Meeting transcript
Board of Finance- Regular Meeting
August 26, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Machine-generated transcript — check the video if in doubt.
That we record. Jeff, do you have it? Okay. You do. Yeah. Alright, folks. It's seven, so let's get going. This is the August 26 regular board of finance meeting twenty twenty six. We'll go ahead and start the meeting and start, with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America. Of America and to the republicans and one nation under god, indivisible,
liberty, liberty, justice for all. Alright. Welcome, everybody. Let me see if I can pull up my agenda here. Alright. So we'll do public speak real quick. Looks like we've got Linda, our Emeritus member, one of our Emeritus members. How are doing? Hi. All set. Just here to listen. Just here to listen. Oh, Matt, you did make it great. We'll go to Joanne next, and we'll come back to Matt. Same thing. Just listening. Thank you.
Very good. Welcome. Welcome. Matt, do you have anything before we actually get into the meeting? No. Okay. And then we have somebody just is on there as Andover resident. I don't know who that is, but, if you'd like to public speak, now is the time.
Yes. I just had two quick questions. I don't know if they'll be able to be answered for tonight. One is What's your name? My name is Ben. In the treasurer report for July, there's 14 checks that were written as fraudulent. Do we know the source? Is that did somebody get a hold of the checkbook, writing checks or what's the story behind that? And then the other question I have is July 2, $3,000 check was written to Jeffrey Ballard. Is there any idea what that is for? Other than that, that's all I got.
Alright. Well, hopefully, we get to that during the administrator's report or or Jeff can chime in. Thank you for those. Ben, I believe you're doing this. Okay. Going back up to my agenda. Changes additions. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think we wanna punt on six a. The the the funding process, I think we maybe give it a month to see how it plays out. I haven't had a chance to read and digest the legal guidance. So why don't we just my opinion would be, why don't we strike that for tonight and come back to it next meeting? What do you guys think?
I don't know. Maybe we should just talk about it. Okay. I mean, we can leave it. It's fine. I mean, unless I I I don't see a reason any reason not to. We didn't talk about it less last month despite the fact that we had gotten notification of it. Maybe we should just
have it out there. Sure. Just we can just chat about it. I don't I don't think there's a saying action. There's nothing we can do. Yeah. But I think we should talk about it. Yeah. That's fine. We'll leave it then. Okay. Anybody else have any additions, deletions they wanna bring forward? If not, then we will move into the town administrator's report. Matt, you are up, sir.
Good evening, everyone. So, first and foremost, the, AES bathroom, renovation. I know that they've been, they must be getting close because the school's starting tomorrow. I was not at the, most recent, update, but, when I was the previous one, was at everything was on schedule to be completed in time for school opening. So, I did not get a chance to go over there or take take a look at it. But, perhaps, Bill or somebody else that may have been on that meeting can share on that. I was Go ahead.
I was I was there on last meeting last week, but not this meeting. And last week it sounded as if everything was scheduled. There was no delays. Everything was happening right on schedule. So I'm assuming it's all set.
Great. Thank you, Bill. Beyond that, I was off last week on vacation. I did submit a report to the select board. I didn't have time to do one for the individually for the finance committee. I know we did provide some information that I know that Robin passed on. Budgetary information for QuickBooks based on what our auditor's report has. So but I'm the only thing I'd know that I've mentioned at the select board is that there's some items that I'm going to be looking to ask the finance committee for. I think that there's some items that from operation of my office either, you know, a laptop computer and a few things that we don't necessarily have a budget line item for. Once
I get some more information, I'll provide that to the finance committee. So I'm here to answer any other questions that you may have. I could probably touch base on the fraudulent checks that was raised by a member of the public. From what I our positive pay system, if there's any checks that, seem to be out of the ordinary, red flags them, and there seems to be several some, I guess they're basically, like, our old checks that were sort of whitewashed. They were previously they were, like, a sign. I could probably provide copies if somebody wanted to stop in just a photocopies of them. But they're they're basically old actual checks of ours that they cross out the name who they're for, but they're signed by Valerie and by Eric Anderson. And they just changed the check number and amount. They're they're for the most part, think as we've seen, they're generally small even amounts like 900
or 750. So there've been several of those. They sort of get they get positive pay. We we say that they're a and then they give us back the money. So it's it's a it's a system that's showing that it's actually working. So if there's any issues, sometimes there's checks that get positive pay fines that says, like, it's made out to the state treasurer's office. And it comes back saying, wrong payee. It's a state of Connecticut treasurer's office. And obviously, we'll approve those because they are legitimate, and they were signed by both myself and the first. So I'm happy to answer any other questions. I don't know. I didn't really look into the Jeff Ballard one at this time, but I can do that.
When's Jeff Ballard wouldn't that just be for his garden thing? Probably for the garden.
Would imagine it's for the garden. It's for the garden. If we look back at the approval amount that was approved the budget here this year, somebody helped me out. Wasn't it $3,000
or something like that? Probably around that amount. It's probably a reimbursement. I don't remember the exact number. Yeah. It was it was around $3,000,
so I think it must be for the garden ban. That's Yeah. Have QuickBooks up open on my computer. I just have you know, we got we got some minor reports so quickly into the agenda that I had that checked. And so, Matt, could I'm not sure I quite understood the explanation you gave with the fraudulent checks. Are those test checks that we sent out? Or These are not you know, we because we don't know what original check if somebody had gotten a hold of one of our old checks that had previously been cashed, and they just sort of whitewashed, like, the names and stuff like that. Okay. It looks like it had one of our old checks from, a year ago or something. They they but okay. The the way that this is working is
these people who are committing the fraud are sitting there taking the checks and putting them through a program like Adobe and wiping out the payee and the amount and leaving the signatures and the bank information. And then they're typing in new information so that they can go to the bank and cash it. So they'll change the check number. What Matt is talking about is Matt and the finance department have been doing positive pay, and that is something new that we got into. And if you would look back at old previous check statements, you'll sit there and see there's been a significant number of them. Those are actually checks and they're at the bottom. They most of them hit at the end of the month. Majority of those are going to check cashing places where people are at the end of the month and the beginning of the month getting their monthly checks. And so you can sit there and see on the twenty ninth and the thirty first there were five checks presented. And if you look in the other column for the ones that were presented on the twenty ninth, you'll sit there and see that we got the money back. And if you looked in the beginning of August, would sit there and see that we got the rest of the money back. So the treasurer has been doing a very good job of monitoring that. Matt has been doing a submission to positive pay moving forward, so that we're trying to eliminate this. But this has been an ongoing problem, and it's gonna continue to be an ongoing problem. We just have to be diligent about monitoring the bank and monitoring that we get the money back.
Are they getting their check copies? That's what was wondering. Check to start with.
Our check could either went to a bank. You have problems with people at banks, and you have problems with people who are receiving the checks. A lot of people, Nick, are depositing the checks by phone. They're taking a picture. And so it becomes it is problematic for us. So what the bank is asking us to do is to utilize the system where we're telling them what checks are gonna hit our account before they get released. So what they're supposed to do, what the bank is supposed to do, it doesn't always happen. Some of these checks are not $900 Some of these checks have been $18,000 and you're sitting there, you had ACHs that were more significant up around the $9,000 mark when we first started having this. When we started having this right when Lisa was appointed treasurer. So this has been an ongoing thing for about four or five months. We keep fighting through it. You guys get to see it. The public gets to see it. So, yes, there are fraud checks there, and there are deposits coming back for those fraud checks. So they've been doing a very good job of doing it. Lisa is actually not on vacation. She is she is not gonna join us tonight. She is dealing with a move for a family member who took a teaching position in New Hampshire. So just to let everybody know. And then what was the other question that he asked? Oh, yeah. And and my question is when you look garden? Yeah. The garden.
You look at that, isn't it in the memo? Like everything about those checks should be in the memo as best we can. And then if you see something you don't like or you need to get details on, you should. But on him, I gotta believe his it says community garden in the memo. I can't even find him, but I'll look for him. You guys keep going. Sorry. Yeah. That memo was a great addition. Thank you. I remember that. So
I guess, Matt, looking at your the report that you had given to the select board last time they met, there's some stuff going on with the transfer to station. Have we made progress?
As far as the hiring of a Yeah. Attendant? Yeah. We've considered two people for the position. Basically offered both the job. One of them declined to take it. He for whatever the reason was, it had to do with the the number of hours and it came down to one hour. It was their decision not to take the job. But we have somebody that's now, working obviously to be probationary. The person signed up to take the class to get the certification for a transfer station attendant through the DEP. I as I mentioned in my report that I had already taken that course. So if if we need be that, you know, we could basically, the DEP would like to have somebody there all the time that has that certification, but they're also understanding that, if we hire somebody new that, you know, we'll generally have something probably there. Steve, who's there, is certified,
and, the next class for the test is September, September 11, I believe. So the new gentleman, Tom, is taking that position. So Yep.
I have a question. Yep. Go ahead. Can you tell me what's going on on Bunker Hill? There's some kind of construction or something? The road's closed? In Coventry?
Yeah. Coventry is doing a a bridge project up there. So there's gonna be It's in Coventry. Yeah. Oh. I I saw the same thing, Liz.
Yes. What? Who are these poor people? Yeah. Yeah. It would have been tough if they coordinated both at the same time, and then there would have been a no man's lane. So No. They're doing they're doing a bridge in their town.
I saw the name of the crossroad, and I'm like, I don't recognize that. I mean, I should recognize that. I used to live in Coventry, but I don't recognize that cross street. Yeah. I'm glad you asked because I was puzzled too. That's that's unfortunate for those folks, man. Oh, those four people. But then everything will be nice and pristine for after one's done. In another six months probably. Yeah. All those poor people. Yeah. But but at least our at least our folks can come down Route 6, you know, and not have to.
You know? Okay. Thank you. I got I just gotta say, somebody was complaining to me that lives on Bunker Hill, I was like, oh, what's the big deal? We're building a new bridge in for you. But now that Long Hill is closed, I'm like, it's a big deal. Now you get it. Pay in the butt. It really is. But Yeah. You gotta do it. So Now you get it. Yeah. I think
it's worse for the Bunker Hill Road people, though, than for you guys. At least you guys have Hendy. Yeah.
Right? Bunker Hill. It's a long a detour. Big. It's a long I know. Is. Detour. Yeah. So, anyway, thank you. Okay.
And I guess anything else, Matt, you know, subsequent to that document that you wanted to raise, bring up, alert us to?
No. I think, you know, I think that's all I have today, but I'm I'm always present for questions
that you have. So I mean, I appreciate the the info you got us in terms of our fund balances and whatnot. That's definitely
something we want to As I mentioned, the the the treasurer and the first left and we're, you know, are integral integral to getting that information. We are able to try and,
if you wanna go through it, if you have follow-up questions on that, and if there's any issues, we can format it in a different way. This is just how it came out, and we wanna just get you the best information that we can so you can understand. Well, like, one of the one of the things I was thinking about, and I'm just kicking this around. I'm not making any formal requests at this time, I was looking at some of the balances. I was looking at the road improvement fund balance, and one of the things that occurred to me was you remember, I was downtown hall paying my taxes and, director of public works was in there, we got to talking. And he mentioned we have a new there's a new process for chip seal
Yep. And that we might I I don't know if we're fully gonna switch over to it or not or what have you, but I was wondering if maybe we should have a meeting where he joins us. And we talk about the road plan, and we talk about where we're at as a funding level, where he's at in capacity down there. You know? Part of my think thinking is, okay. So we we have $850,000 in a fund. How much work could we actually do? Right? And and I have to think that a new process, as he described it to me, it was a five minute conversation, but as he described it to me, it's a little bit more expensive upfront, but it lasts longer. Right? Yeah. The rubberized chips deal. That would in in theory then impact how many miles you do a year. It's gonna reduce unless we increase the funding level. You're gonna reduce a little bit how much we can get to a year but increase its longevity.
And just sort like, what does that do to our road plan? You know, he's been in there now long enough. I would hope he's got his arms around that and maybe could come chat chat with us about it. What do you guys think? I'm I'm thinking it might be a good thing to do when we're not in the middle of the budget process too. Like, when we're not flailing around trying to do all our other stuff, maybe one Maybe next month, we could just just have him come as a guest, maybe. If if he would if he would be available. Think it was there. Two processes, though. Because if you look at Whales Road,
I'm like, that looks like a brand new paved road, but then you look at some of the other roads they've done in town. It looks like the old chip steel where they put the dirty dirt on top and then the street. So I'm wondering, like, which one are we going with, and why would one road be done one way and another road be done another way? Yep. Wales definitely seemed different to me. Yeah. I agree. I think a paved road. And it's not like Wales and Townsend Wales and Townsend were done all in one shot. Right? I I don't know about Townsend. I I use Wales, and I'm just saying I looked at I've been on some other roads that have been done recently. Yeah. And it's a different process, and I'm wondering why does one road we all pay the same mill rate. Why does one road get this beautiful rubberized process? It looks like a brand new road and other roads get chip sealed. It'd be nice to know the thinking or concept behind that. So I don't if
you can talk to that, Matt, or if maybe mister McGuire Yeah. Probably for that. No. I I I can touch base, but I think it would best be better to, have him come in and explain, you know, certain roads were doing certain ways. I know they're doing, like, more reclamation up on on bridge roads. That's a different process. So there's different processes that we we didn't wanna go all in, I guess, on all the rubberized ship seal because of the expense. And you also want us to make sure which roads are, you know, deteriorated more or in in a more in need situation. So, the the process is to try and get all the roads taken to get in a sort of a plan for keeping them up to date. And some of these roads are gonna have the rubberized seals, other ones are may not, but it would be probably better to have him come and explain because typically, I think we get a play a plan from some of the DOT that comes in and says, you know, what what their recommendations are for certain roads as well. So certain highway speeds, some of them some of those were just, were, dead end roads or so
that they definitely don't have the type of traffic that you would see on some of the other through streets. So, you may not wanna have the rubberized chip seals on some of those type of roads that are are dead end, that you're not gonna see the type of traffic volume on. So I would I would defer to the Department of Public Works, the
DPW director, to come and explain that. Why don't we see if he's available next month for our meeting? And I think it'd be nice to to talk about because then we can And before we're going into budget season, we can have a sense of where we're at. And then we'll so when we start to think about capital in six months, we, you know, we have a better sense for it. I think that would be helpful. So Sounds good. You should consider having every department
Yes. Come to Public works was just the first one, Jeff, I I thought of.
I presented him with his budget in a in a new form from QuickBooks. We have some memorized reports just like you guys have the memorized reports in front of you that those reports in that form based upon comments that you guys make or the Board of Selectmen members make are going to be presented to both boards in the same manner each month. So the check register, the budget versus actual. And what I also am going to do, Rob, on the Board of Selectmen side is also call each board and commission in front of the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance. We can share it because it will work. Have them come put their their budgets into the packet, their detailed information into the packet, so you can actually see what's getting posted. Like, when you look at what's getting posted into the roadwork stuff, you'll see a lot of asphalt. You'll see a lot of materials to sit there and get the the chip sealing done. But it'll be helpful for you guys when you're going to budget to have as much information as possible and actually to have the people that are responsible for the budget talking to you. And there is also a lot of things that I want to do with you guys to talk about how we can make the budget a little bit different going through next year. Because there's certain items that are in every payroll item is in a line item for a different department, but they really have no control over that other than ours.
So there's certain things that I think might be better pulled out in a different way. So if you guys look at the budget to actual report and you sit there and you start thinking about it, I'd like to go over that with you and see if it maybe should be displayed in a different way, moving forward. And also put more of the revenue items in there as revenue items and then put the expenses onto the the
because you don't see Town Aid Road. We don't see Town Aid Road. I looked it up. I mean, I actually found the state of Connecticut, you know, has a website. You can go town by town and see what the grant is. We get about $1.85 a year.
185. And and you can sit there and see that it gets, when you and and and look at all of these fund balances. One of the things we should do there is we should sit there. There's not a lot of transactions that happen in these funds, but there are certain funds that have transactions that we should be looking at them in detail and showing the public and saying, hey, okay, this is where the money is going. This is the vendors it's going to, and we'll move on. But there's a lot more information now available. The board and commission reports have been finalized. These reports have been prepped and are easily prepared.
And so now it's just a question of making sure everything's reconciled and moving on. So Yep. That sounds good. Yeah. I I think it makes sense to start with public works. They're a pretty big Yeah. Factor, and then we can move on and think about who we wanna bring in for October. But let's see if we can do September with public works. I think that'd be good. I don't think I I don't wanna weigh it down on meetings with multiple you know? I wanna and I wanna get people in and out as quickly as we can. We will tee them up right at the start of the meeting and and then move them along so they don't have spend their whole night with us.
Yeah. And maybe it depends on how big big a big of a group it is. Like Yes. Community garden could come in with probably the rec community or
you know? I'm thinking I'm thinking the big boy. You know? I'm thinking public works, fire department, you know, our our big ones, are kind of would be standalone, I think. And and, this hopefully preceding the budget process so we can digest it, think about it, get our arms around it. And then when we get when we hit crunch time in January, February, we'll have a better sense for everything. I think I think that makes sense. Alright. Okay. So that concludes the administrator's report unless you have anything further, Matt.
The only other thing was that, I know that there's been talk that we wanna try and have a triboard meeting and Oh, right. Yes. And and I just wanted you know, because we're having this meeting here, if you will maybe just, start with your group, just come up with possible date, then from there, we could yeah. I'm pretty sure that, know because you're you're a pretty good sized committee that, you know, I'm sure we can get the select board to follow suit and then just touch base with the other side you know, the board. So if we can if you wanna I'll I'll send you a note in the next, twenty four, forty eight hours just so so we can try and pin down a time to at least start planning that. I think we discussed it last time, Sam. We were We did. We never had time this time, we were trying put a date in the calendar, but. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're we're down two members tonight, number one.
Number two, I mean, I can speak generally about my availability, but, I'd have to look at my calendar. But I think, you know, generally speaking, Wednesday nights are are pretty good for me. Some Thursday nights could work. Mondays, Tuesdays aren't impossible. They're just harder. I have to I have to check my daughter's gymnastics schedule. They went and they changed the practice times, and now I think she's got practice at 06:30PM on a Tuesday. So I'd be driving home from Hebron trying to log on and, you know, or or getting physically to the town hall. It might work, but, you know, I can vouch. I can say, like, Wednesdays work for me. So if we wanna pick a Wednesday,
that would be okay with me. I don't know if anybody else has any stuff like that where they are just dealing with kid logistics or whatever that you wanna knock out, and then we could kinda focus in on what's left.
I have a problem on Wednesdays starting September 2. I'm gonna be in charge of driving grandchildren to hockey practice. So
Oh my goodness. Hoc I have heard about hockey parents and the travel. Yeah. This is a Yeah.
I do my part to make life easy. So Wednesdays aren't gonna be a problem in the next, month or two. Maybe we can find a third. How about Thursdays? Thursdays are okay. Except for September 24. Thursdays are okay.
Okay. Heather, Nick, you guys chime in too. What's good for you guys? I'm looking at my calendar. K. I'm checking right now too. Thursdays are usually good for me. Are or are not? Good. Are are. Yes. Are? Good. Okay. I could probably make Thursdays work.
So we our September meeting, I believe, is scheduled for the twenty third. That's a Wednesday, obviously. Hopefully, we'll see about you, Liz, but that's how your regularly scheduled meeting. Right. I will before that would be the seventeenth.
We could think Yeah. I mean, I I will be available to for regularly scheduled board of finance meetings. I'm You still wanna add to Wednesday again. So if you I don't. But
So you could do it under regularly scheduled meeting is what you're saying. On a rather scheduled Wednesday. Right. I I think what Lisa said basically is don't add more Wednesdays. Don't add other Wednesdays. Yeah. Don't give her more Wednesdays, please. So why don't we just try and have a tri board meeting on a Wednesday, on a regularly scheduled board of finance Wednesday if we can.
That would be the September 23. The other option would be we could pick, like, the seventeenth, which is the prior Thursday. Again, that would not Jeff, do you have thoughts about what do you think, about your board's availability? Do you have any sense? I know you got some new people.
I can only speak for myself, but, I mean, I just let's just schedule it. Let's give three dates. You guys give three dates. We'll go to the board of Selectmen. We'll sit there and see if those three dates work. You know? I mean, we don't have to do this on the meeting. You guys can do this by email after the meeting. Let's just come up with a a a time coordinated with Matt. Matt can send it out to the board of selectmen. We'll sit there and come back. I mean, I'll make it depends upon what kind of meeting it is. This meeting's probably gotta be in person. I'm just letting everybody know it's probably gotta be an in person meeting. It should be an in person meeting. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting all those boards together. I agree. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
So just do after the meeting and just come up with three eights and or Matt, the board of selectman will come up with three dates and send it back to the board of finance and sit there and see how your attendance would be with that, and we'll go from there. Okay. That works. Alright. So TBD on that. Very good. I
had a question on the on the on Matt's report. Where are we with the collective bargaining? Is that all done?
No. We're we're still we're still working to schedule another meeting with the management, and then we'll get into that. So, we were gonna try and do that, this week once I got back from, my vacation, but, I'm I'll be, circling dates to the rest of those that are involved. So we can try and move this move this quickly now that we're, getting into the fall.
Liz and I met today and discussed what was going on. We we were both in the town hall. So we'll sit there and circle back with Matt. We we just need Heather to come up with there are certain things that we believe we need to discuss with the union, and then Matt can schedule that appointment and get this over with. Okay. Alright. K.
Alright. Unless there's any other questions, we can move on to the budget to actual and check register, which should be in our packet. Yep. It is. It's in our packet. I you know, I I worked today. I haven't poured over this, but this is we're into the new fiscal year. So a lot of this, you're seeing small percentages instead of, you know, what we're we were looking at last time. Right.
Yeah. I just had a couple things I highlighted and they're Go little, but ahead. On 4145, civil preparedness, I mean, the the budget for the salary is only a thousand dollars, but it's at a 100% already. Is that something we pay for that person up front? We're gonna have to look at that one.
$1.35 dash 100 under civil preparedness, thousand bucks spent. Yeah. I mean, it sort of seems like for such a small, maybe we do just pay it lump sum, but I I don't recall.
Yeah. I think if, Lisa was here, we'd probably be able to Yeah. To that. Yeah. Sure looks like that. Maybe Matt could, take that back,
the question back to Lisa. Matt, just so you know. Matt, you're on mute. You're on mute.
Matt has listen. I have a go ahead. Matt has three different computers or two different computers that he deals with. He So has one computer that he's on to do the meeting and a camera, and he's looking off at the other computer that sits there. And so Oh, okay. Probably a better question to Matt is, Matt, where are we with the IT changes? You could put it together later. Let's I'll defer on that. Yeah. So so Matt has the ability, and Lisa has the ability to drill down. I would sit there and help Matt today, but I can't sit there and I have a flaky internet with my office. So I'm having some problems today, so I cannot access
information like that. And I'm sure what Matt's going to find is if that's actually a payroll transaction, it's a journal entry, and he'd have to get into the ADP system with with the finance department. So highlight that one, Matt, and bring it back to the finance department, and get we'll get an answer to you, Heather, or or Liz. Sorry. Okay. Okay. I mean, listen. Other Here here's just as a global thing. It's only one month into this. Yeah. So Yeah. 8.3% is the number for the month. Yep. So you can sit there and see how the revenue is a lot higher because we're we're collecting our first quarter. So we're collecting
July, August, and September, you know, kinda. So it's a little bit higher. It's not as high as we'd want it to be, but it is higher than 8%. And then anything in the expense side that's over 8% or a reasonable number, I mean, there's a lot of annual fees that all of these companies come and bill January or July 1 to get paid right in the beginning. So you'll sit and see some big numbers in some of the memberships and those types of things. Yeah, 8.3% is the number. And the biggest problem that I honestly see on this is the ECS funding is not in the revenue side. So the bottom line looks really kind of bad. So we have to put our expected ECS revenue in on the budgeted side so that our number looks better at the bottom. We'll get that done within the next week. So by the time you guys have your next meeting or this information gets prepped for the board of selectmen, it'll be corrected. Where are you seeing that?
The ECS funding? Yeah. If you go to the top. Right? So, like, if you guys are we're re we're reading this page one of this report. Yep. The information in the top half is all the revenue for the town. Right. Right. And when you sit there and you look at the second section for for 4,300 intergovernmental revenues at the bottom. Yeah. The last line is ECS funds. And when you look at the budget, it's zero. It's it's $2,000,000. Okay.
So it was in it was in your budget. It was it was calculated out what's gonna happen. The state will end up paying us, but that number needs to get put in there as the budget got implement, input, by the treasurer. So Do
you ever know, Jeff, if they pay that, lump sum or quarterly or something?
Oh god. They Matt could probably drill down on it for last year. They usually drag it out to the end of the year, and they don't pay it quarterly. I'm trying to remember the numbers that I saw. I thought it was they paid us twice a year. They paid us they let us wait, like, six months, and then they pay us. And then they wait till the end of the year, and they pay us the other half of it. Okay. So we had about a million dollars twice. And it's not enough. And if somebody wants to do some digging, the ECS calculation is a big problem for me because of how it gets done. And, that would be a great project for the board of finance to sit there and go and research on the state side as to how the state calculates our ECS funding and and why Andover honestly gets screwed related to the ECS funding. So
drilling down last year, it looks like, we got to deposit on, October 31 for looks like about 0.5 a $1,000,000. The quarterly, looks like there was another, $500,000 on January 31 and then on April 30, 1,000,000. So they it was like
Oh, interesting. Quarter and then Quarter and half. Was remembering the million dollars.
Okay. Well, that's a thing. What I'm saying is it was 501,001 thousand and $2. We have to be able to track something that's that's anticipated like that that we know we're gonna get. Right. That's what you're trying to say, Jeff. Right? Is we need to display that in such a way it doesn't look like we're It needs to be in the budget. I mean, if you look at this report Yeah. I mean, it's just from my standpoint. You go to the bottom,
and this is what I did, you know, at one point in time, I went to the bottom and the budget shows, a $2,395,000 loss. And so when I was sitting there going, well, that's not right. So I knew it had to be ECS. So, I mean, yes, if you look at this, and I didn't I don't do I haven't done the math. So there's certain things that, you know, we have to check what is going on in the finance office and make sure we're right. I mean, you might have used $395,000 of funds to pay for last year as it would come off of this report. You know? And if you think of it just as a business, you're not gonna have enough revenue to cover your expenses. This fiscal year, you're using your fund balance to pay it, but that's the $395,000. So that will show the entire year once we make sure that this matches the the budget that was passed by the taxpayers. So, Jeff, we we know what the amount is, or we don't know yet what the amount No. We know For ECS? Yeah. Oh, ECS is like two it's been the same thing for thirteen years. It's just a hair over 2,000,000. Yeah. $2,002,000, something like that. Yeah. Okay.
And we we know the dollar. It's been flat for Matt, what was the number in last year? $2,004,782.
Yeah. Right. Okay. So that's the number it's gonna be again this year, Bill. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Yeah.
Alright. Well, let's go through this. And if you have any questions, Matt can drill down on it. And and hopefully, what we can do I mean, and you guys might even want to go through the check register, you know, and then come back to this, or I don't know how you guys want to do it. I put it in the order that I thought you might want it. And I gave it when I gave it to Matt and said, put it in the package.
The only other one that I had questions about was on the youth services. That's 4,419. That's page six of our packet. Six? Or yeah. It shows that we pay we've already paid half of the budgeted amount to Is that again, is that something that's regular? We pay them half now and then half later? Yeah, they us an invoice. Sorry,
ma'am. They send us an invoice for half of the year and then they'll send another half. Okay. So that's proper.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, since we're so early into the year, there's not a really yeah. Yeah. But I just tried to look for stuff that was high in the percentages. And I did find Jeff Ballard that is for the community garden, and he's the one that manages that. So my guess is that he put in some receipts. Can you drill down into that, Matt?
He did. He Matt's only gonna find one line. Yeah. You need to go you need to go into the finance department and look at what he's submitting. Okay.
Okay. So he He's he's going to home depot. He's going to the supply. He's He's creating Yeah. Like a business expense report for for the garden and for what he's doing. And I believe a significant portion of that was the irrigation system that he supposedly put into the community garden. Mhmm.
And look into that. It was July 2, and it does and the memo, you know, we did go through and try to add information where we could into the check so that people would have an understanding of what it is. So, like, if you sat there and went through any of those checks, it should have some basic information for you in the memo.
Yeah. What they bought. Might not be the greatest, but Right. It's something. Most of these is There's definitely a few checks. There's blank, you know, and I think some of it's the fraud. Some of these are blank for the the name, and the you know, there's a couple that are labeled reverse check paid. Does that have to do with the fraud? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's when you get the money back. I mean, a lot of the blanks are deposits Yep. Because, you know, you have you have the additions or all all the funds in and out, so whether they're deposit or they're transferred. So I'll probably do it when we get to the checking accounts, because it'll be easier to explain to you. But a lot of the transfers are in from other accounts. So the tax collector deposits into one account, and that's an account that earns interest. So immediately when the deposits go in, it starts to earn interest. And the funds for this, this account is set as a $600,000 holding account. Like, so the bank always keeps $600,000 in this account that you're seeing, which is the operating account.
So if there's extra money, it cleans it out that night to the investment fund, if there's money needed, it kicks it in from the investment and fund to cover the checks that are cleared. So let's get to the next section. I'll explain it. K. So any checks
to on. You have one? I'm ready to move unless anybody else. No. I'm good. K.
Are you moving on from the check register, or are you moving on from the the budget to actual? No. To the to the check register. To the check register. To the check register. Okay. So everything in the credit column is a is an out of the bank, so it's a part of the check, and anything in the debits are the deposits into the account.
Question for this July 2 check. So shipment in Goodwin maybe I should know this, I don't know. The shipment in Goodwin check for the AES bathroom rental project for 4,000?
Did Why are we board's lawyers, so I'm assuming they had input on the contract and everything like that, but I don't know why that would be repayment.
Oh, you guys you guys well, I don't know if you approved it, but it is it is shipment in Goodman. The review of the contract with the the contractor, It was $4,132.50. Yep. And it was paid out of the AES Capital Fund. Right. It's part of the project. You're gonna have a review of the contract.
And along those same lines, I think you're going to probably see it in the next months. You'll see a bill for Fuss and O'Neil because I guess Fuss and O'Neil was originally working on the project before Yep. And I guess it says that the the finance committee had authorized them to do it before back when they thought the project might not go out to bid or they're gonna do it. But so there's still outstanding invoice, I think, for Fuss and O'Neil. But you'll see that next month. It was similar to, I guess, the shipment good with the invoice. But other than that, the other I'd I'd have to look that up. Caught up with them. No? Absolutely not.
We're not caught up with that? No. No. We we caught up with them. We were way ahead of them. Their contract their contract was into project maintenance. You know, that that is that one better come in front of both boards. So
I guess it's actually it's a I guess it was a lost check from back in October. It was approved. It was a check that was written, and they're gonna be reissuing the check because it never cleared.
So that's different from paying an additional bill like Yeah. That's right. But it'll probably come out in the check industry. That one that one's much easier to pallet than San or Maine, plus O'Neill additional funds. Right.
Quick question hundred on thirteen fifty eight thirteen thousand six hundred fifty nine, Tai Chi Planning and Policy Group. I was just curious what that is. There are
planners. The town planner. The town planner works with the PNC, the Planning and Zoning Board, to develop the plan of conservation and development, and he's been engaged with them. They're contract.
Got it. Okay. I just wasn't following the description on that one. Thank you.
I have a question. Someone had asked me about this and I'm just curious. In our contracts for the garage guys, I'm sorry, the acronym is escaping me, the guys that work at the garage, the Public Works, I Public guess their contract allows reimbursement for a couple pairs of boots a year. Is that right?
Well, Liz, that's in their contract. We need to sit there and discuss that.
Oh, it's in their contract. I'm just saying, okay, it is currently in their contract, but my question is, they have to provide a receipt, right, to get reimbursed? It's not just a They do. Okay. That
was my question. Okay. I mean, the most recent one I saw is for the new employee for George. Yep. Okay.
And then you'll sit there and see uniform cleaning. Yeah. Who is that one? Swiss? Swiss. Swiss. Yep. Swiss. $101 a week. Wow. Is there a cheaper way to do that?
Been happening for years. Probably not. There's not a cheaper way to do it? Have them wash their own clothes.
Well, I know. I guess the way it was explained to me by someone who used to be on one of these boards was that it's not like regular laundry. All of those guys are a mess.
You can't you can't just put that those clothes in there in your laundry. You're gonna have That's why it was explained to me.
Yeah. Mean, if you're you're paving a road or you're doing you know, you're working with tar and stuff like that, you know, you need a deeper clean. I guess the question is I
guess the question would be, is it the town's responsibility? Like, if we provide them with their uniforms, which I I don't know if we do. I don't know. Maybe that maybe that's something to talk about. But
I would think that would probably be in the contract too. Right? When when
Eric comes next meeting, we can talk to him about that. There you go. Yeah. Piggybacking off of that question Liz had too, I'd be curious if it's just common in contracts of that nature. I would think it is.
I would think that's retell it on then. It's a good thing to research for sure. If you think about it, if you put yourself in in their shoes, I mean, I'd certainly want it to work that way. In Or boots or boots in this case. Oh, I don't know the boots say. But, yeah, the the cleaning makes a lot of sense to me. But
More than a little tied and OxiClean's gonna get out for it. Exactly.
But you have to remember for, like, say, the booths. They they we wanna make sure that they have, you know, safety booths. They have steel toes. You know, they're more expensive, but it's, you know, for either workers' comp or those type of issues. We want to make sure that they're for OSHA reasons that we have, you know, the the right type of footwear, not only that, but, you know, that we we're not putting them out in the on the streets with equipment there or materials that are substandard. There you go. We do the same thing in our office too. You oh, you do? Yeah. Our our place provides steel toe shoes.
Matt, in your experience in South Windsor, is that is that customary to have those items in the contract?
I was a I was an elected official in Suffolk, but when I worked in Palmer and Granville and other towns, yes, that's typical that there's providing the uniforms, uniform service, as well as reimbursement on clothes. And even like in police departments, we provide them with, you know, certain clothing allowances for their Okay. As well as providing protective equipment. So I I think that, you know, it's it's a it's for what we're paying Swiss, it's a it's a I know it's an expense, but it's, I think, a small price that, you know, is a generally you know, as Jeff mentioned, they've been doing it right along. It's not something that just jumped out out of the blue. No. No. It's just a question. Mhmm. Yeah. Did
did we buy a tractor or pay on a tractor? We bought a tractor a while ago, I'm probably still paying on it.
Seems like that's like I don't I don't know what the cadence of the payment is or how much it is, but I just looked at that one. That one's pretty big. It's
yeah. We bought that tractor, I think, two years ago, Jeff. I
it's a what was it? 125,000 or somewhere in that park? 100 Well, we just paid $47,800 Yes. For this. It's probably a five year payment.
Yeah. It is. What where are you? So if you sit there and tell show me, Nick, like, tell me which date.
Yeah. Absolutely. One three seven twenty one three six seven two. Santander Bank,
John Deere. It looks like it's Yeah. That's that's the new road tractor we bought a few years ago. Two two, three years ago. Why did we pay 47,000 at once, though? 48,000.
Do we pay it, like, once a year or do we Once a year. Yep. Okay. Even the truck is once a year. You're gonna see a truck payment come up. That's a $125,000. It's once a year.
Got it. But the the fire truck's the $1.25. Right? Mhmm. Yeah.
Well, we also have the fire truck and I'm a I'm not sure if we've made the last payment on the plow truck. On the plow truck. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you have the plow truck and the fire truck and the tractor. Those are our three debts. So if you look at our we probably should sit there and have a little section on debt so we all know what we got, and we should probably put it in this report and what we're our balance Years remaining, etcetera. Yep.
Just so we know what's left. Yeah. That would be really helpful for me. I'm just was curious why it was 48,000. I vaguely
recall the fire truck was a ten year lease. I don't recall the other items, what the timing
was on them. The length. I think the plot truck was five, but I do believe that the the
fire truck is 10. Yeah. It is 10. It was 10.
It was an almost million dollar piece of equipment. So Yep. It was million dollar.
Is the is the fund transfer every day that we were talking about, Jeff, with the six it has to be up to 600,000. Mhmm. Is that that fund transfer?
Yeah. What happens is that that's a fund transfer from one of our other accounts, Heather. So so this is okay. Let's go to the other page just so we can see it. So you got this cash balance page. Which page? Page 17 of 25.
Alright. So the the account that we were working on was the Set 511 account, which is the operating account. So when that account gets reconciled, it gets reconciled to $600,000 because what the the bank is doing is requiring us to keep a $600,000 balance in to offset fees. So we don't pay any bank fees. So that 511 account, is the account that all the checks go out of. The next account, the 5096 account is the investment account is where tax deposits go into. So when the tax collector is collecting money, it goes into that account. And that account, that 5096 account, so 1000096, that earns 2.5% interest. The next account is also tax deposits, but those are credit card deposits that go in and get paid by credit card. And those those dollars are supposed to get swept into the investment account, and that's a zero balance account.
And the next account is the AES operations account. That account is that balance is just from 06/30/2025. That's the audit balance that was provided to us. And then, the next account is the stiff account. Stiff account earns about 3.74, 3.75%. So the two accounts that earn interest are 5 0 96, and the stiff account, two 0.5% 3.75. That's all we have now because we closed all of the other fund accounts. So the other 21 we haven't closed them. I'll sit there. We zeroed them out, so there's no money in those accounts. They were all earning us no interest. It's about $900,000. They all got moved July 1. And it was all moved into the investment fund, and then it from the investment fund, some of that money was moved to the stiff account.
So Sorry. Go on. No. Go ahead. No. I was just gonna I I apologize. I didn't mean to break in. The stiff account, obviously, we wanna maximize. So the investment account, which earns interest but a lower interest amount, you said, like, 2.75. To what degree can we get you know, we got 3,500,000 in the in the investment account. How much of that could ultimately end up in the stiff account?
Well, you probably wanna try to keep one month. So if you sat there and looked at all of your expenses, you wanna keep, like, 8% of your fees there. I mean, our biggest problem, honestly, is when we have to pay the large payments, the way that RAM has been at you know, RAM was only on the RAM payment schedule got manipulated before I got here because people were trying to play the flow of when the funds were needed because all the towns wanted to keep their money. So they sat there and staggered it. RAM is more difficult to deal with. So you wanna you wanna have it be as as much as possible. So, really, what's gonna have to happen is we're gonna have to work with the treasurer and with the top administrator to get those monies over there, and we just have to watch the timing of how long stiff takes to move money back.
Right. Is the investment account it's quicker probably to move money from that to the operating account? Is that what you also were thinking? Well, there is no thought to it, Rob, because
the investment account everything else is a sweep account. So the account the thousand account, 5111, it's kept at a $600,000 balance every day by the bank. So if you had $600,000 at the start of the day, and you wrote $100,000 in checks, the bank is going to sweep $100,000 into the other account from the investment account, get it to 600,000. And the other accounts are supposed to be zero balance accounts that the other count, the 5129 account is a zero balance account. And it's, like I said, deposits for credit card transactions, and it gets zeroed out as well. So if there's money in the account, the bank is supposed to sweep it into the investment account so it earns interest. So, basically, our finance department can kind of track this and
decide at some point, okay. The optimal amount of money for us to have in the investment account is x.
Let's say it's $2,000,000 or whatever. And then the rest, we could move to stiff, and we'll we would have enough time if we needed it Mhmm. To go get it. Okay. So so right now, if you think about our July, our July was a lot a big collection month. So we've got a lot of money. There's a lot of money right now there because we've collected for the next two months. And so we should be moving more money from the investment account to the STIF account. We just need to get on a better cadence of doing it. Yep. I I I agree. That makes sense. The 5111 account is always a $600,000 balance?
Yeah. But what happens, Heather, is the the bank does it based upon actual transactions through the account. So we might have some outstanding checks. So in this case, there's a $150,000 of outstanding checks that haven't swept through the bank yet. So that's why our account chose 450,000 because of a 100,000 $150,000 of outstanding checks. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. K. Well, I'm very pleased with the consolidation. Really nice. A long time coming. Long time coming.
That's great. Good work all around on that. And if Lisa was here, I'd I'd definitely give her an attaboy attagirl. Sorry. Next time we see her. Alright. Any more questions on this page? And we wanna talk about our capital reserve fund page? Oh, really? Looks pretty This
is this is great. I'm I'm liking it. You know, as long as we're tracking this as best we can in real time, and, ideally, someday, what I'd love to do is is have a document, probably not in this system, maybe a spreadsheet or something, that some of these funds don't get tapped very often. Some of these funds we know we're gonna hit every year like clockwork, like when we pay the truck payments and, you know, things like that. Or we've planned a certain amount of roadwork. You know? And we know that there was gonna be yeah. We have that balance, but we know we've got work coming. And, you know, just I I would love it if we could get to the point where we know both what our balance is and what our planned expenditure is
in the next however, you know, long we wanna again, this is all I'm still kinda kicking this around, you know, what ideally I'd like to see, but I am, I'm psyched to see this. This is great. Some of these balances are unsurprising to me. The road improvement fund, the only thing I wanna say about that is did we consolidate I remember there being, in the audit, there were two different funds. Did we consolidate those two? There was a Town Aid Road fund and a road improvement fund. Did we You'll find you'll find Town Aid Road later later on. And you Oh, okay. And you have to remember that
the prior fiscal year was a really difficult fiscal year. We didn't do a lot. Right? So there's been a lot more done this year, and there's more money that's being spent out of these accounts than had been done in the past year because of the transition that we were under related to Eric and related to Jay. So last year and last summer was difficult, and this summer has been much more work. So that road improvement fund is definitely gonna go down. And what we should do is we should identify the the accounts that have transactions in them, and you guys should see the transactions. Because even though they're up there in the check register, you should sit there and see, at least from the fund balances, how it's happening. And that can be done. Like if Matt sat there and clicked on one of those numbers, he could sit there and tell you what transactions have come out of those accounts this fiscal year, and it's only July.
But Yeah. This is stuff that we should be able to give you guys on a more regular basis. Now a lot of some of these need to go away, to be really honest. And, you know, there is the library reserve fund. We've got to give $72.76 to the library and let them spend it on something. We overspent, on the transfer station shed. We have to Yeah. Was that that's gotta just be zeroed out.
We need to do a fund transfer there, right, to zero it out. Yeah. So We
come back to you guys and go, I just wanna move it from the general fund to this so that it's zero on our financial statements. Right. We don't want a negative number sitting there on our balance sheet over and over and over again. Yeah. Well, yeah, it it you know, it's hard to sit there and say, it's on our balance sheet. It is on our balance sheet how we're looking at this. Yeah. How the auditor looks at it is a totally different world. He has a fund balance, and he's sitting there. I I look at that, I look at him like this is a positive to us. Like these are dollars that we've saved to get something done. And what we have to sit there and start doing is just making sure that it's the right number and we're good with it either we're we haven't funded enough or we need to fund more. And each one of these is broken down exactly as the audit does it. All right, so when we rebuilt the financial statements, we rebuilt them to the audit. So in the audit, if you look at it, you'll sit there and see a capital reserve fund section, and this would,
if we ran back the numbers to 06/30/2025, you'd see the numbers that were in the audit. So some of these accounts haven't moved since the audit, and some of the accounts have moved, you know, there's been money put in or money taken out. Yeah, I think it's, I think it'll work. I think, you know, moving forward and, you know, for all future boards, the board of finance, board of selectmen, we'll be able to get better information in sooner because the person on the meeting, Matt or the treasurer or even someone else can sit there and drill down on this information and give you immediate feedback as to what happened in that account and why it moved from point A to point B. And you know something I was thinking about as we're talking here, we should probably put
on a line over here, a section over here for the last fiscal year, so that you can see how much it's moved. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll give you the change dollars and then that way what you can do is you can see funds that have changed and you can say, hey, I want to sit there and understand why we spent $200,000 out of this fund. And we can do that. That'd be fantastic. Yes,
just looking at the last fiscal year for The road projects one, the, that we show at 515 as of June 30. We spent 192,000 last year and then we had credits of, 385. So that was in the previous estimate. I know that we must already be, you know, we're spending money, as Jeff said, for this current year for some of the things we're doing this summer. So you'll just see this year is that we're gonna spend more than than we anticipate. So there'll still be money in it, we you we'll be able to keep that. Well, but budget five,
so, you know, we intis we thought that would be spent last year. It didn't it didn't in last fiscal year, so maybe we'll do more this year to
Well, you already put another 385 in that. True. So that So $303,185,000 of that 846 got in there on July 1. Right.
There's a on on page 21 or 25, there's a number of the smaller funds that are negative,
And there's there's two funds for school grades. Wait. Wait. Let's go through this. Oh, sorry. Can I can can we stop for a second? Sure. I I'm only showing seventeen pages. You're you're talking about twenty Seventeen pages too. Yeah. Eight eight 18
of the whole packet. Sorry. The whole packet. I apologize. Of the whole the whole packet. Looking at the the the the footer on on here, the page I was talking about. Just go through each one of the pages. You you are on capital reserve. Let's just go to the next one and it'll be quick. And then you guys can just sit there and ask whatever you want from each one of the funds. Okay. Right? So if you click on the next one, all you have is these non major capital funds, and these are the bridge funds. Yep. Bridge and culverts. Wait. Non major?
Non major capital. Okay. Next page. Got it. Okay. Got it. Yep. Okay. And so we'll just go through these so we can so that's the bridge and culvert fund. We haven't really done a lot out of that. That's the savings to get the Missoula Road project completed. Right? Then you have Bunker Hill. Those are the dollars that are in that fund right now. That fund should be $700,000 So there's 300,000 additional money in there right now. So we're working on closing out Bunker Hill that should be closed out by the end of the cycle. And then you have this pedestrian bridge fund that it's honestly related to the bridge over 316, and that money needs to be moved. That's an old mess. We're probably going to have the public works department do
a cleaning of the bridge top and move those monies out as a a funding for the operations of public works. That needs to go. That's one that's on the list. So alright. Anybody got anything related to those? Now this is another one where it's gonna be the same thing. It's gonna be July 31 or August 31, and then we're gonna have the the prior year number, and then we're gonna have the change. Yep. You guys will be able to look at each one. Yep. Right. So if you go to the the next page, and because I know you're you're looking at this, Liz, on a piece of me. So you got the non major permanent funds. These are all of the
donation funds. Charitable. And charitable funds. These are the funds that will get updated with interest based upon their cash balance. And everyone except the Norton School Fund, it's 100% cash. The Norton School Fund is about $68,000 of stock in Bank of America. They get dividends on a quarterly basis. So each one of these accounts, the treasurer's office will calculate interest to add to their funds on a monthly basis. None of the other funds are going to get interest. So in the past, they've all had, like, point 0.009%, and that that was our interest rate on what they had. So, like, all of our money that had been kept in open space was the biggest one. It had it had $225,000, and it'll be in this section here. The fund balance is there, but it used to have a cash balance account. Alright? So that's that next page. And then you got the the next page, which is non major special revenue funds.
These are kinda all the oddball things that go on. Right? So you got And this is the page I was talking about. Yep. So these negatives, these zero accounts, like, they need to just be clear like zeroed. So I will work with the treasurer to get these to be zeroed. So you got that. You got the connectivity fund will get zeroed. You get the historic preservation fund. That's actually gotta be reconciled. The school grant funds, to be really honest, Rob, that's a that's a negative, but that's a negative from the audit.
You know? And it's just it's just weird to me because we have it's it it it looks duplicative. You have school grants fund and school grants funds.
That's weird. If you think about if you think about it, what they're saying is that that fund has been overspent based upon its revenue that it's been driven to it. And I will just flat out tell you, we have no information. So we need to get it. It's on our audit. It's on the town's audit. It's there. But that's just a number that if you go back to the 06/20 06/30/2025 audit, that's the number you're gonna find. I have no idea what's Why there's two. Why it's there, what it's doing, but yeah. All right.
And can I ask a question on that one? Sure. The school lunch fund, I thought there was a line in the AES budget for lunch. Is this for AES or another school? No. It's
It's yes. This is Go ahead. I was just gonna say my understanding, and you correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, is it again, we kind of what Jeff said earlier is we're trying to mimic the audit here. Right? And the audit covers everything.
Oh, okay. Does that make sense? Jeff, am I explaining that well, or do you think I missed the mark? No. You you that these are all things that end up on the town's audit. So that lunch fund, just so we're all that's that's probably the cash balance that they have that they're saying they have in their lunch fund. Right.
I mean, Nick, it's just like everything. It's a small little business. It should be accounted for and presented to you as a small little business. What are you generating from the fees you're collecting for? I mean, Rob, you can roll your eyes, but it's the reality of it. You know, what are you collecting? What did you spend? You know, what is spent, Nick? Do you have a good question? You have a budget for that, right? You're spending the entire budget for the lunch fund, but you're collecting money. And is that being put back into the budgeted line item or not? And this is all stuff that you guys need to decide how you're going to do oversight or not do oversight and what you want to do. But yes, that
is the number from 06/30/2025. Oh. 2025. 2025.
Yep. Right. On last because this one says July thirtieth twenty sixth, but on the header. But this is from the last audit, which only gets you to the end of June of last year. Right? Okay. I'm just kinda Some of these numbers are updated. Like, for instance, the town aid road fund money clearly has gone up
since the audit. We must have gotten the payment. If you broke these down and you sat there and said anything that is is operated by the treasurer's office is updated. Right. Anything that is controlled by the school and the school finance officer is not updated.
Right. So the town aid road question I would have on the funds, regarding you know, we have our road improvement fund, and we have our town aid road fund. Town aid road fund, am I correct that that is that exists so that we can take in the money from the state? Mhmm. And then we would we would theoretically transfer that money out to our road improvement fund. Right? So right now, have $340,000 in there, and then we have $850,000 in the road improvement fund. So in theory, we've got over 1,000,000 in total road money available to us. Mhmm. So just just so everybody understands, we have those two funds. We probably have to keep the two because in order to receive the money from the state, we need to maintain it.
I got Rob, if it was me, I'd look at that town a room. I'd like to consolidate them. But Well, I wouldn't consolidate them like you're you're saying. What I would do is I would sit there because that Townade Road, there's you said it was a $187,000 in funding. Right?
I I just had it up. It was it was just shy of $1.85. It's like $1.84 and change. Something in that ballpark. So that's what the state gets us every year.
I would honestly put that on the the budget as an income line. Yeah. It should go there. I agree. And then and then what you need to do is you need to fund the road improvement fund accordingly. So if this year you funded road improvement $600,000 in essence, because you were you had no. Well, it wasn't. It was about $400,000. We we put $3.85.
Plus a 187. Plus $1.85. Yep. Right. So you you get $560,000. Right. And that's what you would fund for road improvement, and it would go that way. So it would be only one account, and you would be able to pay attention to it better. And, like, that's yeah. I I don't like that there. I don't like the revenue hitting there because it's it's you don't see it. I wanna be I wanna be as transparent as possible. Everybody gets to see it. I don't care. This is what it's going. If you don't like what we're doing, that's okay. You can sit there and be angry at us. We're we'll try to do better. But this is everything that it is. So I would sit there and look at that and $340,000 and say, okay, let's next year move that to, as you said, Rob, move the $3.40 to the road improvement, but put the next year's allotment of a $187,000 on the income side of the budget
and, you know, sit there and move from there. Right. So Who has control right now? Matt or you? Because I was gonna just share screen real quick. I wanna show you guys what I'm talking about. Defense control. I gave it to you. Okay. I did. Okay.
Just let me know when this comes up. Because this is what the state data has. I assume there's some lag involved in this, in terms of some because it talks about expenditures too. We're not seeing it yet. Not seeing it yet? Okay. We'll just if we can't get it to work, we can't get it to work. We'll do it next meeting or something, but Yeah. When we talk about the roads. But, I thought this was at least an informative thing, you know, CT, the DOT, web page has a map, and you click on your town, and and it brings up the the town aid road stuff.
Well, we print that out. We can put it in the package and get it to everybody. Right?
Sure. I don't know how well this will print, Jeff, the way it's the way it's screenshot print, something along those lines. Hopefully, it would come out well. I don't know. I haven't tried.
Well, let let's go through these funds. We'll just let's let's move on. Yeah. Let's let's go through these. So you got the Andover Public Library Fund, and a lot of these funds, I'm not sure we all know what their purpose Right? Is
I I mean, I don't know what every one of these funds purpose is, but we're going to sit there and go through it. And then, you know, this is where, especially this section, think this is where the Board of Finance could sit there and direct to sit there and say, okay, we should be thinking about this. So the public library one, no problem. Andover Youth Basketball is like a pass through. That is funding that has come through parents, and that's what's available to the program for youth basketball. The next two small ones need to go away. Yeah, that's ARPA. That's dumb. The Community Bike Share Fund, that is something that Eric was working on. I do believe those dollars, I need to work on something else, but I think those funds have already been accounted for. Those are the bikes that he bought, right? The electric bike or bikes? Correct. He bought he got some funding, but what I Bill, what I think happened is the bikes were paid for and then expensed out of something else, and I need to sit there and get them moved out of that fund. Alright? So Yeah. We're okay. We you know, it's just all transactional stuff, Bill, that, you know, make sure that we
We need to tap the right fund for the We need to get them moved so that they can be liquidated, In my mind, they're going to come back to the town one way or the other bill, it's either going to end up in the general fund, or it's either going to be used for an expense for one of the programs probably from the community center standpoint. The garden fund is what is left in the garden fund. That will sit there and really have gone away because Nick, some of that money that he presented and got paid in July, that would have really affected the June numbers. So the July numbers. So, we'll make sure that that one is correct as well. The dog fund is from collections from licensing. You got the community investment funds. Those are also funds that are collected from the clerk's office. And I was working with the clerk the last couple days to try to get all the statutory issues related to the money they collect because it's the money they collect. A portion of their fees go into these various funds, and we have to get an understanding of what we need to do related to those.
Okay. So Roberta's kind of coming coming up to speed on that?
Correct. And we've just been doing some research on the the statutes to understand when somebody pays $150 for X and $130 gets reimbursed to the state and $20 is supposed to get kept in the town, where those $10 and $20 are supposed to go for every transaction. We're working toward it. But these these still match the audit as to where they're at. Connectivity fund looks like it should go away.
The connectivity fund, we gotta sit there and get that to go away. The farmer's market, we need to get that to go away. The Eversource Energy Grant Fund, we need the Energy Assurance Grant Fund, we need to understand what that's for. Economic and Community Fund, that negative $15,000 means we over spent that fund in some manner. Gotta look at that one in more detail.
We wouldn't have pulled the sign out of the sign stuff out of there, would we? No. No. No. Sorry. I just shot in the dark. Go on. Yeah. Yeah. So,
you Hartford Foundation for public the grant fund, they gave us some money. The historic fund preservation is related to the money collected by the clerk's office, housing grant fund, miscellaneous donation fund, the open space fund, at least we understand what that's for school grants, those two funds, not sure. And and they may need to be combined.
Yeah. Yeah. So We can talk to Jody about that. Well,
I gotta look at the audit. I gotta look at how the audit laid it out, because did they have a school grant fund a and a school grant fund b? It's probably it probably might be a miss a miss typing error, I'm thinking. Could be. One is fund and one is funds. Yeah. I mean, it really looks it looks odd. Yep. We'll sit there and get it. The school lunch fund is what they have from the lunch program, senior activity fund. Oh, you know what one of those might be? Do we have a student activity fund that should be in here? Oh, yeah, it's down the bottom. Okay, so you got it because it's student versus school. So you got school lunch fund. And maybe what we'll do is we'll try to segment these by school and by town. And then that way, everybody will understand what they're who's controlling them and what they're doing. Senior activity fund is the community center, so it's the amount of funding that they've collected versus what they've spent. Same thing for the senior lunch program, so money versus what they spent. So there's available funds to spend when they charge $5 and pay $10 for the lunch. The severance fund has been there related to different employees when they leave. Social services fund, you have that. Student activity fund is the dollars collected by the school related to the students, and that's the balance they have available. Again, 06/30/2025. Town Aid Road, we just talked about, that's what we get from the state, that's what is still available there. That Veterans Field Fund is $10,000 That's going to be moved to
the playground and the pickleball program. That was $10,000 that Hartford Foundation for Giving gave us as an additional funding source for that program. And then Veterans Monument Fund, that was the money raised when Jerry was doing a lot of the work down at the Monument Park. So all of that money, that $932,000 the majority of that money, not all of the money at all and that's why we gotta break this down because we gotta have the town money. All the town money was moved into the investment account. Those were all the accounts closed. So if you went through this, there was, like, 21 of these that had their own bank account. Yeah. Some of the ones on the other side, all of the ones for the the the Norton fund, Brown and Brown, all those funds, they all have their own bank accounts. Yeah.
But these dollars, the way to look at this, honestly, is this $932,000, the $138,000. So we're at a million. Right? The money related to the culvert and the bridge. So now we're we're let's say we're at $3,000,000. Right? And you come into the other ones, and you have $2,600,000. So you're about $4,600,000 if my math is even close. That's why you have such a bank balance. Yeah. Right? Just so everybody's aware, that's why there's a bank balance because we've been either saving or planning.
Yep. That's it. Alright. I mean Nice. It's nice to have that. Improving. We're we're getting there. Getting better every time. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Thanks for the work.
Yeah. And to the extent we can clean up some of the smaller ones and make this even easier to look at, fantastic. Yep. Anything further on this, guys?
Good. I I would just notice that we didn't get anything from the school this month. I sent an email asking I asked Yeah. Kate said she didn't get anything. And she said she was gonna check, and obviously nothing came. That's disappointing.
I'll have to ask about that. Oh, we have one other thing on our old business that we kick kick kicking down the road. Lisa's not here tonight. You know, we have that that donation request item. Just go away. Just remove it. I think, you know, we can come back to that at some point when when we've got some time and maybe after we've done all this cleanup with our funds and our our accounts, we can talk to Lisa about that. But, you know, for now, I'd like to table it.
Yeah. I think she was thinking about it, and and I see that Diane's Diane Grineer's donation was on here. I think they've found a way to incorporate it through the maybe Hartford Foundation for Giving or something. Is that right?
I that. Saw it on that page, like $10,000 or something. Diane made a donation of a thousand dollars and I I worked with the treasurer to create a line for her. That's not saying that it's just have to we have to write a procedure as to how it happens because what happens to the treasurer's office is it's like basketball, right? Basketball is probably the worst offender. So the basketball program gets all the deposits for all the kids, and then drops them off at the treasurer's office and says make a deposit. And then the basketball program sits there and says, hey, we have to pay all these refs, go write all these checks to all the refs. So that's the issue that you're trying to deal with with these
charitable groups. They're similar, they're smaller, they're not as taxing as the basketball program, but they can cause operational issues within that department. And that's what we have to work on. So like the Board of Finance would really have to sit there and say, okay, here's the procedure how we're going to do this, and this is what we're going to request that these organizations do. Like, okay. If I mean and it's probably something we have to think outside of the box on all this stuff. We have to sit there and figure out how to do it to for the benefit of the groups, for the benefit of the community, just make it as easy as possible. But yes, Diane Granier made a deposit into the town for $1,000 She wants to establish a scholarship fund. She sat there and did the program and she needs to answer all the questions, but she did something through Hartford Giving. So the Hartford for public giving is managing the bigger amount of money.
Alright. So right? I mean, this is definitely something we'd want Lisa to weigh in on because we want whatever procedure there is to work for her, to work for that finance office. We want it to work smoothly. We don't want a bunch of, you know, grinding gears every time something's gonna happen. Mhmm. Sure. Okay. Right.
That would move us on a new business, six a, which is the the new process for AES operating budget funding. I think we've seen a number of emails. I'll just say at the outset, I wanna see how this goes. I thought our older process was working okay, but that said, let's see. My main concern is that we have smooth operations and that there aren't we don't run into a situation where a bill can't get paid, that needs to get paid. But, you know, see how it goes.
Can I I I can sit there and tell you, if we revert back to the way the policy was beforehand, right, before we made the change to sit there and move all of the checks being processed out of two separate accounts? If we move it back to the way it was originally, we'll be fine because what happens, Rob, again, is I'm telling you, it's a, it's a zero sweep account. Any check that's presented to get paid gets paid. So I would be willing to do that as well. I was trying to be reasonable, you know, but it does mean a lot to the town because if you sit there and you think about it as the year goes on and the balance gets bigger and bigger and bigger and there's no interest being earned,
it's not appropriate for the town. So I would sit there and tell you, I would be okay if we went back to the way it was five years ago, and the check, the checks that the school uses would be the 5111 account. And then those checks would go through this account, the town account, and everything would get paid appropriately. The school decides what it's paying, it has its own records. The school can, we can all get back on the same signage because what you guys have to realize also is when Eric left, a lot of things changed without a lot of approval. Like I think you remember the superintendent didn't want to sign checks for the town, but also Matt was never put on as a signer on the school account. A lot of things changed. Yeah. They were signing before
Eric left, they were signing each other's checks. They were signing each other's checks. And then,
you know, Eric left, and we were doing more review of the checks and to understand what was going on and trying to understand why things were happening in a certain way. But the superintendent made her adjustment. I am telling you, I will sit there and I would if we want to do this in the simplest possible way, I'm I am flexible. We all need to work to make this happen in the appropriate way. But I would go back to the way it was five years ago. I know it can be managed now. Back when we were both on Edmunds, it could not be managed. It could be managed now within QuickBooks.
So okay. As you know, you know, the process I was talking about was the was the process in between, obviously, which was the just, you know, 10 Definitely, sir. The information Which was worked out, you know, by Eric and Val couple two two, three years ago, whatever it was. But what I'm what I'm saying is, let's see. Let's talk about it as it goes, see how it's working.
K. That's all. That's all. I I don't under so what what changed?
So okay. I don't know if everybody got copied on every email, but Yep. The change is that the board of selectmen voted to go with a process that Jeff devised, which I like that. While setting up an account, a new account, a sweep account, as he call you know, as he's described it, they put a $100,000 in there. Right? No. Okay. I I saw those Wait. Wait. Time out. Time out. That's not a new account. I apologize because I thought that was new.
No. I had I had wanted to set up a new account. That was the initial process. And then listen, this is not going to be done simply or easily. This is going to be a battle because the superintendent and the Board of Education do not want to be transparent to your board or to the town. So you can sit there and say whatever you want. You can shake your head, Rob, and do whatever you want. But that's the reality of this. So what I asked for to make money for the town, to have control over the town's cash and the town's money, is that when they get funded, Heather, they present a check register to the treasurer, and the check, the treasurer would make sure that those funds were available in their account. She would transfer the money to their account. They have an account, they have a Board of Education account, not even a town account,
Right? It's a board of education account at M and T Bank, same bank, we would transfer money in as they needed it. Right. Okay, I saw that. So did that happen or didn't happen? No, it So did something change, though? That's why I'm confused as to what changed then.
Well, the way that it was working, right, was there were 10 payments made. So if the budget was $4,500,000 $450,000 would be put into their account on the first of every month. Yep. What that does is that moves significant amount of funds into an account that earns no interest. So the point is why not earn as much interest as we possibly can be? Right? So and I'm just telling you, the balance that's in the bank, at the end of the month is what gets paid interest on. So if you look at the numbers that I gave you, once upon a time, if there's $800,000 or a million dollars in the account, it's going to earn at a minimum 2.5%. So if you have a million dollars in an account, it's gonna earn $25,000 in that one month. That's a lot of money. Right? Am I wrong? I might be wrong.
I have it. Not annualized. Anyway That's the point. Point is Yeah. Divide it by 12. $2,000.
Right? So every month. So Right. So what have you know, would be, in theory, $24,000 a year. If if that that might be high, but But it's money. I I don't disagree with that part Yep. At all. I I wanna see it work smoothly, and then I'll shut up.
You know, if it's working smoothly, great. I actually, we have to have a meeting with the the I mean, it's going to be a big meeting. It's probably going to be the town attorney. It's probably going be their attorney. It's probably going to be the board, you know, whatever. We're going to have a meeting. We're going to have to have a meeting. It's not going to the town. I'm just telling you, we're not going to sit there and let the Board of Education have a problem. But the Board of Education and the Board of Finance needs to be supportive of having a conversation that will work to sit there and make sure that everybody does what's right for the town. And just telling you, I would sit there and go back to the way it was before, you know, because I do think that would be the easiest way, because the checks would just get pulled out of the account, and the banks would sweep the money from the investment account in, and there would never be a problem. And then what would happen is there would, the money would always be in an interest bearing account, whether it's in a 2.5%
interest bearing account or a 3.75% interest bearing account, it would always be in an interest bearing account. So I am willing to sit there and have a conversation. This first one is to sit there and go and do what was proposed, was provide a check register to the treasurer's office when you're doing it. So like normally what used to be done in the past, and I don't know what happens at the Board of Education, I know what happens at the town now, one week is payroll week, that's what gets pulled out of the account. The next week is payables week, and that's what gets pulled out of the account that week. And it goes in a cyclical manner. And I don't know what the school does. I don't know if they run check runs every week, every two weeks. I don't know. But when they're running the check register, they're doing their payables, they do the payables, and they say, this is the check register for that week. They used to bring those check registers over to Eric, because Eric needed the check register when he signed the checks. They don't do that anymore. That hasn't been done since Eric has left. Matt, I don't believe you're getting any check registers, are you? Okay. So the check register would come over, and it would say, we need $150,000 put into this account to cover these checks. We put $150,000 into the account to cover the checks. I had recommended putting $100,000 in as a starter so that the $100,000 would be like their cover. So in case something bad happened, they'd always have $100,000 at a minimum in that account. And that was my thought. But if their payroll sits there and says they need $200,000
put into that account to cover payroll for that period, dollars 200,000 would go into that account to cover payroll for that period. All it means all it needs is a reasonable exchange of information for the town to put its cash in the appropriate account. That was it. But I will tell you, Rob, I will go backwards all the way back five years ago when we we did this. One account. It'll work. That would be the easiest thing. They would have the checks. And listen, Matt should be a signer on their account at a minimum. It's town money. There's not one person from the town that's on that bank account. Just the that's the reality.
I think it would be better. Talk about with with them and see if we can get Jody to weigh in as well. Because, obviously, this process has to work for Jody. It has to work for Lisa. Mhmm. It has to work smoothly. That that is my number one concern. The interest is good,
but secondary to to that to me. If you want it to run I mean, no matter what we do And I do wanna earn the interest. Even even if we went back to the way it was before, the school would still need to provide the same information because they'd need to provide the check register to the, to the treasurer's office. So they knew which checks were going to come and be cleared at the town level. And they would need to do MAT, they would also need to do the positive pay or whatever it's called at M and T. The fraud protection? The fraud protection. They do that now, I believe. I do believe they do it now on their account as well.
Why did we change from what it was done five years ago?
Oh, Heather. Okay. So what we did was five years ago, the decision was made to move to Edmunds software for the town and for the school. And when the decision was made to move to Edmunds software, it was made with the understanding that we could have one account, one file that we were accessing. Didn't work, had to have two files. So you had to have a separate file for the school and a separate file for the town. And Edmonds is not a very simple system. And honestly, the town got moved away from it three years in. You couldn't reconcile the accounts. You couldn't reconcile the way we were doing it, Heather, because we were using one town bank account. So this one town bank account was for both the town and the school, and it was very difficult to put the transactions in for the school to reconcile on the town level, and the school couldn't reconcile on its own because it was commingled with the town. So the decision was made to take those, basically what happened was Eric, and I like how Rob says it, Eric and Val made this decision, no,
I had been elected first electman and I sat there with Eric and Val and said, we can't reconcile either one of these accounts, right? This account based upon how it's doing. So it was a mutual decision that we would set up two accounts. Val went to the bank at M and T. She used the school's tax ID number that is used for payroll. And if you look at the bank statements that I sent you once upon a time, it's the town of Andover, the Board of town of Andover Board of Education, Valerie Bruno, the address for the school. That account, there's no one right now as a signer, like I said, for the town. But we had to do it, Heather, because it was impossible to reconcile. So at least when we did that, we could reconcile.
So if we went back to one account and we pay everything, we could reconcile them? Yeah, because,
you know, I have been accused of trying to be a king. And one of the things that the king lost was I wanted to go to QuickBooks five years ago, because I knew that the ability to go to QuickBooks and to do what's needed to be done on both organizations could be done within QuickBooks and have a lot of flexibility. So after about three years of attempting to try to work through Edmunds on the town side, the board of selectmen at that time determined that it was very difficult and moved to QuickBooks because there was no integration. And the reconciliation process is just so much easier. So right now, what I would do, and what I would recommend as the process for the board, for the treasurer's office, is to get the check register, and all you would be doing is putting the checks in and coding them to the school account. It would have nothing to do with control over what they're spending, how they're spending it, nothing. It would just be, you just input them. And to input, you know, the number of checks that they write, a you know, at one point in time, I did an analysis back before, you know, when I first got involved in this, and I know the number of transactions. So what would happen, Heather, is every transaction that came out of the Board of Education that would go into QuickBooks would go in to be reconciled, and it would just have one line item. You would not be breaking down the expenses the way the school does, none of that.
And then what would happen is it'd just be a sweep. If a check was presented, regardless of it was the town check or the school check, it would come out of the account and the investment account would be swept to fund it 100%, no failures, no problems. I honestly thought about that when I was talking to Liz today, I was like, that's probably what we should do.
I'm just trying to think ahead to the budget season when everyone is, you know, there's a lot of friction, would that help because we could see it all? Oh, it would help immensely because
transparency wise, it wouldn't tell you what they're doing, but you know how you go through our check register? You would be able to go through their check register and say, hey, what was this spent on? And then, because right now, I mean, I'll ask all of you, do you guys get any information to sit there and look at, Honestly, like to really, like what you do against the town, what you do for the town. If you go back to the pages for the check register, have you ever seen that for the school in the last five years?
I've asked for specific information and have been denied. And as a taxpayer, not even as a Board of Finance member, mean, look, reached out and got, well, don't know, maybe he was just looking at the packet, but obviously he's able to get information like a taxpayer should be able to call the town and say, hey, what's this? They get it. But we should be able to get easy answers, but everything's always not easy. Well,
listen, I think if we go back to, you know, after having the union discussion with Liz and thinking about this, it really should go back to the way it was originally, and we won't have any problems. The the way that I'm the way, honestly, the way that I'm asking for this to happen, and and we could actually set up, we could actually set up a town account, like the other accounts are there to sweep accounts, and the school could do everything that it would want to do, and there would be money swept into that account to cover it, and it would be a zero balance account. And then all the money that the town holds would be available to generate income. We could do that. Mean, but it does need to come back and be a town account, because the town needs to have the available resources to generate as much money as it possibly can. So Where do we stand right now? I would sit there and tell you we need a meeting. And We do. Rob and Rob Yep. Since you have the relationship, you really need to get the meeting scheduled. Yeah.
So I will will sit there and send out an email in the morning, but I can tell you, Rob, that I would ask you to get the meeting scheduled so that we can all work together to get this done in a way that's gonna work best for the town. So
Alright. I'll do what I can do. We'll see if we can get, you know, Caitlin and her board. You know, again, if we're gonna be working through this particular process at this meeting, then I'd like to see if Jody could make it Mhmm. Because it's gotta work for their finance department too. Yeah.
To do. And and I'll get with Matt and with the treasurer, and what we'll do is we'll get with the bank because it might even be better to have a separate account that's a a sweep account for the school. And again, it has nothing to do with managing what they're spending it on. It has everything to do with keeping the money and available money to invest. Actually, it's about transparency.
So Jeff, if the money was in the separate account, like you just said, would it be earning interest in that account for the school or still for the town? No, still for the town, because what would happen, Bill, is, is it, it would be like,
one of like, we went back to the page with the bank accounts on it. Mhmm. Right? So that was page 17 in the packet, but it's the cash balances one. Uh-huh. The accounts at the bank level, like, the account 010045129. Uh-huh. That account is a zero account. So what happens is if there's money that comes in or money that goes out, the bank automatically rolls money to that account to make it zero. So like if you looked on the bank register every month, every like time, it would be zero. So there's money in this account, but that's because there was money that showed up on July 31, that the town is putting on its books, but it hasn't cleared the bank. So tomorrow, that money got flushed into the investment account, 5096. So Okay. If we did that type of account bill, that'd be the home run for me, home run for the treasurer. But it would require Basically,
what you're saying was done five years ago. It was just right? That's Yeah. Just
Well, what was done five years ago is every check, every town check and every school check ran out of account 5,111. All the checks ran out of the same account. And it was a sweep account, so nobody ever had any problem because money was swept to it. Okay. Right? Now, in my head, what I would sit there and want to do is we could do it that way, or we could sit there and put into a a new account, let's say, like, count 1005, and call it the new AES account, which would be a town account, and it would be a sweep account. The school would run it, the school could have the same signers, add Matt to it, I mean, because Matt should be on that account, and go from there. But it's just being able to work together and to improve
our ability to earn money, but in the end, part of what I'm after is transparency.
So where does it stand right now in terms of what are you doing this month?
Well, I have tomorrow because I don't have any of their check registers and the treasurer has been away. So I have to sit there and send an email to the superintendent and to the board chair and just say, hey, you know, listen, there's a lot to this. I really should get a detailed reconciliation of the bank account. We should understand what's in the account today, because they've gotten $900,000 so you need all of the check registers for the entire period before and August so far. What they should do is they should provide the entire detailed check register for the account, and then we should sit there and determine how much more they've received than they needed, and then give them $100,000 and what they need. It's not going to be easy. This is not going It's be not going to happen. And if we don't work well, if it doesn't happen that way, I'm going to have a meeting with the Board of Selectmen, and I'm going to sit there and say, well, we're going to fund them week to week. I mean, why fund $485,000 all upfront or $458,000 Why not fund $100,000 each week? Right? And it still is wrong because they're going to sit there and have money that they're going to pile up in that account because they're not spending that and you don't know and I don't know. So it's
not going to be, it's not going to be easy. So, so far that we've done the old process of what you're saying, Jeff, they've been getting the $450,000
a month. Correct. Okay. If you look in this cycle, they got two payments because I tried to get this done at the beginning of this cycle. And if you look in the check register, right, on July 2, they got a $100,000. When did they get that they got that in July 2, there was a $100,000 transfer paid to them. And then, on July 10, they got $383,000. And the reason why they did that, so you understand it, and I can be as transparent, I only had a board of three members. And to actually get I would have, you know, if if the people didn't resign, this would have gotten done one way, but they resigned. And what had to happen was I needed a full board to vote on this. So anyway, they got the whole thing,
then they've gotten $483,000 So right now they have $960,000 in that account. I don't know what they've spent out of the $9.60. You guys don't know. I don't know. I don't even think the board of education knows. And they've spent 900, they have $960,000 because the next month's payment was made the beginning of August. So now we're at this beginning of September and another week, and we have to decide what we're going to do. So right now, what I would like to do is I'd like to sit there and go through the process. And as you said, Rob, see how it works. I honestly think that it would work better going back the way it would, because if we went back that way, we could sit there and have a sweep account, and there would never be a problem with a check, not clearing, not cashing, not having enough money, having all kinds of confusion. If the board wants to write a check out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and they want to sit there and say to the town, you've got to make a deposit every month, every day. Yeah. That's going be problematic. What I'm after is smooth operations.
So the only way you get smooth operations, we work together. Okay. That's it. So K.
Well, I don't know that there's much more we can do tonight on that. We're gonna have to see how this goes. We have on our agenda liaison reports. I don't we already sort of discussed that people didn't make the bathroom project meeting. We didn't have CIP this month, so nothing there, which would bring us to board open discuss sorry. Meeting minutes. We have one set of meeting minutes Yep. In our packet. Yep. But It's a miracle. Yep. I know. We're almost caught up with them. We're going one. That's Fantastic. K. Does anybody have anything on those? Or let's see. Do we have 1234? Okay. So it's the same group that was there that night. That's good. So we can all vote on this. Oh, yes. I had just a couple minor typos. K.
Under number four Mahoney Sable. Yep. Half halfway down the town no longer no longer Record. Records balance no longer records balances and activities that are already accounted by the school. The town no longer
I think it's the idea is that the recommendation the recommendation was that the town no longer record. Oh, oh, an issue of reconciliation, if memory serves, that Right. Went into our corrective action plan. Oh, recommendations on repeated finding
that the that the town no longer record Yeah. Down. Okay. Okay. I get it now. Yep. It's probably See, it's a little clunky, but I think it works. No. But now if you add the previous part, you're right. Okay. On the next page Mhmm. Just above just above number five, the first the last paragraph, first sentence. Discussed interest earned. Oh, interested. This is interest. So interested should should say interest. Yep. Take e d off.
Yep. That's all I found. I don't know if anybody else
took a look. It's it's weird how you can read that, Liz, and I would just read right over that. Yep. You know what I'm saying? Discussed interest, and you wouldn't even see that it was spelled. It's just weird. Yeah. It's not the sort of thing spell check's gonna catch. That's for sure. It's a You know what? I I I'm sure I've read over stuff that's not right. Like, not everybody's gonna catch exactly the same thing. So Yeah. It's just funny because it looks I'm like glad you're getting away it.
I'm okay with, with them, with that one change. If anybody else has anything, speak now, and my recommendation is we go ahead and vote this through. I'll make the,
the motion that we approve, the minutes for the 07/22/2026. That one. Amended by Liz's two comments. I guess, actually, only the one amended taking ED off of interest. Interest. Yeah. Change. So that's what my motion will be. Okay. Great. Alright.
All in favor? We'll go around. Liz, yes. Me, yes. Bill? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Heather? Heather? Yeah. Yeah. Nick? Yes. Okay. Great. Five o. Motion passes, but it's done. Huzzah. Back to my agenda. Alright. That brings us to board open discussion. Is there anything else anybody wants to discuss? We're coming up on 09:00. I hope not. But if you do, now is the time. No pressure.
Pressure. Oh, I I know. I didn't put the damper on that or anything, did I? So
I guess my only discussion would be how soon do we wanna have this meeting between the tri board, not the future tri board, but the one focusing on the finances and the payments. When are we gonna try and get this done?
Well, I'd look at next month. I mean, shouldn't we try and get this done as soon as we can? I mean ASAP.
ASAP. ASAP. As I feel like this is in a little bit of a limbo space right now, and we don't want that. No. How is this gonna be different from the tri board? Like, what are what is to me, this seems like a tri board. It is. Like a tri board. Is there a different policy? Doesn't need it doesn't need to be all of us to get to this meeting. It needs to get a meeting. It, it just needs to be able to, we need to work together, the tri board, we need to work together. We need to work together on all of this stuff and it, and it can be easy, but this one is just more of a focused procedure.
Hey, this is the procedure that's going to happen. How are you going to play? Are you going to play nice? Or if you're not, you're not going play nice because listen, the town, if the town sat there and said, we didn't get the information, we don't need to fund it. That's not the right attitude to have. Right? So we'll work with everybody. Let's work with them. But there has to be some give and take, there has to be compromises on both sides. And you got to understand what what we should be doing as a group as all of us, we should all be on the same team. This whole this thing is tiring to be really honest, God awful tiring. Sure is. Yep. Yeah. 100%. I'm I'm tired. So yeah. Me too. But we'll sit there. We'll sit there and we're gonna, I don't know if you know this, but sometimes it feels like a war of attrition. And there's people that will wait you out. And there's some people who are really good at waiting out. And if you get more tired than they do, they win. So maybe this time, maybe I'll get some more energy. All right.
Has to happen by Monday. Yeah. It has to happen for Monday. It's the thirty first on Monday. September 1 is the next day. I mean, listen, we're gonna we're gonna work through it. School is not gonna stuff it. But you want to know what I would ask and Rob, I would ask, they've got $986,000 so far. Right? It's 10%, not 8% of their budget. Have they spent it? How much do they have left? I'm just telling you to ask the questions, you know. So, anyway, we'll sit there and we'll get it done.
Alright. Would be available Monday if you wanted to set it up for Monday. Uh-oh. I I I'm available for Monday too. So
Wait. By all means. Monday. Okay. Let's let's see. Rob's like, wait. Wait. What? What?
I thought we were talk alright. I I thought we were talking about scheduling something. With the school.
Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Alright. Well, we'll see. Alright. Monday might be difficult for me, but we'll see if we can make it work. Whatever. Look. We're gonna get emails out there. You said you're gonna send an email. I'm gonna respond to it. I'm gonna send it. We're gonna get it to Caitlin. We're gonna get to Val, Jody, whoever else. But, you know, pulling it together for Monday. Wow. Okay. We'll see if we can do it. Alright. We'll see what we can do. Correspondence. Correspondence. Well, I forwarded some stuff today to everybody to try, you know, that I was behind on sending out to everybody. So in any event, I don't have let's see. I don't have anything beyond that. I don't believe I sent the I I realized I had sent around the final audit documents that Matt had sent me, so I sent those around now just now. But I don't I don't have anything in particular. I don't believe correspondence wise beyond what I've just already forwarded the board, which was stuff related to the the thing we were just talking about, the funding process, and the audit.
Yep. So Okay.
Alright. You wanna do a quick public speaking and get this thing wrapped up? Yep. Yep. Okay. So I think we, we have a couple of troopers left. Joanne?
Trust me. I do wanna fade out into the sunset and not always be present, but I do retain a lot of information and having served on the board, you know, I just kind of want to follow it through and make sure everybody's just following through of the things that I've seen happen for years. So quickly, I got to give Mr. McGuire a lot of credit because, I give credit where credit is due because he has repeated things, he's talked about processes, he's told what the systems have been, you know, patiently and to all of you so that everybody understands it. So I think that's great. I am glad that you have transparency with the funds. I haven't looked at the packet. Hopefully they're out there for the public so that we can see and that like you all said, it's really important in your next budget season because they just weren't available. And, you know, everybody's trying to keep these budgets down, and you guys know in the balances, you can make those smart decisions. Lastly, I wanted to say, because in the essence of saving money, I will be sending you guys an email tomorrow. I don't usually get responses. I get you're all busy like myself. But because you haven't met with, and I won't talk about it publicly at all here, I just want to say that I'm doing it so that it's out there. I have found a lot of in researching for my own job, employee contracts where they do talk about the fee in lieu of insurance or what they do as a community
that are very fair. So it's right there in writing for you. You don't even have to research it. You know, a lot of towns don't even do it anymore, but you know that's an astronomical price that it's costing the town. I know you're all gonna work on it. So I'll send that in an email and continued good work and good luck.
Thanks, Joanne. Alright. And I I apologize. It's it's my brain's fried. I can't remember your name again, mister resident. And And
I just had two last little things on the funds. I noticed that the opioid crisis funds are missing on the treasurer report, and the NIP funds are missing on the report as well.
The I'm sorry. What was the first fund you said? The Opioid Crisis Fund. The state says Crisis Fund. Okay. About $47,000
from that. And then the NIP fund is about $4,000. What's the second one? NIP? From the alcohol sales. Oh, the nips. Nipples. Oh. Little nips.
I get it. Sorry. For a second there, I just wasn't processing what you were saying. I wasn't either. I didn't know we had funds. I didn't I didn't I didn't remember that we had a fund for that.
Yeah. Me neither. I didn't know if it was in, like, the the transfer station for recycling or how you guys did that. I just looked it up on the state website, and it said that we should be receiving about $4,000. So
K. We'll have to look into that. I don't know, Matt. Maybe when you have a chance, look into it. Because I honestly, off the top of my head, I can't answer your question. But thanks for raising it. Yep. Yep.
And then for the school, I think we should do the sweep accounts. If that helps anybody, know. It's been a a hostile environment between everybody, but I think the sweep accounts I agree with Jeff. The sweep accounts would be the best course of action.
Okay. And that's it. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Thanks for showing up and having you say. Alright. So that brings us to adjournment, folks. Yep. I'll move to adjourn. Second.
With a seconds, bill motions, bill seconds. Very good. All in favor. I'm a yes. Bills a yes. Liz is a yes. Heather's a yes. And Nick's a yes. Feeding the gas. Sorry. It's all good. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Being Thanks, everyone. Returned. Stop the recording, please. Alright. And, Jeff, I'll look for your email. We'll see if we can get something scheduled. You got it. Alright, sir. Bye bye. Thanks. Thank you. Bye.
This transcript was generated by Deepgram from the meeting recording. Names, numbers, and other details may be inaccurate; the video is authoritative.