Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen Special Meeting Budget Workshop
February 27, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I have faith in you.
We're gonna call to order the Board of Selectmen, special meeting budget workshop, for Thursday, February 23 at 07:07PM. We are 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. Okay. Public speak. Catherine Magaldi Lewis.
Hi, you're up. Hi. Okay. Could I get these please entered into the minutes, this little diddy here? Sure. Thank you. And I will send this to Kate. The Edc and pdc and pnz are once again appealing to the board of selectmen for a town planner. The 2015 pocd plan stated that Andover has a tremendous potential to define itself as a new unique place in the region. The town is interested in promoting a type of development that is sustainable environmentally friendly and preserves the town's rural landscape. Andover's current regulations do little to promote that type of a development, and if the town does nothing and keeps its regulations as they exist, the town will have to accept a cookie cutter type subdivisions and the ill effects of a commercial strip development along Route 6. The plan of conservation and development was accepted in 2015. That plan discussed the revitalization and development of Route 6 and the creation of a village center mixed use zone around the intersection of Route 6 and Long Hill Road. The regional economic development strategy and master plan study refers to us as historical Andover does not use that terminology for the surrounding towns. The study calls for a small network of local streets improved accessibility to trails and sidewalks
crossing improvements. And these improvements were also mentioned in the Yukon plans. And over needs to prepare for the future, and we're hoping that the Bos understands the importance of a planner in order for the town of Andover to develop. And that's it. Thank you. We just really, really are requesting and pleading, appealing to for a a planner so that we can move on with any of these plans. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you. Thank you. Joanne Eber. All set. I'm here to listen. Thanks. Okay.
I think we're all set. I think everybody else on the meeting is Jay, and Adrian is on the phone. So we're going to move on to item three, the budget workshop for fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four. Eric, you had sent us over some information on the major budget drivers. Would you like to sit there and talk about that, or what would you like to get done? Sure.
Let me just share my screen. So this was at the last meeting. You asked me for the first meeting to produce a list of what are the major things that are driving the budget this time around. So I'm going to go down in order, you can ask any questions you want. First thing is a grand list is up 2.4%. That means with the same mill rate, we could increase net spending 238,000 over current without increasing the mill rate. So things that affect revenue. There's been a lot less buildings and houses sold, and that really drives a lot of the fees that the town clerk's office takes in. So, we budgeted, we're going to assume next year's revenues for the town clerk's office are going to be about $30,000 lower than what we estimated in last year's budget. There is also less building going on than there was a year or two ago. So, we're gonna decrease estimate for a decrease in land use fees. And there, if you take the governor's budget that he proposed, that would net us a decrease in ECS funding of 63,000 over our current levels. And the last thing is, if you remember last year, we got a payment from the state of about $115,000.14000 dollars because of the difference between the mill rate cap for car tax and the mill rate for the previous year. But since we dropped the mill rate last year with the reval, we're now under the limit, which means we don't get any money in the state as rebates for the tax credit. So we're gonna lose 114 ks there.
The net is about $2.15 ks less in revenue expected this year, presuming all those things hold true. So changes in expenses. Biggest driver of that is education. The RAM budget's going to decrease a minimum of $450,000 and that is due to the decrease in our levy percentage. RAM was initially proposing a 4.75% budget increase, but my understanding is that they whittled that away down to something like 3% or 3.5%. But the $450,000 decrease is assuming their overall budget goes up 4.75%. So, may actually get more back. You know, the RAM budget may decrease more than 450,000. But that's the best number I have at this point. AES budget, I don't know. I put in 4.5% as a placeholder. I don't know whether that's high or low. I'm not sure they're far enough along in their process. So next thing up would be a look at the capital funds. And these are what I'm proposing. Increasing public works capital equipment 125 increasing the fire department to 100 which is 20 more than last year, but it's what I've been recommending for the last five years, four years. It just keeps getting cut every year. Building maintenance fund leave at 60,000, reduce the Bunker Hill Bridge replacement fund to zero level fund bridge and culvert fund and increase the pre fund a little bit. That's basically what I'm suggesting for capital. And Jay is on here, so we can probably spend a portion of this time. Talking about the. You know the roadwork fun The other thing that we may be short of is on the planet conservation and development implementation. Remember, we've been putting some money aside for this each year.
Got back the initial, we have the RFP for hiring a planner for the POCD. I think everybody that was at that patient and Scott, you can kind of back me up on that preferred a firm called Tai Chi, Tai Chi, don't ask me to pronounce it. So, we're going to have to negotiate with them a little bit because their their fee is, is definitely more than we had that banked for this. However, they also indicated that they would be interested in doing this as a combination of them doing the POCD and at the same time becoming the town's town planner and combining those two roles to lower our cost for the POCD.
So we're going to explore that a little bit. I don't know where that's going or whether that's even realistic. I'm just giving you a heads up on that. So, are the changes in capital fund. So, I'm proposing a net decrease in about $110,000 in capital funding. Personnel costs, the town clerk has requested a large increase to $67,000 And that's actually a board of finance decision technically because she's an elected official. But since she asked to put it in the budget, I'm letting you know. I'm recommending a 5% increase for the public work supervisor. The budget as it stands right now includes a temporary salary for temp help at public works of $22,000 I'm not really in favor of this.
We can certainly discuss that at length, if you so choose. There is some increased budgeted for overtime for snow removal. And the other thing I think you should do is because you don't know who's going to get elected next year for selectman, you probably should add back the first selectman salary for whoever the incoming official is. But again, that's up to you whether you want to do that or not. And the other thing that's really up in the air right now is the expenses based on voting. There's a whole series of bills at the Capitol right now for different variations of early voting. Some of them would require us to man the polling station for up to two weeks. We would spend a lot of money if we had to do that. So, know, until something comes through the legislature or the legislature coalesces along a single plan, it's very hard to tell what that effect is gonna have on the budget. We also are seeing, we're going to see a pretty significant increase in diesel costs just based on, you know, what we're locked in. There is an increase in what the youth services is asking for. I sent the board all the supporting document to that. And then beyond that, the changes I think we ought to consider would be, and that's why Jay's on here would be discussion of public works expenses, the small vehicle for senior transportation, town planner, putting money aside for museum improvements to satisfy SHPO. And I have one alternate source for that money if you want to discuss that, and then funding for the community garden. And that that's a real quick and dirty overview.
I'm happy to answer any questions on anything I've I've said or written here.
Eric, a couple questions on my end on your on your money related to capital. What is the the balance as of December 2022 for the fire engine fund? Zero?
No, honestly, I think I just forgot to look it up. It's definitely not zero.
Okay, so if you can find that one at some point in time, I'd like to know that. And then your total decrease in your capital funding is only $75,000 doing the math?
No. I think the total decrease, at least if I did the math right, was a 110,000. You're gonna have to relook at that. So I gotta relook at my math? Okay.
So so we have how much in the Bunker Hill Road bridge replacement fund? Some 400? 140,000 something like that $4.38. And and we're gonna use a 160 of it?
No. No. So in the end, when that bridge is completely done, we will not have spent any of that. However, even though we're not, we don't have to pay for the bridge, we have to pay the contractor. We have to have enough money to provide the when we get the bills, we have to pay the bills and then get reimbursed. So we looked at it and figured that there was gonna be somewhere between in our worst interval around 400 to $500,000 that we would potentially have to pay out to the contractor before we got reimbursed. So we're keeping the money there. It will get returned to the general fund, but not until we've completed that bridge and we'll immediately roll that money in and use that for the Long Hill Bridge.
Think think of it like a when you're building a house, the bank lets you take take draft, you know, draft amounts. It's kind of the same principle. You have to have the money there to take the draft to pay the bills. So Okay.
Just a side note, Eric. The draft budget you sent us is not is it was currently not working as a linked workbook, so it comes up blank on the main budget tab. I don't know if you can actually, at some point, send us that again. The mill rate calculations tabs and all the others work, but the main budget itself actually does not have is not populated with amounts.
Is everybody else having that problem? My copy works. I can certainly resend it.
Yeah, if you can resend it, I'll just, I'll manually print it this time or download it. I I had left it in there because it was working within the Excel format of the mail. But Graph budget, Adrian?
Yeah. So Eric had sent us. Yeah. Eric sent us on the sixth Right. Brand list, draft budget, account personnel costs, etcetera. Yeah. Mine were fine.
It did initially for me, but now it's saying that it is unlinked. So I think that's operator error.
Very much could be. If you could help me But I will send it to you again, and hopefully that will correct the situation. Thank you. No problem.
Do we wanna talk about any of our drivers at this point, Jeff? Or what's, what's your thoughts?
I was trying to look at something else on our information that went on. But, yes, we can look at our drivers. Actually, why don't we have Jay speak because he's on the meeting? Let's not waste his time. And, Jay, thank you very much for the invitation on Saturday. I will sit there and try to make it down after, little kid basketball. You come down in my sweatpants if you don't mind.
Yeah, okay. I suppose you can hear me now. Yeah, that'd be I know it's kind of short notice, but I figured to throw it in there and we can always do another one. Joanne Hebert would like to come, but she's not going to be able to make it. So anyway, we can do it again. All right, so what would you like to talk about? Roadwork? What we've proposed?
Yeah, I think you should kind of review, we should probably kind of review like where we're at and what we're talking about for the upcoming year. Then we'll talk about what we have for funding.
Okay. So basically I put together what I thought, you know, if we're going to try to do the similar things that we're doing right now, sections of road consisting of preservation, of the remaining portion of Long Hill, Skinner Hill, Wheeling, Pine Ridge, Shadlow, Dogwood, Woodfern, Hutchinson, Times Farm, and Old Coventry. Those roads, preservation, shimmonship, like we've done the past couple of years. The estimate on that, just for Chip Seal alone, approximately $220,000 $221,000 Then we get into what I figured, you know, I basically try to plan out a budget for a thousand ton of asphalt for shimming, and I'm going by a number of 110 per ton. I've asked around a little bit and at the time nobody could really give me a good number, whether we're going to be about the same as last year, a little above or low, so I went with 110. So that puts us 110,000 for asphalt labor for the contractor to put that down, that's another 97,000, almost 98. Total miles of the roads that we would be completing is about five and a half miles. Allotted some money in for Crack Seal at $40,000 Forgive me, I got a bunch of papers here. And centerline striping $25,000 in our, we'd have to be including some drainage work if we can get to that, which we are planning to do, that's one of the things that we want to, that's a must have, but we've got to replace stock that we used last year to the tune of about $43,000 for stock
material, catch basins, pipe, roadbed material, and other items that we need for that. And then we get to our other Items miscellaneous items are weather works contract 500 ton. Well, that's the roadbed material. And miscellaneous grass seed. And let's not forget our catch basin cleaning. So catch basin cleaning is going to be somewhere around 13,000 to $14,000 So all said and done, the things that I put in there amount to approximately $562,300
Jay, just because I'm trying to follow along, I'm having a little bit of trouble going through Do you have your your account sections? So if I go to public works, which is on Eric's budget for March.
Yeah, I sent Eric my spreadsheet. I'm not sure he made it. Let me see if I can bring it up. Bear with me a little bit.
So most of this money, Jeff, doesn't come out of the public works budget directly. It comes from two places. It comes from Towne Road and it comes from the public works road improvement fund. Yeah. So, are the money sources we pay for all the road work. Public works budget pays for the labor, you know, and the trucks and vehicles and equipment, but doesn't necessarily the roadwork itself gets paid for out of the permanent funds and the town aid road funds. The problem is, is that there's no way the math adds up because we spent too much money last year. We got a lot done and, you know, we got the reclaimed road sections done, which was huge. But we don't have you just flat out don't have the money unless we increase that budget pretty considerably, which is why I put Jeff up or Jay on to discuss because either there's got to be a fairly big increase in the budget or we're going to scale back this year. Because last year we sacrifice doing a lot of the little things we do in a normal year. Didn't line stripe anything. We didn't clean catch basins. We didn't do any guardrails. So we took out three of our ongoing maintenance expenses completely to fund what we could do with chip seal
and also pay for the reclaim and repaid sections. So the question is really what approach we wanna take for this upcoming year.
And then from my end, I'd say, I gotta go back to your other issue, Eric, which is your drivers.
Did did you did you and Jay, did you and Eric or Eric you know, the proposed budget that we see in front of us doesn't include this number. So Yeah. If you're talking about it and wanting it, why don't we have that as a proposed number so that we have something to talk about?
Exactly. Well, what number do you want me to put in there? I mean, honestly, would hold the number personally, I would hold the number we have, and I would just accept the fact that we're going to do an awful lot of drainage work this year, but we're not going to do much shimming and chip sealing like we've been doing, you know, the past three or four years. That's my proposal.
But Jay obviously disagrees because he'd like to get a lot more done. Well, no, not necessarily because we have talked about this and I wanted to bring that up, but potentially because of the, if we try to maintain what we're, what we've currently done in the past couple of years, You know, we got to bring back some of the other things, catch basin cleaning, and I didn't even put in any guardrails this year. But, know, the long and short of it is, the past couple of years we've been pretty fortunate to start with a pretty good balance in the springtime to start our construction season and we pretty much used everything up that we had last year. The
Town Aid Road account in the first year we started was pretty hefty. Last year, started only, I think we started with only half the amount and then the next part, the next payment came in and it kept us going, you know, and things kind of fell into place. Think this year, we're counting that well, we would be counting on the town aid road. You know, we would be in that same predicament or you know this it may not be there right away. So we have to be very careful on what we're doing and you know how much money we're spending until we get something back in those accounts again.
So, you know, Eric and I talked about this quite a bit. We have the potential of Eric, you talked to him about that trip grant? Yeah, I mean there's Getting some other getting some other work done. So, we're that might come to play in, know, and we'll have the ability of receiving those funds, but we don't know that right away. So, we definitely got to do some drainage work in a long handy and we can prepare things to open up the road, you know, and do some of the drainage. I appreciate,
Jay, I appreciate the Jay, hang time on and do the repairs, but you know, and and fix the road again. But if we if we do so much in the chip seal end of it, the preservation, try to do that at the same time, we may not have enough funding as it stands right now. Not even We close wouldn't have it, we wouldn't have enough funding. So we're, you know, we're just thinking about scaling back and do some of those, you know, that list of roads that I gave you, we can hold off on some of those and do the most important ones and still have the ability to move forward with the same plan you know
in the following year. What were the things Jay that you didn't get to do last year?
Can I I stop this for one second? Unless I'm missing something Eric you have about $523,000 of potential revenue coming in from Town Aid Road and the Roadwork Fund. Am I wrong there?
That's not Right? Your So so how much more do you need? Like, what's the number? Because we're having all this conversation, but it's hypothetical.
Yeah. Just tell me. I mean, what I wanna know is you got $5.23. What are you doing with $5.23? And then if that's not good enough, then this board needs to sit there and come back and say, okay. We're gonna put another $100,000.
Well, he told us we do it $5.23. What I'm what I think we need to know is, you know, he's broken it down, you know, 300 there, 300 you know? But, you know, with 44,000 on this and 13,000 on that, we need to know what the next number is. So if you're saying you're $5.23, that's the number, if not enough total between Town Aid Road and our $330,000 of proposed funding, then what is the number? Until we know the number, we can't support it or not support it.
I guess the one question. Adrian, I agree, but I'm after one thing. Did I see anything written down that I missed related to this Jay? Did you send us something that said this is what I'd like to do?
Not to you specifically. Eric and I talked about this and I have, you know, sent it to him. And then we discussed, you know, what we thought would be probably the So filling in on the information of where we came to that, you know, because it's really hard If for
we go with the roads that we potentially had proposed to do, then we're going to have to increase. But if we scale back a little bit, which we can do,
and it depends on How much is the increase? That's the question. How much is the increase? It's not even
that Adrian. I get that they want to do an increase, but if we don't see it in a piece of paper, it's really hard. If you don't see it, send it to us so that we understand what you're expecting. Then we can go through it like Scott and Jeff Murray know the roads tremendously. Adrian understands what it's going to cost. We can sit there and say, okay, you got to cut back 10% or we can find $200,000 I mean, but if it's not on a piece of paper, if you're just talking to us, it's hard for me. So but I see you have $523,000 of potential revenue that's outside of your budget, Eric. Right? Am I am I wrong with that number? No. You're not wrong with that number.
Okay. But but, Jay, you just broke that down and told us, you know, what that's going to. Right? So we need that we need that breakdown in writing, I think, would help so that we can all look at it. But more importantly, we need to know if we said to you, tell us what we need to do. Not the not the scaled down version of, well, we're gonna be we're not gonna do I don't want us as selectmen to fall into the habit of reducing spending and then it costing us later. Right? So if you're telling us that you can still do the drainage work that needs to be done, and you're gonna either contract out the things that we wouldn't do anyways, the chip ceiling, whatever, whatever, And there's a number attached to that to do the list of roads that you need to do to stay on plan. Eric had a Eric had a plan to do the roads, I think what was it? Every thirty years or something, Eric. We come back to every road at least once. Right? Do it for complete redo. But you guys had to put a plan together. You told us what you needed to do it, and we've been trying to get there funding wise. So whatever it is that we need funding wise to stay on plan,
Tell us that number at this point. If it's gone up because of the cost of asphalt, if it's gone up because of other items, whatever. But we didn't know what the number is. He said Adrian, 562. No. That's that's doesn't get us there. That's not that's not his total number. That's what that's what's taking stuff out. Am I correct, Jay?
No. I had I had listed 562. The only thing that, like I said, I didn't put any guardrails in because I
didn't think it would So five be able 60, to get but 562 is the magic number or is 562 the reduced number? No. 560. I got 5623. So call it 5625.
Is that is that the doing everything we need to do number, or is that the reduced number? Does that not get us all the chip ceiling and stuff that we needed? And with you guys doing roadwork and scaling back as you just discussed, or does that get so that's the scaled back version. Doesn't have guard rails.
It They'll be saying that. You know what? Let's Wait. Let wait a week. We'll come back to you in writing because this is this is getting kinda pointless, I think. I mean, all I was telling you is we're gonna do less roadwork this year. Gonna That's all I was telling you. With with my proposed budget, we're gonna get in less roadwork than we've done in years past, period.
But are we doing where does that fall in line with your plan to get the roads in order? That's the question. Right? I mean, you spent a ton of time on that, Eric, and we appreciated that. Right. And and and the answer, Adrian, really, is that it depends
because several of those roads we're planning on chip sealing. If we get the trip grant, we're going to be reclaiming. So we can wait an extra year and not chip seal because we're reclaiming them anyway. But if we don't get the grant, you know, that's going to put us a couple miles of road behind. So I can't give you that answer because that answer is predicated on funding that we may or may not get.
When will you know about the sense? When will you know about that funding? Not for months.
Would it also make sense, though, to put that money in there, even if you say, hey. We're gonna hold off right now, and we're gonna end up doing that as our spring project in '24. We wanna have the money in there to do it. Right? And if we get the trip grant, then we'll shift those funds for other resources within public works, whether it's doing more guardrails, whatever, whatever, you know.
Hey, I have to add all that to that number, Gabe, the guardrails. Now I wanna know if you're if you're now getting the trip grant, are you still gonna work on HENDY?
Yeah, no, we're still planning to work on Hendi and to Eric's point, Long Hill and Skinner, we would be holding off on, you know, the shim and chip because of that chip trip grant. But we have some work, but we've got to do drainage work on Skinner Hill as well.
But here's the thing, and this is just my take on it, other selectmen may think differently. I don't want us to get in the habit of underfunding public works and assuming that we're gonna get a grant. And then maybe we get the grant this year, but maybe we don't get it next year. Or maybe we don't get the grant, and then next year, we need even more money in the fund. And instead of going to the town stocks and saying, you know, we need one or 2%, well, we now we need four or five. It makes more sense for us to consistently, levelly fund what we actually need. Yeah. Fund it. Fund it. Let us fund it. Let us fund it. And if you get the trip grant, then that's a bonus. If you don't get the trip grant, then we actually have the money we need besides the trip. You know? And that way, the townsfolk aren't getting hit in two years or three years when there's no grant money there. They it could be that same number if it stays the same or whatever. But let's fund this stuff correctly.
I I'll agree and I'll disagree. I'm just gonna sit there and tell you. You should sit there and put forth a list of of everything Jay that you know needs to be done Eric's already done it, it should be listed out and go listen this is what we have to spend and and, you know, even if it's $10,000,000 and you laid it all out it's $10,000,000 the town has to spend over a certain period of time. And then if we can only fund 600,000, we pick the top top items that make up $600,000, and that's what we fund. Maybe because we don't have unlimited resources.
No. I I totally agree with you, Jeff. And and I guess my point is, you know, if we get the trip grant, then maybe it allows us to accelerate catching up some of those town roads, you know? Correct. But you got you got you got $10,000,000
worth of of potential projects that Jay and Eric can identify. And we can only pay for 600,000 this year.
No, I get that. But like, but like, but like Scott said, we need guardrails in there. Need the, you know, you need to put in all the things we need, not just, well, we're scale it back because we're hoping we get a grant. So The stuff that you left out last year has to go first this year.
Well, you would assume that they you would assume they would move up the priority list because Right. From last year is now number one. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And then Eric's just keeps delaying everything out down the bottom and saying we still have to do all this. Yep. And that's fine. Yep. But I agree 100%. I honestly believe that people in this town need to know a total number. Is what it should take to get our infrastructure to the point that we would be comfortable or Eric would be comfortable with. Because if Eric's comfortable with it and they are comfortable with it, then I'd be comfortable with it. But you guys could come back and say, it's going to cost us $10,000,000 I think the people in town should know it's $10,000,000. We as select people can only push forth to the board of finance $500,000. That's our problem. Right. Right? Right.
You know, and and we we made a promise as a group to try to honest with residents about what the real budget is to run this town and not try to cut it back to the point where you you know, we start putting things on the back burner. So give us the opportunity to do that. Now listen. We're not saying that board of finance isn't gonna cut that back, but but if we send the correct number to the board of finance and they cut it back, then that's on them. We've done our due diligence. You know?
And and, Jay, you should at least be comfortable that we're trying to, you're telling us the reality, this is what I see needs to be done, even if you're estimating and guessing at your total costs, you're at least putting them on a piece of paper saying these are things that we have to consider getting done, you know, Eric, we'll get them all done year one. You're not going to get them all done year one, but we got to have the list. And we should see a piece of paper.
Jay, from a management point of view, it's better for you to do that with us and tell us what you really need. And then if we don't fund you, you you can throw it back in our face and say, hey. I wanted to get that stuff done. You didn't fund it. You know? The townspeople can't come back on you and say, why wasn't this road done? Well, I asked for that road. Didn't get funded.
Know? We will always, as a group, say we wanna fund a 100% of it. It won't happen. It won't happen. Yeah. Just just reality. It'll get to a town meeting and get voted down. Okay, we try, but we're showing everybody there's a $10,000,000 backlog. It's the same thing that Eric's got going on with culverts. He's gonna come back to the community and say, I've got $5,000,000 of culverts to do or $10,000,000 of culverts to do, And either we get it from the state or we get it from some grant funding or we have to start paying for it because that's what's gonna happen. Yep.
But don't just keep this on a piece of paper. Don't sit there and just talk to us because that that's not gonna work. Yeah.
Help us help you. Eric says a week. We'll talk about it in a week. You know?
K. Good enough. Jay, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Jay.
So now, Eric, I have I mean, I I got your budget up, all your tabs and your calculations, and I'm going to tell everybody here I detest that the Social Security and the benefits aren't in each individual budget line item. And I know it's a treasurer issue and it's a state issue, but you can't tell all the total expenses for a department. I hate that. So if you look at each individual
tab, like if you looked at the administrator tab or the town clerk tab, all that is in the budget there. It just doesn't roll up into the main budget. So you can see every dime of that. I got it. Okay. By department. Go, Eric. Go, Eric. Go go, Cheryl. Yeah. That's a Cheryl thing, not an Eric thing. Okay.
Alright. Are you happy now are you happy now, Jeff? No. I am not because it throws off the front So
now I I have to do separate calculations on the other tabs. Thank you, Eric. So, you know, it's like one of those things. Here are the real costs, but here's what we put on the front of the budget. So good luck. Alright. So You can't make everybody happy all the time. No. So what so, Eric, where where do you wanna go next? What do you want us to focus on?
I wanna know what you want me to focus on. I mean, I gave you a rough draft with the best information I have today. Obviously, a lot of these numbers, we don't have final numbers yet, and we're not getting getting them, you know, in the next couple weeks because it involves outside agencies and we don't control their, you know, what they're charging. But this is a rough, I mean, you know, kind of the good thing is the budget I pushed to you shows for the first time in quite a while, a mill rate reduction overall for the residents. You know, so what I'm saying is that you have some wiggle room And it just depends on what your priorities are for spending and I don't I don't do a good job of guessing you know what your priorities are so I'd rather have you guys all tell me what your spending priorities are, and then we bake it into the budget.
We'll have to have a conversation because, I mean, we we really need to sit there. And if you re going to sit there and say, What are our priorities? I m sitting there looking at our priorities are infrastructure issues. So the only question is, do we as a group have any I mean if I told you what I would like to do, I would like to sit there and hire somebody for a rec coordinator that would sit there and do senior services and do all transportation and would do recreational activities for the youth. I mean, those are that's something that I think the town sorely needs and should have, but that's going to cost $60,000 probably after all the benefits are paid and everything else is done. So is that gonna happen? Maybe not. But I I just don't I mean, I I mean, maybe it's this year, Eric, and maybe it's I
think we got to sit there and go, okay, is there anything that's really out of line that's moving that you're projecting to ask us for? And then, yeah, then maybe next week all of us come back if there's something we wanna see done. I mean, the bottom line on Eric's numbers is, you know, he's he's slightly down. I mean, this thing doesn't calculate the way I would wanna do it. You're down $200,000.
Yeah. But we also don't have guardrails. So I think that, you know, affecting those numbers is is a thing. I think the other thing we need to talk about is the salary for the for the treasurer's office. You know, we had some follow-up with a couple of the a couple of the of new candidates that went really well. But in talking to them, you know, we're definitely low. We're gonna have a very hard time selling that job at the pace at the at the dollar number that we're at. I mean, that's just the reality.
And that's what I was trying to get at our last meeting, Adrian.
Yeah. You are 100% correct. It's just, you know, we probably need to be thinking closer to $30 an hour for that accounting position. I mean, you know and and that's asking people to take a pay cut and accept the they're they're and some of them are willing to do it. We thought we have two two candidates that are willing to take a pay cut from where they are to come into that job because of flexibility and a reduced schedule, but, you know, they're not willing to come all the way down to where we're at. You know? So
Well, what's the difference in that? That's not what is that? $12,000?
I didn't work out the totals for the year, but, basically, they're they're asking somewhere closer to 30 for that position an hour.
What what the 30 at the one of those peep persons, Adrian?
Yeah. Actually, both of them both of them came up pretty close to that number. So Alright. So We have thought we we need to do follow-up interviews next week, obviously. But what what to come out to, Jeff, you were gonna say? $9,000. K.
I mean, if you're gonna find somebody good, absolutely. Why not?
Both of them had fifteen plus both of them had fifteen plus years of experience. So Okay.
So that department, as it's currently budgeted, is is down. So well, oh, Adrian, why don't you do this and Eric, why don't you do this? Why don't you negotiate with your top candidate and tell us what the number needs to be?
Yeah. We're gonna do secondary interviews next week. Joanna's gonna reach out to Eric and try to schedule so we can go second round. We're trying to be a little quicker about reaching out to people given how poorly people showed up previously.
And it sounds like, Adrian, that we're pretty on board with that. So Okay. Well, that helps.
Why don't we talk about Eric's wants, the four things that he wanted. See if we can get past that.
Okay. That's a good idea. Eric, do you want to jump in?
Sure. I mean, the four ones I put down there, know, the the first priority in truth for me is the small vehicle for senior transportation. Because I think there's, that's really the only good way we're going to satisfy and be able to keep one handicapped accessible vehicle available for the school. And I think the overall cost to the town, you know, it's definitely beneficial to the town to do that. You know, the school is paying through the nose to provide that transportation service right now. And presuming they can actually get a driver. You know, which is still somewhat of a, an issue, you know, that brings, that saves the school a lot of money, which saves taxpayers money. Plus, I think it's a much more efficient way for us to be running senior transportation.
Thought we were supposed to or I thought we were all fairly much in agreement that we were gonna try to get it out of this year's budget. Agreed.
Mean, Eric, from my standpoint, I'm with you. So number one priority, do it, and let's try to fund it out of this year. And I sent Eric a list of all the vehicles that I thought
were acceptable for use. And I offered if he wants to go and take an afternoon and do some test drives and we can compare vehicles, I'd be willing to do that as well. Wow, that's awesome, Jeff. Yeah. So number one priority done. Let's Hey, Don.
It. So your intention is not to budget for this, but to take it out of this year's budget somehow? If we can,
we take it out of this year's budget. If we can, we fund it out of next year's budget. Is that an agreement? Everybody have a problem with that?
But you're not gonna know whether you can take it out of this year's budget until probably June. Okay, then we're mean, not budget. We're gonna budget it for next year.
And and and what will end up happening is if it if it's not needed, we'll do something else with it, or we won't spend it.
K? Is there a is there a reason that you're talking June? Because in the past, we've had a pretty good idea of any encumbered certainly by by mid April. What's changed?
What's got me nervous, Adrian, is revenue, not expense. Okay. That's what I don't have a real good handle on right now. I mean, know we're gonna be $30.35 k down for expense, but I don't know more than that. Okay. That that's a fair answer.
Number two is a town planner. I mean, I do think that's a You know, it makes sense to have a part time planner for the town. I'm still hoping Jed and I are meeting with the primary candidate that was selected by the RFP review panel. We're going to try to see whether we can work out some kind of an agreement for what it would look like financially to hire somebody as the planner enroll in doing the plan of conservation and development as part of their job as the town planner and see what that looks like financially. I don't know how that's going to play out. I'm hoping we can do that reasonably enough that it's not a huge, it's less than the $30,000 budget. You know, and we offset it with the money that's already in the budget for that's already saved for POC. But I just don't know more than that. The museum improvements,
the Eric, reality is
I don't want to cut you off, but I want to go back. I want to vote on the planner. I want to get that out of our hair. I want everybody to be on board or not on board. You wanna vote, Jeff, on it? Make a motion.
I motion to put it into the budget for 2024, dollars 30,000 for a part time planner.
I thought somebody was gonna be speaking to us about this in future budget meetings so that we can kind of hear about that before we made a decision?
I tried to bill. I'm still trying to line up Bill Warner. He just hasn't replied to me yet on what his available date is.
Reason why I'm saying Scott, I think I'm I know you're hot to track for this, but I think it's a little premature tonight because we were all expecting to have a presentation and kind of gather our thoughts about that. I don't know if anybody else feels the same.
Well, if somebody's gonna come give us a presentation, we may as well try to get the presentation. Right? I mean, I've spoken to Jed about this multiple times, and I understand that he puts listen, everybody that is volunteering their time for the town puts more time in and I'm sure planning and zoning puts extra time in. So personally, Scott, don't have a problem funding the town planner, my concern is the town planner comes with a plan and we we can't implement any of it because we can't find the funding. But if the consensus is that we need a town planner to sit there and and assist us to plan, then, okay, let's try. I don't have a problem with it. Scott, I would ask you if we're gonna have a presentation, why don't we wait till that meeting?
Eric, what's the chance of us getting him?
Pretty good. I mean, I've reached out to him. He initially said he was gonna do it. He just hasn't gotten back to me. I gave him a list of when all the board of select and budget meetings dates and said, hey, do you have an availability for that to speak to the board? If he can't, I'm going to turn around and get the planner from Tai Chi to do the same with the board. You know, so I will get you an experienced down planner that will come and talk to you. I just don't know what meeting they're going to be available at yet.
Yeah, I'd be comfortable with listening to a presentation because I think we're gonna have a bunch of residents asking us, what do we need a town planner for? And I think if we're all educated on it would probably help it would probably help the cause if if that's something we wanna move forward with.
K. And and, Scott, I think, well, I'll speak for myself. I am in support of a town planner if, well, because everybody who is involved in it, Eric to Jed to you, are in favor of it. I am sixty forty, but I definitely wanna know that we're gonna do something with it. They don't wanna just throw $30,000
away. Not it's not even so much as being a town planner. To implement the affordable housing plans, we're gonna need a person that can spend a bunch of hours. There's not gonna be a committee that's gonna have that's gonna have enough time or to devote that much time like Jed does to even enact the new affordable housing.
And and that Aren't we aren't we exempt from that? Aren't we exempt from that because of our size? No. We are not.
No. How in the heck are we supposed to do that? By getting a town planner. Oh, boy. I mean, my my point go ahead.
Once you hear once once you hear these guys talk about the affordable housing plan, you'll understand it. And I didn't understand it either, Adrian, until I heard Bill Warner talk. And then I understood, wow, that's going to be way too much for any individual or any committee to be able to devote that much time to. Well, my take on mandate.
Mandated. It's you know, and if you don't do it, then you're you're not gonna get grants.
Yeah. My my take on it wasn't even so much from the it's not really from the affordable housing point of view. My my take on it is if you look at towns that have invested money long term to kind of to to to be able to grow, the ones that have been successful funded town cleaners for years. And it the problem is it's a very slow process. I think that the town needs to understand that. I mean Exactly. You look at if you look at Woolimantic, they spent thirty years planning and planning and planning, and it looked like nothing. Nothing. And I can tell you having been a resident, you know, before I came here that in the in the, you know, the ten years I was there, I saw it slowly, like, incrementally. And then all of a sudden, in the last four years, all of their plans came together finally.
And after thirty years, if you drive down Main Street and you drive through town, you see this unbelievable transformation. It's literally breathtaking how different it is now than it was when I moved to Womantic nearly twenty years ago before I came here. But they spent a lot of years with incremental incremental movement, getting rid of a blight issue, you know, going after, you know, Main Street landlords that weren't weren't weren't playing along and and and wanting to improve their properties. I mean, they, you know, they they went after things one little piece at a time and and planned out how they wanted the town, and now they're finally there. But the town folk are gonna have to hear it from someone else and and a professional, you know, and and and see how it is a slow laborious process, but when you finally get there, it can be pretty amazing. So I don't know if our town will support it for that long, but it may take that long. So we might as well give them a shot and go from there. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So so let's talk to that guy. Okay.
Like I said, I will I will get you a planner that will be willing to discuss that with you. Okay. Item three, Eric.
So this is the one that kind of annoys me, but semi doesn't. And that is that we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to fork over some money to satisfy SHPO to be able to get the other damn building built, the senior transportation garage. You know, that's kind of the bottom line with that. And there's two possibilities for it. Possibility number one is that we just take it out of the general building maintenance fund. And we take about half of the money in the general building maintenance fund, and we use that on the museum. And we just slow down on other projects for the upcoming year. Or option number two is we fund it separately as a distinct funding source for that project. And no, I don't have better numbers for it. I just have not had time to really engage with them, but didn't figure out what our full costs are going to be for.
Can that those improvements on after the building at 12 centers on or has to be done before we have.
We have a couple years, right. Can do it afterward,
but we have to agree to it in writing and have a funding source identified to do it before they'll sign off on.
Sign off on what? Sign off on I mean, we have the funding for the new building. Correct?
Yes and no. Yes, we have the funding, but the funding comes from the state. And so the state's requirement on any state funding is that we have to we have to satisfy SHPO before we're allowed to do the project. So, before that old building comes down, you know, we have to have an agreement and ship with SHPO in place for tearing down a historic structure because some of your predecessors on the board of selectmen many moons ago pushed to make that whole region a historic district. So now we're living with the ramifications of that decision.
Okay. We have to commit that funding to get $275,000 to build a garage for senior transportation. It's a worthwhile
trade. Done. But the other thing to keep in mind is, look, the Andover Museum needs that money anyway. I mean, door cells are all completely rotted out. So, I mean, any way you cut it, we've got to put the money in at some point. So, you know, we're essentially funding a bunch of renovations that we know we should be doing anyway.
Correct. And they that group who's done all of that work down there has done a phenomenal job. That building looks so much better than it did two years ago. Yep. They've done a great job. So I have zero problem saying we should fund $30,000 for renovation and that regardless of the building being built, but the reality is we need to fund $30,000 to get the building built. Correct. Done. Okay. Let's go to the next one.
Community garden organization would like a small fund to fund the work they're doing with the community gardens.
Okay. If you're gonna do this one if you're gonna do this one, you better sit there and do money for the $106.70 fifth anniversary group.
So I The anniversary will be over before that budget year starts.
Well, then give them some money out of our current contingency or something because you know?
Okay. How much do you wanna make a motion to to give 170 fifth? You know, $3,000 out of the contingency fund, and we'll cut them a check for for this year's operation.
Let's do that at our next regularly scheduled meeting. But if we're gonna do that if we're gonna do this, I'm just telling you, and I I have no problem with you doing this one. I mean, they've done a nice job. Their building looks great.
Yeah, they did a I good job fixing that was surprised. As far as I was concerned, that thing was completely wrecked and I would have just destroyed it with public works and hauled it to the transfer station. And they managed to fix it up completely so kudos to them for that. And the thing is,
you know, I've been meeting with those guys down there with Grace and Mr. Ballard and they want to move all that stuff every bit of the wood and move it to a different location. I got to call into Todd Lazard to have him come down and talk most about wood location for the new community garden, and they're gonna redo it, and Jeff Ballard's going to, you know, he's come up with a plan to do it out of pressure treated wood, and we just need to find a new place for them. And thing is that they have to have this money fairly soon because the growing season. Right.
Okay. So, can't be funding for next year. I mean, a fund a a fund would be good, but we need funding for them so they can apply this stuff for this year. Okay. Alright.
So in a general sense, are we I mean, of Eric's four items right now, we would be more apt to fund than not fund. Is that an accurate statement across everybody? Yep. Yes. Jeff? Yes. Alright. That's a begrudging yes.
Well, I'm just I'm just concerned about the community garden and the construction coming up and how we're gonna work the logistics of that.
Trying to we're trying to work it all out, Jeff. It's been a Okay. Long a long journey. And has the location been?
No, because we have to find out what impact the construction is gonna have on that area down there and how far the construction is gonna be and where they where a new home could be for it but it's it's gonna take Mr. Lessard to go down there and tell us where where the edge of his construction is gonna be so that we can find a new place for it.
Can I ask a general question? And, Scott, you and Jeff, I know Adrian dropped off, but what is the potential timing on construction of the community center? What would you like to what would that committee what's your timeline, your timeframe? I would say,
correct me if I'm wrong, Eric, but I would say, you know, by the summer we would like to be building, correct?
I would like to be building by the summer. Right. I'd like to be building around June 1. Right. Yeah. I just don't know whether that's realistic. We don't have a final design yet. You know? And then the question is, does it work out with the school? You know,
just, sit there and say it's all, it's all, I mean the bigger issues you really have is you don't have a final design. Yep. And you don't have a final contract,
right? Right, we need final design, final contract, special permit application of planning and zoning, figure on a couple of months to go through planning and zoning.
Okay, Eric if at all possible can you sit there and get with Scott and Jeff and Adrian and put a timeline together on a piece of paper so I can understand it because I'm under the impression, Scott, that we would want to start building in the summer if we can get everything in place. Because if we can do that then that information can be out there in the public and we can sit there and say this is our goal is to start as soon as possible because if our goal would be, I mean we should all want to do it during the summer when the school is out of session, if at all possible, at least the beginning phases of this, you know.
Well, what I would say is we do the ground construction. I mean, so if you think about the things that have to occur during that season, you know, you're not pouring, you know, you're, you're not doing the asphalt, you're not redoing the driveway late in the fall or over the winter. So, absolute is to get that done during the paving season. And I would try to get all groundwork done for that kind of as soon as possible. Because if you could get all that done in the summer, so you're just now constructing a building itself, then that's not particularly invasive and that shouldn't be too bothersome to the school. Okay. That would be my guess. And close are we to getting a final plan and all the extras that we needed?
Well, we got at least two more meetings to go. So, that's about another two weeks, a meeting next week and a meeting the week after. And then the building committee is going to have to meet because there's going to be some, you know, because we're keeping this under 1,000,000. So, there's going to have to be some compromises made and some decisions are going to have to be made about what the priorities are. So, what they're giving us essentially is a list of all the options and what the cost basis is. The committee, because that's not really a me decision, the committee then comes back and says, these are the things we absolutely want. These will do really late in the process if it looks like we can afford them kind of thing. Does that make sense? Yep.
So if we can get that out there and get that information, you know, just a tentative timeline so that everybody can understand that our goal is to get those items done, like you said, Eric, in the summer, I think that will help everybody with what we need to get accomplished.
And to answer your question, Jeff, I was on the last meeting I attended, and I think it's pretty close. I think there's just a few little tweaks here and there that was discussed at the last meeting. So I think in the next two weeks, I think it's probably gonna be pretty close. Right, Eric? You agree?
Yeah, I think by the next two weeks, because the architect's basically designing this on the fly. The hard part is, you know, the architect's doing the design and then Todd's got to figure out the cost basis for each of the options. And we've thrown a bunch of options at them. So we're making them work for their design fee, that's for sure.
Okay. Alright. So we can do that. That's great. So, Eric, your four your four items are? Pretty positive.
Yes. We're we're not negative. We haven't shot you down on any of your items.
So you want them included in the budget at this point?
Is that what you're saying? Include them in the budget, and and the biggest thing is figure out if we can do the car or not. Yeah. The vehicle. Sorry. Not the car. The van. Whatever it is. Yep. And I still think we should get an electric, mister Murray, but that's just me.
Alright. No comment. So find out a timeline find out a timeline for the the town planner so we can get that one done. And does anyone else have any issues that that we need to? We're we're twenty minutes over our timeline. Is there anything that we wanna prepare have Eric prepare for our next meeting, or is there anything that we want to see done differently?
Maybe he he could add the Social Security to the No.
He he's he's not going to. He's fine. I could I could do the math. But we'll Eric, if there's any updates to this are you doing any updates to what you presented to us already?
So, I have a few that I haven't incorporated in the budget. The trying to think since when did I send it to you, so I probably have an updated version of that relative to what you have, But the only major things that have changed would be the estimates from the state of what the state and that's just running off of the governor's proposed budget, which may or may not be realistic.
Okay. So so by, when's our next meeting? Monday? Yes. Send us an update of this tomorrow so that we can we can now have your updated spreadsheet, and we can all sit there and look at what we need to do. That way we can have the most updated information. We can all go through it and then have a little bit of time to prepare before our meeting. I think we go through some of the departments next time and try to tick some of those things off and say, We're good with where you're at. Try to get some of these things as if we voted on them in different segments of the budget so we can at least clear them off. So Will you and Jay have your stuff by, Monday, Eric? I don't know. K. Well
then we're down to March 6 for the next one.
Okay. Well, send us the updated budget, Eric, and then you can tell us what you want one: to go over next week. And if you don't want to do Jay next week, then we do Jay the following. Okay. Very Even though Jay has to get done because he's the biggest piece of the whole budget, The biggest piece of the budget that we are in charge. Right. Right. Okay. Anybody else have anything they wanna discuss tonight? Motion to adjourn. Second.
All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Thank you very much. Aye. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I forgot. That was very good, Jeff. Joanne Ebert, would you like to say anything?
I would. It's very, very quick. I wouldn't let it go, but thank you. Just because you guys talked about the new account associate that you're going be hiring, the good news when you are doing budgeting or thinking about it because it's going to be a thirty hour position even if you raise it a little bit like you're all thinking about with the two qualified candidates hopefully it should come in less. That's all I just wanted to bring that up when you figure out the yearly salary it would be less than the forty hour position even if you raise it but that's for you all to decide down the line.
Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Jeff Murray has already made a motion, and Scott has seconded the adjournment, so I think we're all good. All right. Alright. Thank you very much. Okay. Peace. See you guys.