Meeting transcript
BOF ANNUAL BUDGET MEETING Special Meeting
May 6, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Call the meeting to order at 07:00. This is the Don Van Dover's annual Board of Finance budget presentation. Looks like we have just about everybody here. I think we're in good shape. Rob here also? You? I see Dave Hewitt
Louise, Diane, Linda. Okay, Rob, Curtis here. Okay, well let's go ahead and get started. I'm gonna call go ahead and call to order. Okay, good. Okay,
I'd like to welcome everybody. I know this is a little unusual. Mean, I see some familiar faces, so I know a lot of you have already participated in these types of meetings before. It's a little unusual, a little awkward, and not what any of us would prefer to have done. But I do want to welcome you and thank you for attending. This is an important part of our process, and really the only method we have right now other than written methods to help the residents understand the budget process, the proposed budget, and what we're trying to do, and how we're going to go through this and get feedback on what you'd like to see changed, if anything. A couple of things I'd like to say before we get started, just some just kind of review the agenda and talk about some housekeeping items. This is likely to be and it's busy meeting. It's a little bit different than what we would normally do. Agenda is such that we're going to call to order. We've got a budget overview and presentation. Eric's going to primarily give that presentation. I think he could give it at his sleep by now, although the numbers seem to change on him every time he talks. But he's very cognizant, familiar with all of the agenda items, and is kind of best poised to give the overview there, and the rest of us on the Board of Finance may
provide some input as we go along. When we get to the public speak portion of the meeting, we would like to have this in sort of a question and answer format, although if you would just like to make a brief comment, that would be fine as well. The moderator, Amanda, will call on each of you in turn, and that's how we're going to handle that. And there are two different public speak opportunities on the agenda, so for some reason you don't have anything to say the first time, you'll get a chance at the very end. A couple of housekeeping items. Please make sure that you keep your mic muted if you're not speaking during the public presentation, and the commander will try to control that best as she can. When she calls on you, if she calls on you, you may need to unmute your own mic if you've muted it on your own. Okay.
I would also ask, kind of based on an experience previously, that you avoid using the chat function in Zoom. It is there, but it's not it shouldn't really be part of the meeting. If you're having technical difficulty and you want a chat message to Amanda or somebody, that would be fine, but otherwise it can be a little distracting to the participants, and I don't think they're recorded with the meeting that goes on the Internet for the records and for other people to view, and so I think it's important that we avoid that and just use the speaking portion of the meeting. Okay.
The purpose of this meeting is to really prevent a high level view of the budget and to get the public's feedback. We're not going to go into a lot of details here. The budget itself is online, and if you're really interested in a grueling session, we spent about five hours in our previous meeting going line by line by line, so that would help you understand particular line items if you're interested. It is there. I don't recommend it unless you're trying to fall asleep at night and can't find another way, but if you are interested in the details, it's certainly there and you can hear us kind of going through and asking questions on each individual line, so that is there. But this is really more of a high level presentation.
I also want to emphasize that the budget is not going to be voted on during this meeting. That's going to happen at the end of the month during our normal Board of Finance meeting, but it will be discussed and presented. Okay.
A little bit about the budget process. We all know this is an unusual year. Eric's going to talk about that in his presentation. Lastly, before we get started, again, I just want to thank you, everybody, for being here and attending. This is an important part of the process. And we've already got a lot of feedback on the website and other methods. So thank you for participating. As you all know, it's very important and critical to what we're trying to do here. Okay, so I guess with that said, I will go ahead and we'll move on to agenda item number two, which is the budget overview and presentation. So Eric, I think that's yours. Do you want to go ahead and start presenting?
Sure. Let me just, share my screen here real quick. Alright. Can everybody see that? Yep. It's coming up. You should be looking at a PowerPoint presentation. For those of you who are calling in and can't see this on screen, I'll try to describe it as I go along. And this should be posted later also. Would
Yes, also posted on the town website if anyone would like to view it during the meeting. Yeah. Okay thanks Amanda. Okay so
I won't advance. Okay, so I just wanted to start talking a little bit about the history of where we got to where we are now. In a normal budget year in December, all the department heads submit a budget for their department to myself as the administrator and the board of selectmen. I collate all that and with the treasurer Barbara, we put it into one coherent document. So I submitted in January, at the end of January, a set of capital recommendations to the Board of Selectmen, as well as a preliminary town budget. At roughly the same time, the RAM Board of Education presented a preliminary budget to the region and Andover Elementary School also presented a preliminary budget. On February 26, the Board of Selectmen motioned to send the budget to the Board of Finance. The initial budget they proposed had a 12% increase in the final, in the mill rate and would have resulted in a mill rate of about 39.2. This was when we were still assuming it was going to the voters to be viewed. In March, as all of you are well aware, COVID-nineteen changed a lot of things in the way we live and it impacted the town, the state, and the world. Both the state and town declared a public health emergency and on March 21, Governor Lamont made an executive order that requires the Board of Finance to pass a budget and set a mill rate and bypasses all the normal budgetary process or much of the normal budgetary process and the ability for town residents to vote on the budget.
And just recently, the governor passed a second or made a second executive order, which basically said, yes, when I issued that order on March 21, I wasn't kidding, you really have to do it. It's not optional. So in April 2020, both the or at the end of March and the beginning of April, both the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen realized that the level of increases that they had been seeking to deal with some long term structural problems just were not realistic or, you know, conscientable in this, the midst of the COVID crisis. So I was asked as the administrator to trim the capital requests and the budgets as much as possible and get us down to as low a mill rate as we could go without, you know, really dramatically affecting the way the town operates. So I submitted a revised budget to the Board of Selectmen, as well as a set of revised capital recommendations. And on April 13, the Board of Selectmen at their meeting made some further modifications to what I submitted and then passed that to the Board of Finance along with the timeline of how the budget could be accomplished under the governor's You just muted it. On April 27, the RAM board adopted a final budget And in April also the Andover Elementary School came back to the town also with a revised budget.
On Wednesday, April 28, after a pretty extensive review of the budget and some changes of their own, the Board of Finance voted to put a budget forth to the public at this meeting. It's May 6 right now and this is the the Board of Finance's presentation to the town and to gather further feedback. So if we look at the kind of big picture of what our budget is some of the nomenclature disappeared. Okay, the light green is the elementary school budget. The elementary school budget represents about 31% of the town's total budget. The blue wedge is the debt remaining on the elementary school, that's about 1% of the budget. And yellow is the portion of the RAM budget, which is about 42%. And everything else the town does, including capital expenditures, is 26% of the regular budget. And most of what we're going to talk about tonight is this part, because this is the part that's directly controlled by us. So the RAM budget, the governor made the RAM in the regional school districts do the same thing they made the towns do, which is they were ordered to adopt a budget, you know, without going to public referendum. So RAM has adopted a budget, which is basically a zero increase budget, but the effect on Andover is about a 6.8% increase in the RAM budget to Andover. And the reason is that next year we're sending more students to RAM and the overall population of RAM is decreasing. So the total number of students is going down about 90, but the number of Andover students is increasing next year by about 12. So our fraction of the total budget for RAM is going up 6.8%.
And since that's our biggest single item in our budget, that represents quite a bit of money. So Andover's levy for the RAM budget is $5,200,000 and this is about a $337,000 increase for this year. Elementary school budget, the Andover Board of Education requested a final budget of 3,916,000. The Board of Finance voted to reduce that to 3,902,000, which is a 4% decrease from last year's budget, or the current year's budget, I should say. There is still debt service to be paid on the bond for the last expansion of the elementary school. That's $96,500 and that debt will be retired in about two years. So when we look at town expenses, so this gives you a pie chart which shows you basically the broad categories of expenses that the town has. Expenses related to the town hall include the cost of administration, myself and my assistant, tax collection assessment, town clerk, building department. That's about 24% of the total budget, but that doesn't include the employee benefits. Public works and snow removal combined is about 10% of the town's portion of the budget. Public safety is about 9%, that is the fire department, as well as the resident state trooper, the fire marshal, animal control officer. The costs of running the transfer station are about 4% of the total budget. And then between senior services, youth services, and health services, That's about 3% of the total budget. Overall employee benefits are 11%, town insurance is 3%, the amount going into capital funds is about 21%, and all the little things that don't fit conveniently in one of those categories equate to about 13% of the overall budget. So here's a budget summary which shows
for the three major categories what the budget was in nineteen-twenty versus the proposed budget, the difference, and what the percentage is. And as you can see, the elementary school budget has decreased, the town budget has decreased, but the RAM budget, which is the biggest single thing we have, has increased by about 6.9% and therefore the total budget is still increasing about 2.8%. So the next thing we look at is kind of the final what effect does this have on the mill rate. So part of this is that the town is offsetting some of the capital expenses by reallocating existing funds, as well as using the money that's in the unexpended fund balance. And so the total to be raised by taxation is about 9,000,004 and $10,000 And the other thing is that the grand list has increased a little over 1%, which means a mill is now worth about $264,000 And when you plug all that in, you get an estimated mill rate of 35.6, which is an increase of about 1.75%. And that is it for the overview. So I will give up my screen sharing and I will turn this back over to Mark.
Okay. Thanks, Eric. So hopefully you were able to follow along there. Again, it's a high level overview. The details have been very thoroughly gone through by the Board of Selectmen and also the Board of Finance, as well as Eric and his staff. I do want to make a couple of preliminary comments before we go to public speak. I think everyone understood, and hopefully it was clear from Eric's presentation, that the RAM budget is what it is. We cannot change that. We had a lot of feedback, and we did go through all of the feedback we got from the public in various venues. A lot of feedback about how the RAM budget was too high. Even a zero increased budget for RAM could be deemed too high when you consider that their student count was decreasing, and I'm sure that you would find both members of the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance that would agree with you if you think that probably could have they could have done better. Unfortunately,
we have no control over that and it is what it is, so I think that that's made pretty clear. So I guess I would say if you know, unless you have something you feel very strongly about, there's probably not much value in discussing the RAM budget. A better venue for that would be the RAM Board of Education, as well as the public meetings that they're going to hold over the year, and especially next year's budget meeting. So that's pretty important. That's our one opportunity to really provide input, and then of course your vote. Unfortunately, we didn't get that this year. We should have that next year. Okay, a couple other things on
the Q and A session or the public speaking the Q and A session. As I mentioned earlier, Amanda will call on people in turn and you'll have the opportunity to speak if you don't have anything that you want to ask about at this time just say I'm all set thank you and we'll move along. I would ask that you keep your comments relatively brief. We have fairly well attended meeting here, which is great. But do try to keep them brief. Also keeping in mind that if something comes up, we will have another opportunity to speak at the end of the meeting. For the sake of brevity, if you just want to concur what somebody else said, if Louise makes a comment and I just want to emphasize my agreement, it's easier and simpler and to everyone's benefit if I just say, you know, I just want to concur with what Louise said. It was a great point, and just want to offer my support for that position, rather than rehashing the argument, and that'll make things go a little smoother, but still allow you to emphasize your own position. Okay, I think that's really about it. So I'll turn it over to Amanda and we'll go over to the public speak section portion of the meeting.
Hi everyone, I am going to go one by one. So first up for public speak, we have an email address is showing up, shapiro91. Would you like to speak? Okay, moving on to Mike Palazzi and Kathy Palazzi.
Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. On the budget, don't show on the Conservation Commission. I don't show any monies in the that were put into it. I had $600 last year and I don't see anything in there now for 'twenty one. And on fiscal year 2020, I had $600 Did they take it all away?
No, I don't think that. I think it's in there at $6.65 this year. It's actually an increase of about 10%, Mike. Yeah,
I'm looking at it. Maybe I'm looking at it online right now and I don't see any money in there. But maybe it's just me. Can check with the
There's nothing in there. If Barbara was in is she in the works She's there. At She's on the call.
Because I'm looking at a small cell phone type of thing trying to get this you know it's not that much okay it's there's nothing there okay reading blank
Barbara Ahn, can you unmute her? I'm looking at the one she sent out the spreadsheet, the Excel spreadsheet she set out.
Yeah, I'm unmuted. Yeah, it should be there. I'm gonna just look at the top real quick for the summary. Conservation Commission, $665 is budgeted.
Okay. Just for some reason Barbara is not showing up on the online here that I'm looking at anyway.
Okay. Interesting. We'll have to check that out. Make sure it's accurate. I'll look into that Mike. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Anything else Mike or Kathy? Nope, we're all set. Thank you. Moving on to Wally. Martin? Can you hear me? Yes.
We can. My only comment is that this is a once in a lifetime issue knowing that the the town has money for the way. Used to be called the surplus. I know that's a bad term. But I think that to keep the mill rate I think the Board of Finance has to work really hard at using these funds to keep it at a zero interest. Thank you, Wally. Thank you, Wally. Dan or Jerry? Crem? We're all set. You for your work that you put into this.
Thank you. Okay, so now we have Laura Edwards. I'm here for support, so no comments. Okay, thank you for joining. Samson, would you like to Yeah, for support, no comment. Thank you. Diane Grenier? Diane are you there?
I'm here can you hear me now? Yes. Okay sorry No comments, but you'll see Diane's iPhone. That's me too. I'm doing belt and suspenders. I need to be on two different events, two different platforms here, but I'm all set. Thank you. You're so popular. Okay. Next we have Katie Marino. I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Steven Nakos. All set. Thank you. Don Keener?
It's nice to have wine at the meeting. No comment. Next
up, we have the phone number (860) 508-9053. Okay, Rochelle Strymple. Thank you. I'm all set. Paul? Paul, would you like to participate? Okay, next up we have Chris. No, I'm good, thanks. Thank you. Joanne Hebert? All Thank you. Melissa Leteska? All set. Thank you. We have Pat. Nothing at this time. Thanks.
Steve Model, it looks like your audio is not turned on. Next up, we have Kim Bednar. Doesn't look like your audio is set up either. Next up, we have the phone number (860) 680-4212.
That's me. This is Shannon Loudon, and I'll just say thank you for your excellent work, Board of Finance, and, we're all set after that. Thank you. Thanks, Shannon. Jim Halsey? No comment. Thank you.
Okay. I think that is it. I'm checking if anyone else has joined.
Some of the board of selectmen they may want to make comments.
Would you like me to go through the board of selectmen now? Yeah, think they should. They're public too. Even Adrian. Okay, first up we have Jeff McGuire.
I usually do let Adrian speak for us here at this board. I just like to sit there and say the Board of Finance has done a very good job in very trying circumstances. And Mark, I'd like to compliment you on running very nice meetings. The meetings I've attended, you've done an excellent job. Thank you. Eric as well, thank you very much for all the work that you put in and all the hard work. And Amanda, the amount of time you put in for those meetings, I have to thank you as well. So thank you very much.
You're very welcome and thank you too. Next up Adrian.
Yes, would just probably two things. First one I would point out is I would hope the board of finance actually would not use fund balance any more than we already have to offset. We've already done that with a bunch of things in this budget, and we appreciate you guys doing that. But I wouldn't encourage you to do it to artificially lower the mill rate only because next year you'll have to figure out how to make that up. So that gets very complicated. But the other thing I would say is just to all of the public that's that's on here and watches this later is that the real opportunity is gonna be at RAM in the next two years. They have a budget change that's gonna come up with their financed debt that will free up over a million dollars and that could be put back to the towns. For the town of Andover, it would affect our mill rate quite substantially to to get our portion of that back. Know, and it really RIM has really kind of been the driver certainly this year and in some past years as well, but it will continue to get worse as the state continues to reduce education cost sharing funds. The school board at AES has done a good job of trying to go through and find some savings. I don't know that RAM has really done that effectively. And they say that they're not getting a lot pushback to do that. So they don't see Andover residents at their meetings. They don't see them at their budget meetings. So we really need to start representing there as much as we can.
So I would encourage anyone and everyone to get involved as much as possible. We will make sure that people know when the meetings are. We have Facebook now. We're gonna start putting that stuff out there for folks so that you can more easily get involved. So just encourage everyone to do that. Thanks Adrian. Scott Prasan. Can you hear me? Yep.
Yeah, I'd like to thank everybody also, Mark, especially you. You put on a good meeting. And Amanda and Eric, I don't know how we could do this without you two and the whole Board of Finance, but thank you again. These are very trying times, and looks like we're gonna get through it. Thank you very much. I know Jeff Murray is on here.
Hi, I'm back. I'm here. Just a couple quick comments, you know, I'm just very happy that the Board of Finance, the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Education, and our town administrator and administrative assistant are all on the same page finally. We're all kind of running on all cylinders. And we were hit with this kind of in short notice and we all work together to solve these issues. And I just think it's a huge breath of fresh air for the town and looking forward, I'm just, I'm looking forward to working with all of you in the future and hopefully we'll get through this and we'll move on. That's it. Thank you. Okay. We have anybody else? Amanda, can see.
I don't believe there's anyone else. And I personally just wanted to end public speak with saying thank you to both boards for making all of the information transparent as possible. It has been my job to post everything on the website, and everything that can be up there is, and it's available. So if anyone has any questions during the meeting feel free to check it out on our website and let us know if you have any questions
Okay I guess that we can move on to the next item which is the discuss and act upon the fiscal year twenty twenty-twenty twenty one budget. As I mentioned earlier this is not the meeting where we're actually going to vote upon the budget, but this does give the Board of Finance members another opportunity to discuss some of the input that we've received, talk about additional options. I mean, we have gone through this in detail, As all the board members know. But it is another opportunity to discuss that. And I do think that the one particular piece of feedback we've gotten was I think it came from Wally about tapping the reserve fund more than we have already in order to reduce the mill rate further. So I think it's appropriate that we discuss that at least and any other ideas that the board members may have relevant to the budget. Any of the board members want to make any comments thereto?
Sure, I'll say something, Mark. I feel like our last meeting, which those of you who tuned in went to 11:45PM. Went through this line by line. We did everything. We kind of looked at everything. I honestly have no idea where else to look for cuts that would be, that wouldn't hurt us in some way and would be, you know, sort of cost us more really than would gain us. So, you know, personally, I think I'm, I'm good to go with the budget as it currently exists. And I think it's the best we can do. Mark? Yes Adrian.
So we are still looking at some transition options for software and cost from the auditor and we're hoping that we may have some answers. We're gonna try to set up a meeting with the board of ed to try to work out, you know, some odds and ends there. If that happens, we will come back to you with with the adjustments. But, know, there's a possibility there maybe another between '20 and 30,000. So we're still looking at that.
Right. There's a $30,000 line item currently in the budget for software transition. That 20 to 30,000 savings, I would guess would kind of be a joint between the AES and the town's budget, Right?
Yes. Yep. Exactly. So but in total, it it would help. So we're still trying to sort that out. We had a meeting today sorry, yesterday, and we're gonna try to set up a joint meeting going forward.
Okay, yeah, it's definitely something that we need to drive to conclusion. Thanks Adrian. Kurt, Louise, David, Diane. I actually have a question. Sure. What
the result was of the review for the person who did the pensions and benefits if you had a chance to talk to the Hooker and Holcomb?
Yeah, actually we did get a report back from Barbara and I'll summarize, Barbara just sent an email on that, but that is, Barbara you might be better to summarize it, but basically it's a, the increasing complexity of the actuarial, I guess, component of what they're trying to do is driven the fees up some. Is, you know, it is something that actually I think the same firm does Hebron, Andover and Marlborough. And so there is kind of a cost saving factor in there, but it sounded like there wasn't really much negotiating room in that one. However, do you want to comment further?
You summarized it Mark. I did have a long conversation with them yesterday morning and they did go over the fees and it has nothing to do with our participation numbers. It's it's the report themselves. They have to do two reports. One got very expensive in 2017 when GASB changed some reporting requirements and they do recognize the commonality of the three towns we're in with Board of Education, a RAM. And so they give the whole group a discount. They gave the minimum amount that they can do this for is what he he told me they committed to leaving their fees flat for next year. Eric did reach out to CCM and other towns use other firms, it may be something a decision is made I don't think anything could probably be done at this late day. But if it's something you want to explore next year maybe going out to bed.
And that's about it unless anyone has any questions.
Is this something Barbara that we could kick over to shared services committee given that they're auditing multiple towns on the through the same,
same, I, you know, could from the conversation I had, it probably wouldn't be fee savings because they do a report for the town of Andover. So they have to do individual reports for all towns they have to do the actuarial analysis for Andover. So we are Andover and Andover Board of Education. So they do have to do the same amount of work. Whether it's shared services or individual for them, it's the same same amount of, work to generate the reports. Okay. I just thought it was worth asking.
I think if we were going to go out to RFP or to bid on that, what we would have to do is we would have to do it as basically a three town group plus RAM and we would have to do a kind of basically a shared RFP if we were going to do that. That's the only way because we're not going to convert just ourselves because we still need the numbers from you know from the other groups. In other words some of it's specific to us and some of it's specific to the group overall. So it doesn't really make sense for us to do it independently. It might make sense if we did it collectively. Currently it's not collective.
So it actually may be a good candidate for shared services to do that as a collective thing. I
want to agree with that because I think there's a lot of competition out there. And I think you go in as a package deal. I think the bids would probably come pretty favorably. So I think if I feel that would be something that we should look into for maybe next year, if we can't do it this year.
Just for the record, when we really looked at it and we got the report back from CCM, we identified a total of four companies within Connecticut that provide those services. So you got three competitors, I guess. Correct.
So you may take a request for quote approach instead of an actual bid. Yeah, the bid process can be just more cumbersome, but you might just get quotes next year.
Yeah, mean, it's not a huge line item, right? Now it is spending a lot of time and going to RFP or something like that. That's exactly what I would But it certainly is worth is worth getting right. It's,
it's a sixth of what the audit cost is and the audit cost you decided was just, you know, it is what it is and you decided to keep the auditor. But yeah, it's $5,000 so certainly next year would be the year to follow-up. No stone unturned. That's right.
Dave, Kurt, Diane any comments again I do think we want to also address the issue about further reductions to the to the general general fund just want to get everybody's input on that.
Mark I'm just going to make a comment on using fund balance. Our biggest drivers RAM our census is going to be up I believe till 2023 isn't that correct Rob.
As I recall it's gonna be, I don't actually remember if I had the details on this but I think it was two or three years. Okay so if we Two more years.
More Adrian. Okay. Two more years. So if we start robbing fund balance to lower that,
that's going to put us in serious financial position. And then second to that due to COVID unfortunately, I think we realistically have to look at probably with some tax collection problems later on. So that would be my concern. I wouldn't wanna touch that. So for
the record we do the town does maintain roughly a 10% if you want to call it emergency fund. So we can handle internally some level of tax delinquency before we start really getting in trouble and needing accent dissipation notes or anything like that. You know we couldn't you know it couldn't be 30% loss of revenue, but we could lose a little revenue, you know, and be okay. But it's not an infinite well, that's for sure.
Well, I don't know if anyone saw it, but there was an article that listed five sixty eight people or so in Andover that were on unemployment. Out of our small population that's fairly substantial so. Yeah.
That's for sure. Mark, can I interject one thing? Just want to remind you that after the last meeting, you had had some questions for me regarding the request by the fire department for additional money for physicals. And we received a response back from Ron Mike and I forwarded that to the board, which was his explanation of why they need the additional funds for the physicals in the budget. And also currently that line item still retained is retained within the town's general budget. But depending on what you adopt, we would assume we would move a portion of that currently to the fire department budget.
Yep, alright. Yep, thanks for reminding us on that. It's a good point. Yeah, Rob provided that in writing and then basically rationale for it and it seems appropriate to me anyway. Diana, Kurt, additional comments, questions?
Mark, I concur with Rob and Dave on their comments regarding the fund balance. I think we've dug and dug and dug as deep as we can get to come up with the budget we have. So I kind of agree with him. And
I I also concur with everybody. I think with this coming this year with COVID, we don't know what is going to hit us in this next budget year. Need some funds set aside.
I guess I would agree. You know I don't like dipping into the fund balance any more than absolutely necessary. We are dipping into it actually a little more probably than I would personally be comfortable with. I know we hit it big last year. There were some reasons for that. It was a little high and the goal is to keep it at or around 10%. And we had a lot of things we needed to do. Makes me a little uncomfortable to do that, but I understand the rationale and I agree with it in this case. I'm not comfortable going any further personally. I think we would be making a mistake. That's our contingency and we need to protect the town and
what we need to do to provide our services going forward. Anything else from the Board of Finance members? Okay, if I'm not hearing anything else, I guess we can roll back to public comment, public speak. Going once. Let's get COVID over Zoom, can we?
No, I don't think we can. We're still learning a lot about this, but I don't think we can. Okay, hearing no more questions, comments or discussion from the Board of Finance members I'd like to go ahead and move on to agenda item five which is again we'll open it up for public speaking public comment. General approach applies. So if you want to go ahead and Amanda will go down through the list of people currently in attendance. Remember to unmute your mic when she calls you and let us know whether you have anything to share and if not, just let us know also and we'll go on.
Okay, so first up for public speak we have Nair. Would you like to participate? You have to unmute yourself if you would like to speak up. I'll just give everyone a moment to unmute themselves as I go, just in case. Next up, have Shannon Loudon.
I'll just say reiterate thanks again to the Board of Finance, Eric and Amanda, for your excellent work. We did our work on the Board of Education, and I appreciate what you did for the town and supporting the Board of Education's view for our budget as well.
Thank you, Shannon. Next up, we have Mike Palazzi. Mike, I just wanted to share some information regarding your comment earlier. If you scroll down to line item eight fifteen, that is where the Conservation Commission budget is. Yep. Were you able to find it?
We didn't see the whole thing. There is some money. We saw the 600, but it wasn't on there to begin with, but now it was on there. So whether we went to the wrong place, but I'll look at it tomorrow Amanda. This is a good update Thank you guys at your you, anything else? No, we're all set. Thank you. Okay, Wally Barton.
Just thank you for the opportunity to speak and I don't have anything else. Thank you. Anne and Jerry. We're all set. Thank you.
Thank you. Laura Edwards. I'm good. Thank you. Diane Grenier. I'm all set, do you hear me? All set, thank you. Thank you. Steven Nakos? All set. Thank you. Excellent meeting.
Thank you. We have Rochelle Strymple. Thank you. I'm all set. Thank you. Chris, would you like to participate? I'm good. Thanks.
Just so everyone knows, we have Nick Levine from CBC, who is broadcasting this meeting for us tonight. Nick, if you'd like to participate, speak up. But just so you know, that is why he is here. I'm not just skipping over him. Okay, next up we have Joanne Heber.
Amanda, yes, I just wanted to make a quick point that if at all possible, it would be great I know they've cut as much as they can. I've attended but if at all possible, it would be great if the term of the $30,000 that the country school was offering this year that they had it could contribute towards the transition software, I believe. Story there, but having a check at the meetings, I think there's $16 charge. Joanne, you're kind of breaking up. Having We
attended the meetings, and I didn't hear what you said after that. Okay. I just wanna make sure
Better. Good. Okay. That, you know, having attended the meetings that in elementary had brought up having $30,000 in their budget that they could use that they had this year and give to the town to fund the town's half of that financial software. So I don't know if other people are willing to to make that point because that's the chunk of money that they have available this year. Just gonna go forward costing about 60,000, and AES has the portion for this year. They had 30,000 they could get to the town, so if it happens, you know, I just want to bring that up. That would be 30,000. Thank you.
Thank you, Joanne. Okay, Jenny Morell just joined. Would you like to participate in public speak? No, I'm all set. Thank you.
Thank you. Paul? Would you like to participate, Paul? Okay. Next up, Melissa Lateska. All set. Thank you. Thank you. Pat?
Since we don't know what the future holds, it's the best we can do. So I'm gonna go ahead.
Thank you, Pat. Steve Motto, I just wanted to let you know again that your audio is not working. Not sure if you're on your phone or computer.
Maybe able to call in separately on a phone. You can use two devices, by the way. If you're viewing at a tablet, you can also call the phone number with your, separate phone and be admitted. Just be sure to mute one or the others for not getting an echo back and forth. But that can work just for these meetings, just for future reference, if not anything else.
Good point. And now do we want to go back to the Board of Selectmen to participate in public speak?
I think we should. Again, they're part of the public, we're overthrow it. Go ahead. Jeff, would you like to start off?
No, I have no other comments. I think the Board of Finance has done a very good job. It is not what we wanted to do this year. We have a lot of things that this town has to get accomplished. But because of the current circumstance, we understand and we agree with what is happening with the Board of Finance. Thank you.
Thank you. Adrianne, are you still there? All right, Scott Persson. I'm all set, Amanda. Thank you. Jeff Murray. I'm good. Thank you.
Thank you. And I just want to triple check I'm not missing anyone. Yep, for sure.
Alrighty, thank you. I think we're all set with public speak what do you think Mark?
Yeah I guess I'd agree. I just want to make a couple of comments before we move on to adjournment. The next step here really for everyone's just knowledge and is talked a little bit about the history. Really, the next step is we're going to continue to gather public feedback. So your opportunity to contribute and the other residents of the town, the rest of the public, your opportunity to contribute. Your feedback, your thoughts, your ideas, we still are going to continue that. We will not be making any final decisions on the budget until our regular meeting on the twenty seventh of this month. So this opportunity to contribute ideas and input is not done until then. We will be making our final determination at that budget, barring any unforeseen changes. So that's really where we are. I guess my last comment would be to thank everyone for attending. Fortunately, we didn't turn into a five hour marathon session this time for everybody's benefit. So we just want you to be safe and be healthy out there, take care of each other, watch out for each other. And I think that we're probably ready for adjournment. If anybody has a motion to adjourn, one of the Board of Finance members. I have a motion to adjourn. Louise motions to adjourn can I have a second? I'll second it. Okay Rob seconds
all in favor. Louise yes Rob aye Kurt Aye. David? Aye. Diane? Aye.
And I'll vote aye. Am I missing somebody? How about Linda? Linda, sorry. You've been so quiet. Aye. Thank you.
I'll vote aye also. We have a unanimous vote to adjourn. Again, thank you everybody. Stay safe, be careful out there, and continue to provide any ideas or input you have. Thanks very much and thank you, Amanda. Thanks Eric.