Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
February 16, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
So let's get this started. One second, please. Find my paperwork. Okay, we're going to call this Board of Selectmen's special meeting for a budget workshop for Tuesday, February 16 to order at 07:02. We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
All right. Thank you. Public speak, who would like to start this off? Kathy and Mike, you guys have anything you want to say? No, we're fine. Thank Diane Choquette. I'm all set for now. Linda Fish? No? Good? Louise Goodwin?
Yeah, I do have a question. The hearings, the assessment hearings, tax assessment hearings are coming up, and we're just curious as to when we're actually going to see the bills and what the result of the reevaluation were.
Okay. We'll get an answer to you on that after this meeting. Eric Noones? I'm all set for now. Joanne Ebert? Set. Thank you. Okay.
All right. Before we get started with board presentations, do any of the members of the board have anything they want to address before we get started? Paul, nothing. Jeff, nothing. Scott? Nothing. Adrian, are you there in the background? Yep. No issues.
You're good? Yep. All right. We're going to allow the RAM Board of Education to present to us. Scott Leslie is here and Ms. Bancroft, I'm sorry. I apologize for not that first name. I want to say a name and I might be wrong. It's Stephanie. Stephanie,
sorry. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. We did get your package. Scott, if you would walk us through a little bit of the highlights of the
budget, it would be greatly appreciated. Sure. I'd be happy to, and good evening, everybody. Thank you for allowing us to join you.
About how much time do I have? I don't I wanna be respectful of you guys' time. Since you're the largest portion of our budget, you have as much time as you need to explain to us exactly everything. So you can have all two hours if you need it. I don't think I'm gonna take that much time, but
I'm gonna let's see. I just wanna make sure I can share my screen. Okay. Can everyone see that? Yes. Yes. Okay. So they're they're just a few things before we get started to go through the overview. This is still a work in progress. So this is still my proposed budget. The RAM board has had a couple of budget meetings up to this point. The last one, they had the, facilities, athletics, special ed, and technology present at the regular board of ed meeting this, upcoming Monday, the twenty second. We have another budget workshop as part of that meeting, and the department coordinators will be there to answer any questions. So the ram board itself has really still in the gathering information piece. So I just want to make it clear that this is not a final budget. This is a budget that still has some certainly has some tweaks to be made to it. But I think this gives you a pretty good overview of of the types of things that we're looking for. And and I'll I'll share this is on there's some updated information in here that I'll I'll so I'll share this version of you when we're finished.
Obviously, it starts with the ram mission vision and theory of action. Think that stuff I'll let you guys read. In terms of the commitments that we, you know, as we build our budget, and as the ram board reviews the budget, the types of things we're looking for is certainly wanting to be fiscally efficient and maximize our resources, make sure that RAM is a welcoming, accepting, well maintained and safe facility. We want to offer a world class education for all of our students. We want to hire, retain high quality professional staff, and we want to engage the community, in ongoing communication. As far as some of the things that we looked at with developing the budget, certainly we wanna make sure that all of our students have access to high quality learning,
that in particular will help them to be successful in college or, in their careers. We want to develop our professional staff to promote a positive school environment. Goal number three, we recognize that we have a decreasing enrollment, so we do want to make sure that our budgets are responsive to that as well. And I've I've got some information to show how we've done that over the last few years. We want to make sure that we enhance a culture of safety and acceptance with our our students, staff and school community. And we want to make sure that our facilities are, kept up to, speed and that they fully support teaching and learning. In terms of the the current budget timeline, as I said, the the RAM Board of Ed has, at this point, really had, kind of workshops where they've been reviewing and looking at and having presentations. The February 1 budget workshop was canceled due to weather. So they're one behind. Upcoming, we have a, our regular board of ed meeting on Monday with a budget workshop as part of that. We have on March 1, a public forum where we're inviting members of the public to engage with any questions that they may have. I imagine we'll probably schedule some additional meetings in there. And then April 5, we'll have the public budget hearing and then the referendum on May 4.
And, again, I'll I won't go through each one of these. I'll let you guys read these on your own. But but I do wanna, you know, stress the fact that we're very proud, for good reason, of our students and your students. In particular, some of the areas that we've really put a lot of focus on at both the high school and the middle school level is our focus on our career and technical education programming. We've developed some really cutting edge career and technical programming at high school. We have the pipeline program, which some of you may be familiar with, where students, are able to graduate from RAM with a sophisticated manufacturing, training, and many of those students are getting hired right out of high school, by some of the local machine shops as well as some of the larger ones like General Boat and Pratt and Whitney. We've expanded those programs down to the middle school now so that we, students are able to investigate production engineering and advanced computer science at the middle school level. We've also expanded our art courses down to the middle school level. Our middle school students participate in a engineering program that provides young women with a clear view of opportunities for engineering. So we're really doing, you know, a lot more in terms of helping students understand what types of careers are available to them, as opposed to simply talking about being college focused. Having said that, our students advanced placement scores are, uniformly excellent, as our PSAT scores and you know, we have the data there. So, you know, our we would argue that we're we're using the money that, you generously provide us with to to to obviously good effect, and our students continue to excel.
In in looking at the the cost per pupil, these are the the state figures for twenty nineteen twenty. If you compared RAM to the other, secondary districts, right now we fall, last in that comparison. Region 8 has a per pupil cost, calculated by the state of 2439. And as you can see that, most of the other regional high schools are up into the 20s. And so, you know, we believe that with the money that we're that we're given, we we do the most with it. And I think that our students, the success of our students really shows that spectacularly. In terms of our enrollment projections, you know, we are in a period where we've seen enrollments decreased. We certainly recognize that in some of the towns, they're starting to see an increase in enrollment, although I think most of that is at the lower grades. So I don't anticipate that we're going to be seeing that for a little bit. And I've got an enrollment projection sheet here that that kind of bears that out. We really don't know the impact immediately of folks moving into town. And, you know, we know that there's been a spike in housing sales and whether we're going to see some more students coming from that. But, you know, over the next five years or so, we're projected to lose approximately 300 students. And coming into this year from last year, we have a projected decrease of about 89 students. Some of those at the middle school, and about 70 of those at the high school. This is the and hold on a sec. I've got your I can see your pictures. I'm looking to get rid of that, though, so I can see the slide.
Oops. In the back. So if you look at, the enrollment, the projected enrollment, you'll see that, you know, seven twelve, we are anticipated and projected to go down over the next five years, as I as I indicated. You know, and I think beyond five years, it's a bit difficult to project, but we know that we are seeing a decrease in enrollment. As a in response to that, you know, we we have reduced a number of positions over the last four years. In 02/1819, we reduced 11.1 teaching positions. 2,009 going into 02/1920, we reduced another three and three point two teaching positions in 2020 led this past year, we reduced one and a half positions.
And I have a reduction of two additional teachers going into this year. You've got the total positions reduced. So that would in some of those include some paraprofessionals and some of the other support staff that we may be reducing. You'll notice that for this year's budget, and I'll explain in a few minutes why, you know, I'm getting rid of two teachers, but the overall reductions is less than two. And we do have some pieces of positions that we feel that we need to add at this point. But again, in terms of the teaching staff, we have been reducing those. The challenge with reducing staff at the middle and high school level is that you, it's not always a one for one, it's not always you lose 25 kids, you can therefore get rid of a class, those 25 kids are, distributed across the grades so that it's not that as if you can get rid of a an English senior English class,
because some of those kids you're losing are coming from the freshman class, some from the sophomore class. Also, we have our specials. So it's, you know, if you in many of our instances, we have one teacher teaching a program. So if you lose that teacher, you lose the program. And we have eliminated a number of programs doing this over the last few years. So for example, we reduced a family consumer science position that taught our foods program, we no longer have a foods program. So when you lose that person, you lose the program. And our feeling at the time was that we didn't have students who were leaving Ram going into college level food preparation programs are going and working in the restaurant industry. So we didn't see that as a terribly viable career path. So instead, we focused our efforts on some of our other existing programs, for example, metals, which we updated so that it is now that you know, part of the manufacturing pipeline.
We've also reduced our woods program, we've eliminated a full time woods teacher. So we no longer have a full woods program. And again, part of that was looking at the viability of the career pathways, and again, decided to focus on the manufacturing as opposed to some of the other things so. So that is another challenge that just makes it a little more difficult at the high school level to do a kind of a one to one but we are certainly aware of the decreasing enrollment and, and I think our each year reflects that we we are doing that our part in terms of reducing staff.
Scott, can you can you just touch on class size a little bit? Is that possible?
Sure. And class size is probably well, it's it's it's variable in that I would say our average class size is gonna be anywhere between, let's say, eighteen and and twenty five. So we have a number of classes that are in the 22 to twenty five twenty six range. And then so like for example, the class the two teachers that we're reducing this year are English teachers, a middle school English teacher and a high school English teacher. And we're doing that because those class sizes will allow us to do that. So I can reduce the English teachers and still maintain class sizes of 22 to 24. Having said that, we, you know, for a number of years had some of our electives which and we still have some electives that have lower class sizes. So some of that is due to the nature of the course itself. So the, our welding class, you know, may have a class limit of 15 students, but that that's a health and safety issue. It's not necessarily, due to lack of interest.
One of the things that we are starting to see is, although we do have the, reduction in enrollment, we also have an increase in graduation requirements. So our sophomores are required now to graduate with 25 credits, where the graduation requirement used to be 21. Ram has always had 24. So for us, it wasn't a huge deal. But it does mean that all of our, students, beginning with last year's freshmen are required to take extra courses. So what we're seeing is that where we might have had electives with, say, 12 to 15 students now have 16 to 18 students. So we're starting to see an uptick in some of those courses that might have had lower enrollments.
And as as we continue to adjust our staff sizes with the decreasing enrollment, we will start to see I think a bump in class sizes. Does that help?
Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that. Have one other question before you get too far down the line. You you talked about the the pathways program in in you know, for career services, you know, are is there a methodology or is there a system in place so that kids get the opportunity to, you know, to look at that, like, know, and and talk to about what those options are? I just know that sometimes in sometimes there's a big push for college, college, college, and that isn't everybody's, you know, end end game. So I'm just curious as to what the methodology or what the the system is in place to make sure those those programs are utilized. That's a great question. Because that really, you know, we we have if you look at our
opportunities handbook, which is basically the course catalog that students use to choose courses, we have a significant emphasis on that those career pathways. We bring our middle school students into the high school, so that they can view the our metals our pipeline program. They can view each of those career pathways that we provide so they can get kind of in middle school start that process. We've actually started working and partnering with the elementary districts as well through the innovation, consortium to so the elementary programs know what we're doing as well. So we do try to get that information out there. And, you know, I agree with you that that college is is a spectacular way to go, but it's not necessarily for everybody. And we had a student, the first year of the pipeline program who graduated from RAM on a Friday and started work at Electric Boat on Monday making $73,000. He was worried about what he was going to do with all that money he was making as a 19 year old is I'm sure his mom and dad were as well. So yeah, we really start within our buildings at the middle school level, making sure that students are aware of what those career pathways offer.
And I appreciate that. That's great. I just wanted to get an idea. I don't want to sidetrack you too much.
So some of the programs that we are looking to so that this is a slide of some of the additions that we're looking to add. One is our extension of an advanced placement research program. Some of you may be familiar with, our middle school and some of the, new programs that we've provided in the middle school, that allow students to do project based learning. We extend those into the high school at the freshman and sophomore level, and then at the junior and senior level. This year, we started with AP seminar. Next year, the next level of that course will be AP research. That's not costing us anything because we're using existing teachers. So that's an enhancement in program that won't come with any cost increase. Last year, we added two part time school psychologists, point six at the middle school and a point six at the high school. We were able to hire one of those positions. We have not been able to hire the second one. This is an area of shortage. We have not had any, candidates. So, but it is a significant need for us, particularly coming back from this year when we know that there's going to be a lot of students who are going to have some going to need some mental health support. So we're proposing an increase of a 0.4 FTE, which will allow us to flesh out one of those positions to a full time, which we think will be more likely for us to fill. And we do see an enhanced need next year,
again, with students coming back to school full time and back to a regular year, but still certainly going to need some probably additional supports. At point six, do they get benefits?
They get the benefits are proportional to the amount of time that they work. Okay. Yeah. The and then the pupil service administrative assistant. Right now, we are you know, I think we have the bare minimum of staffing within our special ed and our guidance programming. In particular, we have one guidance secretary at the high school. Most districts have at the very least one, but most also have a registrar. They have somebody who takes care a lot of the administrative tasks, which are significant at the high school level for guidance in particular. With the shift to online college registration, those responsibilities have blossomed exponentially with people leaving, people coming. It really tasks that position and takes away the time that they really should be spending on supporting students for their applications, their college, their college process and supporting the counselors.
So we are proposing a, an administrative assistant position that would, support the guidance department and the special ed. We're not asking for a full salary though, because 10,000 of that we have in a grant, which would allow us to support, the special ed side of that position. So those are the additions we're looking for. And again, it's really a point for school psychologist and the administrative assistant, which is partly paid with grant funds. And then we're looking to reduce two English teachers, at the middle school, one at the high school. And we have an administrative assistant at the high school, part time administrative assistant, the high school to the high school nurse. We've been able to, as a result of COVID,
we're able to hire an LPN using grant funds. And our proposal for next year is to continue to use grant funds to support that LPN position and have the LPN take over the assignments of the administrative assistant. So it allows us to be more efficient in use of our staff. The LPN was significant for us this year in that we have a nurse at the high school, we have a nurse at the middle school, and we needed that extra person who is able to escort and supervise students who are in our isolation room, should they show signs of COVID or we get a call that they might have been, have tested and they're positive for COVID. So it's been a critical position, but we think we can next year,
as COVID becomes less of an issue, think we can use this for other purposes. So hence the reduction of the assistant to the nurse. Some of the driving factors for the budget, one is in the area of technology. In terms of hardware, one of the areas that we're looking to do is kind of take our lease program and each year you'll see that it might be 30,000 or 40,000, 50,000. Come have a more predictable level and what, our director of technology has done is outlined a leasing program that would top out at 60,000 a year, and that would allow us to fully supply our students one to one with Chromebooks, and to ensure that the other computers our students use are up to date. We have a number of unique labs. So for example, our engineering program has a lab of computers that are specific to them because of the firepower that they need to work. We have some Apple Labs in the digital art area. So there are some unique labs and and we feel that so this isn't a thousand dollars increase. It's basically rather than budgeting 30 or 40 or 50,000, we're looking to budget 60 a year. So it's not a full $60,000 increase.
Is it are you saying that, I guess I misunderstood, you were saying
you needed about 60,000 a year for Chromebooks, so that's not the number for Chromebooks? No, not. It covers Chromebooks, it covers the other labs as well. So it's the full technology leasing budget.
I I just my my question is, has someone looked into that? I mean, you guys have quite a bit of staff up there now for technology. Is that you know, it it it just seems like that's a pretty big number for leasing. I mean, at at $500 a a unit, that's 1,200 units. So
And and, again, it's it's not it covers the teacher laptops. It covers the computer labs as well. We can I can certainly get a a more detailed breakout? I would very much appreciate that. Be happy to do that. Thank you. We have, also in hardware, the we have a number of, data switches that need to be replaced. In terms of the software, some of this and I have a slide later on that that kind of highlights some of the COVID expenses or expenses related to COVID. In terms of software, Schoology, Google, Zoom, those first three programs, those are programs that we've used essentially this year in our hybrid model where we have students
working remotely are. We anticipate that we will be back to a full time regular school year next year. And I'm not alone, but I think every superintendent is asking the state what is the expectation going to be for families that may choose to remain remote? Is that still an option? You know, right now, throughout the end of this year, that's an option regardless of what model we're using. So these programs here are will continue to be important for us in order to be able to ensure that students can connect with us, whether they're in the building or not. The Securly program allows teachers to monitor student use of their computers during classes so that they can make sure that they're focused and doing what they need to be doing as opposed to possibly playing video games. Swank is a program that allows teachers to use snippets or parts of movies
for educational purposes. Cami is a flexible program that allows teachers to mark up PDFs so that as students have done away with paper assignments, this allows the teacher to engage in communication with the student as PDF assignments go back and forth. And Screencastify allows teachers to record and capture video content into their lessons as they develop recorded lessons, regardless of whether we're in hybrid or whether we're full return. Those types of activities are still going to be critical and important for teaching to use. Really are looking to move away from paper. We're looking to, you know, for students to be submitting assignments digitally, teachers for homework rather than having a student maybe do something, it may be review this video that I've created. And then tomorrow you'll be working on a program related to that material. So, those programs will continue to support teaching and learning. For our special ed program, we have really right now we're looking at three drivers. Historically, we have been responsible for our special education students through the year of their 20 birthday. So if they turn 21 in September or October, November, we own them through the end of that school year. There's a lawsuit which is, currently being appealed at the state level. And what the lawsuit requires us to do is educate these students through their 20 birthday. So for some of these students, this adds as much as another year onto our obligation to educate them.
We have eight students in this category. This might change if the appeal goes through. It could very well bring it back to '21. But we can't hope we can hope for that, but we can't plan that. So we've had to budget for those eight students at least through their 20 birthday. We have a number of new students entering who are currently in out of district programs, which will then be required to pick up. And we have one student who may have a potential residential placement. So these are students we're looking at. The budget's not going to go up any higher, but we have some of this stuff budgeted in there for next year. There may be a decrease in the budget if we learn more about any one of these students that's included within this group. In terms of the facilities, I'm going to hold off on the first two just for a few minutes for another slide coming in a little bit. In terms of some new equipment, have any modern day high school has cameras all over the place. You'll see in our, capital budget, we have a third year of a three year camera, upgrade project that we're in the midst of. These are new cameras for the serving area in the cafeteria and the kitchen area in the cafeteria.
And we've had some incidents in both of those areas that that tell us that for safety reasons, we really need to make sure that we have those areas on camera. There are currently no cameras in those areas. For food service equipment, dollars 4,400. We have, portable heating and cooling units. They're kind of, stand on wheels so that they can be moved around. We've we've had those since the building opened up, and they're starting to fail. So this this would allow us to replace one of those units. The increase in sewer fees. We I think I think a lot of folks in the region, residents included, saw a spike in their sewer fees this year. We were told to expect much more than the $8,000
increase. Mike Schleihofer, our facilities director and I met with the board that sets the fees earlier this year,
and we were were able to commit that, they will continue to use the formula that they've been using for the next five years. There's apparently a new formula which, they are able to use, but it would cost us an additional up to $30,000 a year. So we have a commitment that they'll keep it flat, at least the use of the formula for the next five years. So we do have an increase, but I think the increase has been mitigated significantly. The, capital budget. These are the items that are currently in, in capital for next year. The we, for the first time you know, every every year we refinish the gym floor, that involves simply buffing and re resurfacing, but you don't go down to the bare wood. This year for the first time over the summer, we went down to the bare wood, repainted. So we we did a full refinish. The equal rows are protective mats that will allow us to put down a protective mat for other uses in the gym. So for example, we use the gym for our college fairs. We use the gym for inside graduation.
We use the gym for right now because of COVID we have tarps down on the gym because we need to set tables up to spread students around the building. We hosted a vaccine clinic today at RAM and one of the areas that we considered using for vaccine was our alternate gym. Has right now we're simply using regular tarps and Chatham Health, which sponsored the clinic, felt that the tarps were too dangerous for folks possibly in their 80s or with walkers, with canes. And so what this would provide us with is a safe floor protectant, which would allow us to people to safely walk on as opposed to trying to take down tarps. The guidance carpet replacement in the middle school, carpet that is many, many years past being repaired. When it was originally installed, there were no transitions between guidance tile and carpet, and it really is coming up. It's fraying. It does it is starting to concern us in terms of producing tripping hazards. I can say the same thing with all those stair treads in the in the middle school, they're they're color coded because they're they are different colors in each of the hallways, but
they are all worn and starting to come up and really for safety purposes, need to be replaced. The AC unit here, we have we have two, one in the headroom and one in the lighting control room. The headroom is our computer control center off of the media center. It's continuously air conditioned. That unit is starting to fail, and we've had some instances where it did start working and the temperature got dangerously high in that room. So that really is a unit that needs to be addressed. The same thing is true with the lighting control room. This is the control room for the auditorium. Lights. It's it's highly sophisticated and very hot. And again, if this unit fails, we would risk losing all of the devices in those areas. So I said earlier, the upgrade for the cameras. This is a three year plan. So, the 40,000 is the third payment out of a three year plan for replacing and upgrading our cameras. I can tell you that, the cameras that were originally installed were fine, and you could see shadows moving. You could kinda get a sense of of that, yes, there was somebody in that hallway. And the new cameras allow us to identify people. You know, we can identify their shoelaces. And it I can't tell you in a in a current high school how useful that is to know
if something was stolen, if there was an issue in a bathroom or whatever it might be, how helpful cameras are in helping us to ensure everyone's safety. The repair saw cuts in the tennis courts is a, again, it's a wear issue. And the more we can do to keep up our tennis court, the longer it's going to last. The irrigation upgrades, Some of our irrigation systems are no longer reliable, and this would allow us to much better control and make sure that we don't have sprinklers going off at all hours. And it will allow us to repair and do some upgrades there. We have at this point added irrigation to all of our fields and it has allowed us to maintain those fields significantly better than we were when we first moved into the building. Unfortunately, the site does have a significant amount of crumbling concrete. And so if you've been keeping track, you'll see that there's been money for concrete replacement each year. There's a significant square footage of concrete, and this will allow us to continue to ensure, again, just the safety of of folks walking around.
Yeah. I know it's sort of an out of blue question, but, I mean, given the level of maintenance you guys are doing, because all of these are basic replacement maintenance things, the stair treads that, you know, the saw cut, you know, pulling the caulk out and recaulking them, and that's not a $15,000 job. I mean, that's somebody kinda teeing up on you. So, I mean, does it make sense that you guys should have been looking at all along having a maintenance staff in house that can handle some of these things? You know?
To have it well, I can I can I can answer by telling you this? Some of the the stairway replacements, you know, have actually been in previous capitals. And as as the capital budget gets tweaked every year, they've gotten pushed off and pushed off. Yep. So some of these are not appearing in for the first time, in a capital budget. They're appearing for the first time in a proposed capital budget, you know, because things do get pushed off. Yeah. And, you know, for some of these, the degree of expertise needed, like, we have been able to do some, caulking and some
kind of more simpler things. Think that, and I and I'll get you more information, particularly on the the tennis courts, but Well, know, I mean, I'm looking at the tennis courts and the and the sidewalks, you know, and the curbing repair around campus. You know, I'll I'll give you an example. The the variance that we got for pouring a pad at our transfer station, we had numbers that came in as high as, you know, 24,000 and we had, we ended up getting it done for somewhere around 5,000. It's, there is so much variance, because there is unfortunately, a thing out there. As soon as they find out it's for a school or town, they tack on this premium and they just go to town on you. And it's absolutely disgraceful, you know. And you know, we were able to actually grab the guy that used to do the sidewalks for Wyndham. You know, he did all the sidewalks for Wyndham and Wyndham had him doing sidewalks for years. He probably did about a mile of sidewalks every summer, you know. And, you know, he slowed down a little bit. He didn't want to be that big anymore. So he cut back his company, but we were able to get him to come in and and give us a heck of a number. And it's just a little frustrating when I see numbers like them. $60,000. That's a heck load of I mean, that's a lot of concrete, you know. And I look at some of these, and I wonder if you guys would have be better off long term. A lot of the things you're mentioning in house repair crew should a couple of guys should be able to do a lot of this stuff. It's
just a little, it's, you know, it may be more cost effective as a district to look at that, to have bring in a couple of guys that have a background in commercial maintenance, and in carpentry. I mean, stair treads, doing concrete outside, these are all things that are not out of the realm of commercial maintenance. Sure, yep. We do. And
you know, we, the way our staffing looks right now is that we have one maintenance position that's dedicated to the outside. Yep. So he really does the fields and lining of the fields that really he's full out with that. And then we have one maintenance on the inside, and he's really focusing on problem solving and doing, you know, the repairs that he can. And then everyone else is really well, we have another maintenance position, but he also is the head of the custodians in the evening, which obviously is when most custodians are working. But if you had another guy being able to work with that person,
and I'll tell you the other things that you could have him look at doing. So for instance, you just went through this whole thing with windows getting replaced, right? Right. Those windows still need to be re caulked every five to seven years, So you could get a schedule going where you're caulking those windows. If you do that, they'd become a fifty year window.
Instead of you guys going, hey, God, we need to do windows again in twenty years. So
maintenance type items, you need to be able to, you're doing all these sidewalks and you've been doing them going on, right? If you have someone going around and checking all the saw cuts on that concrete and doing fills, then that concrete is gonna last longer. You know, and last but not least, I will say this, if you're not doing any of that, I really, really hope that in all of these contracts, you are hiring an outside person to come in and overlook these projects. Because if you if you had done that with the windows, when the windows were installed in the first place, you wouldn't have had the problem you had. You always need a third party, someone who is not part of the, you know, not part of the contracts, contractor that you're paying to go in and take pictures every single day of what was done, was it done correctly, and catch the problem before it gets to the end. Whether that's on the concrete project, the stair tread project, you know, going behind the guy that's looking at the, you know, the cameras and making sure they're following the contract that you're you're holding them to. Right. Right. I really hope that you guys are doing that. We you know, for for projects like this, which are smaller,
our facilities director does most of that work. Okay, if we do like a bigger project. So for example, one of the approved projects that we had for this from this this current year that we're in was to address the drainage issue on the competition field. Yep, we have so we have somebody who is is hired to do that piece of the work. So anytime we, you know, go out to bid for a substantial project,
we do exactly what you're suggesting. Okay. Yeah. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. We also did have someone
when we did the windows project. Okay. That oversaw the project. So that has been our practice. Okay.
We did. We also hired someone for the DOT project to do that for us as well. Yeah, I mean, it just it pays dividends to catch that stuff. Absolutely.
So in terms of the the maintenance budget, we do have at least two items in there that are still COVID related. One is custodial tech services, which provides us with a sub pool. And again, obviously, that's money that we may use, it's money that we may not use. But you know what we did find this year with custodians having to be quarantined, or being out for being sick themselves. In order to ensure that we were keeping the building sanitized and cleaned, we needed to make sure that we had a safety net to ensure that we had adequate staff each night to do that. I. My anticipation is that we'll be full back in, if not sooner than next year. But that I think that mask wearing and,
the sanitation and cleaning is still going to be a an important piece of what we do. I don't think that will necessarily go away overnight. And then in terms of supplies, the increase of $30.50, dollars 3,000 covers sanitation, cleaners, wipes, masks, gloves, for both our staff, and we don't provide our students with masks and gloves. But but if they need them we certainly need to make sure that we have those available for them. Most of it's though in terms of the sanitation materials. So we anticipate that, you know, if anything COVID remains with us next year it's likely going to be in these two areas. So if we if we look at the the operating part of the budget, You can see that this covers the overall budget. It covers what we anticipate for revenue over the course of this year. And we anticipate that with our current proposed budget, that would lead to an increase of 2.20.43%. This is the operating budget, not capital, but the operating budget. For capital. This is a decrease of $43,000 from last year's capital budget. So this actually is a decrease of 12.8%. We do have a another list of capital improvement proposals that, totaled, 349,000, which the RAM facility subcommittee did not choose to add to our capital budget so the capital budget that you saw here is what's being proposed by the RAM facility subcommittee. There are some additional items there that we're not moving forward for next year so.
So there is a decrease in our capital budget. And then if you add both capital and our operating budget right now, that sits at 2.26%. Again, I can tell you that the the ram board has really just started looking at this. So they haven't started adjusting it yet. I can tell you though, from my office, we will have some additional adjustments. So if anywhere that that increase is going to be dropped a bit over the next few weeks to a month or so, as we continue to fine tune the budget. Scott, sorry,
Jeff McGuire, do you have a per pupil spend based upon this proposed budget?
What the per pupil, I don't have that, but I can certainly see what we can do to get that for you.
Then at the beginning of the presentation, you told us about the You have it on We received the preliminary budget. It was on the beginning of your document. You sat there and you were breaking down the per pupil spending between the other regional school districts. Is that $17,739 that we're talking about per pupil expenditure for the year twenty nineteen-twenty twenty? That's what it says in the header. Just trying to clarify that as I do my math. Right, yes.
I Okay. Can get you more information from the state in terms of how they calculate that, what that includes.
If I look at your numbers on this and what you just showed here, you have a proposed budget of $31,292,429 for twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two, and your student population is going down 89, you said, correct? Correct. Okay. All right. I would really like to know how we get to those numbers. Sure. If you can provide that along with the other requests that Adrian made, it would help me. Yeah, I'd be happy to get that for you. Okay.
Then this right now shows the proposed levy for the operating budget for each of the three towns. This is based on the 1,302 number is the state audited number, and what that includes is the number of students that are on October 1 that are in the building that students that attend physically attend Ram, middle and Ram High School, and the number of students that we tuition out so that we cover the cost of that may be attending other programs as well. So that's where we get to the thirteen oh two. So that's not our current in house student enrollment. It includes the students that were responsible though for covering the cost of their education as well. What it doesn't cover is students that may be attending technical high schools, or charter schools, or other schools for which we don't cover the costs for. And then this is the levy for the capital improvement budget. And again, I'll provide this version for you guys that that is an updated one from the one I think I sent earlier. And this is just a kind of comparison of the percentage increases over the last five years.
And questions, happy to answer any questions.
Hey, I just have one. This is Jeff Murray. So I've been I've been going through the AES budget quite a bit our elementary school and I know a couple years ago we put together a shared services committee that hasn't done a lot. Think they maybe had a couple meetings, but our heavy hitters are pretty much special education. And has there been any effort between RAM and Marlboro Hebron and Andover to maybe try to do some shared services and some cost sharing with that staff to see if we can probably put better services for our special needs students and try to do that at a lower cost?
You know, I'm not aware of any shared services in that area that we've looked at. I know that at RAM, we've put in, we brought back a significant number of our students. We instituted a resilience program, which, really addresses students who may have school phobias and, might have traditionally been outplaced and were able to keep those students in the building. And then we've, also put in a new step program which allows us to deal with those students who may have more significant behavioral issues that again might have traditionally been candidates to be outplaced. And instead, we're we're keeping them in the building. I'm not aware of any shared services in that area. As far as you know, reaching down to the elementary schools.
I mean, just as a district as you know, all the towns, I just think it would make sense that all districts come to the table and see if there's any way that we can share staff and maybe put some full time people on between the three towns and see if we can, you know, improve that program and lower the costs because it just seems like everybody's got their own Marlboro's got their people, he's got people, we've got our people and you've got your people. And why can't we just try to centralize that and you know, have a transition from the elementary school level to the middle school and high school level. And we like I and or we have two out placements right now. And it's very expensive if we can maybe enhance our capabilities a little bit more, maybe they wouldn't be out placed. That's just something I really like. And this is not to you. I mean, it's just I'd like to ask that question to you, even in Marlborough, too, like why don't we get together
and try to do this in a more efficient manner? It just doesn't make sense that we're all doing our own little kingdoms, not, you know, working together as a team.
And you know, right now, the really the only I think, significant shared services that the four districts have our health insurance, and the busing contracts. Correct. Which which have been very helpful. There we've we've had one meeting and it was this past month of a new shared services committee that brought together representatives from each of the elementary districts RAM. So there's there's there's at least a a the toe has been dipped in the water to ask the question, are there other services that we could be sharing?
Yeah, and especially specialized, like one of the heavy hitters that we should really take a look at. Yeah, I agree. Okay.
Just one more one more comment, I'm really happy that we're doing some more trade. You know, we're doing some more trading with the trades and we're doing we're doing some more, you know, because like I when I went to Ram that while that wasn't available, and I ended up going to college for engineering, but I don't and I was told it was kind of a negative thing to get into the trades but I think now it should be emphasized because I think it's a very it's a lucrative career to be into and I think we should be pursuing that a little bit better. So but thanks for thanks for those efforts. Right.
No, that's really been a priority for us. And so we continue to push that. And I was glad to hear that there's a lot of money being spent on that. Right.
Have you guys actually looked out to Pratt and Whitney Electric Boat, some of the bigger people that are looking for guys in those trade areas? Have you looked out to them to see if they have any grant programs or things to supplement those?
We do and they do supplement those. So there's a number of programs, particularly with the manufacturing pipeline program, that, that through the support of Pratt and Whitney and mostly electric boat are are supporting financially, some of the necessary educational components of it like there's, you know, those programs aren't just focused on how to run a lathe, a digital lathe, but they're also focused on blueprint reading, and they're focused on the type of demeanor that someone needs to have in order to be successful in one of these areas. So we, we meet with representatives from Pratt and Whitney Electric Boat on a monthly basis, and they have supported us with new equipment for the for the metals shop for the educational materials. And then, last year unfortunately it had to be virtual but normally we do interviews right at Ram so they'll, you know, prep all the kids we run them through mock interviews, and then representatives from Pratt and Whitney from electric boat. And then from some of the smaller manufacturers as well, come to ram interview the students there. So many of our students are walking away with jobs without having to leave the school building. It's a pretty remarkable partnership.
No. That's great. That's great. And and the only thing, again, I would stress is that it may be something that you guys wanna look at from a cost effective point of view. Given the level of maintenance and the size of the facility that you guys really should have a maintenance staff that's not just custodial, but that's actual maintenance. Long term, especially as the building ages and you start going into these things, whether it's parking lot or whatever whatever, those are gonna be bigger, you know, bigger the the contracting it out all the time is not gonna be cost effective. Let's just say that. So yep. Definitely take a look at that. Any other questions? Paula, Scott? I'm all set. Thank you.
Since they won't ask, would like to know, was looking, Scott, at your total numbers out of the $30,000,000 that we're talking about, about $20,000,000 is related to personnel costs, whether it's certified staff or non certified staff. The increase for this coming budget is about $500,000 I believe that was the right number. Can you tell me what is the contractual union increase that you're forecasting this for? You said you were dropping two certified teachers, but you offset those with some positions and some non certified positions.
We have for our so we did a one year contract with our teachers. And that equated to a 3.63 increase. Our non certified staff and nurses are currently in negotiations. So we don't I don't know what the percentage increase is going to be. We did a our non certified staff was scheduled to negotiate their three year contract last year. Because of COVID, what they ended up doing was a one year, 2% contract. So we're starting negotiations, actually we're starting negotiations next month with the non certified staff. With the teachers, the board negotiated a one year 3.63% contract. So that those are the those are the that's the one number I can give you at and the administrative contract going into next year is a 2.5% increase.
So the contractual obligations for the staff offset the two positions that you eliminated. Yeah, right. That significantly. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Yeah, we have we have you know if you look at it we have, know, almost 200 teachers it adds up.
And you said your classroom size average is somewhere around 18 to 22.
I would say on average 18 to 22 we have, you know, some in the '25 to '27 range, and then certainly in the specialties, we have some that are in the 15 range, but that that again that's some, some of those by design just because of safety reasons.
All right. Anyone else have any other specific questions? I mean, obviously, I mean, I do appreciate Scott, you coming to our board and presenting this to us. Would tell you, as we've said or I've said directly to AES, the per pupil spending number is really a tremendous focus for me to try to get an understanding of how well we're doing as our population declines. There's more difficult decisions that need to be made as that declines. And for the benefit of all three towns that participate in RAM, your board and the board of education that Stephanie represents needs to really focus on that. But we do appreciate all the good work you do. So on the other side of this, we are thankful for you and for the teachers, and for the good job you do and how well you educate our children. But in the end, we have to balance everything.
Totally understand it. And I hope you'll recognize as well that over the next few weeks, I'm gonna continue to whittle this budget down. And then, you know, I am hoping that we'll be able to bring it down at a lower percentage than what you see right now. Great. Scott, what is the average teacher salary?
The average teacher salary. You know, I don't have that off the top of my head, Eric, I can get that for you certainly. I can tell you that, you know, when we did the teacher negotiation, this past year, the, you know, whenever you go into negotiations, you have those comparison charts, and it shows you where your teachers fare compared to other teachers. RAM teachers are almost, almost to a chart down, if not at the bottom close to the bottom. There's there's a significant gap between what RAM teachers are making and teachers are making in even Hebron and Marlborough but also compared to any of the other comparisons that we typically do whether it be Tollin County or whether it be schools within our DIRG.
And from that point, Eric, that was probably the only financial record I was looking for that I could not find, the certified staff. You provide the numbers, Scott. Provide that you have two thirty seven certified staff positions, you didn't provide the financial numbers. Then you give us your admin staff and some other staff numbers, but not that
number. You know, and I can provide some of that additional information for you. You know, I can even provide some of the information that we use during negotiations that can give you a better idea of where they fall, you know, in comparison.
Okay. If you could provide those there, that would help. Sure. At least, honestly, the other members of the board can sit there and say, all we can do as a board and as a community is shine a light on what is occurring. You coming here and presenting this to us at least gives us an understanding of what the Board of Education is doing and what its thought process is. We, in turn, as the people that need to sit there and make sure that our budgets are in line and that what money we're spending is spent effectively for the benefit of the community. We just shine a light back upon it and say, Hey, listen, that doesn't seem to make sense to us. As in Adrian or Jeff, we're bringing ideas up that maybe you could utilize to help yourselves out. Sure. I totally agree with Jeff Murray that shared services and how we relate together could help also on our local Board of Educations and make that maybe a little bit more cost effective as well. If you could provide us that information and what is your timeline, just so we're all made aware on this? So we
have a budget workshop this coming Monday. We have one scheduled for March 1. And again, we canceled one due to weather so I anticipate there'll probably be at least one other added. And then we have in April town, the budget hearing for the town, and then obviously May, I think May 4 is the referendum. We're still working on the budget through and into March.
Okay. Do any of the other members have questions before we let Stephanie and the superintendent go?
No, I just wanted to say thank you. Just like Jeff and everybody else has said, so this is very helpful. And I know that you're gonna continue to sharpen pencils, so much appreciated. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you.
Well, thank you. Appreciate and Eric I'll send I'll, I'll send you this updated presentation right now so you have it to share and then I'll provide you the other information over the next few days. Understood. Great, fantastic. All right, Scott, thank you Thank very you again for providing us. All right, Stephanie,
thank you very much for coming. Okay. Before we move on, is there anything else that the board wants to do in relation to RAM just as a board, or do we want to wait till we get our additional information and at our next meeting have a conversation about what we can do to proceed to hopefully make it come out in a financial manner that's appropriate for Andor. So, well, we'll talk about that at our next meeting.
Yeah, I think it'd be smart to let this marinate a little bit and get some more info
and maybe talk about the next one. Okay, we have Andover Board of Education on the agenda for this meeting, Eric. Is there anything that we want to address? Not that I know of. I gotta tell you,
because of the dual holidays, we put that special meeting announcement out. It really didn't need AES on there. As far as I know, we're not discussing that at this point.
Okay, does any of the other members want to discuss the Board of Education at this meeting at all? Like our Andover Board of Education? It is on our agenda. We can if you choose to. No? Okay. All right. We have item three, Board of Finance. I know that we're going to attempt to schedule a meeting with the Board of Finance to have an in-depth conversation with them as to what our priorities are, what we're trying to do to move forward as a board. I know we got to get that scheduled. That's just a timing thing, Eric. But does anybody else have any issues related to the Board of Finance they want to bring up in the meeting? Before we move on to the next section of this, I got to ask Adrian, is it just because your camera is not working? I'm sorry? Is your camera not working? I'm just wondering. I miss seeing you. No, I think we're good. Okay.
All right. I'm engaged, Jeff.
Yeah, that means he's working in the background. Next section we have is 3B, discussing XPON the twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two term budget. The last time we all met, we had discussed the numbers related to employees. Eric is our last person that we have to deal with related to employees, I believe. Is that accurate? Is there anybody else that I'm missing that we didn't decide on? Eric, did we decide on everyone but you?
Pretty much actually technically myself and Amanda are the two
we do we ever get a do we ever get anything back for the attorney about the library as far as you said the legality of the contracts about salary regarding the library
library. I think we wanted to say with the hours we were going to do a memorandum of understanding.
Yeah, mean, we know what the budget is. So we'll do the memorandum of understanding at some point this spring. I mean, it's not going to go into effect till July. So there's not really any need for it at this very second. So no, it's on my list of things to do, but I haven't really taken a crack at it yet. I'm just asking.
Okay. Well, I'm going to sit there and let's actually skip. Eric, at the last meeting, we asked you to sit there and prepare something related to Amanda, well, not Amanda, but related to the position. Have you done that? Did you?
I did not. I mean, honestly, I think when you get right down to it, given that we're still reducing staff in general, I don't think we can really I don't think we're in a position to be expanding staff roles at this point. So I mean frankly as much as I would like to do it, I don't think it's an I option to
would tell you that it's in our interests as a board to get that information. It might be that we don't act on it in a manner that you may want us to, but we need that information. For our next budget meeting, if you could do that and tell us what you would want that person to do in that position to be able to accomplish, that will at least us guide us, whether we sit there and decide we're going to bring it up to the public and say, We believe that this is important, or we decide to sit there and say, We're not going to do it. I think we need the information. If you could do that for us, that would be appreciated. Okay.
All right. Well, how are we addressing this in the budget for this? I mean, our goal was to push this budget from this meeting to BOS so they could start their thing.
No, I think our goal was to push it as of the budget workshop on the twenty third to them. Yeah, that's all stated. So we've got this and one more budget.
I actually thought we were pushing this until the beginning of March. No, that's Even not though I'd rather get it to them, I know Mark Brinker asked us to get it to him earlier, but our timeline really is
Yeah, I mean, to be fair though, they really should have it as soon as possible. I mean, at this point, I think the big changes for us are gonna be what we decide to do in funds, fund balances. And that's gonna make the big changes or not. I mean, I think we can make some decisions on the rest of these minor issues pretty quickly. It's the fund balances that we're gonna be knocked down drag out here, think, candidly.
Then when you say that Adrian, please just when you say fund balances, like moving money from fund to fund or what is your No, what we're gonna put into
What we're going put into the funds. What we're going to put into the funds, whether it's we talk about public works, fire department, multi building use, building maintenance, bridge and culvert, bunker, Bunker Hill Bridge, tree removal, road improvement. Those are the big asks.
Okay, do we want to tackle any of those, Sonny?
I think we need to tackle all of them tonight.
Okay. Well, I count the twenty third as my last day to tackle them all. Are you saying you haven't looked at the spreadsheet Eric sent us? No, I have not.
Do you want me to share that right now? I can share that screen. Sure, let's do it.
That may or may not have been what I was working on in the background while listening. That is eating dinner.
So here are the major transfers that we're proposing. And I'm happy to answer questions on any of them that you have.
What'd you change? Because that doesn't match up to the sheet you gave us.
So what I changed was my own stupidity initially. We and it was just the way Barbara had the sheet set up. I had DPW public works equipment twice. Okay. And obviously we're not funding the same thing twice.
Oh, so you pulled it, you pulled it, okay. I pulled it out of transfer DPW DPW equipment. You pulled it there?
Right. Because you guys We had in public works equipment fund Yep. Got it. Okay. Alright.
So the only other concern I have with this sheet, Eric, is the way you currently have the sheet working, your number at the bottom of your budget, which I'm not sure how this happened because this used to be set up that it all worked together. But the number at the bottom of your sheet does not pull into your revenue total expenditure line number on sheet on your revenue sheet. So your f y twenty two budget sheet is not actually linked in to your other side. Correct. I don't think that ever was.
It yeah. It was. It definitely was on the sheet that we gave Barbara. And we have relinked it when I was there. I don't remember last year what we did. But I noticed when I started to do this, I'm like, oh, it's not carrying over. What the heck? So because otherwise, you you may you risk making the mistake of carrying something over incorrectly. It just it's that's the whole point of having the using Excel is it makes it little easier if it just kinda pushes things for you.
All right, so let's sit there and go through these just so we can
Well, I think we need to, I think we need to, let's have a global conversation if we can right now about the amount of money that we're asking for, what we think is feasible, and what we want to do to make up the difference. Right? Well,
We can sit there and go as all previous, well, not all previous boards, but are all of these, I mean, all of these items to me are, with the exception of maybe I look at the fire department money, I know Adrian has made a, they presented to CIP and that they have some significant issues that they would like to address this year. But I mean, that number is 1,100,000.
Right. Well, now it's a 100,000 less than that now because 110,000 less than that because he added in there twice. Right. And again, this is this is the only problem with it not pulling across.
So which one do you wanna pull it out of the the department? So so yeah. So he had DPW. You eliminate the 110 there
because it was in there twice. Yeah. So I eliminated the line that has XXX on it. Yeah. Okay, so we're at $990,000 For that, yep. Okay.
I I sit there and I look at all of these items. Well, does anyone have any recommendations of what to call? Let's put it out that way. Is there anything that any member of the board feels strongly that we should cut out of these numbers?
Didn't we already go over all this? They're gonna keep everything?
You can't keep everything. If we don't do our job, we're asking the board of finance to do it for us. That's not fair to them. That's not, we can't dump everything on board of finance. We have to make some we make we have to put on our big boy pants and make some decisions. I think it's absolutely ludicrous to send a budget that's got, you know, a 5 mil increase over to the board of finance. That's that's insane. Granted, mil of that is on the school side, fine. And also keeping in mind that the biggest reason we're having this issue is because we cut three mills off the budget last year by using fund balance and we did the previous year we did almost four mills or four mills. So when you take four mills off the number one year and three mills off the next year, eventually this is gonna catch up to you. We did that for a couple of reasons because that money should have already been spent and it made sense. But now we have to find the middle ground and figure out how to we need to take that bump in the road that is us catching up
on maintenance and roadwork and spread that out. The only way to do that, because listen, you and I, we all know there's no way a five mil increase is passing, there's none.
First of all, we're not talking about a five mil increase. Really? Okay. About mil increase. If How much everything in this budget passed would be basically 38.75. So essentially a 3.1 increase which I agree is still probably not going to get through a vote certainly not without an enormous amount of socialization with the public in an explanation of why. So the question becomes what do you think is really realistic? Then I honestly I would say give me a number and I'll come back to you with the budget that Okay so accomplishes
here's my problem with what you just said. If your spreadsheets don't match up then because your difference number, right? What the town budget is, your difference, and your fund balance used, right, you start breaking those out, you would be higher. Oh, that's right. You also got the one ten off cutoff. You adjust that? Is your three mils including that one ten that was put in twice? No, the three mils is including the corrected spreadsheet.
Okay. Can you go to your page two revenue or your can you slide up so I can see it? So $12.09 84, $2.40 9. Okay. So you're looking at three and change.
Correct. Point one. Which is still a huge number and I'm not at all. You know, I'm well aware that
that is a very hard number for the public to swallow and very possibly they won't. Well forget about the public, it's a hard number for me to swallow for crying out loud.
I mean, I don't know about anybody else, that's a choker. All right. Here's my question. Before Paul,
one second. Eric. Let Paul speak. Doesn't get a chance to say it again. No. Paul's got to have the right information. Eric, when you look at your spreadsheet, and you look at row 68, which is the total department request, is that the number? Which? On column g, row 68. On the first page. The first page? Yeah, first page fiscal year 2022 budget. Column G.
So what I gave to you right from the beginning was basically what I thought was a minimum budget that would work for the town and what the department requests were. Because I don't think in all cases the department requests are reasonable. So in column J, I trimmed a bunch of those things down. So that's the difference between those two columns. Okay, go ahead Paul because I
can't match up. That doesn't make any sense because they're the exact same number basically. No, they differ by about $40,000.40 ks. Right. Okay, here's my question. Sure. We
threw an idea out there or actually Adrian did about bonding. Do we have that conversation now and does that help us with deciding on what to do with the rest of the rest of the stuff?
I absolutely think that having that conversation is important. And that's what I meant when I said we start having a global conversation about this budget. So
what makes sense to me and maybe somebody agrees or disagrees is why don't we rather than getting into the nitty gritties, let's look at this big picture. What are we thinking about bonding? What are we thinking about not bonding? And then get down to the nitty gritties. Does that make sense to have that conversation?
Does anyone object to having that conversation? Let's start there. I do not object to that.
Because otherwise I feel like we're spinning our wheels. Trying to look for a needle in a haystack, but I don't know what the needle looks like right now. Scott, Jeff, what's your opinion? Sorry, Jeff Murray.
I mean, I'm just looking at like the fire truck fund, the building fund. What is the there was a there was another fund in there is for 60,000 for building maintenance. Yeah, what exactly is that for?
So that's all the major building, basically any large building expense that the town incurs. Instead of putting all those in separate line items have one common one. So the CIP can make decisions about where that money is best spent within the town.
I from my perspective, looking at all those increases for road work that needs to be done. I mean, even if we got rid of the building fund and the fire truck fund and other thing, it's less than 15% of the ask that's in there. So I just don't know where we would actually trim anything. I mean, because like you said, that covert work, that bridge work has got to get done. It's not a question of if it's going to be when. Right. So
can we talk about what we have in these funds right now and what we've spent out of them? I can, sure.
Because I think it's without, you know, and to be honest with you, this is not your fault, Eric. This is something we talked about. When this spreadsheet goes to the board of finance as inevitably it will do, we need to have a line item in there that says what's actually in those fund balances currently, you know.
Okay, well, I mean, I would have given them the same capital fund allocation sheet. No, but put it on the same sheet. So when they're looking at it, it's easier to do their work. Can you go back to that shared screen please? You Do wanna see that or do you wanna see the capital allocations what's in there now? Oh, okay. What's in there now, please? I'm sorry. Thought that's what it was. I didn't get a chance to start perusing it. Okay. Give me two secs. Let me share that one. Okay, except obviously Public Works Capital Equipment Fund, we just spent a considerable portion. We we actually have about 23,000 left in the capital public works equipment fund
and of the building maintenance fund at this point somewhere around 10 or 11,000 of that is encumbered so there's you know high 40s left in building maintenance fund.
Okay. Do you have any plans to use building maintenance fund between now and the end of this fiscal year?
The the two kind of projects CIP has asked for more information is doing the electrical work in the town hall. And then the second thing was they approved doing the roof on the cold storage building in the public works. But Jay had some questions about whether we could potentially repurpose that as a parking area for senior transportation with a reconfiguration. And we're obviously not going to do the roof until we investigate that a little bit because if that's a realistic possibility then that would change up what we would do with the cold storage. So I put that one on hold. The second thing we're going to need to fund is because we're transitioning over to the new alarm monitoring. There's going to be some upfront costs to do that. And then the question becomes, do we redo the alarm system at Public Works? And do we do the alarm system at the museum? Combine those two costs, the lowest estimate I have right now is somewhere around $16,000 $15,000
to do both of those. But I've still got two more vendors I'm going to talk to before I even so I'm not ready to present anything like that but we've got more projects than we can fund certainly.
Yeah, I mean, and there's a bunch of things that aren't even in the pipeline yet. We know we have a masonry problem over there. We know we have some issues with gutters and water coming off the building in public works. We know we've got some concern over at the library with again, appointing for the masonry. So are of them are relatively small, the library and the gutter work over there at the public works. But if we were to get into working on the masonry at the Public Works Building itself, that's gonna go pretty quick.
Yeah, to answer your question, Jeff, I looked at it realistically and said, you could easily come up with a half or a quarter million dollars worth of building maintenance, major maintenance changes that would be worth doing. Obviously, we're not going to fund a quarter of $1,000,000. The goal was to fund it high enough that we could start chunking away at prop you know at issues over a period of time. You know we're going to have some additional stuff at public works you know smaller scale stuff but bigger than than what we can accommodate with the maintenance budget just for public works. So yeah, does that answer your question? You know, I can tell you the one I think we could get away with cutting somewhat.
I mean, we could probably get away with cutting the tree fund down, you know, because we have some money in there. We could probably get away with knocking that down certainly the 50,000 and
live with it. Well, here's a question originally we talked about needing about a $100,000 for tree work. We just spent darn close to 50. So, do we need to do it all in two years?
So what I think is I think we're probably about half way through the easy to do trimming. I mean part of the issue is that we're kind of ignoring the really expensive trees to pull down. So I think we could easily spend another 50 to $60,000 and do the same thing we did last year which is bring in distinctive and just have them you know we still got a bunch of roads that have a high preponderance of dead ash you know that are potentials to come down and basically clear all that and then at some point we still have to go back and get some of the really problematic ones like the Juravadi Lane Juravadi Road Intersection you know all those massive trees right on the edge of the roadway at some point those have to come down So, you know, and that alone is probably a, you know, a 10 or $12,000 just little corner to deal with. So, yeah, you know, that's another one of those budgets. If I had a 100,000 in that budget, there's no question I could spend a 100,000 this year on tree work. I don't want to get that too low simply because we had so many outages last year for trees fall. It's like every time it's windy, we end up with roads blocked and public works working to clear roads.
I mean, we have a pretty big backlog we need to work off. Yeah, but that it's not our job to be clear trees for the utility company.
We don't cut trees on the utility company side. But why are we worrying about outage then from our trees? Because trees on our side of the road still fall across the road and take out the power lines.
Right. Even if you took that number down 25,000, you're taking it down 25,000. That's not getting us. It's a start as Adrian would like to say.
Yes, would. So let's get that down to 50. Public Works Equipment Fund, I think you need the money you have in there given what the everything that's been transpiring lately. Fire Department Engine Fund or Fire Department Equipment Fund, they have 33 left. They've got a couple purchases that they've talked about that makes sense. Washer dryer, and compressor, pretty big items. I'd like to see us give them enough you know, get done what they've talked about doing. So they probably need somewhere around 75 to get done what we've talked about. Now, I know that doesn't leave them money if they spend through it for an engine, but I have talked to the places, you know, going to bonding or financing, and the numbers to finance or lease finance are super low. This is something that Kurt had brought up to us
a while back, but we hadn't looked into independent of him. I think he's correct. It makes sense to do that. They will actually, they'll finance the truck out for us know, for what the life of the vehicle is considered. So somewhere between even fifteen or twenty years. So it does not make sense for us with the rates being as low as they are with our bonding, with our credit rating to be putting too much money away. We need to take care of them equipment wise. But when we start talking about trucks, tankers, whatever, that should be something I think long term that we are bonding for, or we are doing a financial package for. And I've talked to three different banks on this and all of them said that that is the way that for the most part towns are going. So I'd like to fund that for the equipment that they need. And then as that next truck comes forward, we'll look at that as either part of our bonding package or something separate. When we start talking about
public works, again, given that we just had an issue with the engine and we're getting some stuff down there, I don't think we should mess with that number. But when we start talking about road improvement, Bunker Hill Bridge and the culverts, I would like us to be looking at bonding for that stuff. We can do anticipation notes for bonding for the road work. So basically what it is, is you take a note out in anticipation of going to a bond. You have enough money put in. No, we're taking a quick shower. Somebody's taking a shower. I'm not sure who that is. Hopefully it's not the town. So we can do that type of thing with road work. I don't think there's anything else I see in here that we should be talking about doing it with, but the roadwork, the bridge and culverts as a grouping really should be kind of group into that. Try to put, we're trying to catch up the roadwork on the backs of the taxpayers. I don't think that's, I don't think we can do that year over year right now. I think we need to spread that out a little bit more.
Have no problem with the bridge and culvert projects. The roadwork and the road improvement funds. I think you have to consistently fund that and you have to consistently fund that out of taxation.
Right. That's what I would say too. I don't disagree.
But some of this is catch up work. And I think the catch up work overall needs to be pushed out. We have, give or take, we spend a $100,000 out of Town Aid Road and we spend another $100,000 out Town Aid Road on fixing guardrails and basins and other stuff. But in general, about $100,000 a year was our spending on paving. No. But my question becomes, we have two ten in there now. How much of that do we have contracted going into the spring for this summer? Eric? As of today, zero, but we're certainly already in talks
with contractors. What are you anticipating to spend out of that?
Out of the two ten that's there now? Yep. I would assume we're gonna spend every dime.
Plus you're gonna contract another 100 out of Town Aid Road?
I think the goal is to do, get some of the shimming done, the additional shimming done very early and do the majority of the chip ceiling before we get into the July budget. So to accomplish all of that out of the existing budget. But part of the goal is to be going into next spring again, with roughly that same amount of money, because you do a lot better if you can do a lot of that work before July. Sure.
So we know we'll have another 100 from Town Aid Road We should be able to work with, can we reduce that by, we've talked about what do we need to do to maintain our roads once we are caught up?
So our background spending level should be somewhere around $350,000 for road surface, something in that range year in year out. That's about our whole level number somewhere in that range.
So you need consistent funding from the town somewhere in the $2.50 range. Correct, correct.
Can I, Eric on your spreadsheet again, because I'm just trying to figure this, make sure that I'm understanding? Are we saying that last year the town general budget was 3,405,166?
Yes, kind of. And here's the kind of. But I hate your spreadsheet kind of.
Don't kind of, I actually just hate it. So here's the problem
is that at the end of last year, what the board of finance did is they took the anticipated surplus from last year's budget instead of letting it roll to the unencumbered fund balance And they put it, they made transfers into those funds that we shortchanged last year. So they basically transferred an extra $100,000 from last year's budget into this year's budget at the July of last year. And that's the difference between last year's budget. It really depends and I don't know how I should be presenting that. It's basically plus or minus a $100,000 whether you include that because that's not the budget that they pushed forward, but that's the budget that we actually went into July with. Does that make sense?
Okay. So you're really saying that with that transaction, we're $152,000 higher this year. And if we take that transaction out, we're really $250,000 higher. Basically, yes. Okay.
The way I look at it, we're gonna be spending 4 and $38,000 on road work this You're gonna spend more in. And probably more than that. Have the grant.
The 100 from Towne Road and 128 for the grant, right? 128 for what? The grant that we The steep grant. Oh, yeah.
So, you're at $4.38 already. That sounds like way over $3.50. I would say that we're probably doing the right thing.
Well, that's the question you ask yourself, Scott, dude. I think, but here's
to your point, Scott or from Eric's point of view. Eric's point of view is that if we reduce that road improvement number too much then we're asking for it again next year as an increase because we know we need give or take two fifty in that line item every year for basic maintenance in order to not get behind. Right. We need two fifty there and we need a 100 from Town Aid Road.
Right. We're gonna have the same money next year without the SEEP grant if we fund it the way it is right now.
If we drop that to two fifty, at least that number would be consistent year over year going forward at least for a little bit. I think that's the correct thing to do is to take 50 out of that line item and put it down to two fifty. Because that's the number we know we need to keep going into. Into. Okay.
We can look at that Adrian, but in my mind, like if you're sitting there, If we're looking to get back to last year's number, let's just think about it from this standpoint. If we all agree that we're willing to go with a higher number, it's $250,000 we'd have to cut from general town expenses.
I understand that. Sometimes the way that you get to things is to do them incrementally, right? Okay. So we already know that when we started this meeting, Eric pointed out that we're off by 110 because we had a double line item. If we adjust the tree fund number, okay, well now we've adjusted that instead of 75, we're at 50. So that's 25. So now we're 135 off from where we are. We take 50 out of this. Okay, well now we're 185 off from where we were. And if we just keep looking at this and going down the line, we get closer and closer. Okay,
but my question was, are we all willing to go to the town and the community knowing that we're doing the right projects? We're spending the money in the right places for the most part. Are we willing to go and say we want more money? And what is that number that everybody on this board is comfortable with? Is it $150,000 Is it $200,000 Is it $50,000
I think it's different for every line personally. And I think this number, we talk about right sizing the school budget all the time for the number of kids, right? This is about right sizing this budget for what we know we need every year going forward. $2.50 is the number, 300 is a makeup number. It's got an extra 50 in it. Well, hold on, hold on.
Two fifty is the number. Plus town, can do a 100, another 100. If you expect, if you say the road quality that we have today is acceptable. In other words, you can maintain a PCI of 62 pretty consistently with $250,000 worth of funding.
I think you take that number for your budget every year. Then you, I think we have to right size this budget now and then talk about bonding for the catch up. I really do. I think that's the correct one. Adrian, we could right size this budget by getting rid of the culverts. So if you wanna sit there and do it in that manner and I feel I wanna get rid of the culverts. I wanna drop this to two fifty, leave public works alone, put the fire department at 75, like we, you know, and I think that gets you there.
Well, if you're asking me, I'd rather you sit there and go to the community and say, okay, we're going to bond for the bridge, the culverts, everything that we have to do. We get Eric all this money all upfront. Tax for roadwork. Just keep the roadwork money.
And you're assuming you can pass the referendum question on binding.
So, but I mean, remember too that we're at this point twelve months away from starting to pay out significant dollars for bridge work. So the question is that, and we've signed a contract with the state
that we're gonna have a real hard time backing out of. And we agreed to that, or you agreed to that as a board. Eric, we're not backing out of it. We're just trying to find an alternative way to fund it. But you have a couple of different options here, Eric. You've got the Bunker Hill Bridge Fund and the Bridge and Culvert Fund, right? Yep. What do you have committed coming out of Bridge and Culvert right now? Right now, only about
roughly 10,000 in design work. Okay, you already spent 40 out of it or no, you put 60 in, you got 60, okay. So you're gonna spend 10, you'll have 50 leftover. What do you got coming out of the Bronker Hill Fund in the next twelve months before you hit the twelve month mark? Probably nothing,
probably. And then what are you gonna need for a payment at the twelve month mark?
Well, we're into construction. It looks like I had that question for the engineer. It depends on how fast they work. We could look at a payment request as high as about 400,000 realistically for that project But at any one
you've got, we know we have money in fund balance that we can use to pay that and then shuffle back into it. If we don't get a bonding okay from the town then we tax for it next year, we don't have a choice. And in the meantime, put out a fund balance. You can spend, you got 160 there and you'll have 50 leftover in the other. So give or take, you're gonna have at least 200 and whatever we have leftover at the end of this year, ask the board of finance to transfer into that.
Okay, Adrian, how about we think about doing this? How about we think about putting a specific taxing line for culverts and bridge work? When the community sits there and we break it down, we just give it to them straight out. These are items that we need to either do this way or we have to come back to you and we have to bond. Does it make sense? So you take 1 mil. 1 mil for Bridge and Culver. Yeah.
You put it as a separate line item and you just say, Hey, listen, these are things that have not been done, they need to get done, we've got to do them. We're going to either do it this way and if you don't want to do that, then because in reality, those are the two items in my mind that are pushing our town budget over its threshold. You're right, we should find an alternative way to finance them. But why not just go back to the community and say, Listen, to do these bridges and to do this work, we're going to have to sit there and do a one mil annual bridge assessment. It's honest, it's telling them what it is, it's being really clear. And then if they say no to that, Adrian, then our issue is, okay, we have to bond for this. And then you go to the community and go, listen, this is how we tried to do it. You said no.
The board of finance okay with that, you could do it that way, borrow a lot of your fund balance and then pay it back every year as you go forward. Because like next year you'd get 1 mil that would take care of this one but when you hit the next bridge, you don't have enough. So you'd have to borrow from fund and then pay back from there. I mean, honestly what I anticipated doing Real
quick, Eric, before you get into that though. And the auditor said that's okay. And if you write it into your town budget, if you write it up that way you're clean and they're okay with it. The state's okay with it. It doesn't affect your bond rating because you know where the money's coming from. But you have to line item it basically the way you're suggesting. It's just an alternative because when I look at this I think that's a great idea but what does everybody else think? Jeff, Scott, Paula.
I think we should be bonding for bridges, the large culverts. We're gonna have Long Hill Bridge too, you guys are forgetting about that.
Have Long Hill, Bunker Hill. We're not forgetting about it. Well, what do you think of Jeff's idea about putting a 1 mil tax specifically for this? I think it's fine. Yeah, I'm in favor of that. For bridges and culverts? Yeah.
And Eric, it's basically taking your budget and just trying to the operations of the community and the town would be flat. I mean, personally, I don't believe. I think we should try to do more, but okay, we'd be flat. But we'd still have the $300,000 in there for roadwork. We'd still have the money in there for tree work and we'd take the two twenty out and we'd actually be increasing that because isn't one mil, what is one mil right now? Two seventy one. $2.71. So we'd be putting more money aside for bridges and culverts. Jeff Murray, what do you think?
I think it's a good idea. I don't I don't want to put all I don't want to put all our eggs in one basket hoping that we're to pass the bond.
That's really my concern is that if we don't pass if we strip all this out and we don't pass a bond next year you know we're coming up with some way to generate an extra $240,000 just to do the Bunker Hill Bridge and oh look we still got five culverts to do, you know? I don't think the community,
I mean, I don't think that if it's explained correctly, I don't think the community will reject that. What you'd say in the meeting is that if you happen to not want to do this and you reject this, we are coming back to you with a bonding package because we have to get these things done. There's not a lot of options. Eric, I know you know this better than anybody. You're going to have to do this work. Or you just start closing roads. Yeah. That takes care of your bridge and culvert,
that takes care of those two line items. But we're still looking for a mill for the school and a mill for the town side give or take, Well,
hopefully the school and hopefully Ram sit there and do some additional work and reduce our costs.
And the board of finance reiterates our position I to think realistically your best case scenario with the school is they probably end up coming down about another 100 ks because the one they've got give or take 150 ish of contractual increases. Well,
yeah, but on the other hand, Adrian, they have very small class sizes and they have some other issues. Well, that's what I'm saying. They could cut but they've decided not to. Well, I think if they send that forward, I think the voters need to decide what's You're lying on it. Adrian, let me speak for a minute. The voters need to decide do they need to spend money on schools and 10 kids in a kindergarten class or do they want roadwork done? So that gets you $100.
And I think most people in this town realize our roads are in very poor condition and we need to spend money on roadwork. And I think asking one mill, look people in this town aren't going to be upset spending money wisely. And that's what we're doing. We're spending money wisely. We're not spending it foolishly. I'm not disagreeing with any of that but I think it's unrealistic
to believe that the school number is gonna get zeroed out. That's all I'm saying.
I think the voters are gonna have something to say for that because like I just said, they're spending money. What we're putting that money into roadwork, there's smart spending and there's foolish spending. I think there's some foolish spending going on at AES and I think the voters understand. I agree with you. I mean, 50,000
for air conditioning and a 100,000 for that extra teacher in kindergarten, I totally agree. But even if you take those two items out, you're still a $100,000 up.
You're still looking at 0.4 of a mill. And there's still tuition tuition tweaks they can do and there's efficiencies they can find the preschool which was another $72,000 they had in their budget. Okay. So those efficiencies are there but they need to do the hard work and find those efficiencies. Okay expecting us to cut roadwork and things that really need to be done in this town is it's irresponsible on our part to let that pass. I'm not suggesting
we cut roadwork but I am suggesting that we talk realistically about what we're asking and then try to do a hail Mary
and try to put bonding up. I just don't see it. I honestly don't see it. Think- mean- Jeff, one thing, I don't look at bonding
as a Hail Mary. No, neither do look at bonding- Well, take it out, it's a Hail Mary. I look at bonding as a prudent use of our credit position and we should be taking advantage of it when it makes sense for the community and makes sense for the budget. We've never done it effectively other than in a school project. With
the bonding, we're going to be a year out anyway and we need this work I done agree.
I think if we put it to the voters in that manner, they can sit there and make their choice if they don't want to execute a one mill separate line item. It might be in some years, it might need to be two mill because we're in the middle of a big project.
That's how I think we go at it. Well, Jeff, I think realistically, and Eric, I think will back me up on this. The level of work that we can sustain and do one mil is about that. And that would carry us through this bridge, you then need it for the next bridge. And then we've got two other bridges that we're evaluating. And in the meantime, you've got the culvert. So I don't think it's gonna have needing to be more than that. And again, this goes back to what the auditor said we could do, which was as long as you know you have a line item for the funds coming in to replace, it's dedicated, you can borrow from the fund balance to smooth that out year over year.
Well, I understand what you're saying, but in my head, if we do Bunker Hill and Eric, Bunker Hill is slated for start when?
Next spring. Our goal is still to start that basically April of next year. April of next year. Okay.
You have a million dollars in liquid capital at any given time that you can pull out of there that doesn't affect anything. So you've got the money there to loan yourself and then pay back. Your Payback idea for what, a bond? No, so you can take money from the fund balance and then pay it back with his 1 mil tax. In other words, if you have a $500,000 bridging culvert year, we only have $2.71 coming in from the mill. You difference take from the fund balance and then you pay it back the next year.
It's smooth It will be in the hole. What's that? It will be in the hole. No, you're yourself back. You're not gonna have
I think what Jeff Murray and I are both in our heads going that voters have to approve that one every year. What happens when they don't approve that 1 mill and we're That's in the the logic. That's the mental game that you don't AJ, I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is You're saying you want to get it approved every year? Hey, if you tell me I could sit there and go to the community and say, the next ten years, we need a one mill bridge and culvert levy. That's what I'm get it approved one time. That's what I'm saying. If we can do that, then let's go. That's not how I was envisioning it. I was envisioning it as one year for this one and maybe next year I got to come back for two mills. But if we could sit there and say 10,000,000, if we can legally get that on board and get that passed, then I'm all for it. Because we could sit there and go to Eric, go, Eric, lay out the five bridges that you have to deal with, get a slideshow of all of the damage that's done to all of these culverts and everything else. Yeah, no problem. So
that's what you're thinking. That's not what I was thinking. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was a long term solution.
No, I'm all for the long term solution, but I was thinking that legally we'd have to go to the voters every year for the 1 mil. If we can get there and say it's 1 mil for the next ten years and we can legally do that, I'm all for it. I'll support that today. Okay.
Still, I mean, you may have to line item it every year but you factor it in as a
regular budget item, you know? The problem is, as you go to an annual budget meeting, somebody raises their hand and says, I wanna get rid of that 1 mil line item. No problem, we're gonna close that road.
Well, let's find out legally we can do it. Well, can legally do it. You just have to probably, if you agree to split it out, you split, you know what I mean? I know what you're saying. That's
what they did with the Bunker Hill Bridge as you remember. I mean the the of
setting these up as permanent funds was to figure out what your long term cost basis is for each of those cap those areas and just level funded every year. So once you've established that, you know, then you make each individual group live with it. And the only thing I think will go back down is I think the tree budget, you know, in three or four years, we're certainly not spending the same amount of money. We got to get through the ash die off and we got to do an initial canopy trim back. But at some point that's going to come down to
a more regular number.
But the rest of the stuff, it's not really going anywhere. And honestly, we've talked about in the past showing our residents where the money goes. So you can even split it out and do the same thing for paving.
Adrian, you said $2.71 was one bill? Yep. So that's gonna cover roadwork and culvert Not for 10 roadwork. No. That's what Jeff just said. What Jeff just said. Mean, that wouldn't even cover roadwork.
Are you saying me? Yes, you. I said we'd cover roadworks? No, I said road and culverts. Sorry. Bridge and culvert event.
This is just bridge and culvert, the one Hill 271?
Yep. Because you've got to do Long Hill, Bunker Hill, Missoula, every other culvert we have lined up. And if we get to a point where we don't need the money then. Well, we're evaluating
the bridge at the beginning of Lake Road there too, right?
Bridge at the beginning of Lake Road? The bridge is down there. Oh, okay. Yes, yes. I know which one you're talking about. I
mean, I am sure Eric could come up with $2,000,000 of bridge work that needs to get accomplished in the next ten to fifteen years. What do you think, Eric? Oh, I don't think there's any question about that.
Well, bigger number in some sense is actually gonna be the culverts because a lot of them are not gonna fall under matching funds or anything. That's the bigger issue.
Yeah, some of those we can argue that we get, we can argue for state match and get 50% of the funding. The problem with the state funding is that it adds a lot of our cost to do it too in that program but they pay for half. It's not like,
you know, it reduced their cost a little bit but it certainly doesn't reduce it by 50%. It triples the price and then they pay for half. I mean, that was the, when they were doing the last bridge, was flipping out because we were paying for our engineer to overlook, or the state was, we were paying for the federal engineer who was overlooking the state engineer who was overlooking our engineer. We paid for all three. Three engineers. It was absolutely ridiculous.
That's not the real of the conversation. Let's just stay on target. Jeff
and Jeff were squaring on this one. Let's go Adrian.
Look, it's not the roadwork here. It wasn't for that school budget, I think these line items in here would pass. I think this budget would pass. I think it's that line item for the school that's going to be the sticking point. Okay,
so I'm with you, The school has to do its job. School needs to I'm asking the Board of Finance to ask the AES Board of Education to do the same. Okay. So what I'm driving at here is really simply we're trying to look at our budget and our items. And if we're all in agreement, would like Eric to find out if we can sit there and make that request, Eric, a one mill request over ten years, get it approved one time, and have it be the way that the Tom moves forward for the bridges and the culverts. And then that way we can sit there and take those dollars out of this. And then the question is, do you want to cut anything else that's there? Do you want to cut, and it's really at the bottom of this,
the fund transfers. Do we want to make any other reductions? Do we want to reduce tree removal,
reduce the roadwork? I think I'd like to see tree removal drop down.
Okay, does anyone have a problem with dropping tree removal down $25,000 To 50, we drop it down to 50.
Right, do we wanna vote on it? Let's just vote on it. Adrian, is that your motion by motion quickly is Eric is that is that acceptable.
Yeah, that's fine I mean we can certainly live with that. Okay. Okay.
I mean, look up until last year, we never had more than $10,000 That's
why we got so far behind. It just one more question. What is roadwork one of your major complaints that you get into the town hall?
I would say yes on a day to day basis that's there's a lot of people that bitch about roadwork not bitching but road conditions.
All right. So the motion on the table is to reduce tree removal fund to $50,000 I'll second that.
All right. Any further discussion? No, no. All those in favor? Aye.
I would also make a motion to reduce the building maintenance fund from 60 to 45. Eric, do you see any issues with that?
I mean no honestly that's one of those things you know there's an enormous number of projects but just like culverts you adjust your burn rate based on what you have available spend I'll spend whatever you give me
Yeah buildings will buildings fall in disrepair like our roads do if we cut that. You mean more disrepair.
I said I just don't want to cut money foolishly if we have things that need it and you know we're gonna fall in a state of disrepair, we're gonna have to catch up with it just like we're doing a roadwork. It would be foolish to cut it. It would be.
No, I think I can live at 45,000. Okay. I don't think that's the end of the world. Okay.
The motion on the table is to reduce building maintenance fund by 40 to 45,000. I'll second.
Further discussion on that issue. You know that's one of those that I'm going to sit there and say I don't. I would rather not cut building maintenance I think for years and years and years, we have failed to try to upkeep our infrastructure and our buildings. So I don't necessarily, I mean, I know cutting the $15,000 sends a nice message, but I don't necessarily know that it does the right thing for the community.
I think realistically with all the other things that we have going on, it leaves enough money to work on multiple projects, whether it's the library chimney, the gutters over at public works, the gazebo, we can pick off a bunch of small things, smaller projects and we'll burn through that money. But again, as Eric said, it's the burn rate, right? So it gives us enough projects to work on but not so many that we're overwhelmed. And then next year, if we burn through that next year we have the same amount in there. We can look at doing the masonry possibly over at the Public Works Building.
Okay, Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? I'm opposed. So four of them. Okay. Anything else that we want to cut from the funds?
We didn't do it officially. I'd like to bring the fireworks equipment fund to 75,000.
You mean fire department, not fire department, sorry, department. That'd be a lot to spend on fireworks.
All right. The guard fire department equipment fund to 75. With the 33 they have in there that will give them enough to do the projects that we've talked about.
Okay, just someone who want a second, I'll second that. All right, further discussion on that? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Scott, you voted aye. Yes. Okay. Good to go. All right. So Eric, that's taking out how much money? 25 on the trees, 15 on the building maintenance. So we're at 40 and another 25, so 65,000? Correct. That gets us down to $9.25 for the transfers.
How much is this piece of equipment that the fire department wants? Like how much is it?
It's several things we're looking at. We're looking at a washer dryer unit. We're working at some gear.
No, no, no, the piece of equipment, the tanker or whatever
you wanna buy. All the gold for this. Yeah, rescue pumper, that's about ballpark $800.
Yeah, that's down, we're probably at least a couple years out from that. We're specking it now and then we're gonna look and see what it looks like. Maybe we talk about bonding that at some point or financing it but it's gonna end up replacing two pieces of equipment though. They're asking for one to replace two. You're never gonna get an interest rate as low as it is now again. I totally agree and that's why we asked them to spec it so that we can then go and look at what that finance number is. Then we'd be all set with them for twenty years, right? I mean, for truck equipment, I Big expenditures. Big expenditures, yes. Because they should have enough in the fund for their ambulance the next time it comes up. You say we were at Eric? 12 what? 12,925? Yes. Hang on. 65925.
So that brings our total depending if you look at minimum approval down to $12,000,008.83. What kind of mill mill increase is that?
Well, mean, all total we only dropped it about 65,000 so we dropped essentially what a quarter of a mil. Quarter. So we're about 3.2, 3.3 mills somewhere we were 3.1 I thought.
Yeah. So I'm according to mine based on your number worth 2.7 ish to 2.8. Yeah, under 2 certainly. You mean under three? I mean under three, sorry.
If you were to pop it into that total expenditure line item that would be your it'll adjust it.
Look, if we could get Ram to come down like they're talking and we could get the AES to come down, get it around 2%. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't pass. If we address the needed roadwork that we need. Well, it's not 2%. It's two mills. Sorry, I misspoke two mills.
Well, keep in mind, this is all hypothetical because the board of finance has their say as well. Correct.
All right, so does anyone really wanna keep going and is there any other transactions that we wanna make tonight?
Multi use building fund. Man, you're on a roll tonight, aren't you Adrian? What? We're doing our I'm trying to I think we need to talk about doing our job. This is part of our job, isn't it? Now, to be fair, what do we have in that currently? 450. 475. 450. Where is that line? Why am I missing it? It's 773. Actually, 447. Yep, I thought it more around 4 50. Yep.
We tapped a small amount of that to for furniture for the seniors,
remember? Yep. Okay, so we're gonna need probably 47 of that this year to go out and do take the design that we have looked at and turn it into, we need to do some survey work, we need to do some pre work. And hopefully we're coming back to the community
with something to work with here pretty quickly. And that's what I was thinking this year we budget that money for.
So you'd end up with, you spend the 47, you'd end up with $4.50. Correct. And
then what do you wanna do to come up with the rest of it? The big sales. We always say lots of big sales.
Well, I say bonding bonding bonding but it's just think we're going to have to for that. I think I think that's something that's something we've gone for. I think that's workable. Okay,
great. I think I think the people in town, I think the residents in town will vote for that. We bought it for the remaining amount.
Well, or your other option is since we're in this whole separate thing. If we put the 50 in this year and it gets approved, you'd still have $4.50. Correct. You could almost do it with a single one time 1 mil charge. You'd be pretty darn close, correct?
Without why I'd like to fund it this year so we don't get that fund down to 400,000. If we don't fund it this year, we're going to be down to right around that 400,000 mark. And then this and then that we're not going to be that's not going to be attainable.
I thought you and I were going to argue about this, but I actually think I would support that, Jeff. You. Wow, is this a Kumbaya moment? We have a circle.
Only the best friends. But when we start talking about, I think, do you know how the board of finance puts together a budget document to explain their budget? I think we should consider doing something similar as we present our budget to them. Well, that's why I wanna have that meeting so we can explain why we're doing what we're doing.
Okay, I think it's helpful that if we do that, let's have Amanda as we're going through doing the explanations with them, take the highlights so that it's highlighted out for them. So that when they get back into discussion, they can refer back to the document. Everyone okay with that? I think it's smart. Sure. Okay.
I'm good for tonight then if we want to mold this and make sure there's nothing else. When is our next meeting? Twenty third.
Okay. So we'll finalize this on the twenty third with what we have to get. We have to get left. We have to get through the personnel stuff, right? The rest of it.
So so in the budget they they gave I gave you each of the I color coded them. So all the ones that are red are the ones I think you really ought to review and make sure in some cases you agree with my decisions or their budgets where I didn't have all the information to make a good as you look at the budget, so I'll give you tomorrow or the next day, I'll give you the budget back with the revisions that we've made up so far, so that based on the decisions you've made so far, the mill rate calculations work, you know, and you have that to look at.
And then I would just ask that you review that and we can talk about it at the next one if we're not gonna do it now, which is reasonable. Okay. Where are we right now on the agenda Jeff?
We're over it. Was our last item. We have public speak. Okay. Eric, do you want to stop sharing the screen? Okay. So we're going to move to item four on the agenda, which is public speaking. I want to know if anyone wants to add any comments. So we'll start with Linda Fish. Are you still there? Okay. Nothing.
It took me a while to find the right button. It took a while to get to the mute button. All right, Diane Chokett.
Also I want to say is the more detail you can provide back as for the logic behind every line item and what we're doing for the Board of Finance, that would be great because it'll make our job easier.
Well, you were here can't you explain it for us? No I'm senior citizen now I'm too old. Get your COVID shot. I got another month. Okay. Joanne Ebert.
Just quickly Jeff I'm just hoping that you guys don't give up on keep pushing like you are the educational budgets because you guys are fair in your process of dissecting everything. It really is funds that they should be doing a little bit of the hard work too so I know it's frustrating it's frustrating for me I give a lot of my time to this stuff too and it doesn't seem like you know hopefully going forward we'll see some reductions there so that you guys can move with your money to the places that you want. I'm really big on the shared services thing that Jeff Murray brought up earlier I mean I have a lot of thoughts but I'm going to just keep it quick because I know it's a long day for all of you but even some of the special ed things it's only February and I know it's planning for the future and it takes a lot of the people at the top of the schools but it would be great to see if those three towns that fit together and maybe share some OT people some PT people you know down the line I know it can't happen overnight so
Okay all right I think we're good Amanda would you like to say anything?
I'm good but I actually I do have a question No questions.
When do you feel like the budget page on our website should go live? Should we wait until after the next meeting? Not until we push it to Board of Finance.
So after our Board of Finance meeting, you push it live. Okay, awesome. And Thank then Jeff Murray, just so she asked that question, I'm assuming that we try to have the meeting after the twenty third with the Board of Finance? Mean, next meeting shouldn't even be that long, hopefully not. We don't have any more presentations for the next meeting.
We should have better numbers from RAM hopefully by then too.
The next meeting is to push all of our numbers together to agree on everything and then schedule a meeting with the Board of Finance so that we can present it. That's it. Somebody want to make a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second.
Okay. All those in favor? Aye. See you guys later. Thank you for your discussion, gentlemen, ladies. See you. Cheers. Thank you. Bye bye.