Meeting transcript
BOF Regular Meeting
September 27, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
What? You're live. Thank you. Alright.
The next item is changes or additions to the agenda. Does anybody have any changes or additions to the agenda? Have one, actually. I couldn't get to the agenda item number four.
He did say depending on if you would like, he will send you the presentation now if you wanna review it now, or you can wait. And he said, if you do schedule a time, know, just tell him and then, you know, he'll make it. Okay.
Other things? No. Thank you. K. I would like to make one proposal for an addition under new business. We would add item six e, which would be discussion of the proposed budget of transcripts. Would like to make that motion that will be made that change to the agenda?
Anybody for a second? I'll second the motion. Okay. Any discussion?
K. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So that's an example of what I'm all about with the budget already. But
I think that one should get passed back to the building maintenance fund because that should have been a one time repair to the Public Works garage. Okay.
The first specific, we're 26 that I think are one. We would be significantly over I think we're gonna end up running because it's gonna be over on the corporate body accounts. We have a low cost vendor right now, but they are horrendous. They're frankly just not cleaning the there's nothing amount that they're not cleaning. So porta potties are too tough. And we we're gonna have to switch to another vendor if all vendors are more expensive. So we will run over on that. I think we're probably gonna go over pest control at the transfer station too because we are rather liable to eliminate the rat infestation inside the transfer station. You know, we thought we had it solved near where the compactors were, and we went to move the tires in the building, and that building was still in the grass. So we've just displayed the little blue building. So now we're gonna be trying to pay some out of there too. So those two things I know we're gonna be over. We're gonna be a little over overall on our bill to MECOG for animal control. That is because they after the budget was over, they came out with their final agreement to the towns, and the percentage was greater than what they initially told the towns to anticipate. So it's not a big none of those are really significant numbers, but they will be things that at year end will be over, you know, in total budget. The other issue we're running into is the senior budgeting program is considerably underfunded at this point. The board of selectmen has basically decided to let that ride and make it aware that that was running a pretty significant deficit.
Guess right, their cost per meal has gone up a lot. And before we the town funding portion was only about a thousand dollars, the total budget, and the rest was fundraising. You know, when that worked, we were paying $5.06, $7 a million. And it's not definitely when we're paying, like, $14 a year.
Yeah. No. That's reasonable. No. You for that. Any any other issues?
Those are I mean, right now, we're doing pretty well financially. You know, this year, we're we seem to be tracking the projections pretty well. Okay. That is is for this year's budget. So what that is is in the normal cycle of our work, we do kind of three things. We hire a company called Abbey Construction. They give us the best day rate Mhmm. For paving group. Yeah. We pay them by the day to shim our roads, but we buy the asphalt directly. So they truck it, and they put it down, but we pay ADN directly for the asphalt as opposed to doing it with them as we have more control doing that. And because we buy directly and all the asphalt plants basically have to meet the whatever the state bid spec price is, You
know, the only the only difference we do is in a lot of our shedding. We use what's called virgin asphalt, and virgin asphalt is asphalt but does not have recycled asphalt product in it. Mhmm. We do that because it's a little stickier. So we pay a little bit more than state contract price, which is just for maturity, which is 10 to 20% VAT in it. But it's a very minor adjustment.
You know, all the asphalt plants chart basically the same amount because whoever got the state bid, they didn't completely use them. So and it's all based on what the liquid asphalt commodity price is. So there's an escalator between the price of liquid asphalt and what's charged per ton for regular paving asphalt. So
the probably more information if you want. No. I I just wanted to work on it. It's cycle, so it was a big
Right. Yep. So you'll see two big trunks pretty regularly. One is ADN. Yeah. We use we use them because they're fairly close, and then you want the hottest material delivered to site that you can get. So we use sometimes we use maintenance material. Sometimes we use ADN. Okay. They're basically interchangeable. And then you'll see some fairly large bills come through for Abbey Construction. That's the contractor that does the actual Any
other questions about the checkers today? Okay. If we'll go ahead and see if this is the update on the ADS.
Alright. So as you all know, both the board of elected and board of finance made decisions that if the school turned over the cost of the paving top to the upper block, both courts would agree to sub that work out to the contractor that they selected, which was constantly being as of last Friday, they cut the check to the tenant. So I received that Friday. They cut a check for a $120,000, which was the amount they originally covered, but was less than the amount we requested, which is $125,000. But only, like, a little bit, and there was enough money in that fund to cover the estimated cost from Constantine. So I don't have to worry about that. So I reached out, and then they informed me that since they paid the town, it was now my project, which that's fine. I can deal with that. So I reached out to the paving contractor, Bill Constantine, and said, hey. Give me a time and date. And I got our materials testing lab lined up to do the pavement analysis, and I let our town engineer know we need somebody on-site as soon as that was approved. Constantine got back to me Monday and basically said, look, you know, we have too much work already. We can't do the work we have now. We put the asphalt plant truck down. I'm not gonna sign a contract because I don't think I can get any of the So
well, I I mean, you know, that process took way too long to to wind through. You know, what I'm looking at now is what is plan b. The school's concern is that they can't use the pot because that they feel it's too uneven to be safe. Now I don't think that lot is less even than the lower lot, but their board has decided they're not gonna use it until it is addressed. So in the short term, reached out to Indus, who's a contractor of use for crack sealing and also something called mastic sealing. And we're meeting with them tomorrow on-site and presuming they can do the work in the fall before they shut down for the winter. What we will do is we will address the cracks, hopefully, with a product called mastic, which works a little better than standard crack sealer. It addresses much wider cracks, and we will
create ramps around the basin because they said basins are a trip hazard. Is it a real problem or is it perceived? You know, that's up to the eye of the beholder, but presuming we can get the contract to do it, we will address that this fall on an interim basis. And then the question would be back to the board of finance and the board of education. I asked the board ed that in light of the fact that we are not going to be able to pay that this fall, ask them whether they still want to deposit a $122,000 worth of payments. We're more than happy to put it in the capital fund. But if they choose not to, I mean, we're happy to take a check up and then they can figure out what else to do with it.
Because there's some possibility that they can put that money in their 2% on lapse rate of two. That's up to them. And I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to cash the check since we were cashing it to do a particular project. If they do go ahead and put the fund, but they do say go ahead and check cash it, you know, both boards have already agreed to put it in that capital fund for that project. My suggestion would be we go to RFP sometime this winter for aiding project as soon as the asphalt plant's open, and it can be done in the spring. And that would give us the time to go to a formal RFP, which would satisfy your actual policy because we all know what we're doing doesn't really confirm and inform for our existing policies. So but that's up to you. You can either decide to go with the original contractor that they've already lined up or, you know, or direct me to go to RFP. The second question is, what do we do in The UK? Just to be clear, though, that's that's dependent on what the order then decides.
I think Jerry's called the special meeting to recommend that question and get get an answer back to someone how they'd like to see. So once we have that Correct. I guess we'll we'll pick it up as needed.
Right. And and the second question is going to be if we do the temporary work the upper parking lot, who's paying for that? You can say that's additional funding. Because that will you know, I'm guessing that's gonna be an 8,000 or so dollar bill if we bring in a contractor to do the mass of the ceiling. We might be able to do some of that less expensively if we have public works do the work. We just use what's called class 12 asphalt, which is basically asphalt that has sand but no rock in it. It's not as slow, but it tapers to a fine point.
And we can probably address some of the problems, but I don't know whether we can do it to an extent that does feel comfortable to use parking lot. So those are unknowns. Hopefully, I'll have a better estimate on cost, and I suspect it's gonna have to be a decision, you know, by the board of selecting whether they wanna spend money on that or who pays. Know, that may hinge on on some other things, you know, we talk about later. I
I'm just I thought this was was there a communication for
I mean, I don't even know what they So what the board of Slackman stipulated to me was that they agreed that I could sign a contract under two conditions. One, the board of finance gave us for the board of education to bring them under the pound. And two, constantly produced a contract that met the technical requirements of the pound. I still have never seen a contract that does Once they kind of informed me that it is now my partner, I reached out to Constantine directly and said, hey. You know, I gave them the technical specs again. I sent an email and said, hey. I can sign this today. They can give you a permit Monday, but it's gotta include this. You know? And then I followed up Monday, and he said, glad that we can't get through this year. We would still do it in the spring if you guys don't want. So that's kind of where we're at with that. And then I looked and said, okay. Given that, what is plan b, and what can we do right now to get that lot back open for the winter? Because that's gonna be a pain in the butt. Mhmm. Not utilizing it for the rest of the fall spraying it to look at treatment. So that's where we're at. Yeah.
Because I I know I've listened to all the meetings, and this is yeah. So I think this helped me a lot. But yeah. And we're basically doing the.
Town put off that strip seal contractor because we were ready to go on to line one, and they still hadn't gotten in by September 15. And we basically said, look. You're too late in the year. This gypsy was much more temperature sensitive. Mhmm. And we punted on that contract for the year, which was big. And it's unfortunate for the town because we really needed to do it. And it's gonna put us to the hole by not doing. But, you know most degree. Exactly. Right. Right. We we cannot put the chip seal down now in these temperatures. It just does not we don't get a good product. K.
Other questions on that? K. I already know. I get to move on to agenda item six. New business. Six a is the twenty twenty four board finance meeting schedule. So, obviously, we have we have to decide at night. But if everyone's basically keeping the Wednesday, the Wednesday, I heard everyone, if that works for everybody, we can just make that decision now and go with it. And then I'll I'll get that as. We can we can check that out. Does anybody have any other thoughts or
does that work? No. It's basically these two messages for me. So I'm always Yeah. I think since then. Yeah.
So that would be the January 17. That would be February 21. That would be March 20.
This year, we have been doing it before. You're right. Now Yeah. You wanna measure Yeah. You said it. Said it.
So I made the error. Yours was broad enough. Okay. So then that would be no. No. I responded. It's funny because I already have it in my schedule. I'm assuming there's meeting. So it'd be the twenty fourth through the January 28. February 27. The twenty seventh. November is the twentieth. Sorry. November is the twentieth. Thank
you. And December will be the eighteenth. Work for everyone? Mhmm. K. Do we have any other further discussion? Did somebody second the motion? Five seconds? Further discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? And hearing none, that passes. Thank you. Okay. Next item is the 6B, the future Board of Finance meeting venue. So I brought this up as a possible board discussion about whether we want to meet in person or whether we would like to go back to meeting virtually. Virtually is certainly a lot more convenient, but after we had that problem last week with the last month with the basically pornography, we inserted into the meeting appropriately. I did not feel comfortable having to be virtually, so we can figure out what it is. We can do more of a play that. How can we figure it out?
More It's not clear because it's not like people just joined the meeting with passcode, and then we're saying things. We had that happen at one time where the kids got out during a meeting. Right. You can control that through a waiting room like things, so that you can only let people in once they've kind of embedded and get them out again. That's complicated, but it can be done, but that probably would not have prevented this. We don't know how it happened. It wasn't like somebody joined the meeting and was showing something on camera, like on the stage. We had some Yeah. Packed Zoom meeting. And that was very uncomfortable. So there really wasn't anything we could do about it. If if we decided before the virtual meetings, then I would say that we need to come up with a protocol of what we're gonna do if that would happen again. Because I don't know that we can just end a meeting. We have we officially never end a meeting. It's a little awkward from We look. Yeah. From a, yeah, from a procedural legal standpoint
if we don't actually complete the meeting and follow our agenda. So I think that what we would have to do is come up with some kind of protocol that we either start a new meeting, but then we have a you know, you know, I don't know if it's probably at this next step on or if we meet in person the next week, and we, you know, to continue the meeting. So there's something like that that has to be decided.
I mean, when we we have that, we all basically drew the view. We all like to have, like, regional network.
Was not a participant at the meeting. They never showed up on the list of participants. Right. Right. So that was somebody in the Zoom system, you know, you know, there's no way to shut out somebody who's
Are you talking about Zoom meetings or in person meetings? Zoom. Okay. Because when we used to have in person meetings, we had fifteen, twenty people just about every time we had a meeting. Really? It must have a while. Well, I know when I first started going, the old town hall, the parking lot would be full, and you wouldn't be able to find a seat for the town for the board of finance. That must be when I first started. When was that the old town or the old fire department?
Okay. They couldn't find a parking spot. I'm dating myself. I used to I used to show up. We had a fun appearance is Not different. We have option that we could be possible, you know, that would increase security would be to do a hybrid meeting and say, okay. We're gonna meet in person, but let us know we can't make it. And we can have one or two people remote if we have to and just don't share the remote contact information. Because the problem is is that if we announce them as, you know, it was new or hybrid meetings, we have an obligation to put that out on the on the world, you know, and you cannot prevent somebody from logging in until they cause a back to the problem.
I would like to have a procedure. If something like that happens, I mean, that's, like, shut down immediately, give them a certain amount of
How do you odds did it work out in your meeting? Come back in tomorrow, but I'll give you the walk in and you can watch a recording of tonight's meeting, and you can decide how well it works. We've done a bunch of other meetings. I attend probably two hybrid meetings a week. Well Okay. Probably with Prague. We do
I'm comfortable with it because I do a lot of meetings this way. Uh-huh. But that doesn't mean you all like it and not everyone does. Really. It's really your. That's what I mean. That's not.
I think the only thing is when we say hybrid meeting, we gain nothing. Correct. We do it the way they are proposing, which is that we only hand that out to people who specifically have challenges getting to the the town. I'm not, you know, I'm not a huge fan of that. I just think it complicates things significantly. Is this meeting the room, Courtney?
I thought Zoom. It's been three years. Forget it. I'm done. I know. I was basically done June 31 in my mind. Let me change the election.
That would be good. And I was asking you about that. But alright. So, you know, I think if somebody wants me to make a motion, I, you know, I think that's fine. I I don't know that we got some clear Luis, how do you feel about it? I make a motion to Yeah. I I think that's good.
That's fine. Mean, my personal needs, but either they have bigger issue.
One. There is a certain ease of it for me to just pop them on. Like
6c is the Board of Finance Chair position policy and procedures. So I brought this up. If you remember that I think we talked about we didn't really have a good policy protocol for determining who would be in the chair position, who would be in the co chair position, and then how we would rotate that. We decided it was a good idea that we should revisit that and what's the law, but I don't think we really set a solid policy or protocol around that. So what I would propose, first of all, is that we need a protocol or policy around it. And second of all, what I would suggest is that we make it eagerly one or two year term. And I don't feel strongly about whichever, but it is something you kind of learn as you go along. So maybe two years makes sense. And I would also suggest that we do the vote in December with the December or January meeting because that would be the closest meeting or the first meeting following
the general election. Does it feel like it's gonna change in November? To me, it makes sense to do it in the subsequent meetings.
So it also makes some change very big for the budget. Exactly. I can get to years, but it doesn't.
Yeah. Yeah. Don't it's not the only way make this is just, like, the venue. We can if somebody if I wanna change it from here, we can be Yeah. Mean, it's the chair, the design on December from the meeting. One second. I'll second that. I'm. Can
I make a suggestion that we do the same thing with the vice chair? Well, that's I'm I agree with that. It was my extension. So I mean, the Yeah.
Should it be January? Because then you have no. Then you wouldn't want a new person. I was gonna say, you what she say wouldn't start till January 1, the new people. Yeah.
But then you want some new people. But, yeah, you want you want the new people on there. Oh, is it? The office. It's starting to take off. Is that correct?
So that one where I can't tell you off the top of my head because of the weirdness in our election schedule. Some offices take place as of November 20. Others are January for the end of the week. So that's The
town website says that the termites spiders November 20 So to restate your motion, as I understand it, you're moving that the board adopt the policy that we were both on the chair and vice chair positions every two years effective the December meeting. Yep. And the the first of these votes will take place this year. Correct.
The only actually, the only question I'm at is we as it comes out.
Okay. Further discussion? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? No. No. Passes. Thank you very much. Okay. The next one is a discussion of the the discussion on discrepancies
with the capital fund. I'm I'm obviously aware of the issue, but it's kind of her to talk to Cheryl. And we have certain options, and you probably wanna make decisions on how we speak because we're gonna need that.
How that transpired? Was that inaccurate inaccurate supports were provided to a court for that to order is 2223. Current this is all Right. Right. No. I haven't seen it.
They have a lot of numbers. They were getting the wrong numbers. As
of 07/01/2022. 2022, then we based the budget off of that, off of the unaudited numbers. Basically, happened is nobody ever went back into the software. And subtracted. And we subtracted. We bought it into numbers. So that that problem actually
was from a year before that. Well, that's what I'm getting. I've been over the. And it's right. This January or as you can see right here, the
board of finance motion to close that account and return that to the general fund, like, four years ago. I never got Oh, that's previous creditors to actively close the fund and move the money to the general. So but you certainly can, but we always intended we've known for a bunch of years that we're not using that fund, and that can be reassigned to other priorities or rolled back into the general fund. The reason why it never got caught for not rolling back into the year of the general fund is the year that that would have occurred. We ran enough of a surplus that even even though we budgeted to put that money back into the general fund in that year, we ran enough of a surplus that didn't run negative. And didn't notice. Not that you didn't notice it, but that it didn't cause us an audit problem. You know? So that money is very definitely available. The second pool of money that would be available that we should transfer again also is the money that is assigned to the Times Farm Bridge Fund because that project was completed in 2017. All the final paperwork for the closeout has been been saved for at least eighteen months at this point. The problem is the state is running so far behind the closing out bridge projects that, you know, having a bridge that should have been closed out six years ago and hasn't been is kind of hard for the course of the state right now. But I do not see any
No. Okay. So it's a 105,000 still in that fund. There to my knowledge, there is no potential that we're going to need to extend any of that money. So that is another source that could be repurposed to cover this if that was the choice. So our options are basically to assign a short public works for this fiscal year and to basically say, okay. Well, we thought you had 410,000 we're putting into it. We're actually putting in 200,000. Work did get completed. So whatever short is that
That's good. Right. So right. But I'm saying in this 15 Right. So that option number one is to just basically say, okay. This year, we'll consider a prepay for work we did last year. The second thing is automatic funds with one of the capital funds that we know we were gonna repurpose to other things. Now I will tell you that it was it has been my intention to recommend that the library club get repurposed to our color club. Because the reality is we had around $350,000 in our color club. We know sometime in about eighteen months, we're gonna be looking at a bill probably around $700,000.
That would have made up a significant cover control. So that's why we're giving you what kind of the options are to address this. The other option is to go to a town meeting, say, may I help up, and ask for an additional appropriation to travel public works. So those are kind of the three things that could happen. But you're the board of finance, and ultimately, it's your choice to decide how you wanna proceed. Where does your.
I have a question. Are we under any obligation to tell the town?
Alright. I just wanna say the library was under the impression that money years ago got put into a building fund, maintenance building fund. So the library doesn't feel bad about saying, I don't know, our roof is leaking. This is because they figured the money's in the building fund and it wasn't
all put into the building fund. The building fund was initialized for $520,000 on the town. It just for whatever reason, the treasurer at the time never actually closed out that account. We got rid of it even though, you know, we've talked about it for years. Yeah. Well, I'm very glad it fine.
Is that a good question? We had this quarter, and then I'll be looking back at what? $1.72.
Right. Ship sailing was a $155,000. Okay. So we did not do this fall. Right. Now that the ideal time to do that is mid June between mid June and August for a dinner. It's like like like like Well, which has always been the problem. So what Yeah. Yeah. Ordinarily, what we do is prior to July 1, we shim all the roads, so we get we take all the money we already have because that takes a month six weeks to address all the problems. And then so July 1, we are ready to go, and we tell the chip seal contractor, we want you in as soon as we can after July 1. And, frankly, I'm incredibly pissed that they put us off this year. However, it's been a horrific year for roadwork across the board because of the weather. And the other complicating factor is both Vermont and New York state. Yeah. Yeah. Lot of the big companies in which we use. We have a company called Gorman.
I mean, when I was up in Vermont, there was
Right? But if you were already in the. Certainly, it's not out of control or if you can move back, and it leads over to the next escalate, and then we deal we could deal with it, you know, part of this.
Maybe that's too complicated. Maybe the way it is to just fund the haul
Everybody understand that? Okay. Do we have any further discussion? Perhaps it is. Yeah.
Well, I think Cheryl made the point earlier that one of the things that each department is is the along with their outdated budgets. And
we have accurate information so that there there will not be Yeah. So we do this. We're actually extending that expenditure without necessarily explicit authorization. Yeah. It's not a huge amount, but it's not a significant either. And I think that I'm willing to vote on this motion. It doesn't make me overly comfortable, but I do think that it's an investment we move forward to get this vote for it is
that we have a lot of work to do, and then I know that people also want their Right. It is Right. We didn't you know? It's not You're This is not right. We're we're only.
Was that the 2223 there was a twenty seven time period pain on a '26. It happens on repairs and other things like that. Instead of budgeting for 27 pays, it was budgeted for 26. I'm
sorry. So I think you like questions. Rob is asking is the year over year, last year, understanding that it's unbottled. Yeah. You know, we spent less than we took in as a town. Yes. Right? The net balance is somewhere around, what, around 240,000 something in that trying to get a budget as close to reality as possible is that we recognize that a significant fraction in the the way that I am using will be over by the end of the year. Because when we put a project together and it's long before the actual year, there are too many unknowns, you know, and I can't predict within if you look at a lot of the transfers that we made, it's back when we referred back, they were for fairly small amounts of money. But we're not necessarily gonna just bump up all the individual line items to account for that so we don't run over except and we used to do and then return a half billion dollars at the end of the year back to the the general fund each year. So the goal is to be as close as possible, but then that does mean we're going to have an enormous number of individual transfers
Alright. So we'll get the the meeting minutes. So we'll go get the meeting minutes. So the meeting for July 19.
Mark, can I just ask before you do that? Do you still need Cheryl, or can you cut the finance status? No. I don't think Good. Anybody else who's trying
to put the more or less in the sale, I'll certainly say.
Just have a question. Is it possible sometime in the future to get the fund balances with our stuff so we can Yes. Would the library thing have been on there if we ask for the fund balances?
Five days, zero mandate from extension. That motion passes. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the administrative report. Eric, is everything in the talk so
far from Francois. Okay. I just wanna say a couple real quick things. The first is we got the $100,000 in funding from our legislative body for the Route three sixteen quarter study. Oh, it was fantastic. We submitted an RFP yesterday to hire a consultant to spend the money because we technically have to spend that by the live one. The goal of the study is to figure out how to get multi use pathway between here and the rail trail running loosely down Route 360. And today, myself and the traffic and planning staff for the Capital Regional Council and Government walked it on the ground. The reason I did that now prior to us getting the consultant is that eventually we're going to go back to the Capital Regional Council government to fund the actual construction of the project through a program called LAC. And so today, I walked the project with all the people that evaluate the solicitations when they get sent to them because I think it's important for them to see on the ground what the issues are, you know, so that someday when they get it in front of them with a on a piece of paper, they actually understand it at a visceral level. Mhmm. So that's one thing. And the second thing is I would just really like to thank Linda Fish for all her years of service on the board of finance. This is probably your last meeting
since you're not gonna be here at your next meeting. And the November meeting elections occur, and your replacement will be picked prior to the November meeting. So I would best like to say on my end Yes, sir. That
I've appreciated working with you, and I appreciate your commentary. And I wish you all the luck in the rest of your activities. Still coming, Yeah. Yep. Nice. That was the time you got it. Nice. Didn't
We didn't have. Alright. So no liaison reports. Anybody else?
No. However, at the CIP meeting before that, we did approve the purchase of the signer of our own public works. Okay. To replace the one loan motor, we do have that. We are using that currently. So that's that's working up pretty well. And it was kinda interesting. The one thing we realized is that we used our put a little blower on the new blower, and a little blower works much better than on the new one than the old one, which is kinda interesting. I'm not sure exactly why unless the fan speed is higher or something, but it seems to work. Overall, it works really well. The other thing we are probably gonna do is we are gonna probably they do make kits that basically you know, it's got a single wheel in front on each side. We're gonna go to double wheels and make the wheel base a little because Zach was using it, and he said it is a little unsteady mowing on, you know, So and then the new rubber cut mower is a lot wider than the old one. So the double wheel makes it easy.
So if they had unexpended funds at the end of the year, they could come to the board of finance request that that be rolled into this nonlapting account. And what happened is that the Board of Finance over a couple of years did not approve it. And I would say that the main reason that they did not get approved is because they really didn't provide the rationale for what it would be used for. And I think, honestly, they had provided a rationale and said, look, we're going to need HVAC equipment in six months or eight months. We expect if there had been an effort to identify what the purpose of that would have been, I think, if there would have been some definitely on the bus. And I think at that point, then the school became a little spooked that they weren't ever gonna be able to do that, that the board was gonna turn back in town. So and so then that kind of engendered the idea that, you know what? We better send it while we gather this. We're not gonna we're not gonna let us keep it.
So if I can interject here, there's there's advantages and disadvantages to using the 2% versus the standalone capital fund. Mhmm. So one of the advantages of the 2% from the source perspective is that they do control that money. Right. And so I asked the audit in mind whether that money could be spent for capital projects. And he said, yes. It is no question. So, technically, it is still the town's role to to do capital projects as opposed to standard repair and maintenance, which is completely on that. So the disadvantage of the 2% nonlaxial account is we can't budget to put money in every year like we do other capital funds. If we have a capital fund established for the school, it would make sense to put a nominal budget amount in every year like we do with the other capital funds. And to me, what would make sense is make the school give you an actual capital plan, which we have never gotten or not for many years. And so the town knows, look. Here over the next ten years of the capital expenses we think we're going to Right. Entail. And, therefore, we are to get kids, we put back to number of dollars in a capital fund for that. That capital fund is still under your control, essentially, even though you've designated it for the school,
you know, you still have to authorize expenditures from that. The difference between two percent amount of maxing is they have more control over that. The downside is they can request the town the town money into it. It can only come from unexpended funds and pull me up to 2%. And, you know, is this a $122,000 project or $130,000 project? They would be capped this year and putting about $80,000 in the 2% on that same account because it's 2% of their $4,000,000 budget.
Those are the kind of pluses and minuses. And I think it's really worth having a conversation with the board of ed onto what money should be put where and
what the parameters we're spending in it. So think there, if you think about it, you don't wanna overload budget,
I need to address policy I'd rather write know, between that would be between you and the board that pay your that governs the use of fund, and that provides clarity