Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
April 27, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Go for it.
Okay, great. Thank you, Eric. Okay, welcome everyone. This is the town of Andover regular regularly scheduled Board of Finance meeting on 04/27/2022. I'll call this meeting to order 07:00. Okay, we'll go ahead and recite the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic towards it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty, justice, for all. Thank you. We'll go ahead and move on to agenda item number two, which is public speak. It doesn't look like we have any members of the public in attendance other than the board. Okay, so seeing that, we'll move on to agenda item number three, which is the additions oh, it looks like we do. Marcy, I see you joined. Did you have any comments for We're public
just about to move on to the next agenda item. No, thank you.
Okay, very good. Move on to agenda item three, which is additions and deletions to the agenda. Does anybody have any additions deletions to the agenda? Joanne?
I just wanted to add one agenda item just to have a quick discussion about the board clerk position for the Board of Finance. Nothing specific to anybody that's done it in the past, just kind of a little overview of some info I've gathered and see what you all think.
Okay, so do you want to make a motion then? Would suggest we're looking for a motion to add it as item 8B, which is a discussion of the board clerk position.
Should I make a motion or does someone else do it? I don't know. You
go ahead and make that motion. Think it makes sense. Anyone could do it, but I think that's what you're doing. I'd like to make a motion that we
as a board just or that I'd like to discuss the position of board clerk in the minutes and things of that nature. Okay, so we'd add it as agenda item 8B, would be under new business.
Second the motion? I'll second it. Okay, Diane, any discussion? Okay, hearing none, I'll go ahead and call for a vote. All those in favor, Aye. Opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. The motion passes. We'll amend the agenda to include item 8B, which is the discussion of the clerk for the Board of Finance meetings, as I understand it. Okay, very good. Any other additions or deletions to the agenda. Okay, we'll go ahead and move on to item for which is the town administrators report, Eric.
Sure. I'm going to keep this brief since I sent a lot of this to you in written format. First of all, I wanted to apologize to the board and to Joanne for my outburst at the last meeting. That was unprofessional on my part and I do apologize. Second, the only thing I wanted to say other than what you've already gotten in written form is that we did finally get our first allotment of money from our Nipps bottles sold by the Endover Package Store. So we got about $1,200 for our initial allotment from that. We also received the check from Kerma for the insurance claim for the well and the controller lightning damage that occurred last August. So took a while but they sent us the money. That's all I have unless you have other questions everything else I supplied in written form, so I'm not going go over it line by line unless you want me to. Mark, you're muted.
Thank you. Does anybody have any specific questions for Eric? Joanne?
I'm not going to make a big deal about this and I appreciate Eric that you apologize tonight. We've always had good conversations in the past and I think it's good to have good healthy dialogue and I know that these are our meetings and we're able to talk about what we you know how we're going to voice concerns and I appreciate that. I'm a little taken aback because this is the first I heard you hadn't reached out to me all week, but I do appreciate it here doing it publicly. I would have accepted it privately as well. Yeah, so I appreciate good dialogue. I've always had good conversations with you. It was a little bit of a surprise and yeah,
moving forward, looking forward to just being able to ask questions or voice our opinions. Thank you. And then maybe this I have to wait for the finance department part but I don't know if I'm allowed to ask them now or then but will we have we don't have a representative tonight from the finance department Correct?
Correct Marina was supposed to be on but she is traveling at the moment She had hoped to make it but Okay
What the reason was but she texted me shortly ago and said I flat out can't be on it today Okay, thank you
Okay. Other questions specific for Eric? Okay, hearing none, I guess we'll move on to the finance department report. I don't know Eric if you're going to address the particular items on here. We've got the budget summary, revenue summary, tower spending over expenditure items.
So I sent the members of the Board of Finance on Thursday or Friday. Friday I believe a copy of what my suggestions were for the initial round of transfers and I sent you as you had asked for previously the budget in Excel form so you could manipulate it the way you wanted and then I also sent you a version of that Excel form with all the headers stripped out and then sorted by percentage used so you could see right up front everything where we're currently over budget and then what fund transfers I was posing in this round.
I had sent out earlier this week everybody on it. The sample of the format that we did for the budget transfers last year that Sherry did for us. And I would very much like to see all of our budget changes done that format. We at a glance can easily see what account is coming from and what account it's going to. And I don't know if anybody's had a chance to look at that, but we used it last year. Do you guys want me to send it to you again? I think I sent it Tuesday of this week.
Yeah. Haven't. I haven't had a chance to look at it.
Yeah. I do like the format that you sent Diane. I had a chance. I, but I do wanna say that I appreciate getting something and truthfully, I don't mind stating publicly. I feel bad that our town manager has to do it all. So I can appreciate that he, you know, made an attempt to get us something. I do like the format that you've shared that I think Sherry did last year, and we'd expect to get that from her. I mean, know Eric got us something, so that's good, but I agree. I like your format.
That's what the board wants. That's what the board will get. I would have preferred to break up the transfer so we do some each month, instead of having to deal with 70 or a 100 of them all at once, But so be it.
And again, I don't know if these are questions for the finance part or you. Again, not trying to put an overdue burden on you having to sit there and put it in a new format but it's yeah whatever it's Diane's point so whatever she wanted to make on that the the format that she sent is easier to read but I do appreciate that you sent it to us
Does anybody else have trouble downloading the modified expenditure report? All
right. Yeah, can view it in the browser. Just I must have had it corrupted when I downloaded it. Sorry. Okay. I saw I did see look through your your your, form suggested format, Diane. I haven't really compared the two personally, but, you know, it is pretty straightforward to understand that way.
Eric's format, and he did the best job he could. You know, you have to read the text in the column in order to understand what's going on, and you have to know what the account numbers are, whereas in the other format, the account description and numbers there and saying, we're taking it from this account and putting it to that account. Cause I really wanna have a visual of where the money's moving from and to. Cause there's gonna be a lot of transactions.
Any other comments or input from the board on that?
Are we saying, Diane, that we want to hold off until we get it? I mean I have no one can see it's just so easy I printed it it's
you know it'll have you can't see it yeah someone. We didn't do the transfers last year until June so I mean we can do them next month and then finish them up in June
Because I'm thinking one of the finance people could just do whatever Eric has provided us put it in the quick format and I think you're right it would be easy to go through it but
I'm not saying that. And the piece of information I do not know because now we are in April and I'm assuming our expense report is through month end March. I want to know what hasn't been posted that we don't know about yet.
I can answer that. The version I gave you was as of April 15 and the version you got in the packet was after that because there's one more transaction on that one than there was in mine because they did one additional journal entry. So there's not a lot of difference between those two. I had Marina specifically pull me one on the fifteenth because that represented the period after the Taliban Cup checks, you know, for that the two week period and done the correcting journal entries and corrected all the errors we had found in the things that had been posted incorrectly. So you're saying the report we got in our packet is the most current? As far as I can tell, that should be basically those two reports only vary by one item. I
guess going back to also this report, I am the person who really wants it in Excel. I get that what they're going to publish on the website is going to be a PDF. What is happening is I think you're getting the report in Excel, it's being converted to a PDF and then it's being published on the website. So then unless the report is emailed to me, I cannot do anything with it. And this Excel format report has no data at the top to tell you the date it was run, what time period it is or anything like that. You can't identify it. I just wanna make sure, and then it also drops the department, the calculations for the department expended percent used, which is not a problem for me if I have an Excel because I'll just drop a formula in there and fix it myself. But other people, it would be a problem for them because then they're going to have to manually do it.
That is a good point. But unfortunately, when you export this to Excel, you know, you lose some of the the detail that you get if you take that same file and export it directly to PDF. So, that is an issue. I don't know that we can address it with Edmunds. I know Marina tried when she was pulling the report for mate, but she wasn't able to produce anything with you know, column total disease.
If you get, I would like to at least know that the report that gets published, that it has the time frame on it. So we at least know what time period we're looking at.
Diane, when I sent it to you, the header, the name of the file is expenditure report as of 04/15/2022. I put it right in the title of the file so you would know. But the one that's in the packet
does not have any information on it. And that is the most current report. So that's the report I am going to look at. So it's it's two seconds to add it to an Excel file. You know, if you send it to me or when you email it to me in Excel, if you don't wanna put it in the report, if you put it to me in the email, I'll add it myself.
I mean, look. If you simply want me to put in one of the headers what date it was run-in the future, I would. I thought I had satisfied your concern by titling it with the date. So that's an error on mine. I will not repeat that. The next time I send it to you, I will write on column I what date
it was produced. So it kinda makes you And the date it was run is not necessarily the date that the report was run through. I want the date range parameter for the report. Correct. Okay.
Without those things, you don't know if you're getting the most current information. That's all I'm saying. You can't tell.
Okay. But, I mean, ultimately, from my perspective, whether I manually put it in the Excel file or manually put it in the name of the Excel file, it's still the same information. But if you would like it in the Excel file itself, I would be more than happy to provide that.
So, right now, what's out on the website for our packet, which is the public record, doesn't have any data information on it. It's gotta be in there for the public record. What you send to me in Excel, I will fix myself. It'll take me two seconds. So I have one question on the expenditure report. And I don't know if you know it's under the recycling department, which is 703. And the last three digits of the account number is 807, which is the mid NIROC fees recycling. We have a year to date of expense of $4,178.16. Nothing in the current column tab, so there was no current information booked. Last month, the report had year to date of $1,152.37, also with nothing in current. So
Right. What happened behind the scenes? I don't know. So what happened was
Marina had booked the Midnear Rock annual fee under tipping fees because she missed, that was one of the ones I went through basically all the line items with her and looked at all the expenses we took out of every line and said I think that's appropriate that's appropriate that doesn't make sense And anything I saw that we didn't make sense, we reclassified. In Midnirach, we had fees in a couple of different places for Midnirach that were incorrect.
So how come it's not showing a transaction in the current month column, the dollar amount, if we've made that adjustment? It's there was a change and there's no transaction in the current month column. So I'm just trying to figure out what But would a journal entry show up if it was just transferring from I do not know. That's why I'm asking even months ago? I don't I think so.
I don't, I think it would only show up if we made a journal entry for a fee that was incurred this month. But that's a question I would have to, I would have to research with Edmonds and figure out how they deal with it. I don't know personally.
I don't know. I just the number changed and I didn't know why. So and I didn't see a transaction posted. So that's why I'm asking the question. If you're telling me journal entries don't show up in the current month column?
I wouldn't think they would because it would have been a reversal of something that was paid a while back. So,
it kind of probably depends on whether books get closed for the month and you have to rebook it in a current month. It may not operate that way. It doesn't really surprise me that that's not set up that way. That's long as the year to date matches which I think is the key thing that needs to be the correct information year to date right so okay. So that answers that question.
That's the only question I have on the expenditure report Do you have a question on the revenue report? I see that we've added two new items at the end of the revenue report. The Connectivity Grant and the Connecticut State Library ARPA funds grant. So my question is these items here. They have an amount in the adopted budget column and I'm assuming it's adopted budget. It just says adopted.
Give me a couple seconds to pull that up. Okay. Okay. But what's your question again?
Oh, I see that there's two new items. Okay, added to the end of the report. Connectivity grant and then the ARPA grant for the library. Okay, so I see that there's numbers in the adopted column, the numbers in the revenue columns, and then year to date revenue, and it shows that we received 100% of our revenue. My question is, why are there numbers in the adopted columns? Because those weren't part of our budget. And I don't know if that's just how it has to be done. Because, yes, we want to recognize this revenue, but it wasn't part of our budget. I see So, that it's segregated from other stuff. So, this is a new item. So, I guess I wanted to explain to me.
So, I think that's not a question I can answer, frankly. You had asked that we separate those out and not have them within the budget, have them as revenue, so we showed them that way.
Right, but I don't, my question is, I'm expecting that and I may be wrong on this. I'm expecting that the adopted column is for what you use as in your adopted budget. So you can track if you're excess or deficit. These were never adopted in budget. Just wanna track that we the revenue.
If the alternative to that though would be having an excess or deficit that was a 100%, right?
Well, it says we've got a 100%. We've got a 100% of the revenue.
But I mean, if you're gonna track a fund, you have to have, you know, what money comes you have to know what you've got. I do see your point and that your point is that it's not it was not in a budget that was adopted. And what I would say is the connectivity grant because that was in the documentation we provided last year, even though it wasn't aligned in our general budget because it was a standalone grant. It was definitely acknowledged in the budget.
No, we didn't net any taxation off of that or anything. I just want to make sure people aren't going to look at this as to be netted off taxation because to me, these are standalone restricted funds or grants used for a specific purpose. And those expenses should be booked directly against these accounts and not into the general expense of the budget.
Okay, so you want it to look like, for instance, a historical document preservation grant, which we have an adopted budget of zero and a year to date revenue of X. Right. Okay.
And my question then goes, as these funds come on, like the connectivity grant, as we starting start paying bills out of that, we should have reporting so we can see the expenses being charged to that fund. Correct. All these accounts, even the community center account need to be set up that way. Yes. I know we've had some expenses come through on the community center. Where are they getting booked against?
I don't know how that works is the question I'm asking. It could be the software, right, Diane, is what you're getting at? Maybe they have to put it in there. I don't know.
I don't know. Gonna ask you to go ahead and Yeah.
You know, one of the one of the things we know is we know we need to stand up. We need to establish standalone funds for a whole number of things and convert a lot of our L accounts to standalone funds with, you know, revenue and expenses. You know, we had been really hoping we were going to get help from the auditor to do that. And the auditor is flat out said he doesn't have time to do that. So whoever we end up hiring to come in and oversee the department is going to have to take on that task because you know, we've got pages and pages of L accounts, know, that have to get consolidated
And the same thing with bank accounts. I mean, I can't tell you how many bank accounts we got. We have a lot, you know, and we should not, no question.
But funds that we have that are active, we know what they are. So right now, we're doing connectivity grant work right now. Correct? So when those bills start coming in, what are we doing with them?
So we have currently an L account for the community or for the connectivity grant, and we pay it out of that L account. So can we get reporting on that?
Yes. You can. I mean, we could print you out the report on that.
That's what we need. I guess I'm saying I wanna make sure that when a contractor gets paid, it's not getting charged to town aid road or the road improvement fund if it's supposed to be against the connectivity grant and how do we account for that? I don't, that's a question I don't know. I don't wanna go over budget because this wouldn't be in the budget because that work is specifically being charged to this account. Understood.
Well, that's what I'm trying to get so that we track. We have a lot of money in these funds and we're going to start tapping into them and using them this year and we need to make sure that we've got that in place.
Right and remember about a week ago, for the connectivity grant but for all those permanent funds you had asked us to track, we gave you an excel spreadsheet which has revenue and expense for every one of those accounts. You would like the same thing for the connectivity grant,
you could have that. I mean, the things that you want. Yeah, we should be looking at that. And the community fund, the community center fund wasn't in there. And I know we've paid some expenses for that.
You know, I'm gonna just clarification, Diane, it sounds like this is a lot of you're basically looking at looking at the books every month and am I reading too much seems to me like a lot of getting into the weeds here, and maybe we need to do that. I'm gonna tell you right now, and this is my opinion. We have a lot of errors in our reports. We're making decisions based on figures that we don't know are accurate.
That's how I feel right now. We have a lot of money in these funds and a lot of money changes hands in those. And we should just be overseeing that. We should just see the bills that are being paid over that. What controls do we have in place that we're booking things to the right places? Know, chasing down stuff all the time and trying to fix it after that is much harder than setting it up right from the get go. You're just doing it the right way. So that's all I'm getting at is just being able to get such transparent reporting for us that we can at least see. I mean, I'm sure, you know, once we start building the community center, we're gonna wanna see that money being paid and bills going out. Once we start doing work on the connectivity grants and these restricted funds that have to be used for specific purposes, there's a lot of liability to us as a town if we don't pay eligible expenses in the right way. And it's just having the oversight on that because there's nobody looking at this stuff.
Diane, if I may, is I'm trying to, you know, I I understand where you're coming from. When when we built the fire station in 1989, you know, we had a set price that the, the low bidder bid and, we received bills after each, function of the construction was done, like lot excavation, you know, things like that. We had a running account of each item, you know, from the excavation to the cement work to the HVAC and heating and plumbing and electrical. The book is is so thick with all the different bills, you know, that the, the the general contractor received, from the, different contractors that he hired to do the work. And the committee, myself as chairman, we were privy to all that information. So we had a running account of every nut and bolt that's in that fire station next door. So I I understand. I think that's where you're coming from, and you're right. This this town has never had a running account. I I that was probably the only one they've had. You know, a lot of a lot of stuff's been done willy nilly, and at least we had it. You know? It was good. It was a good general contractor that that that, you know, did the work, and he had all his subs. You know, they build as they completed, you know, and and went along. So
I'll give you an example just to try to make it clear. This the library got a 15,457 ARPA grant, you know, which has to be spent on specific items. Okay? So, you know, that grant got booked into the expenditure report. I had, you know, Eric take it out. So, now it shows up on the revenue. But the expense for those items are still in the library expense, year to date expense. And it shouldn't be. They've spent all that money. We should have a report showing that they got the $15,000 and here's what they spent the $15,000 on. And now there's zero in the account. And then then that report's closed out. It shouldn't be mixed in with our budget expenditures. I agree. Because it was a separate specific grant for a specific purpose that will have to be audited and, you know, next year when the auditor comes in and looked at. All that's got to be
So I'm not sure I'm clear. I understand what you're saying. You're saying that the expenses associated with this grant should not be in the budget?
Because we never budgeted for it. So this was a grant specifically
for But we didn't budget for the revenue either. Right? But we have that. It's gotta show up on the books. So it's out of the with that piece of it. But But we have to show up the expenses against that, what we spent the money at.
That's all I'm saying is how we account for it. Right now, we have the 50 we have a library being over. Well, it's not really being over. We have 41,000 year to date operating expense. Mhmm. From there, and that's gotta be $15,000 less.
Diane, if you look at the actual budget or or if you look at the meeting packet version, you'll see that the library operations, that money has been backed out and put into an L account as you asked.
Right. But the year to day expenses are still at $43,000.
So No. The the expenses For operating. Are not at 40 The report I have says 43.
It's not 43. It's $15,000 too high because we took the we took the revenue out, but we gotta take the expenses that go with that revenue and book it on the revenue. I don't know how you do it in your software, but because that way you know what I mean? That way the library will be clean.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you look at the the document that's in the packet, you'll see under library operations, which is one thousand and one dash eight hundred you know it shows a budget of twenty six to '80 9 you know and an expenditure of 100% You know, and 26 to '89 expended that the it was put in library operations and you requested it be taken out and it was Right. But we still have on that account line year to date expense of $43,000 3 and $42 On what account line? Library operations.
How much are you seeing down there, Diane? $43,342. This is on page eight, I I think, in my Yes. My looking Page eight. Library, the last line in the library section.
Right. At least on the version I have, which is what's on.
Yeah. I don't see that either. This is the report from the packet. This is the most current report I'm looking at. So if you're looking at your report, Eric, it didn't have that in.
I'm looking at the packet also, I think. I see twenty six thousand two hundred and eighty nine and then, yeah, year to date expended 26,289.
I have one that says year to date $43,342 I I don't know where you got that one, honestly.
I just want to say something too because I know there's a lot of this going back and forth and I can appreciate Mark's comment, meaning that it seems like maybe we're just like a little micromanaging and getting I understand I think it's come from just the whole year and the whole process you know of month to month Diane has and and I'm going to bring up a because I just realized that Eric's report
talks about that. I'm looking at the wrong report. Sorry, go ahead. Take it back. I'm looking at the wrong report.
Okay, you can go ahead. Continue, Joanne. That's fine. Yeah,
I mean, it's been a kind of culmination of all here, maybe expectations and maybe it not living up to it, understanding there's new software, understanding there were new people in positions. Maybe someone always not being present like tonight, maybe a Marina or a Sherry would have been able to just answer her question. So I think it's just a culmination of corrections having to be made and such things of that sort. But you know, we are moving forward. The Board of Selectmen did elect to disband it. There's a transition, know, if they're the leaders that make that decision. But I do want to ask Eric, I did mention in an email, you know, I know that the transition is for next year, next fiscal year, and usually when you're in a current position, you're still going to be working on it. Are they still both actively working on everything until this fiscal year ends? I keep hearing you mention Marina Marina Marina and that's you know just to kind of understand how the transition's going. Yeah, we've had a lot of problems this year with maybe a rep not being able to be here to answer the question. You know, nothing personal on any of them. Hasn't worked out, but we, would be nice just to have the correct information. Mean, Diane's had to do a deep dive into it because she's found a lot of errors.
So that's all. I'm hoping the transition is going well, but the transition is for the next fiscal year. We're still like in my job, if I was transitioning, I'm still here. So I need to still, I mean, would expect you as the manager, I'm not putting you on the spot, but I've heard some comments that maybe the transition's already started. So I want to ask you directly. Of course, the transition has to start, but are they both actively still working on what we need this year? Yes.
Okay. Because you didn't get back to me. Had asked if we can expect Sherry or a board, you know, or a finance department person to be at our meetings to answer questions and such. I asked tonight and you said no one was available. I know there's another meeting going on tonight as well, but I think it's just been a culmination of the frustration of trying to get the right facts and figures so we can make our decisions going forward. And I always compliment you, because truthfully, I will say this to the public, I don't think it should be you updating the spreadsheet. I think that's why the management hire you know, put that task into place, hoping to have a really qualified, and I'm not saying she is or not, I don't work with her day by day, but, you know, I'm sorry that it all falls on you and my ideal picture of a town. I wouldn't think the town manager should be sitting there inputting it and have to answer for the finance director all the time.
Bottom line for me, also masking for accurate information in a timely fashion. It's all I'm asking for.
Yeah. Great. And that's a that's a perfectly reasonable expectation. You know, happy that we're not meeting that expectation. But at the same time, you know, we reduce staff from three to two. We combine two departments. We changed the software. We changed the count of the car, the chart of accounts, and we changed 100% of our Personnel at once. Then we thought for some reason it was going to go seamlessly and it did not. Has been a complete cluster and I'm not gonna deny that. I, you know.
I think the board of finance, you know, we have responsibility to be the oversight and to make sure that things are there. I don't wanna find out, you know, oh my god, we have a problem and not know about it and not have seen it coming because we didn't have accurate reporting so you know you can't afford finance can't run without accurate reporting. That's the foundation for us. That's that's what we work with. I
guess I agree with that. You know, that we we do need to have confidence in the reporting and in the processes. And from that perspective, I know I understand what you're asking for. And I think that that's, that's reasonable. I don't think it's an efficient way to run a meeting. Me back up for you know longer term, we need to have a confidence that the town's being operated that the controls are in place and that the expenses are being allocated properly the funds are being set up. And we're getting rock solid reporting absolutely once we get there, then you know it, maybe we you know we don't need to spend a lot of time going through line by line by line but I do appreciate what diane's doing here which is spending a lot of time going line by line by line making sure that the stuff is right. Because you're right we can't we can't have it wrong, And it is obviously a lot more efficient to get it right into it right the first time and I have a lot of sympathy for Eric and his team trying to get that done under the, you know, sister situation as you'd explain so.
You know, that's sorry, kind of haven't gone into this detail. I would normally, if the reporting was good, I would not dive in like it. I would just be looking at it as an oversight. Yeah,
understood. Don't disagree with you. Think your point is well taken. Know we'll get there, you know it's going to take some work and it's just going to take ironing out the wrinkles and it's going to be taking maybe some processes. But we'll we'll get there, I think so. Other specific questions or items to review here? Anything on the revenue report? We already kind of went through those. I think we're making progress. Check registers included.
And I just raised questions when we get into the funds because I could recognize some of the vendors on the check register that they're the people we hired to do some of the architectural work for the community center. So I see that we paid them some money, but then I'm saying, okay, where are we booking it to? Next logical question. Just wanna make sure that we have accurate information.
Just because this is my final chance to address this, just want to make sure. So Eric, said that both Sherry and Marina are actively working together in both positions, you know, to work with the auditors, just so that I understand it, because I don't know. With the auditors getting them everything they need they're both trying to get the software to do what we need and what you all need at the town so that's an active process every day for both of them.
Yes so right now two things are happening Marina's teaching Sherry. There's a bunch of things on the school end that Marina does for the school that Sherry's having to learn how to do. Know, Sherry hasn't really done payroll, hasn't really done their personnel tracking management system. So, there's a lot of things on that end. And then Marina's also hasn't really done the reconciliations, hasn't done a lot of the journal entries. So, we're trying to do that. And I'm going over the books with Marina basically line by line to make sure things are booked in the correct. And I've gone back to full oversight of payroll. So, that's kind of what we're doing.
Where are we on the reconciliations? What month are we on?
Have a follow We're at least three behind right now.
Know, just planning for the future. We're coming up to year end close and, you know, we closed last year way too late, you know? So key to closing the year is having the accounts reconciled. Key to getting our budget transfers right is having the accounts reconciled to make sure that there's nothing we missed. So it all goes together. We just can't do one part and not the other.
I realize that the real question is, do we actually have the bodies to do everything you want and you need?
For the size of our budget? Or did we get the right software? You know, it's just Well, maybe we don't have the software set up efficiently. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not in there every day working, so I'm not doing the day to day.
We'll just have to go forward. But Eric, I just, you mentioned a key point that I'm surprised as a bookkeeper or a, you know, an accounting thing and it must run differently here, I'm gonna bring it up just because you said, do they have enough hours in their day? And trust me, I get that, you know, in a busy job, you're just right now I feel like I have five bosses on my job and I can't keep up with all of them. So it's it can be frustrating for them. So it surprises me that a bookkeeper slash accountant would be doing the school's personnel records. You know, you said something about the HR and hiring and that's an interesting concept that falls under our bookkeeper accounting thing. I'm not trying to be fresh, really just want to know because I do work in a school that's my job to track personnel years of service and benefits and payroll and accounting and yeah Well, who else is gonna do it? I
don't think that's the only finance person they have, right? So we don't have any HR,
Joanne. No, no, no, So Eric, this is really a calm conversation. Know you I try to input. So in my train of thought, would be a secretary that works at the school. You know, I know that they only have, I know how busy they are. So it's just how people set up offices. You know, we have 800 students and six administer, well, you know, levels of administrative assistants. So I'm not trying to pick apart the town, tell them to, that was just surprising to me to hear that a marina would do that are you talking you know tying it to payroll or are you talking their personnel in general their HR and hiring?
Don't know what they, honestly don't know. That would be a superintendent question, what the exact breakout is. I know they have several, you know, they have the same time clock system for tracking employees that we have, which that's very definitely part of the job of the finance department is keeping that time clock system functioning.
Oh, definitely with payroll time clock, all of that. I just didn't know if she had other functions over there. It's There time's an issue,
is the secondary system for personnel and I don't know what that system is it's not something that the town runs because, like, for instance, teachers aren't necessarily. Jim hours and their vacation time and all that that is not maintained within PrimePay. That's maintained within a separate system. That is, as far as I understand, done by Marina and Sherry has always been the kind of business manager's responsibility at the school. On the town's side, whoever is in that position, in Marina's position, does have quite a bit of HR and onboarding responsibilities as part of there because we don't have anybody else to do it. If they're not going to do the onboarding, then I'm going to do the onboarding.
No, it's yeah, I get that and I wouldn't think it's you. Just, that was really surprising to me and I get it. I mean, usually, so they so in what I oversee just and I will make this brief but in what I oversee we have 800 students we have almost 200 employees and I'm one person like maybe 170 you know and that all falls on me. That's just one duty with the onboarding welcome wagon, whatever you want to call it, but you know, we definitely have a bookkeeper, you know, I'm involved in it with my tie to my administrator, but I'm not doing all of that but we have a huge volume there I understand I don't know how many employees they have but it can't be anywhere near the 150 that we do so I'm just trying to see you know you can't that just surprised me that the accounting person so we do have a database where you keep the employee data, which I think is important.
We tie it in the same thing that the town uses, but again I understand Andover is much much smaller. I was just surprised she's the HR person there because she was hired for a specific role again thank you I just I know times of an element how much time they can devote to the account and the accounting there so that's it So good luck with the transition I know it's it's difficult like you said there's a lot going on clearly.
No it'll be a couple years it'll be straightened out in a couple years.
Okay, are there any anything specific to the again the finance reports? In the finance department, I know we talked a little bit about that, but I do want to stick to the agenda. We've got we've got stuff to cover of course, but. Joanne, you're on mute if you're talking to the group.
Sorry. Yeah, he had it in his report and I noticed at the last minute, so I didn't want to lose my chance. Thank you.
So budget transfers over expenditure requests are none listed in the packet. We are not going to address that today, correct? Is that what I'm understanding?
If you want it in the form that Diane's proposing, then we're not going to have it for tonight. We will hopefully have that for you next meeting.
Okay. I'm going confirm on that because I just want to make sure the transfers are that I can look at them and understand that they're done correctly. And otherwise, I'm going to take what Eric did and create my own spreadsheet. And I don't know why we can't just use what we used last year. So we have the same format.
Yeah. I just looked at the summarized things. I can do either way. I don't have any strong feelings about it. I don't know if the other board members have had a chance to review the reports and comment. Think Joanne also suggested she liked the way Diane had, the previous version that Diane had sent around. Does anybody else have any comments on that?
I think we should be as transparent as possible. So I agree with Diane.
I think the data is all there. Think it's really just a matter of how you want to format it and see it so that it makes the most sense to people, you know. They can understand it as well.
Okay, tabling it to next meeting if anybody has anything else to comment. Any other comments or just suggestions?
Good with tabling it, especially because we got a little information on other things tonight and then maybe it'll just be quicker. You know, we can all look at it and instead of starting now it might be a little bit, yeah.
All right. If there's no other comments, then I think we'll move on to our next agenda item. We have 7A, which is old business, the DOT Federal Local Bridge Program application for the Long Hill Road Bridge. Eric, do you have an update on that?
Yeah, the only thing I would say is the Board of Selectmen did authorize me to sign that and return that to the DOT which I have. So we should hear back in a couple months that were accepted. And then we'll have to continue on down the the path on that. Nothing urgent. I mean, if we start the program now, if we're lucky, you know, somewhere around 2027 or 2028, we'll be ready for construction of that bridge.
Okay any questions from Eric for Eric on that? Okay, hearing none. Let's move on to eight a which is the new business twenty twenty two twenty twenty three proposed town budget probably should have really been an old business. We've had lots of discussion on this. So there was a revised version of the budget that was voted on by the board at the last meeting, which I wasn't present and Eric did send around an Excel spreadsheet with those updated numbers. So do we have further discussion the budget file that Eric sent.
I have nothing I'm good with how it sits right now. Anyone else? I'm the same.
I like I like where we're at. I think the corrections were made or the adjustments were made and we had decided that once that was made we would be okay with that. Yep.
At least for our first meeting. Okay. If we well, let me comment, Mark, because it's my first go through with this. So if we go ahead, give it to Eric or, you know, whatever the final wording is that you have to say that means the meeting is next week right and that's in person okay
yeah yeah I mean basically at this point what the it would be it's incumbent upon someone on the board to make a motion to move this as the budget into the, you know, the recommended town budget for the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three proposed budget that would be presented to the town at the town budget meeting for vote. If there are no further changes or discussion.
Can I ask what the final percentage you know I always ask about that revenue sheet was at the 5.4 you know that bottom line there the money raised by taxation where we at the I don't have it up so I It says 5.4?
Okay. Yeah, I just want make sure I was looking at the right version and I'm sure I was, but I had a few open on my computer too.
Yeah, the total by taxation with an increase of $530,551 at a 5.4% increase from last year.
Thank you. Don't know if someone's gonna make the motion. Anybody wanna make a motion relative? I'll make the motion. I'll make the motion. So is that Louise?
Yeah, it's me. To go ahead and take that current budget as we decided upon to the, the meeting for next week.
I mean, Louise is motioning that the board. Use the budget figures that were voted on until last meeting as the recommended budgets be passed on to the town meeting to the town for the town budget meeting vote. Next week. So anybody second that motion. I'll second. All right, Diane seconds. Do we have any further discussion? Hearing none, I guess we'll take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye.
Anybody voting against? Do we have any abstentions? Okay, the motion passes. Seven to zero. Will move that budget voted on last week's, in last week's meeting on to the, as the recommended budget to be passed out of the town for the town budget meeting. Okay, very good. Any further discussion on the budget?
Well, I do a poll and see how many times we have to work on it.
I'm an eternal optimist, so I'd probably lose that, but we'll see what happens. Question,
does the board want I assume you're going to want a protector setup. You're to do this via PowerPoint. How are you going to present this? I would say yes on both accounts, yeah.
Okay. And we do have the same questions on the ballot for the referendum that we had last year omitting the bifurcation question. Correct?
So, you formally have to, if you want questions, you as a board formally have to state what questions you want in motion to that effect. And then the cards will be programmed for that for the, when it gets to referendum.
So I didn't even think we're at that stage yet. Are we? I don't know. I just want to make sure the cards are available.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I was going to say that if you want to ask questions at the first referendum, you should make those decisions now. So the registrars have enough time to get
them processed? Well, I don't have the information of what we had on there last year, but I thought it was the question should be the same except that one that's being addressed by the Charter Commission. I think it was basically town budget too high. I can't remember how they were, but it was just two or three questions were on there. I'm personally not convinced we had any value
getting, maybe we did from that. We did, because if it comes back to us, we need to know which way to go. At least get a a sense from everybody at referendum from the town, which budget they think is too high, which ones, you know.
And it just is the town budget too high? Is the school budget too high? Specific questions.
It just gives us I'm sure Carol has that on file, Eric, and I could find it too. I
mean, if you wanna ask, if you make a motion that you ask the same question as last year, then we'll do that. That's not a problem. Or the same question without the,
yeah, we can totally I just don't want that question on that, do you wanna vote on the budget separately question, because that doesn't apply. Right. The other questions are fine.
Eric, can you remind me, I remember from last year we had this discussion a little bit. The questions in the past, at least, have typically been yes, no, or too high, too low. Correct. And I had asked about a question of just, you know, whether we could have a just right option. And for some reason I can't quite remember now, it seemed I remember being told no. Do you remember that? Can you refresh So my
you can only ask A or B questions. If you wanted to do that, you could ask a second. You could ask, for instance, is the town budget too high or too low? And then you could ask a separate question that says, is the town budget acceptable as is yes or no? If you wanted that third answer. But you can't ask, is the budget too high, just right or too low? It's very limiting. That's unfortunate. All right.
It's gonna be You'd have to get your legislate try to do it that way, I think.
Frankly, I think I'll just be even more confusing. But Yep. I just I it frustrates me that that we can't do it all in one because then you only get you're going to get a bunch of people who don't respond to that question at all because it doesn't apply. But anyway, you kind of have to infer that response and it annoys me, but that's just my own personal take on it. Thanks.
Well, and I believe Carol would be a big proponent of asking that secondary question. The budget acceptable as is? So you got that in a sense third response. But I mean, yeah, there's no way to put out a survey that asks what would make sense, which is too high, okay, or low. That's just state law.
Doesn't the Board of Selectmen chime in on this also, these questions? Oh, questions last year were questions developed by them.
So that's why I just think the question If keep them the same,
then there should not be any issues. I mean, last year they had a meeting, you know, half an hour before the annual town meeting to do those questions. Right.
I just think we need a little time to think on it. It's hard, you know, to be asked on the spot again. But we have to have those ready in a week because why don't we go? Yeah. So we gave our input though. No, I agree with you, Diane, but again, I know it came up when Eric asked if we needed anything. So at least, yes, we'd like that available. But I think the town meeting itself is going to give us a lot of info. So we haven't. We had a public hearing. We didn't get a lot of people that showed up. So I'm looking forward to the town meeting because that's when you're going to get some input too. I know everybody has busy life so that's all. I mean the cards can be pretty basic pretty same questions. I don't think it's going to be if that's okay with everybody. Mean,
yeah, I just want to make sure that no, it's a good point, but should be easy to research and that we don't run out of time and someone say, we can't do it now because it's too late. I just want to be on record that because I would like to see those same questions last year.
It's a very good point. And I will admit, I've got to go back and look at the charter and decide whether I was thinking in my head, the Board of Finance had the authority to submit the questions. But you're right. The Board of Selectmen did it via special meeting last year. So it is possible that the Charter gives that responsibility to the Board of Selectmen, not the Board of Finance. So that's a good
point. I don't know the Charter by heart, but I don't remember anything about doing that, Having that kind of power accorded to the Board of Finance. No. I don't remember anything that precludes it either, but, you know, I don't remember anything that specifically identifies that
option. Yeah, the other thing to keep in mind is it's more expensive if we ask questions because typically a town budget doesn't get a ton of people, the turnout rate is relatively low if there's no questions we would normally hand count. If there's going to be questions we typically machine count, So there is some additional expense to that. It's not crazy, but we got to get ballots printed versus hand printing.
So one thing we could do if this is a Board of Selectmen task, which I suspect that it would be, Diane, we could always make a recommendation to the Board that the Board of Selectmen include these, and so there is at least the weight of the Board of Finance's opinion about putting these questions on the ballot, even if it's not our prerogative to do so. So that would at least put it on the record and do we could let the Board of Selectmen know that way that this would be our desire.
I would just find the information helpful. What if the budget fails at referendum so we know, what budget is causing the hardest problem for getting the budget Otherwise, we're guessing, and I don't want to guess. Yeah.
Well, it's all better if we both knew answers, right? So there's a little bit of that going on. Ahead. Was that Louise? Yeah.
Last year, did we have a lot of people say the budget was too low? Did we have anybody say that the budget was too low? I'm just questioning whether
the deficit I can't remember the results. I'd have to go look at my records.
I'm pretty sure people answered in both directions, but I also think that, you know, too high was you know selected more than too low but it's not like nobody said too low I don't think. That's my recollection.
Yeah I think you're right on that. I guess I don't really care though.
I don't really see the point of the question honestly just based on what we saw happen last year and if it's a cheaper way of doing it and quicker I would vote for no questions at this point because most likely if it doesn't pass my assumption would be that it would go lower because most people are going to think it's too high. Which one?
I mean is there a problem with one? It going to be the town budget too high, the school budget is too high? Are both too high? Do you know what I mean? That's the information I'm looking for. Okay. Now I see your point. Okay.
So I think we have to decide whether or not to take action here. And I would suspect that we may not have the prerogative to add these agenda items to the to the question do we lose Eric. No, I'm here.
Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm still here. So if that's the case, then, you know, what we could do is, like I said, just make a vote to write my recommendation to the Board of Selectmen that they include these questions on the referendum as part of the referendum, or we can take no action and hope that they'll do that, or we can vote to not ask them. It doesn't you know, either way, I'm agnostic at this point or neutral, I should say. If we don't have any motions on the table, we'll move on. But I think that's what it would take for us to take some action here.
I would like to make a motion that we put the same questions request that the same questions that were on the last referendum last year get on the ballots so we have some information coming out of referendum if we need it. Anybody want to second that motion? I'll second. Okay, Kurt seconds. Do you have any further discussion?
Just as a point of clarification, there was a modification from last year that you mentioned it before, Diane. So it should be built into the motion that there's one question we don't.
You're right, Rob. I would amend my motion to say not asking the question about separating the bifurcation of the voting on the two school and town budgets.
All questions except that one, because that's being addressed by the Charter Commission. Yeah, and I think that was clear from your statement. Normally we have to go through the motion process, but I think that that's legitimate and Kurt, you're comfortable with your second on that restatement of the motion? Okay. Yes. Good. Thanks, Rob. Any discussion on this motion? Any further discussion, I should say, Already discussed the topic. Okay. Hearing none let's go ahead and vote all those in favor say Aye. Aye. All those opposed. Any abstentions? I will abstain.
All right. Motion passes six zero one. We will go ahead and continue. Any further discussion on the budget question? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on in our agenda. The next item is agenda I'm sorry, 8B, which is the question that we amended our agenda to talk about the clerk for the Board of Finance meetings. This was the one you brought up. Joanne, do you want to address this one? Yep,
thank you. Yeah, just a quick conversation overall because I know that we don't currently have a board clerk. So I just, you know I've researched it I kind of know what different towns do or this and that so I know that at one point Marina had suggested coming to the meetings and possibly being our clerk and she's not here tonight. Hearing how busy they are in the office too I'd have a little concern about that but overall I guess because we are the board of finance and how we're going to pay this person and everything I just wanted to kind of ask Eric in our public forum too. I talked to him privately about it. I know that in towns that I've seen advertised and you know when I've talked about it I've done it a little bit myself in my prior jobs it's sort of a per meeting position so it's paid one flat rate and I know in our town we pay the person pretty well so good for them.
I didn't know if it's a per meeting. I think Eric said that at one point you get a certain amount. If it's over a certain amount of hours you get a different rate and then possibly more money for transcription of a minute. And again, we're not here to make decisions that the town makes on that. I just want to make sure that, number one is this a per diem position because that's how you make your decisions too. Had printed out his options. When it is another an employee that already works for the town, we just want to make sure it falls within the reasons that we don't get a situation repeat itself we want to make sure the person just does that or whatever again I'm not the employer in the town but I guess I wanted to have an overview and then of course if we do have a finance person that's going to take the minutes it's good if they just well they should go at the beginning of the meeting when we do have a rep from the finance department I don't know then with all of the conflict and the problems that have arisen this year with this board of finance and maybe us having to ask certain questions or you know the new software this is there a conflict of interest there with the person that would be taking the minutes?
So Eric, I guess my first question, and I did talk to you on the phone, but I forget, is it considered a per diem position unless it's a current employee?
So regardless of who does take the minutes, we have a flat rate per meeting. And then if a meeting extends past an hour, there's an hourly rate in addition to that. The flat per meeting fee covers the cost of generally attending the meeting and then taking the minutes and filing the minutes in a reasonably timely fashion and filing the motions as appropriate. And then the reason it scales by the hour is because it's not necessarily fair to expect somebody who's doing a Board of Assessment Appeals, you know, that runs twenty six minutes to make the same as somebody who sits through a Board of Selectmen meeting that goes to 12:40 in the morning when it started at seven. So that was the reason we did it the way we did it. The flat fee is $65 and then currently they make $19 an hour, you know, forever for everything over the first hour of the meet.
And from my experience, it's I totally get it, know, someone would get a quick meeting, someone would get a huge meeting, but when you are a board clerk and you do things like that and you are so employee generated, I mean, you always do look out for the employee. I have to say that you know you as a manager always lean you know just in observing you for the two and a half years that I have you definitely always bring out that side but I've been kind of in the middle on things because sometimes you get that quick meeting which is great. If I get you know when I used to do things like this if I got $100 or $60 for a meeting you know I didn't want to give it back because I had a nice half an hour meeting so that's all it usually balances
but no, I appreciate you giving us the explanation. That we are allowed to ask the financial side and I don't know how anyone, know, what you're gonna do. I know it's not our decision who gets hired. The Marina thing I just brought up because I was a little concerned about the conflict of interest if there's gonna be a little bit of problems while we go through the transition and you know how things were gonna be recorded. Know, I'm sure everybody would, there is a recording so it's gonna be honest but it's kind of putting her in a bad position too. It's not just us or the town, know, it's, that's all. So whatever we decide, so in, even in looking in the minutes about this kind of thing, I've noticed a definite difference in, you know, of them I really liked and some I'm probably going to ask that we don't pass tonight because they're really incomplete. I understand that with technology we get the recordings now, we get a lot more information that we can see, but you've got to at least be able to look back if you're trying to find something and see a little snippet of it, that's all. So that's it, that's my 2¢. I think it's important to have a clerk and yeah I just kind of wanted to understand the financial impact too since we're Board of Finance.
So that's it. Thank you Mark. Yeah thanks.
I mean I will say my 2¢ at least as a starting point. I think it's valuable and important to have a member of the finance department here at the meetings whenever possible. I also think that is problematic to have them taking the meeting minutes and probably difficult, frankly, when they're trying to answer questions and follow the train of discussion. So, you know, maybe that isn't as problematic or difficult as I think it would be for me. I think Marina had actually might have suggested it, but I'm not sure how that how that would work. So that's that's kind of where where I'm at. Certainly would be open to a board member taking those minutes, but I'm not going to volunteer for that. I think that that's
that's a lot to ask.
Agree with I you, mean, if you're participating in a meeting, you cannot take minutes. It's just too hard. I've tried it a million times and I can't do it. I can't. It's too hard. Now, the flip side is that we record these meetings. So I think whoever clerks the meetings, if they're not participating in the subject matter of the meeting, I don't know if they necessarily need to attend. They can transcribe from the recordings.
No, that's possible. It may make sense or just find somebody.
So we often do. I mean, I prefer that the individual attend the meeting. But there's, in a number of cases, we've had to transcribe from the minutes. And I will tell you that when I'm doing the minutes for a board that I'm actively participating in, I'm not taking minutes while I'm in the meeting. I start the recording from the start after the meeting and I go through the whole meeting again and I take minutes on the recording. And if I miss something, pause it and I rewind it and I do it again. That's part of the reason why it takes, you know, it takes a lot of time because if you're going to get things right, you're going to have to listen to the recording multiple times. So, it's not the hour of the meeting, it's the hour of the meeting and then going back and listening to it, you know, until you've got it right, which I would also say we should, and if the board does not want a finance officer taking minutes, that is fine. Will have Amy take the minutes. My issue is that because Marina's a union employee, if we're going to have her attend the meetings, we're either paying her, number one, or we're putting together a memorandum of understanding with the union stating that she can take time off in lieu of. And right now I'm tight enough on the budget. Don't want to pay anybody. I don't have to anything. Don't have to. So that's kind of my take on it. But ultimately, if you don't feel comfortable with Marina taking the minutes,
then I will arrange for somebody else to take the minutes. And it's really that simple.
Well, I guess I'll, you you know, and I don't want to probably others have things to say that, you know, I said I was a little concerned about it. But you know, the reality is because of the recording, this is about as transparent as you get from a governmental process thing in terms of it's very, very visible later on, there won't be any questions about what is said, what was done, etc. So, you know, maybe that there's not any kind of inherent conflict that would be problematic. It's really, and if she can do it effectively, I guess I'd be okay with that.
Other comments from the board? I got a question for Eric. Who's doing the selectman's meetings now? What do they do as far as the clerk goes?
So right now, when she's available, the same person who does the board of Gretchen Stein has done the last couple board of selectmen meetings. Although unfortunately, she won and couldn't make it. She's been kind of overprogrammed lately. So Marina did one for the board of selectmen too. I don't have a lot of people, you know, we were going to advertise again for board clerks and unfortunately, a really good board clerk that the town has, which is the one that does all the land use agencies, just announced today she's bidding because she's moving out. So we're going to be short all the way around for we're going to be looking for board clerks for everything at this point, probably.
You said you sounded I was going to say, not, we should probably hire our own. Put in our budget, the Fire Commission budgets for our clerk. It's in our regular budget, and maybe he says something that we should look at here. Know, somebody may know somebody or whatever.
I just wondered why we didn't advertise and I think you picked up good people, but you never know. And I've said this before and talked to other people. There's always people that are looking for little jobs. That's when I did it, you know, and you can advertise or something, but you did say something else that caught my ear again, Eric, and I'm sorry. It's this is definitely not picking. This is just asking the question you're very concerned with. Get it if someone takes up the job and they have to. It takes them five hours to do it that's their prerogative and they're getting it right especially if they're if they are participating in the meeting that's why it is kind of nice to have someone that's not participating in the meeting if they want to start jotting notes while they're there then they transcribe later I feel like you're being a little bit too sensitive it could take five or six hours and we're paying them again I'm not a Scrooge but I think you're focusing you're again being very employee centered which is nice I'm an employee where I work so
I I'm just used to management you know going down the middle and seeing you know this is the position this is what we do if like say someone that like say Joanne at home this is her second job she decides to transcribe it I may be a perfectionist and it's going to take me five hours we may not need a perfectionist so we can you know but that's very good that you're anticipating that but again I think yeah it depends on the meeting it depends how long it is especially since we have it recorded It could be something that someone listens to later. I'm I'm neither here nor there if they're at the meeting or not, but that's all I didn't mean to make it a big topic, but I'm glad we all chimed in with our ideas. I'm not opposed to Marina. I just find it very hard to take minutes and be in a meeting too. And she we're really going to be counting on the stable person that's still in that department to answer our questions. And I don't mean stable, I just mean I don't know who's moving where, because you keep saying Marina, but you told me that Sherry's involved too. But it sounds like we'll be seeing a lot more of Marina. So we'll have a lot of questions for her. That's it.
Comments from the board? Go ahead, Eric.
So I just had you, Joanne, you brought up one other point and that was every board gets to decide how detailed or vague your minutes are. I mean, I know you've expressed to me that you thought some of our minutes were not detailed enough. Yet, know, Marina just got kind of yelled at by the Board of Selectmen for putting out minutes with too much commentary in it. So that's really a kind of a board's prerogative, whether you want very brief minutes because there's a full recording or not. That's really up to you as a board. If if you want more detailed minutes, you can have them. If you want more abbreviated minutes, you can have them also.
Good point I agree because other people have given me their opinions and it's just when you're looking for something you're right I did bring that up to you I'm looking at the I mean we're going to talk about this later yeah just like a synopsis of each thing so I'm definitely I'm the new member so whatever this I'll stand back on but one I looked at and I I didn't see anything it just said this this this and I'm like I could have done that and no criticism. I'll see what the board thinks on how detailed.
Well, I think that's probably a separate discussion from having a clerk, although it is part of it. Other input from the board, anybody else have any feelings about how we should manage this? Eric did send around an email in which he outlined some options. So there's certainly things to do. I mean, we're going to pay Marina to be at the meetings, it does make sense to have, you know, she's willing and seems capable, you know, she does seem capable, I guess I would say. And I would say it's I'm okay with having her do it. Just, you know, how we do it is, is make a decision about whether she does it in lieu of other work, which I think is probably not practical because she's got plenty of work to do during her day but the other option would be, you know, to have somebody else do it and probably pay them since I unless somebody from the board is willing to do it, and, we are comfortable with that.
I I asked the question, why do we have to pay an hourly rate? Why can't we just pay a flat stipend?
So why would anybody want to ever do the board of selectmen meeting? Unless you do a stipend per do you want a different stipend for each board and commission?
I mean, how do you normalize it? You may have that could be a thing. If you have a more complex I mean, obviously, we never do a meeting for less than two hours. It's rare that we're less than two hours. And I don't think any meetings you know, I don't want a three hour meeting. You know, that should be rare. Do you know what I mean? Because we have an issue that we're dealing with. Most of if things are running right, pretty much we can get through our meeting in two hours. I think the board of selectmen, depending on how much is on their plate, you know, they may be a total different animal because they have more to deal with. I mean, I'm just talking about our meetings. Don't wanna pay somebody by hour. And if they're slow at transcribing that somebody can do it in two hours and somebody takes five hours. I don't wanna pay somebody five hours to transcribe because they're just a slow worker. That's not in our best interest financially from the budget side. I'm
sorry, sorry. Ahead.
Diane, I wanted to say we don't pay for how long it takes them to do it. We pay them for how long they're at an actual meeting, right? So, if you have a three hour meeting, they get paid for the three hours, they don't get paid for, if it takes them six, seven hours later to transcribe it, that's on them. They're not getting paid for that. Just getting paid per length of the meeting because the longer the meeting, the more they have to listen to and transcribe.
Let me ask this question. Is everybody married to having a clerk at the meeting if we have a full recording? There's no The whole purpose of having someone at the meeting was before we recorded meetings and they were taking notes. If we're recording the meetings, can't we just play somebody to just transcribe from that a minute? They don't do that.
Wouldn't paying them for the length of the meeting still make sense given the amount of work to transcribe?
You're still gonna pay them one way or the other, I guess. I'm
sorry, Rob, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm thinking that I'm attracting people to doing the job. If somebody doesn't have to be on a call or a Zoom meeting for two hours and they can wake up the next morning and listen to a recording and do the same work in the comfort of their home. It's, you know, a bigger pool of people to pull from.
And we do do that. Like, for instance, this meeting, either Marina's going to listen to it later and transcribe it, or somebody else is gonna listen to it later and transcribe it, and neither of them are at this meeting. So we do do that. I prefer the board clerk be at the meeting, but I don't insist on it because if the board clerk's at the meeting and she can't hear something or she has a specific question about who's doing what, she can get it answered, she or he can get it answered right on the spot. So, think you have to be more careful when they're not at the meeting, especially, you know, to state we're going into executive session at X time or we are starting the meeting at x time, or we are ending the meeting at x time. Because the person with the recording doesn't have a timestamp available to them. So they just know, you know, it's two hours into the meeting, so they can probably figure out at what time it is, but it makes life easier if whoever's the chairman, you know, modifies their habits a little bit if somebody's not there, but it's definitely doable.
Eric, you made it perfectly clear. I thought you were stated so Diane, it makes sense if they do pay a lump sum. They should maybe I would think come to the meeting, but I was understanding that you paid some of the lump sum and then however many hours, but you just mean for the length of the meeting. So again kind of Mark brought this up too. I'm glad to hear so I misunderstood even when I talked to you privately it sounded like this thing was getting huge you know depending on how long it takes them to transcribe. I agree especially in the virtual world it's nice the person still could be at home it's nice to you know if there's a time that they can't make it we get it and then they transcribe from just the hearing it but if there's just a lump sum I'm happy with that I was really worried there was like a $65 for this 19 again and I was just going to send examples of towns that have the lump sum so if the transcribing
is covered in that meeting I'm very happy you know and then they can take their time or not. So that's my 2¢. If it ends up being just the length of the meeting, good.
Then they'll try other side of coin is if we use a full time town employee, someone who works a full time to do these minutes, then it puts them into being paid overtime. Overtime or if it's Right. I mean, do we wanna open ourselves up to that kind of expense? Right. Should it not be, you know That's it was a part time town employee, it would be different because there's no overtime that comes into place. Risk of how many hours do they work and then it leads into other conversations
but I would prefer my thing would be to prefer to have a board clerk it sounds like Amy or advertise for one that's not a town employee that's either gonna up themselves into possible benefits or up themselves into overtime to just be a board clerk, but that's not on me, that's my Eric,
is time and a half really for three hours going to be more than the stipend plus the separate hourly payment?
For a three hour meeting, time and a half for Marina's probably, yeah, she would probably be making more on OT than she would be making that we would pay for the supplement. But she would agree to do it for the supplement. Okay. But, you know, because it's still making her more than she makes at her other part time jobs. So it's still lucrative for her. K.
If the town puts out an ad for one of these board member minute takers, would that person be doing it for all the boards?
Not necessarily. Mean, look, we've had since I've been here in three years, we've advertised probably five times for board clerks. Okay. It's not something we've had a great deal of success attracting good board clerks. I know everybody says we should advertise for it and we have quite a bit. Eventually we'll get one or two. We've had some good ones. We've been lucky enough to have a couple good ones for, you know, the land use agencies. You know, Amanda actually did a pretty good job of board clerk, but there were issues with that, obviously. We haven't had a great deal of success attracting good board clerks.
It just would make sense if you hired one, the responsibility would be to do all the meetings and they would probably still stay under the part time status.
Well, first of all, probably can't do all the meetings because the person who does land use, that person ends up doing more than just the meetings because you end up having to help out a bit with getting the legal notices correct and some other things. Oh, okay. You know, the other reality is there's a lot of nights where we have conflicting meetings, So it's not like we can just have one board clerk to do every meeting in town. The other thing is that, you know, there aren't a great deal of people that want to work every single night from seven to however pm and be available for special meetings on the weekends from time to time, etcetera, etcetera. You know, it's nice to have board clerks. It's nice to have backups. We have, as far as I know, there's never been a time when we've actually had backup board clerks. You know, we've always ended up begging and pleading an existing board clerk to try to cover a different meeting. You know, so it's been an issue since I've been an administrator. It was way an issue before I was an administrator because we used to not pay all that well and we never got good board clerks. So, I mean, part of the reason why I upped the pay and got the board of selectmen to agree with it was because we had historically had a real problem attracting and retaining board clerks that would do a decent job. Okay, good point.
This kind of brings me to a question that's kind of been bouncing around in my head since the beginning of this discussion. It the purview of the Board of Finance or any board really to determine and what method that they would have a under which they'd have a board clerk operate and be available or is that just kind of an administrative town function under the Board of Selectmen to determine that how that happens or is that not clear? So,
take on that would be a board should have the right to have a board clerk they're compatible with, You know, that's always been an issue with the land use commissions, less so than with Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance. You know, clearly if you feel that having Marina take the minutes is a conflict, then we will avoid doing that. And I have no problem with that. Other than that, it's you know, if you're happy with the way the minutes are being created from the person that's creating them, that's great. If not, then, you know, you need to address, you know, either ask me to address that with them or tell me to find a different one, and I'll find a different one.
Okay. Isn't it a state statute that that minutes be taken for all municipalities if you're receiving state and federal money?
Well, it's a requirement under the Freedom of Information Act. And it is a you know, any virtual meetings has to be you know recorded basically.
You know so that's like. I think based on marks on Mark's comment, agree the town the town should be responsible for having clerks, you know, clerk the various meetings that they have to clerk. Right. Simple. Because of that FOI rule.
Right. And and we generally do. We don't but remember, we have 20 or 21 boards and commissions. The only ones that get clerks are Planning and zoning Commission in the wetland zoning board of appeals board of assessment appeals, which has been more recent, but we instituted that because. Well, because they were doing a really bad job of taking their own minutes and it was potentially getting the town in legal issues. So, clerk for them, board of finance, board of selectmen. As far as I know, every other commission takes their own minutes, If that makes, that answers your question.
I just wanna make it clear that we have no problem with Marina at all. My only, you know, it's not a problem with her. It's clearly financial anything that I'm involved with just has to do with finances or that and that's why I brought it up I agree with Kirk Diane every everybody that Louise everybody that's made a comment I totally think it's the discretion of the town I would let's just get a clerk if we if we need one and we can't always just like oh it's hard it says you know we could try advertising and we'll see and that's all but if it's going to affect financially because I know we're on the board of finance you know I would have wanted to to end up like Diane brought earlier so I'm glad we had a discussion of it and however we whatever you decide it is good to have a clerk and good relationships are great but it's definitely a job and the person will come here and do a job and hopefully do a good job so
how does the board want me to proceed Yeah. Think Do want me to not have Marina take minutes going forward and advertise or get somebody to be your board clerk and then pay Marina to attend your meetings? Or what is it that you want to do? Where do you want to go from here?
My recommendation would be to have Marina attend the meetings and prepare the meetings and prepare the minutes. You know, I know it's potentially some extra expense, but it just seems to me to be the cleanest and most efficient way to get this done and have her involved on a regular basis.
My question for you, Eric, if we have somebody like that, that is a town employee that's doing minutes, I don't want that expense to show up under her department. I want it to show up under the board or finance board clerk that we'd be able to get all that correctly?
Regardless of who does minutes, within prime pay, that person gets, their time gets charged to the department budgets, the appropriate department budgets, not to, like for instance, Amanda took minutes for five or six different boards at various different times. All that expense was not booked as my administrative assistant. All that expense was booked as this meeting for planning and zoning, this one from board of selectmen, you know, so on and so forth, if that makes That's why each board and commission that has a board clerk has a budget and a line item for that board clerk. The only problem with that is it's very hard to predict how many meetings a particular board is going to have. In the cases where we're over budget on board clerks, it's not for that we're paying them more, it's simply because they had more meetings than we budgeted for at the beginning of the year.
Yeah, so it seems like a reasonable approach. I mean, the way it should be, right?
And then just the last thing, if it is for that, know, I I'll concur with whatever everybody thinks is best. Can I can be open to that? It's just that she would have to prepare the minutes on her own time. I mean as the manager she can't she's a very busy girl so this is a separate thing that she gets paid for so it's not like she comes into the office and works on minutes because she's paid for a per diem position that's that is correct.
Yeah, because you she'll certainly need the hours as you've said so in the office. Yeah, okay I appreciate the dialogue I didn't mean to make it a big thing and that's no. I
tell you what I'm going to just go ahead and make a motion was normally the chair doesn't do but I just, I think that, you know, we, we hopefully are reaching some consensus and if not let's vote and we'll, we'll take it to the next meeting but I'm going to vote that we request Eric have marina attend the meeting and prepare the minutes and pay her on the basis of the board clerk stipend for the for being the board clerk and attending the meetings. Assuming that the union doesn't have any concerns about that, which Eric had previously expressed would be an issue. So I'm gonna make that motion that we ask Eric to do that and arrange it in that way. Does anybody want a second?
I'll second for discussion. Okay. Thanks, Kern. I have a I have a question. Yeah. That's if she accepts that position. Correct? What if she doesn't wanna do it? You know? But what if she doesn't wanna transcribe
everything and not get paid for doing it? Here we go. We go to plan b. We're gonna have to have to have separately.
That's all I'm saying. If you gotta attract good talent, you you gotta you gotta pay them. Plain and simple. Right.
What I'm saying is, Kurt, is Marina is willing to attend the meetings and do the transcription as long as she's getting paid the standard meeting fee that any board clerk would get. And that's because that's more lucrative than most of her other employment would be, you know. Hey, let's vote. I'm good. Other
comments or discussion? Okay, guess we'll take a vote. All those in favor say Aye. Aye. The opposed?
I'm just gonna abstain from this one because I really, you know, I brought it. Yeah. That's fine. Abstentions, we have one, Joanne, anybody else?
Diane, are you abstaining? I'm not going to abstain because I really All like what I want to
right. So motion passes five zero two. Thank you everybody. Any other discussion on this agenda item about the board clerk? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to agenda item nine, which is our approval of the meeting minutes. There are links to the meeting minutes in the packet. 9A is the Wednesday, 03/23/2022 regular meeting minutes. Is anybody through any discussion over this? Would anybody like to make a motion to approve those minutes? I'll make a motion to approve.
Okay, Kurt, anybody second it? I'll second. Linda seconds, thank you. Is there any discussion? Okay, hearing none, I'll go ahead and call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and that motion passes. Thank you. We'll move on to the next item which is 9B Wednesday, 03/30/2022 special meeting for the budget workshop minutes. Anybody have any discussion or like to make a motion to approve?
I make the motion to approve the, is it March 30? Yeah. It's as presented.
John, Diane second. Thank you. Is there any discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we can go ahead and vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none. Thank you. Motion passes. Move on to item 9C, which is Wednesday, 04/06/2022, special meeting minutes. Does anybody have any discussion or would like to make a motion regarding those minutes? Which one did you say? The thirteenth? April 6.
April 6, I have a correction for that one. So on page one under item three, the last paragraph on the bottom of the page says that I made a motion to change the budget as indicated on the current spreadsheet as presented. Louise seconded. I believe it was Joanne who made the motion. It wasn't me. Okay. Wasn't me. What's going on? That's the only correction I have on that. I'm having some trouble Okay. So Diane's making a motion
to correct minute that this is near the bottom of the first page. I would say on the and that's at the bottom, the last paragraph.
Last paragraph. Vice chair Diane McKenna made a motion to make changes to budgets indicated on the current spreadsheet as presented.
Yeah. I went back to the recording. I think that was Joanne.
Okay. Doctor. Marcel. Does this usually work for you? Okay. You might wanna second that motion?
That's all how it worked for a colleague. I'll second it. Okay. Thank you, Louise. Thank you. Any discussion? Okay.
Thank you, Diane, for the correction. We'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?
K. Any abstention? K. The motion passes seven zero zero. Eric, can you do you have a clerk make that change or if you could make that change?
That change will appear in the minutes of this meeting because that's when you
corrected it. Got it. Okay. It's for someone who had to deal with that and that kind of injury procedure. Thank you. Robert Schroleson. Moving on to item 9D, which is the Wednesday, 04/13/2022 public hearing and special budget meeting. Anybody have any discussion or motions regarding that?
I'm gonna make the motion to accept the minutes as per the budget.
I'm sorry, you're breaking up. Kurt, could you mute for a second? I'm catching some background noise. Can you say that again, Joanne?
I make the motion to accept the April 13 budget workshop meetings as presented.
Okay, to accept them as presented. Okay, wasn't sure if you were making a motion about correction. Okay, does anybody who have a second on that motion? I'll second.
Okay, Linda seconds. Thank you. Any discussion? Okay, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye.
Opposed? Okay, any abstentions? I'm going to abstain because I was not there for the entire meeting. So the motion passes six zero one. Okay.
Last item on the agenda is section nine is 9E Wednesday, 04/20/2022 special meeting budget for the budget workshop. Do you have any motions regarding those minutes?
Can we just discuss them before we motion? I do. I can you hear me? Is my voice a little Yep, I can hear you now. Yeah. Okay. This is the one that's a little brief, and unfortunately, there was a lot that happened at this meeting. I don't think they need a lot added, but I just wanted to, I'm looking at it.
Is there anything specific you would add, I guess would be the question. Yeah.
So I didn't really know the procedure when you want a little more. I don't think the meeting's been posted online. Eric, has it gone up yet to view? No, it's not there. Didn't think it's It should be shortly. Yeah. I checked earlier and it's yeah.
Can we hold on these children, is it possible to make a motion to hold on these and make a decision.
Well, don't really need to make a motion to hold we would just yeah we would just table this I guess you know, we you don't really need to motion I mean, we either approve it or we take no action in which case it really need to move to the next meeting as part of the, you know, another, another meeting.
Do that only because I would like to do that if the board would back me up on that. Just want a chance to view the meeting again and see if we need to add anything. Maybe I'll say no, maybe I'm being too particular on this. It just looked very, very brief to me. But again, I'm not the majority. I'm just asking if we can table at one more month.
It seems reasonable. Mean, typically I wasn't at the meeting. I don't have any opinion about whether there's anything substantive that occurred that needed to be recorded that it's not there. So I'll step out of that discussion. The meeting's not posted. I went to look to see if I could view it, but it's not posted yet. Yeah, I have nothing to add.
If we have questions on it, it's not posted yet, at least let's get it posted so we can look at it and we can just table Yeah. It for next
I just wanted to view it one more time to see if it needed to be added. Was just an inkling of when I opened this was just very, very short and the other ones are a little bit longer. If we're gonna, that's all. I appreciate if we could table it, again, I'll sit back.
Yeah, it didn't really strike me as that much shorter than some we've had. Again, I wasn't at the meeting. So you know, it's really capturing the substantial, you know, elements of the meeting. But yeah, it's not as detailed as some of the others. That's true. Eric, who did these minutes? Do you mind me?
I think that was the last meeting we just had. So Marina would have done those minutes. Thank you. All right. Whatever you all decide.
If nobody makes a motion to approve these minutes, then it'll be carried over to the next meeting. It's really automatically tabled there. Does anybody else like to make a motion regarding these minutes for the meeting on Wednesday, April 20? Okay, hearing no action then we'll pass on that and it will roll over to the next agenda. The next meeting. Okay, we'll move on to agenda item number 10, which is our liaison reports. Do we have any feedback from any of the people on the liaison committees?
I'll give you guys an update on the community center. We had a I'd like to hear that. Okay. Yeah. Public meeting last Saturday. I don't know. April 9 or something. Yeah. Yeah. Good turnout, a lot of people came, a lot of questions that we recorded and a lot of feedback, nothing totally negative. They brought up some good points. They asked if we can try and fit in more handicapped parking closer to the building. That's something that the committee has gone back to the architects and the site planner to try and accomplish. Because we think that's really important. A lot of the other things were more things that would happen later on down the road. Does the kitchen have to be here? Does the store have to be there? We're not there yet in the design. So, but we recorded all that information and we're gonna discuss it at our next meeting in May and kind of go through all the questions that everybody had so we can, you know, address them for everybody. But overall it was good turnout. Was happy with it. Good.
We did get approval from the Board of Selectmen to go to RFP for the design bill phase. So that's kind of where we're standing right now.
Thank you. Anyone else have anything to report? Okay. Thank you, Diane. We'll move on to agenda item 11, which is board open discussion. And a lot of open discussion, this meeting we have any other topics we should discuss. All right, hearing none, guess we'll move on to agenda item 12, which is public speak. Looks like we have still a couple members of the public. Maybe it's just Marcy now. Marcy, do you have anything to tell the board or discuss?
I guess I'm the only one that made it. No, I actually appreciate that you guys all have something to add. You have a lot of conversation back and forth and yeah just really grateful that you guys go through things pretty thoroughly. I did have a comment about the hiring in the town. I've been kind of thinking about a lot of hires that have been made and all that stuff and how it seems like the town is struggling in that area. And our business we hire been hiring people all the time you know it's just it's consistent it's not an easy thing to do kind of feel like we're always trying to hire you know it's difficult in landscaping it's like it feels like the hardest thing ever and you can't afford to pay him anything and you know I probably could offer some assistance. Don't know if that's needed or or desired but I just it's kind of just something I've been thinking about that I'm wondering you know if there's something that we could do as a town or that I could assist in to help with that. But that's about it I do appreciate you guys all you know seem very professional and the meetings are really well run so you know I'm really tired because I work
especially this time of year a lot but I really wanted to you know see the process and I know that you guys have a lot of hard things to tackle so thank you. You're muted, Mark.
Sorry, thank you. I didn't hear you. Thank you, Marcy. Appreciate it. Yeah, the question is probably more one for the Board of Selectmen and Eric is town administrator about the hiring but it is not a simple thing. So thanks for the offer. I think that's it, if nobody has anything else. Okay, we'll move on to agenda item 13 which is adjournment. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? Make the motion.
I think I saw Linda's hand up first. I'm not sure who was speaking there but Linda makes a motion to adjourn. Anybody want a second? I'll second it. Okay, thank you, Louise. Any discussion? Okay. We'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, any abstentions? One last time. Hearing none the motion passes this meeting is adjourned. Thank you everybody. Not to be done yet so appreciate the time.