna have to either yep we'll have to go through put in a lock cell somewhere or do them all yeah yep yep so Library library is a little different because every year they kind of mix and match with employees so we try to calculate payroll based on like the total number of hours are going to work because they really only almost all their employees make the same amount with the exception of Amy orasi who's the director of the library and they
have a children's librarian but the amount of time they allot to the children's librarian isn't that much so we take care of that separately and then we just figure Global hours for Library operations o civil prep I would suggest we up the salary for civil prep because I think that's an area where we've been consistently underfunded and we're now we got we got enough grant funding for civil preparedness last year because of a because our existing Emergency Management communication person submitted all the correct paperwork to the state that her salaries essentially paid out of paid from the grant money that that we got from Department of Emergency Management Services I'm leaving this $1,000 in the shared s vehicle because that's kind of what they asked for so as many of you know we share a or we have a combined cir team the town of Andover with the town of Hein and the town of maloro so they trained together they were using this really ratty old ambulance that the town of Hein had gotten rid of but but I believe Hein used some of their C their covid funding and bought them a brand new vehicle for the C team that's technically hein's vehicle but I know it's been shared so we have to at least be willing to help them out for maintaining that and it's a fairly small budget overall so of the large budgets Public Works is one of the the largest budgets so this comment is correct incorrect for the board of Selectmen that was taken back down to 3% but it was I did it in the in the salary tab so the number should be
correct it was just the note was was old and we will go back and address because I think all of these have probably the wrong mult applier for retirement in murf snow removal we as you guys probably remember about two years ago or three years ago we decreased pretty significantly both the overtime and knocked the salt budget down a little bit we've we've held pretty steady it's going to be a little inter interesting because this year we've plowed more than the previous two but so far it looks like we're still reasonable on both the the snow plow the plow removal overtime budget and the sand and salt budget which are the main things that are part of snow removal transfer station so among the the areas where there was a fairly big bump in this is the cost for the compactor lease so I've been aware for the last five years as the Town Administrator that Willie waste which then became
cassella owned two of the three compactors we have at the transfer station but they've been charging us for four years for a single compactor cassella finally ra realized that we had two and started charging us for both of them so that has increased that's basically doubled the contractor Le or the compactor lease line item in that which accounts for most of the the increase there so again Rob's got his hand up just really quick question Eric what are those things cost yeah I was just thinking the same thing I think you know a few years ago we were asking that question and we were looking around to see whether we were looking at a used one that was around 30,000 and I seem to recall they were somewhere in the $60,000 range to to purchase one yeah so but don't quote me on that those are old numbers and I may be misremembering them anyway but yeah it is something you know we should be thinking about and now that they're actually part of the reason why I didn't want to pursue it was because they were only charging us for half of our compactors anyway so I was in the let sleeping dogs category well now now the jig's up so yeah you know definitely something to look at now that's that's it that's on my that's my commentary yep custodian so we only have a single line for custodian and we don't suballocate this to three locations because our custodian Willie Bell and his wife Susie actually clean three buildings they clean the town hall they clean the library and they clean the community center but just so we didn't have to screw around with essentially three
separate time cards for each location we've kind of lumped it into one lumps some custodian and we have a custodian line item in the main budget we don't sub break it out into what it cost to clean the town hall what it cost to clean the community center what it cost to clean the library Eric can I ask a can I ask a question Eric absolutely so I'm sorry I'm sure this is probably a simple answer but on the previous page tipping these what yeah what tipping fees what is that all right so hauling fees is every time they got to drive in here pick up one shipping container or one container and bring it back to willly waste and then bring it back to here we get a per per trip fee and then we get charged for bulky waste in one category so that's not the cost to haul the bulky waste away that's the cost to get rid of the bulky waste and that bulky waste goes to what do you call it it gets shipped out to Ohio and it goes in a landfill in Ohio believe it or not the the Tipping
fees are the cost for what do you call it that's that's the cost for like basically not bulky waste but garbage and recycling oh wow just to emptying basically so it's not the hauling fee that's the cost so we get charged comes and go we get charged separately to haul it and separately to leave it correct correct yes you know and then and then yeah yeah so it's it's not an insignificant fee by any means the transfer station expensive to operate yeah and there's no no other way to negotiate a contract somewhere else or is that a not practically because in terms of the locally cassella is the biggest recycling Center and we actually negotiate our contracts with cassella through something called mid Nero which is the midn Northeast Recycling Consortium of which 13 towns sit on the board of that I am andover's representative for that so we go out collectively every year for our contracts for hazardous waste recycling tires you know you name it all the things that a transfer station has and then you know we we we negotiate a lot of the stuff in bulk with Cella so the the individual towns the con that sign a contract with Cella are relative to this so pretty much everybody in this area is using cassella the only thing we could potentially do is if we owned a tractor trailer and we were and we had a roll on rollof we could
potentially you know haul the material ourselves but there's a lot of that's also a lot of Labor yeah so and we need to own a tractor trailer and you know be willing to do it so PID someone to drive it yeah right so so that's the only maintain it okay thanks for that explanation okay so Fire Marshall probably I don't know how many of you know but we use it's not really a shared service but we and the town of Bolton share both a fire marshal and a deputy Fire Marshall so we pay for him Bolton pays for him and we're actually in a Cooperative agreement with two other towns because you know if something really bad happens it's possible you need more than you know one fire marshal or if the deput is around and not the fire marshal so we have reciprocal coverage also with two other towns as part of this and and we we pay a pro-rated portion of the fire marshal assist assistant Fire Marshals mandated training and then dues and subscriptions and he does have a little bit of an equipment budget Eric can I ask you a question certainly the custodian Services is that done once a week so no currently Willie cleans I think he cleans all three buildings twice a week I know the town hall gets cleaned twice a week and right now the both the community center
and pretty sure the library is getting cleaned twice a week too I could be wrong that might only be once okay and what about the school the school has their own custodian yeah the school has several custodians so they're completely separate from the town and we can't combine them I can answer that absolutely absolutely not Willie does the best job ever I don't know if you notice how clean that town hall is yeah that gentleman cares and does a phenomenal job so please Board of Finance don't mess with that one okay but as far as the school goes as far as the school goes and combining Eric didn't at one point in time we try that I think we talked about it but certainly not in my lifetime have we tried that I think we were discussing it when Sally was the superintendent and I don't think it it it came off well Louise so okay Willie and his wife are they do a phenomenal job and the other thing to keep in mind with with you get with Willie and with his wife is you get people that are very talented in a sense that they don't do just cleaning like if you look all those sound attenuation bars that the town has put up that was all done by Willie and
Susie a lot of the mounting a lot of the painting that goes on they last year they completely Reed resp spackled and repainted the exterior windows at the Andover Museum they I'm gonna say we sold okay let's move on and try to stay out of the weeds guys all right fair enough so this this line item has both senior citizens budget and Andover senior transition and that is that is one thing that's definitely an error the board of Selectmen voted the last time to increase that line item so that line item is Incorrect and let me see I'll have to see how that propagates through but they on the spreadsheet you sent around they doubled it correct I think it just got I think I probably just updated on the main page and not here I will check on that one yeah I'm seeing it is 125 I think yeah I'm sorry is that line five or that Resident Senor lunch 820 so I mean that's since it's doubling have we just been under budgeting that thing yes yes yes we have and the the board of
Selectmen also made a decision that they wanted to keep the fee schedule for that as low as they could to encourage socialization and Senior participation in general so and I could Supply it to you but but basically Tess gave a breakout of the costs of of the programs that they're running so that the board could make a decision how much they wanted to fund it you know which basically trickles Down Under the cost for participation gotcha sorry I actually had a question and I apologize for having you back up but on the transfer station when is the last time that we increased the sticker fees year or two ago right it was believe two years ago they've been $50 a piece for two years okay so we had them 40 and we went up to 50 couple years ago okay correct and for the record because the cost of that the transfer station has been increasing the cost of
the sticker program right now is is is paying for about 20% of the total operating cost of the transfer station so it has been higher in the past but you know the the as many of you know since they closed the main trash to energy plant in the state you know there's just so much less capacity that everybody's been getting squeezed the last few years no fair enough just wanted to remind myself you know if that was an option I don't want to go and propose raising something that we just raised you know yeah I mean I sort of feel like the the fee should bring in at least
25% to 30% of the cost of running the facility But ultimately that's a that's a board decision not a not a me decision you know I think the fees are reasonable compared to what you get certainly a lot cheaper than getting pickup but again it's less convenient than yeah I mean I pay for pickups so I know I'm you know I'm pay I forget what I pay quarterly or monthly or whatever it is but it's it's definitely you know a lot more so but no I don't I don't wanna I just thank you for that that's all I want to know you know if it was two three years ago cool okay we we'll look at that I'm assuming when we go through this whole budget we're going to be looking at a lot of things and and that's one thing to look at thanks yep and in terms of the senior Transportation at least a couple Board of Selectmen members have wanted to increase the vehicle maintenance line item we did increase it last year to this year based on our expenses although to be honest we're going to blow through the $9,000 model amount this year if we were repair the Dodge Caravan that has some issues currently and one of the board of selectman members has you know basically wants the town to run them through the wash pretty regularly so we're going to try to come up with a plan to wash the smaller ones at an
automatic car wash regularly and a larger the larger ones at Cent tre's wash rack if we do that that budget line item has to come up about $3500 to accomplish that I was going to up it but the board of Selectmen never formally said they wanted to do that so I would hope they could make that decision this meeting or the next meeting so we could put that in the budget because that is not reflected in the main budget currently select Bud question oh I have I have a question too go ahead can we go back to the previous page yeah want to just go on what he was just talking about Lizz do you mind if I just follow up on that with the w I know that was a Hot Topic item the other day with the you know the rust or corrosion that's happening on the vehicles at the Town garage down here there's not a
place or somewhere talk about that in public okay I'd be happy to talk to all of you individually in private about strategies for washing the vehicle but oh I just looked into it when I something comes up I looked into it so oh yeah I wasn't going to mention people doing it I just wanted to know all right what the facility I'll go take a tour thank you understood I have a question about the resident services coordinator what is that the social services person what is that that is so there's a couple Oddities in so the state has a requirement for the towns to have a couple of individuals to cover things related to Social Services so the the problem is the state recommends a minimum number of hours that person be available which is like 20 hours a week in the problem is is that we used to have a a separate individual that did that job and when that person for health reasons was no longer able to do the job I assigned that to an existing Town employee and just paid him a portion of the cost that we had allocated previously do that because I thought it was more economical than having that as a standalone employee I just didn't want an extra employee if I didn't have to and the person that's doing that is the person that's kind of responsible for renters rebates anyway which is one
of the programs that normally falls under that category you know that also deals with when we have problems with hoarding that person is one of the leads on the towns hoarding task force which I never knew towns had until I became a Town Administrator but apparently towns have I guess yeah how how busy is that role so it depends it's seasonal it's not hugely busy but I think the reason why I wanted that attached to an actual staff person is because if somebody because you're per the state you're supposed to be supplying you're supposed to have somebody available pretty regularly and the only way you can have somebody available pretty regularly is to have that you know have that a staff person because we're not going to pay somebody you know know 20 hours a week to sit here and and be that person yeah okay I get that I I guess
I'm trying to understand it it sounds like a role that somebody in the in one of the Departments could perform which I know somebody is I don't understand why a separate stiping for something that sounds like it's kind of a you have to be there right someone has to be there to be able to answer the call but it doesn't sound like it might be that busy of a role Liz to piggyback on your question and we're not going to attack it but since this is our I understand and am glad that you didn't hire a full-time employee because I'm sure in a town of 3,000 people like Liz is saying it is a small amount of time I just you know sometimes wonder as I'm looking through you know preparing for these meetings that when someone does get a stipend each year it goes up for a job that's probably minus you know not too much and I don't want to minimize anybody's job we all have function and that going into yeah that's one of my questions so I'm just piggybacking on you too Liz that every year that you know the the employees you know sometimes people would have a stip in for like $4,000 and it just stays there and then if a new this is what I see happen in my employment you know stiens don't automatically go up all the time everything in the town of vover is
always going up the percentage and I'm just trying to you know our budgets are getting bigger and bigger the increases are getting bigger and bigger so these are you know the things that the contracts can't change the union things can't change but these little things you know there's a lot of a lot of things that I I don't quite understand why you know unless someone has told you Eric that each time like that there's a new budget they have to go up 3% too that's all for those those smaller jobs that people are doing right and the reason for that is that the only two people that are getting stiens currently other than the town clerk which that was a board of Finance thing not a not a union thing are because both those employees are union employees so any additional responsibilities that you expect of a union employee have to be via a memorandum of agreement and negotiated with the Union so those moas are separate from the Union contract because I always want them to be severable in other words if the town at some point decides like for instance Kate has or the tax collector has a stipend because in in addition to being
the tax collector she is also my admin assistant so we went from two people down to a single person and we used that money hopefully to be able to pay for some construction Administration but with the understanding that at some point we may decide that's not working and we need a full-time not a full full time another part-time Administrative Assistant for me that can be backed out of the the contract I'd like to I'd like to request that we kind of keep the high level view going here it's it's getting a little longer in the meeting we're gon have plenty of time to hash out these details just go along but Mark will we have time to ask these like employee related questions without the board of Selectmen pres that's that's all we're really looking for information from Eric and ultimately the the board of SEL the executive body and they'll make those decisions so you know he can give us certainly give us information you know we'll we'll we can always manage the line item yeah I appreciate that the only last thing I was going to say on a stip in matter is generally Eric and I appreciate how you do it and break it out we get that usually I think that the employees are lucky to be getting the stiens and they're able to perform the function within their same job hours usually when a stien is given like when we give stiens where where I'm employed it has to be you know they can't be double
dipping so they can't they have to do the stipended job outside of their working hours so I get you're thinking but they're already so in order of increasing them year by year they're already getting a big bonus of which I understand if it's a different function that doesn't fall within they get a stip in for that extra job but they get the the the good news getting it done within their workday whereas anybody that gets stiens usually has to make sure they're not double dipping and getting it with outside thank you that's it Mark that's all I you know this was a topic so just make one more one more comment and we can move on sure good is this something since it's such a small role could this be moved over to the senior center director because she she's not Union right right she's not Union role could just be moved over right and that and that fee could go away correct you could but I actually don't think you have enough time available in that role to be adding things to it now you may have a different opinion we could certainly discuss that if that's the way
the board wants to go but that's also not in her contract so I don't think she's necessarily going to do it yeah we can certainly consider it though we'll talk about it and which in the weeds again we're supposed to be high level here okay sure come on Mark Board of Selectmen very small budget it's primarily just the board of Selectmen does get a stipend four of the five Selectmen agree to get a stipend the first selectman does not take a stipend Board of Finance the only real thing in your budget these days is board clerk wages baa Board of assessment appeals again it's mostly just the salary for clerks I did up the training budget a little bit I did not get I requested them a couple times I never did get a formal budget for them but I know at least one member of the baa was wanting to take the initial course for assessors and baa
members and I think education's important so if one of them is willing to step up and take the time to go through it I wanted to budget for it plan Planning and Zoning same thing board clerk the the biggest line item in here is legal and Professional Services that line item even though it sits within the Planning and Zoning commission's budget covers all of the land use agencies so it covers zoning Inland wetlands and the zoning board of appeals that did go up a fair bit this year you know I was trying to get an estimate from the town zoning attorney and what are costs go so that you know the town is actively in litigation with a somebody on Route Six the Gravel Pit operation on Route Six so and we expect that at some point we may be able to recoup a lot of our legal costs but I'm suspecting both in the end of this budget year and the beginning of next budget year we're going to have have increased legal costs for that and the zoning the legal budget for the zoning commission is separate from the legal budget from the town the town has two other attorneys that are kind of has a town attorney and then the the assessor's office has its own attorney that deals with with just assessment issues that's Planning and Zoning
Wetlands commission again the majority of their budget is the cost of board Clerk and for the record the reason why we do board clerks for some boards but not most boards is because the the land use commissions and the board of Selectmen and the board of Finance and the board of assessment appeals are the things where you're most likely to get sued if you do something procedurally incorrect and you don't produce good minutes so that's why in those for all of those boards we pay a board clerk yep I was I had to go back again but I didn't see anything for training under zon board of appeals is that something you're carrying under a different line I know you always say that you'll cover that when we need training so I wasn't sure if you carry that separately or yeah I I actually don't think we ever made a line item for
zoning board of appeals I'm not sure exactly why I believe that's just in the main budget we can go we can look or or I can find out it is there 375 yeah but I'm just saying we don't have a subsequent a separate budget paid for that because you're you really only had like one thing in your budget so up to this year so we didn't have a standalone tab for you and there are 32 boards and commissions they don't all have get their own separate tab in the budget can I U I'd like to ask one question you had said legal fees Y where where are all the legal fees segmented here so I know Planning and Zoning has leg and professional fees as we're looking at it so where are the legal fees for the town so there is a town legal budget that's not separate from there's no separate line item for that that's just the line item in the main budget and I'd have to find it it's in there somewhere so it's just a line item in the main budget yeah we don't have a separate tab because it's only there's only one line item in it so we don't generally make a tab for a single line item it's essentially a it's it's its own category but it's a category that only has one expense but you told us that there were two expenses so you told us there were legal fees for the town attorney and you told us there were legal fees for the
assessor's office correct how do we identify the split between those two we don't so well let me back up so we have a separate budget like if you look at 237 in the main budget page the attorney line fee has the regular legal retainer that pays for Dennis O'Brien the town's attorney occasionally I take money out of that line item when we need to talk to our labor attorney and then below it is the assessors legal which it's not a reval year it doesn't seem like it it's unlikely that we're g to ex have a great deal of legal fees this line item goes up considerably in years where we do Ral when we expect to get sued a few times thank you okay so that's it for all the tabs does anybody have any other overall questions or things they want to look at onight Joan Eric this this is just a quick question with regards to our assessor who I know is part-time does he and I know he's covered under contract and all of that am I correct with
that he's in a union is he in that Mei yep he's an meiu member okay even though he's part-time does he so does he must does he get murf is my question does he get retirement from [Music] Handover I don't think so okay I could I was looking at the line earlier today that's all I I know his hours are limited here you know when it's not reval so okay thanks Eric it's a lot to cover I think it was a good review I think it was helpful to review the tabs and how this all rolls up you know if anyone doesn't have access to excel I think generally you can open these things in Google Sheets so you need a Google account to do that if you need something else you know let me know or PDF prints or something we can always work that out Eric I think you said this has changed from the one you sent earlier today you're going to send an updated version yeah it's got a couple little changes I might go through tomorrow and and change how each tab adds in the murf costs before I update it and send it to the board okay just and just as a global thing Eric just so I can share with the board
of Finance I mean listen on my analysis as you guys look at this about 50% of the costs are wages benefits in health care so as you guys take a look so Joanne and and and you're going you're looking in the right areas that's where the money is 58% or 4 48.890717 of it we can't do anything because they're contracted related to those items but that is where the bulk of the money is that the town spends so on line 453 when you look at at this there's $3.2 million in town operating budget 1,115 th000 is Wages $237,000 his benefits and $240,000 as Healthcare so those are the bulk of the money that's where it's at high level anywhere we can focus on that and reduce that that would assist so figured I would just give you that info thank you question oh go ahead if it's okay I I had had a chance to go through the whole spreadsheet before the meeting but in our last CIP meeting we heard fire department request for significant amount of money for their turnout gear is that reflected in this is that that's all built in so it is reflected in the capital I I should have I thought I gave everybody on the board of finance a separate Capital sheet that just deals with the capital funds as they're allocated and What expenses come out of each So currently we are putting in that's line 43 one approximately in the fire equipment sorry that line not the one that's the truck yep $137,000 that's for the lease right so the lease is expected to be about $125,000 but currently we have in that account and I could bring up the other
spreadsheet and share that with you if you guys want to see that I think I I did send it to you though so that has ballpark a little over $400,000 in that account so if we take out the money directly to buy the SCBA for the fire department which is the request Ci or what s yep and the Fire Commission requested if that comes out there's still the money for the first year and then this line item more than covers the least payment but it doesn't you know there may be other things coming down the pike that would the the fund gets depleted is really what it boils down to okay all right I get it correct just to
clarify Eric did that that Capital fund summary was sent I think with K originally sent it around on the 6th it wasn't it wasn't today but it was with a prior email but we did get it don't know if any exchanged it but I don't think I don't think we got an updated copy that it does show the SCBA equipment on the fire on the fire truck fund or something right it's about 200k so but I I do want to be very clear and what I asked the Fire Commission to come back to us with was an updated Capital plan because I haven't had a full-blown cap Capital plan from them in like three years so the year before they proposed the fire Tru up to that point when Kurt had been doing it I would get one every year and then they really haven't done one since or if they have they haven't given it to me so I've asked them for that you know and kind of made them aware that given what we're budgeting right now the squad if if we assume a 10-year lease for the squad over the next 10 years outside of what they've already asked there is not a lot of money available to them so that is a that is a concern Sor are there any sorry I don't know any of any any of
the projects that you have planned or remaining are those in here somewhere that I mean I don't I don't even know I like for one I know you mentioned at one point getting more EV Chargers are those reflected in here and I mean how does that work do we pay for them who pays for them and where are those reflected so I'm not currently looking for more EV Chargers oh where did I hear that but basically what happens is that so we budget to the the goal is to make the funding from year to year to year as similar as possible so we take a a longer look out and we say okay let's take Public Works equipment fund so they have a 10-year Capital plan and it's kind of a rolling 10-year Capital plan so we budget for the public works equipment fund fund based off the 10-year Capital plan so we try to level fund that every year because we don't want the big Shockers like to come back to the town and say this year we need a million bucks for the squad and then nothing next year and then so we've done that across all of the major project funds you know so so the ones where most of the projects that are are being undertaken are funded out of are either line 429 which is the multi-use building fund or out of the building maintenance fund so like for instance the building maintenance fund we funded a bunch of the HVAC improvements to the
town hall came out of that fund for instance we did a bunch of emergency repairs to the electrical system so those are like expenses that are out of the ordinary not like the annual building normal maintenance that you do in a building every year these are essentially project funds the multi-use building fund was originally set up to fund the community center but we were able to to spend the majority of the equipment or do the majority of the community center through arpa grant funding but that didn't cover the kitchen and that didn't cover finishing off the basement so I broke it down in the capital fund but a lot of that money has been assigned to various different things at public meetings because see like whenever I get a grant that requires a town match that has to go to town meeting unless it's a really small Grant so once the town meeting like the town meeting agreed to spend money out of that fund for the town's portion of the work at the the recreation Fields the new playground pickle ball courts lighting that kind of stuff so that money is it's in that fund we already have the money but it's earmarked so most of the money in that fund is already earmarked for something it's good bu okay okay so the the EV Chargers do how how much are they used and what are they costing the town just curious so right now they're not really used at all because basically as soon as we put them behind the pay wall they there's been essentially zero usage of the EV charger since we did that it
actually costs us more and that's something Jeff Maguire and I have had a conversation before they got used a little bit but not very much once we put them behind a pay wall they really haven't been used at all it's costing us more money to pay for the pay wall account than it would be to not do that and just leave them available for the public those Chargers were originally put in primarily because the town was looking at purchasing at least one electric vehicle for senior Transportation but the board elected not to do that where we are technically required to maintain them because the vast majority of money to build those came from an eversource Grant that we applied for and got for the town so the town paid a few thousand dollars to install them around 20,000 of that money came from the utility company but technically we are supposed to keep them available to the public does that make so what so what does the pay wall what does the pay wall cost us I would have to look it up but because we have two of them it's maybe you can get back back back on that or something Eric so yeah yeah you can send that back that's fine okay it's a monthly credit card charge and if I remember it correctly it was $40 a month or was some somewhere in the five to $600 range so the question was the question was get rid of the credit card charge and then all we would sit there and be absorbing would be the electrical usage that somebody would use when
they're plugged in you okay do you have any other topics we want to discuss Joanne yeah I just wanted to kind of roll back and and Jeff kind of alluded to this this was the night that we were talking about employees kind of in depth so I appreciate everyone indulging me with the few questions that I had I know we're going to be doing you know deeper things as we go along but are we looking at this I don't know if the board of selectman is still making choices or decisions on some of the topics or are we you know going to get are pretty much we looking at some final this is this is the way it's going to be I didn't know if there's you know there used to be a monthlong of the board of Selectmen you know budget workshops that I used to listen in and maybe a few Cuts would be made here and there so I don't know what their plan is that's all and if we're meeting again one more time or if this was our meeting I know Mark has another one scheduled for next week that I may not be able to attend that one but I will try but to answer your question the majority of what we've presented to you is contractual the biggest issue I will tell you Joanne that we we have not agreed on is related to the community center and those wages that are related to that the one thing that we did do was agree that for all non-union employees we would agree with a 3% pay increase to be put into the budget so that it would
match our Union contracts so that we were not in excess of our Union contracts and then have a negotiating point that we have to deal with later down the road so I would think that that we will still evaluate certain items and and Eric will bringing those to you during your regular meetings and if you guys have any questions you're you know feel free to pick up the phone or email I I'm sure we would sit there and you know always consider anything but on the employee standpoint the biggest one was the 3% raise and we agreed to that at our meeting and then the other one was we have not sat there and finalized the community center side so that will still be discussed at the next bard of s meeting and I totally understand Jeff all the union implications and respect that you kept the 3% for the non-union too I think that makes it nice you know nice working environment that makes sense I just wondered if you had already agreed to you know I wouldn't well I mean I think it's important to speak on it from my opinion the maintainer position had that already been agreed that that person that came in as a maintainer one will now be elevated because that was a big chunk of money too well that was the hope and and that
decision was simply because of the skill level of that individual that was brought in initially to be really honest Joanne that person should have probably been brought in at maintainer two when he was brought in just because of his skill level but the choice was made to keep him at a a maintainer one that is something that we still can discuss but we also have to remember that it's really important to consider the the in the way that the the Department of Public Works you know work crew will will age out and so trying to make sure that we age them in in a correct pattern to sit there and keep building up the skill and the pay grades for those individuals but and again it's not personal and I feel I just had to bring don't don't worry about it is I know I need this this is public meeting I want the people that I know it's not personal it's just a union thing and you know that but we do have a small town so I'll listen yeah correct and we we have not I would sit there and tell you that this budget in in total still needs to be reviewed by the the board of Selectmen in some level of detail we're not just going to walk away from specific lineups the majority of this is set I mean I don't
think we'll we will pick at it in any significant manner I mean what what changes we made to the capital funds to sit there and reduce the overall spend but we were having some spreadsheet issues at our last meeting and we needed to make sure that we what we were looking at was accurate so I would Envision that the board of Selectmen will still regroup and communicate as to the m the main issues that you've addressed from a payroll perspective so so we'll we'll have Eric relay those those numbers if we decide that there's changes to be made sure appreciate it and thank you for letting me bring it up this was the only time appreciate it no problem sure and you know I think it's totally legitimate for the board of Finance to take a hard look at what we're spending you know we had a period where the town's budget we were lucky in that we've gone through a period where the education budgets both for the elementary school and the high school have been contained in in a lot of cases decreasing and we used that to fund a lot of priorities the town had and I you know there well it may I may sound like that there's no nothing here is set in stone I think both the capital funding and the you know and all line items are up for you know up for discussion the only thing I would say
is that I did highlight in the capital fund three funds where I don't think we can decrease and that is because if we decrease those below what we have we can't meet the obligations that we have in terms of Public Works there's two PE pieces of equipment that there are leases on currently so the majority of that budget is spoken for the same thing will be true of the fire engine fund when the lease for that is approved and we get the vehicle which is presumably sometime in the next six months and the assumption is is that the bridge at on Lake Road at the Sola will be part of the 2026 construction season and we need the bridge and Culvert fund fully funded this year so we have the money actually in the budget for next construction season when that begins so you know but the rest are you know are can be looked at and and you know there's you know it just depends where where you think you want to know obviously this is going to be a extremely difficult budget year we all know that when you start looking at a 2
mil increase you're going to have a lot of really upset people and you know you've got to seriously consider you know you know in years past when we've had to the the board has asked me what cuts we could minimi you know what cuts have the least impact and what the actual impact of those cuts are if we get a little further in the budget process and you feel that's appropriate I'm happy to do that but yeah it's it's going to be a hard budget year no question about it okay you have any other topics or questions we want to address now or does somebody want to make a move for adjournment we'll pick this up again next week either way we'll pick it up next week so I move to adjourn I'll second it okay we have a second any discussion on that motion okay hearing none the motion passes I'd like to thank the members of the public and the members of the board of Finance for sticking it out especially the board of Selectmen they've got to do double duty and double pain here looking through this over and again but we appreciate you being available to answer questions and provide clarification so Eric said it's going to be a long process going to be a tough one this year we all know it so we'll we'll just keep working at it bit by bit work our way through and we'll we'll get there at the end all right thank you everybody you have a good week and we'll talk to you soon
appreciate it bye bye