Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
February 16, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Let me bring up the agenda. It's just budget really at this point, isn't it? Yeah. Correct. Okay.
Eric. So start with public speak. Need to close on the agenda. Yeah. Meeting to order. Start with public speak. Right. Does anyone
wish to speak? Do you want to do you to go through them? Diane Choquette? I'm good. Joan Joan Hebert? All set. Victoria? I'm good.
And everybody else's on the board or open, so all right, on. Eric, what do we have left to clear up on budget to make decisions on Before we. You know, can move this on to the Board of Finance, is there anything we got hanging I know we have. The situation with the admin assistant. What we want to do there. Whether or not we are looking at the public works person. And is there anything else besides those.
So that plus what you want to do with the town, are you willing to budget for a town planner? That's the third one. Then the last thing is you guys officially have to motion for the employee. One of the things you are as a board are obligated to do is determine employee compensation. So, you as a group need to formally motion, you know, either by individual or overall what pay increases or not you're giving employees. Okay. And that covers only employees that are not under contract and not under, not elected. Okay. Sherry,
we're working off the last document you sent us, was the last updated document, which is what, February 3?
Yeah, I believe so. Okay. Yeah, that's I have no changes whatsoever from that document. Okay. And in that document, I was told at one of the meetings to figure in a 3% increase, which I did put in there. And then you have your public works positions in there, and you have your library people bumped up to the minimum wage hourly rate. And we have transfer station people increased their salaries as well. And then a temporary summer helper is also in there. So those are the things that I put in because you were telling me this is what you want to have in Just so you see what it looks like.
Okay. The Andover Elementary School number, is that correct in there or not? No, it is not.
I can't put a figure in until the Board of Education
votes on that budget. Because I think we're what, about 100,000 over that number, right? Ballpark? Ballpark. Yeah. Okay. But I can't,
you know, understand. We we generally try to put something in as a as a perspective, because this is, this is a working document so everything's changeable. Right. We're not we're not saying that's what it is we're saying it's a projection of what it may be. Right. If you can, if you can adjust that up a 100,000 on your, your working document. So, at least we're in the same ballpark. All right. And then I thought we, I thought we had actually increased more than 3% because we had talked about wage inflation and that we were.
I put it 3%. The only one is public works director. He's at 5% within the budget. Is that contractual?
It is not contractual. I mean, we're gonna have to renegotiate. His contract is basically up with the budget year. But since he didn't get any salary increase last year, he requested a total of 5%. So, I put that in the budget, but you know that is When your did
he come in last year? About halfway through the year. Yeah. So he'll come up halfway through this year on a two year contract. Is that what we're talking? Well, I think we we set the contract
to expire with the budget year. So in future cycles, you know, it would be aligned with the budget year is basically what we did. So, we'll have a contract every year with them? Well, probably, would assume we'd run minimum two year contracts with them. You know, we can do longer or shorter. Depends what you want to do. Okay.
Well let's start with that do we want to leave jays at 5%. I'm inclined to say if we're doing 3% for everybody else, don't mind making an adjustment for, but we had a small adjustment last year, what was the adjustment last year?
Do you remember? For employees? Yeah. Generally 3% last year. But remember last year, much of that 3% was taken up by the fact that we decreased, we increased the employees contribution to, What do you call it to their health care and we decreased the towns what the town put into their.
Yeah but we're we still I mean to be candid we still don't have them aligned with what some of the other unions are paying so they're still and pretty favorable I mean we've also we've we fully funded that HSA deductible. No, we don't. Yes, we did.
You say we didn't we didn't give them we didn't give them the full the full amount in the contracts. The HSA deductible? No, no, we fund half of the HSA deductible.
When we started, funded the whole thing, though, the first year, right? Yes. Probably. And then we slowly worked our way away from that, so. Correct.
What I'm saying is that, you know, you gave employees last year a 3% raise, but then you increased their costs in healthcare contributions and you wiped out basically half of that increase.
Yeah but they're not paying any more for insurance. We're covering it. We pay for their insurance if they're single right.
And we don't pay for all of it, I mean they contribute to it. And how much are they contributing. Off the top of my head, I think it's 11% right now. Right
Yeah. It's minimal to what the average person is. Understand that it's a frustration for people, but you know, that's a I would love to be only paying 11% of my insurance. Let's just say that. Right. And look, and I'm not making that argument.
It's just that you asked me what last year's raise was, and I told you what it was. But I said at the same time, realize that that didn't equate to 3%, you know, more pay for employees because we, at the same time, decreased the amount we added into their, You know their HSA and we decreased or we increased their contribution to them.
Guess my only point was that's pretty normal in in in the real world that happens, I mean. You know I don't get an adjustment my wife doesn't get an adjustment, based on how much they're making me pay into my insurance, you know. So I wish that was taken into account but it's not so.
Yeah, I'm not making that argument either way. You asked me for a set of information I gave it to you. So, do with it what you want. Paula, Jeff, are we okay with the 3% that we're at? Well, to be honest, yeah, we've got,
I know where I work and I've talked to a few people at other companies, and this year the average seems to be right around 3%. I think it's fair. Generally, it's three percent right now.
What, do you guys have any feeling on what you want to do with Jay?
So you're saying you were asking the question 3% for everybody else, not Yep. Jay is currently in the budget at five. He's asking for
something for last year because he didn't get a raise because he came in halfway through. So you want to climb? I'm inclined to say he came in halfway through, so why would he get a raise that year? I yeah,
I'm kind of waiting towards that, but did he? He's just asking for something? Didn't, he didn't put a number out there? You
said 5% Eric, is that was his ask or was that your accommodation? No, that was his ask.
I'm just trying to get a feel for how how much, you know, other towns are paying our size for the same service. If he's under or over, Eric, you got any feel for that?
So he's certainly nowhere near the high end, but he's not. There's a really wide range for how much small towns pay their, you know, public works supervisor. And I think it depends a lot on what responsibilities, you know, to some extent are placed on on that person. You know, the the range for his position is somewhere between 70,000 in a high of, say, 115. I mean, if you somebody that was technically a public works director is probably going to make somewhere between 105 and say 125.
Yeah, make I'll just make the motion that with that I I don't think given that he just came in that he should have gotten something last year, he should certainly get something this year because we're coming into contractual we're coming into the yearly issuance I would say I would just do 3% across the board. And that would be my motion 3% across the board, including Jen or anybody that's not contractual.
Now, you and you want to make that motion now? Because I'll be perfectly honest with you. Last week, three board members elected not to make any motions
because of the two of you were not there. So Jeff's not but is Jeff not going to be on today? No, maybe let's wait for Scott.
Let's at least wait for Scott to come on. All right. And I understand what you're saying, Scott, Eric, but
I feel like we need to move. I mean, what's the. Just to be candid, if we're not going to make any motions tonight, what's the point of having the meeting? I well, let's wait for Scott. What I'm trying to say is I think we keep going. No, no. Let's back up. Are we if Scott joins the meeting? Are we doing motions? Because if we're not, then let's just fill the meeting now and we'll call him I think
we make motions tonight with Scott on because we're we're time's ticking. We got to get this. That's how I feel. Jeff, how do you feel?
I'm not opposed to making some motions tonight. I mean, with Jay's position, I don't know if it's worth it to do. I mean, not opposed to the five percent, but if we just do like a 22% holdback based on deliverables. You know, let's just say we get our roadwork done. Get everything done at this summer.
Yeah, the problem with that, though, with his, I mean, I mean last night is a perfect example. Things get dumped on public works that he has no control over. I get that. I get that, but what I'm saying is we don't have a year like we had last year with the rain and I understand that. But we're never going to have a year that doesn't have something. I get it. Get it. We just keep falling behind. I just don't know how we're going to catch up. That's all. No, I don't either. But I think when you join a company and you know, to say I should have gotten a raise in the first six months, you know, I'm not, I'm not there, you know. I'll split the difference with you and say 4%.
I mean, to be honest with you, with this stuff that we have to get done this year, don't want to lose a public public works supervisor over 1% or 2%.
I, but if we start, I just don't want to feel that that's we're setting a standard that everybody comes in and gets a raise in the first you know we're going to make up for the six months they you know when they first joined. Personally.
And he is not on the he's not on the low end certainly and we're one of the smaller towns in the state so. And we also provide you know, providing a vehicle, we're providing fuel, so we're not leaving them hanging, I don't think. Eric, do you have any issue with the, if when Scott gets on with us making motions or was Jeff expecting us to wait?
I don't know that there was any expectation. Didn't realize he was not going to be on the meeting. It's not for me to decide. You are the board. You make your own decisions as to what you think is appropriate. Well,
think we make the motions and do it. If we have a meeting next week, any box, we can adjust as necessary, I guess.
All right, we can ask Scott on public works. What else do you have? Else we have Eric, the admin assistant? Correct.
And we also have to talk about adding the public possibility of adding the public works person right.
Yep yep make a decision, whether you want to add a full time person or whether you want to add a summer only or whether you want to add both.
Well, definitely need we definitely need a summer person I personally would like to see the other person come on board. I mean I understand McGuire was a little frustrated yesterday because we talked about what we add a person that doesn't mean what we can do that level, you know that level of a culvert. I mean I think Eric if we add another person, we can at least know that we can get most of our basin work done and our other road drainage done, hopefully, as the roads are coming up to being resurfaced.
Yeah, I mean, obviously the more crew you have, the more bodies you have to throw at problems. I mean the problem is is that in a year we struggle to get through all the baseline stuff that we're supposed to be doing, and you so we try to leave ourselves, know, a five to six week block to work on a major project, you know, and pick one road and say, okay, this year we'll address this drainage on this road. Right. You know, but even that, I mean, there's, you know, there's probably 15 roads that need systematic drainage work. Right. And I mean, we have a ten year. And my point was if we haven't if we can get Jay to start managing,
you know those crews so that we have one set of guys that's just doing drainage work and the other set is maybe running around and being a little more flexible, I think that hopefully would help us move along, know.
Is it helpful to see what the differences in numbers with the part part time person versus the full time person.
With that we need we need both because otherwise we're not if we if we just may add another full time person then we're just going to pulling them to do mowing you know. And the part time person is going be much less expensive we're not providing benefits we're not providing you know. Sherry what what we calculate the part time around. And if you have the full time or two, that'd be helpful. That should be three zero one in the spreadsheet. The
temp salary goes up about 17,000 for a summer hire, essentially six months.
And we've done something between '18 and '20, right? Right.
Yeah. So that gives us a total department request for part time hours of about $20,000 Okay. That's why I have full time person.
Full time person was maintainer one. The salary was $87,600
Well, that's not salary. That's full up costs, salary and benefits. Right. Salary and benefits. Salary is 60,000 and benefits are $27.06. That's with a single, right? That is for family.
Oh, okay. So we could end up You always budget high. Yeah. No. No. I yeah. I know. I'm trying to And
that's what Jeff told me to do is put the highest one in there, you know? 87,000
family. Alright. And then a man disposition. I think that was actually in your sheet to.
It is, but I didn't put it in the budget so changing to a thirty four hour per week position would increase salary by $14,220 and benefits by $28,000 Healthcare, this includes healthcare, HSA, Yeah. Contribution,
Okay. What is that salary rate at? Because I thought we were, I mean, we're paying a little more because she was part time, I thought.
Yeah. I don't know what her current salary rate. Let me pull up. Let's see if I have that graph.
Let me see. Administrative assistant hourly rate. Right now it's 21.63. Nineteen hours per week. It's what I have here on the spreadsheet. Okay. Alright. Yep.
She's not actually out of the range then where she's at now so. Do we have any idea what time Scott's gonna hop on? He didn't say. Anything else we have to address besides these arc.
Then you still have to make a decision, do you budget for a.
A a planner a part time planner or not. I think we I thought we kind of agreed that that was the way to go anyways given that we're we're we're paying attorneys to fill in some of the stuff right now right.
Well, so I had made that argument, but I don't know. I have not been at any kind of discussion where you've made any decision one way or the other. If you have, it was without
All right. So what's your budgeting numbers for the planner?
Our planner was you know what you mean? Eric's number or the one I put in? What'd you put in? Five hours times $75 an hour. That was what I was told to add for a part time planner and no benefits. I'm in the wrong business.
It would be really tough to get a planner willing to do that. You might though. At $75 an hour, I might go back to school and get my planning license. And once that come out to a year? What is the department number, Aaron? I'm just looking that up right now. Planner, wager. Like $17, something like that.
I got, let's see, town planner, wager is. What I added was $40 an hour times four hours per week times 52. So that's 8,320 is what I add. Okay. For the planner?
Yeah. It says town planner, department eight zero three. I have here.
Well, for it's 75. If we're at 75 an hour, it's going to be $19.05. Is that the going rate or 75?
I think you would struggle to get a town planner for that. I didn't realize you actually added it. I mean, you're not gonna get one for forty hours a week. I wouldn't even bother advertising it for that. Know, most CEOs will make about that. What do you mean? $40
an hour, right? That's Well, that's That's not even heard of, right?
Yeah. No. I mean, let's be honest. Like, the cheapest planner I know is Eric Trott in Coventry, and he makes right around 100,000 a year plus pennies as a full time employee. You know, most town planners, you know, are, you know, well over 100 these days. I mean, well,
it's 75. You're you're you're pushing one. You're pushing 150 if they were full time. 160, actually.
Right. But, you know, and if you're not paying benefits, I think you could pull off 75. I don't think you could pull off 40. Okay. Okay. Does
anyone have any objection to the planner? So it's probably like fifteen six is what it's looking like. Paula?
Yeah. I think when I gave you the information, I said you were looking in round numbers. You were looking at roughly 20,000 a year. I think we're going to hire a part time planner. I think we may have confused adding
more hours to the, I think, it the CEO or whatever we've got working? I think maybe that was where that number came from.
Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Combine the planner and the CEO into I a new think that was the issue.
I mean, that's essentially what we have now. We just make the CEO kind of take on the role of the town planner. But that's just one of those combinations that doesn't seem to work very well. No, understand. Because it's a different set of skill sets. Paula, your take?
Like, you were saying we're we're spending a ton of money on this
We're paying the attorney a lot more per hour. We're just not getting done what we need to get done, unfortunately.
Yeah, I think if it's gonna make that position efficient, we're gonna get what we need, then that makes sense. Jeff Murray.
I need to look into this a little bit more.
So the reason we're asking about it is that every time they rewrite the zoning regulations, like for instance, they just rewrote them all for housing code and affordable housing and all that, we have to adjust our regulations accordingly within town. So we have to have someone actually go through and redo those that's that's really why this is that, and the fact that you know there's been a push from our. From our zoning you know our zoning chair who's got a lot of stuff dumped on them, you know, and as a volunteer and certainly not. Versed in all of this, you know we can't ask a volunteer to be rewriting the regulations so we've been using an attorney to do it.
Right. And frankly, the town had a town planner up until around ten years ago when Mr. Burbank got rid of the town planner in a cost cutting venture. Well, yeah. So So we've been
limping along with so we've been getting getting along with somebody who was volunteering their time and an attorney doing this work? Is that what you're telling me? Doing the regulations, yeah. Yeah, so in along the way,
there have been three projects that we ended up. I went back to the Board of Finance directly and requested supplemental appropriations because there were a bunch of things we had to do. So one year we got and spent around $12,000 outside the normal budget on, you know, hiring a planner professional to accomplish some of our reg changes. Know, and another year, I think we ended up spending an additional 7. So, in that period, there have been times where we've gone back and specifically asked for pools of money to do certain things that you know were really kind of time critical. But I mean, a town planner really should be kind of integral in helping to develop the plan of conservation and development, number one, you know, and kind of overseeing the big picture, you know, development and, you know, how zoning goes in a town. That's really the what a planner normally does. We haven't had that, you know, in a bunch of years. I mean, so basically what happens is de facto the chair of the Planning Zoning Commission ends up functioning as the town planner. And then what we do is we lean on our town zoning attorney who in a prior life before you decided to go to law school was a town planner. And we use Mark Brandt's for a lot of planning advice. You know, because of that. And Mark is excellent. He's phenomenal because he brings both the legal aspects, you know, and the municipal planning aspects together in one person, you know, but that advice comes at about $180
an hour is what we pay when we talk to Mark.
I'm just looking at the salaries. I just did some research and, you know, it says average salary, I'm just confused because it says, you know, average salary for a town planner in Connecticut is $63,000 Yeah, no way. Well,
that's what ZipRecruiter's reporting and I'm looking at all the towns and cities and I'm just confused over the amount, that's all. I'm just trying to make sense of it.
I mean, I could tell you about four or five years ago, I made a push to hire a town planner and I put together salary data for all the area towns and what they paid their planners. And at that time, there was literally like one guy in the area that was under 100 ks and that was Eric Trott in Coventry. And that was partially because he only had an undergrad degree. He didn't have a master's in community planning. But generally speaking, are pretty highly paid positions.
I get it. I'm just looking at what the data is showing me. That's all.
I mean, you would like, it would take me a day or so to do it. I will give you the CCM salary data, current salary data. You just tell me what towns you want to know and I'll give you the data on you know what the salary basis is for all their town planners. Tell me what towns you want to know and I'll provide that for you.
Do we have any towns you know basically that in the past we've comped like you know as comparables?
So what I've done in the past is I've done neighboring towns for one and then I've done towns of similar size. There's a size grouping, I forget what, under basically two to five k size range in the state. And I've gone for that for comparables.
I don't have an issue with the position, but I just don't want this budget to re release and have people Googling Tom Flanders and find what I found at $63,000 and say, are you guys hiring somebody for $100,000 when Well,
issue here is, Eric, I know we go back and forth on this and we always butt heads, but you can't comp off surrounding towns when they have development and they have active water sewer, all those things that play into that area. So, we need to go with like towns. If we start talking like you start looking at Eastford and Canterbury and things like that, that's that's the town we're basing off of, you know? I mean, those are closer to what we are.
Well, I mean. You know, then then so I guess what I would say is the town would be better off not having a planner than not having a good planner. You know, and yeah.
I we're never going to be a Hebron or, you know, or a Coventry. I mean, I'd love to say we are, but you know
Well, remember, Coventry's and Hebron's are where they are because for many years they've pushed economic development, you know, and they've had functional town planning staffs, you know, dealing with things. You know, this is this is a town planner is a long term gain for a town. It's not a short term gain. You know, in one year or two years, you're not going to see a giant, you know, increase in anything in a town in a short period. You know, it's a question of where do you want to be in twenty years versus today? That's what a town planner brings you. I mean, you know, I'll give you an example. You know, Bill Warner, if you look at the transition, you know, in Middletown. You that you
but you gave us that example before and and I and we've although I I personally appreciate it. The different I mean I've seen it in will romantic you look at romantic twenty years ago will come back today I get it, I mean the town planner makes all the difference in the world, but. All of the towns that we are talking about have town resources that we don't. They have water, they have sewer, they have gas, you know? Sure. We don't have those. And so we're never going to be the target of some of those types of retail establishments, unfortunately, that everyone would love to have. I mean, can we get some? Maybe, but we're not exactly a big planning town because of that. And we've universally, as a town, rejected those things. We never want to spend the money on those. Right.
That is why basically a town planner has always, for the last ten years, we've basically said, we're not going to have a town plan. And I look at it and I say, you know, that's one of those things. Either you fund it at a reasonable enough level that you get a decent product or you don't do it. And I think it's perfectly acceptable to say you're not going to do it. I mean, you know, I argued in that position for years and was told no. And I get that. So the question becomes,
we know we've got a bunch of regulations that have to get caught up in some other things. What's it going to cost us to do that through the attorney position versus doing it through a planner? I mean, do we want to give a planner a shot for three or four years and see what it looks like? And is it a better, you know, address? Because we know we have a bunch of regulations that need to be addressed and see how that plays out or do we want to say we're going to stay the status quo and not develop at all, you know. Jeff what's your take. Oh, by the way, I talked to Scott, he is at least forty minutes out So I just wanna get anything we add, I just wanna get the data to back it up. Okay. So, Eric, for the next meeting, can you get data from a couple of those smaller towns and see what they look like?
Eastford, Canterbury, something like that. Anything new we add, I guarantee you at the budget meeting, we're going to get the question. Yeah, no question. And we need to make sure we have the data to back it up if it's in the budget. Say, look, this offering is what the position at,
and this is what other towns are paying. Well, let's try to get some small towns on that and see what it looks like. So do we want to postpone that at this point, or is there anything else that we want to try to get information for for our next meeting? Because if we're not gonna make any motions No.
I was just gonna say Oh, go ahead, Sherry. I I just want a little bit of traction on this plan, I think. Do you want me to just take it out for now? No. No. You have Up it to, excuse me. I just want to let me finish my thought because I'll forget. Or up it to the $75 an hour, either four
hours or five. I don't know. So why don't you up it for now to five hours? Yep. And let's see what that looks like at the next meeting. And then Eric will come back with some data. And if it's drastically off or if we decide to go in a different direction we'll adjust it. Thank you. Can you also for the sake of the next meeting, can we put in what that other public works employee looks like the full time so that we're discussing that and amanda just kind of throw everything in the pot and see what it looks like. You're not trying to do it on the fly. So that person is in the budget that person I was just gonna say that person is in there. The full time.
Yeah, the budget that you have, that budget document that you have reflects both the part time summer helper and a full time position at Public Works. So the only thing it does
not reflect then is? Is Amanda's. Amanda's position in the planner at the higher rate. At the higher rate. Correct. So can you adjust those so we can have like what what's a full boat look like? And then we'll start pulling out if we feel we it's appropriate. Okay,
I can do that. That might be the easiest way. Everyone okay with that, Jeff? Okay,
and the deliverables you want me to send to the board is you want you want the basically the CCM salary data on, you know, comparable towns, what everybody's paying planners.
Yes. I mean, just just just for I was just kind of looking online just at LinkedIn and some job search sites, and I just found one for Hopington, Rhode Island, And they're looking for a forty hour weekly union position, 60,000 to 70,000 with benefits,
forty hours a week. Yeah, that's like a mob town.
But no, what I'm saying is that's what they're paying for this position. They're looking for somebody with at least five years of municipal planning experience. Unfortunately,
that's Rhode Island, though. Don't we don't know what I don't know what the requirements are in Rhode Island. We don't know. I mean, Connecticut has, especially when you start talking, when you start talking building anything,
I mean, all of the New England states are completely different. Mean. I get it. I get it. But that's in line with what the other salary data I was getting.
Hey, you know what? Look, I'll pull your comparables so you can make a decision. Yeah. You know, maybe something's changed a lot in the last three or four Are you okay with us putting it in and if we need to take it out, taking it out after, Jeff? That's fine.
Nothing. Put it in. Let's let's see what it looks like, and then we can subtract.
And is there anything else of discussion that anyone wants to get more information on, whether it's A capital funds or any of the other things that are. You know, in the works.
No, I think I think we're pretty we have a good idea about Jay's position, the public works positions. I think we're in good shape unless anybody else thinks otherwise.
There's just a couple of other things we were talking. There's a couple of things I've been discussing this week, and I don't know if we want to try to cover them with maintenance, but we talked to Jay, we were talking about the senior buses and treating the buses and that type of stuff. Do we want to try to add that into the senior budget or to have that stuff done, Eric? Or do we want to try to just get that out of maintenance next year?
I think for next year we'll get that out of maintenance. I mean the materials costs are pretty low. It's really that it's really the labor, you know, putting somebody under the buses, jacking the buses up, getting under them with a pressure washer, washing the shit out of them. So I just wonder if we're gonna have somebody if we're gonna if we don't have public works do it, we have somebody else do what the cost would be. It's way cheaper to have public works do it.
Yeah, I don't have a feel for because it's just there aren't that many places that do it in this area. It's not commonly done on autos anymore, You know,
at least in this area. And I say that that is that's a perfect as they start to slow down and the weather starts to get colder. That's a perfect opportunity to start doing that so.
Yeah. I mean, it's just that it all comes down to a question of time. I mean, you know, we're sitting there with a kid in Zach, you know, that's a fully trained diesel and frame mechanic. I mean, you know, theoretically, if you ever went to, you know, one guy dedicated as a mechanic, you could probably take on the maintenance for senior transportation and a lot of other things. It's just that as soon as you do that, you take him out of all the other roadwork stuff that's We're also involved in this
not in a place to do that, so let's not even discuss it. You're gonna scare people. Right. Yeah. All right. We will have opportunities though, where you have a guy out or somebody's gonna be out on vacation. Yeah. That was sort of my, that was sort of my point. If we add another, especially if we add another person, it's the perfect opportunity to have somebody just sit underneath you know all the equipment one day and just spray everything in a day. You know it takes give or take to do correctly, it probably averages about an hour per vehicle so. It's kind of a one day project, I would think, with most of our stuff, maybe, maybe a little more than a day by the time you wash them down and stuff and let them dry. But if you prep, let's say you prep two at the end of each day, you know, and then the next day you spray them, you kind of just go like that.
You know. Yep. I just want to start taking care of our vehicles. I mean, makes sense. Okay.
Unless anyone objects, then I would actually make a motion. Oh, sorry. Public speak. Public speak unless anyone wants to go on to other things.
I just want to remind everybody we moved our meeting from Monday to Tuesday.
So should we be prepared to sew all this stuff up and and make decisions on next Tuesday? And then that's gonna be our that's gonna be our drop dead date. Correct? Honestly, I was kinda hoping we're gonna do it tonight. Didn't realize Jeff wasn't gonna be here, and so I was gonna be here. So
Yeah. I think it was just last minute confusion so. Yep okay. Okay. Paula comment diasha cap. I'm good thanks. Victoria.
I'm all set, thank you. Thank you for being on by the way. Thanks. Joanne.
Hey, I am gonna have to say something just real quick. So as an outside observer, you know, I try to come to all these to get as much information as I can. So as an outside observer, hopefully, and I think you guys probably do have a lot more information that you're privy to than what I'm hearing as you're making these important decisions. You know, so I like what Adrian and all of you brought up at the end just to have a little bit of backup. You know, I'm totally neutral on everything, but I'm here to learn. I'm here to feel you know persuaded or you know get information for what you know decisions have to be made or whatever. It's all on you guys to present the budget but it was kind of hard to just hear talk here and there when you're deciding raises. So I just think it's always helpful like I say every year when you have a document because you guys ask questions
like, this is current salary, start date was, you know, 11/20/2020 you know he's up and this is just general you know and you're going to be making important decisions too about the administrative assistant position so I would think there'd be like just a little feedback you know she's and I'm just very neutral but just hearing you know what's going to go forward in the past I have heard that communication is a big thing and clearly it is and she's great at it but I would hope that if hours get added to that position, this is as a private resident and I do this as a job, that she's really gonna help Eric so that Eric, and I know she will, that that position would really help
that town because I feel like there's a lot of new employees that are going to be coming on board that need to be managed. There's just a ton of new employees in the last couple of years. So if that's gonna my job is the right hand man for my boss. So I just like to hear what it's gonna entail. You know, what the duties are, what the new situation will be, but maybe that's not for me to hear. And you guys will just be like, that's behind the scenes. It's just helpful as an observer tuning into all these meetings to get the facts. Then I sometimes don't really feel like I have it all, and maybe I'm not, I shouldn't. So that's just my thought. Thank you.
Right. And Joanne, remember, the Board of Finance still has essentially two and a half months to review the budget. The whole goal that could get it to you, you know, March 1 is you have all of March and all of April in the beginning of May to tweak before this goes to the public. So if there's specific information you want from us or the town, You know, give it to me in whatever form you can email or writing and we'll provide that to you.
I think I think her point Eric is that not she knows his board of finance, she can go digging her point is that as a layperson who thinking I'm not let's say I'm not on the Board of Finance. She's wondering if we're giving enough information to the public for them to understand why we're adding someone or what the duties are going to be she knows she can go dig in from Board of Finance and ask for anything I think she's talking as she said, as a lay person so. As just an outside observer and I appreciate it's just it's it, I appreciate all of you, and that was just an observance I had today, know. I think I. I think to be candid with you, you know Joanne is that because there is so much to cover and because you know we're trying to cover so many lines, don't always dig into some of this stuff because we, I think, because we're interacting with amanda let's say for me as position, for instance. I'm interacting with amanda joanne's you know Paul is interacting Jeff obviously Eric we're seeing the workload that she currently has and we're wishing you know, there are, I cannot tell you how many times that I looked at my watch and said oh crap it's 02:00 on a.
On a Thursday and I missed amanda and I need something or I want something sent out or whatever whatever. Because she's just not there to you know if I don't catch that 02:00 window you know I'm kind of stuck so.
Totally totally get it, I know how important she is to the town. I mean, year I've made my points or whatever or that position. Don't want to, you know, you're not supposed to speak directly, but. No, Joanna, I think it's just as a courtesy. I just want to hear what it's going to do. Know, I think that would be helpful. Yep. Okay. All right, anyone else I think we're good motion to adjourn. A second. All in fair. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Okay. So Sherry and I will get that info to you prior to the next meeting, probably in the next couple of days.