Meeting transcript
Board of Finance Regular Meeting
October 25, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Hello. What's your needs? You're make it better. So I'm gonna do both.
The people from the community access that we've got, somebody can never name soft look at her name. But she asked if they were all gonna be heavy heavy heavy heavy sides. They're all gonna be in person where we're record them. So then the exact quality of her was not great at first.
Oh, power on. It made it turn on. I said Kate made it turn on. You mean I can. Alright. Well, we're recording it on the album. Mhmm. So, hopefully, that would be good enough.
Enough. Okay. I guess that being okay, so we won't have Linda tonight, and we won't have Rob. So we can go ahead and start the call this meeting to order, and it's like the. Thank you. So this is the 10/25/2023 for finance meeting, regular meeting.
We have our agenda in front of us. First thing would be public seat, but we do not appear to have any members of the public yet. So we will move on to addition for agenda item three, changes and additions to the agenda. Does anybody have any changes or additions to the agenda? You said we were gonna strike number four. Right? So we'll Well, we'll just continue it because yeah. Yeah. I don't think we can we can change it, but we could just skip over. Okay. Nothing to add. Okay.
Hearing none, then we'll go ahead and it's done before. So, yeah, so the we didn't get the auditor set up at this meeting, but, you know, after talking with Eric, I think it's actually a better idea to have it here, have it audited at the November meeting, if possible. That way, you'll have at least one new board member then, and they can listen in and participate and kind of get a feel for what the issues are. So I don't know if to. Okay. Move on to agenda item five, which is old business, the review of the budget actual. You were gonna be okay
at this point. There there's nothing really major that I mean, there's a few things that are over, but there's nothing that's really big enough to be a significant concern.
Any questions or a few more minutes. Did. Yeah. This meeting that I saw. So it's certainly no problem there. So update on the EES parking lot paving project. Eric, don't I know if I had any case since last meeting. We you had given us an update and the sort of the contractor was not able to do it in this season, and then we were gonna look at continuing next.
Correct. That's still the case. As I said to the board of finance last meeting, at some point in the board of finance, he was actually waiting to fund the things to make that happen, you know, in a time crunch. If we're not in a time crunch, then the question comes back to the board. Do you want to revisit putting out an actual RFP for this? Or do you want to just continue with the contractor that AES had already lined up for the project? So that we would have time now to go to RFP for this if we wanted to go through the normal purchasing, you know, procedure. So that would be the only question I'd have for you as a board on that. Or maybe you don't wanna make, maybe you wanna wait for the new board to make that decision or maybe you wanna make that. That would be one. And the second thing is the board of Selectmen did authorize essentially a temporary fix of the upper parking lot by doing a combination of things. One is bringing in contractor to crack sealing and then bring that same contractor and both different equipment to do what's called mastic seal, which they're very similar products. Mastic just deals with much bigger gaps. So the goal is basically to make the upper parking lots so the board of ed feels that it's safe and they can reopen that before winter when we start getting into ice and territory,
number one. But because of the nature of the contractors, those contractors basically work on I mean, the the the price you pay is essentially a per gallon of material applied, but the contractors essentially work in one day increments. And that's because the only two big contractors doing this, you know, one of them comes from a little less than Albany, and the other one comes from Quincy, Mass. So they're not coming in for a couple hours. They're coming in, they'll bring cruises for a day. So what we're going to do is we're gonna do the upper parking lot, the lower parking lot at AES, and probably some of the town hall of our departments parking lot. Basically go as far as we can get, you know, one full day work for both of those. So we kind of maximize what we're getting out of the deal. So it was definitely more expensive than I wanted the pages which are up to a lot, but probably a third to half of the total cost will be the upper lot and the rest will basically be invested in the lower lot in the county parking lots because they only work too. Okay.
Ballpark, it's gonna be in the low twenties. You know, and, again, you know, we're we're going off the Capital Regional Council of Governments, you know, RFP. So it's kind of a set per unit cost. But until we know exactly how many, you know, gallons are gonna put down, we will have an exact cost. So it might be a little lower than that, might be a little higher than that.
When you say it's a quick fix, is that something that will have to be redone when they actually do the front lock looked at again, or is it gonna be good for them? Well, when we do the upper lock,
everything that we're putting down now is gonna get ground up and put into the base anyway. So that will essentially be starting with a clean slate. So the money put into that should be bought on this essentially a one year credits. It's not gonna have any lasting value past the next year. With the lower lot in the town parking lot, you know, I would not have anticipated doing significant work on either of those lots in the next couple of years. So I think that as kind of a band aid to push those lots along. You know, know, in any parking or any paving, you know, you have essentially long term fixes and you have short term fixes. And the goal is to spend the least amount of money over the longest period of time and still have an acceptable service. In a lot of cases, it's far more economical to do lower cost but shorter term fixes like putting a chipped ceiling roof. That's not something that lasts forty years, but it's cheap and you can afford to do it every seven years. And that's still a lot cheaper than repaving every 12 or every 15.
Cracked ceiling and mastic ceiling you know, were both fairly low cost, fairly high payoff kind of ongoing maintenance things. So, I mean, we regularly spend $4,050,000 dollars a year cracked ceiling downgrades to extend their lives.
Like you said, the board of selectmen had offered this. So had anything been decided or it's still I know we talked about the whatever the the check that was cut for the original contractor doing the upper law in that work. So are we saying this has been decided that they want to do the Band Aid fix, like you said? Yes. Okay. Okay. With
that. That's what I I I think I was a little bit confused. At our joint meeting, I didn't know if it had been agreed on. It had not been Oh, okay. Good. I knew there was stuff in the Yeah. Board of silent. Or actually Mhmm.
Right now, which meeting came first. Well, I know this I probably boarded boarded selectmen, and then the twelfth was the it was all in one week. It was a bunch of meetings at one week because I went, yeah, BOS, BOE, and then our joint on a Thursday. And then just a follow-up. I'm not the deciding factor, but you said when choosing a contractor for the big job that's going to get done, you know, eventually. Are you well, I have two it's two pronged, and it'll be quick. If we do the Band Aid, are we putting off? The Band Aid will hold for a couple of years now and we won't do the bigger job to the upper parking lot? No. Think that we just bigger than the other parking lot. I the intention is still to reclaim the upper parking Okay. Good. Sometime during next paving. Good. Now my
And I have a second part, but but would be the smarter way to do that would be to do that after school actually gets out. Oh, that's it would last June or July project would be My preferred solution at this point. Gotcha.
And because you raised the point of going to RFP for I feel like in good faith in my opinion after that last meeting since we went through this whole thing and everybody's kind of approved the contractor that the board of ed did select, I would not wanna wanna go back. I'm not the deciding factor. In my opinion, I would be okay with keeping everything as is with the contractor they selected with everyone having decided an army of board of selectmen, us, you know, with all the stipulations that the town had brought forth. Just my opinion. I think it would do a lot for Relations? Yeah. I mean, that's And I I mean, I want the work to be good and all of that. Obviously, it's gonna have to beat the specs of what the town had. Yeah.
I really
think that would do a lot of what we're trying to do.
So that a lot hasn't been faded in probably twenty five years. Has it been covered? Yeah. We the better. They may be doing the ceiling. Although, honestly, I'm not I think it's more cosmetic than bone control. There is some benefit to the ceiling, but I think we waited too long. Know, earlier in the life of pavement, it's it's efficient to seal because you restore some of the, you know, the shorter height of the margins, which evaporate more, and you can restore them in the wrong way. You can prevent cracking and shrinkage and a lot of other things. Once you have a, you know, twenty something year old road, you're not really you know, chip seeding will extend it a little bit, but just simply fog coating it doesn't add a ton of ton of value. Makes it look pretty. It makes it look nice and black. I'm not sure if it's a bit But it bit But as far as paving contractors, no. To my knowledge, the town hasn't used Constantine before. I mean, we know about it. Gotcha. You know, we've seen the drive room where they do for other people. They're a contractor with a pretty good reputation, so I would, like, hesitate to use them, but we don't have any personal.
I don't think you're gonna save significant money because their their cost per per ton per asphalt Probably the same element. You know? Yeah. So so they're basically that came off the crop a bit. So it's really all the incidental costs that may change from contractor to contractor. So in this case, I don't think you're going to be saving a ton of money by going to another. If you keep the specifications the same among all contractors, you're probably not gonna see a huge difference in price. But having said that, I mean, you know, the last time we reclaimed and repaved the road, there was a you know, we got, like, six bids back, and the difference between the highest and lowest was basically doubled. So Wow. There was a huge difference in cost. But I would say for that long, the cost seemed about right. That would be roughly what I would expect to pay for. Right? The bulk and that's expired. Yeah. Yes. So
you have to go up and bid it in spring despite the changes.
Well, so I'm sure there will be somewhat of a price change in that, number one. And number two, all these contracts, including the one we had in front state, has an asphalt ex escalation clause in because these guys get burned sometimes when the cost of liquid asphalt goes up because that's a really significant total fraction of their job. And it also kind of fits scale to the cost of diesel. So when, you know, the price of oil goes to the roof, you know, the cost of jobs automatically increases, and that is built into the contract. So you always have to be wary when you're signing these things, knowing what the actual cost of liquid asphalt is to make sure that the number you're signing or looking at on paper is realistic. And we usually look in and make sure we have at least 10% more than that assigned to that job. Because, you know, anytime you grind stuff up, there's a chance you're gonna hit. I mean, you know, you might have light poles out there where they burn the electrical wires too low and you whack them when you're replaying. You shouldn't.
But, mean, there's a billion things that can go wrong in this. So you always have to build in. And that, again, that is one of my concerns with them as they were signing a contract, and they they had no contingency and they had no you know, they weren't thinking along those lines, which makes me nervous.
Yeah. We still have it doesn't happen, but sometimes it does. Go back to the Band Aid fix. So the board of cycling voted to proceed with that. Where will something come from?
Have a double cash and check and put it in that account, which Yeah. Their board still has not made that. So we have not cashed that. Any questions? These well, I guess my question is is is
do they really care about the contractor? Do they care about getting the job done? And, I mean, not to try to override them, but they they really did run the RFP. We got a better price. Just do the contractor also, but the patient is somebody I mean, like, it didn't get done this year. And That is a good point. I just think, We're speaking with them. That's it.
And and to be honest possibly. To be honest, I was never when we started this, I was never looking to run this and administer this project. And if you look at the proposal I sent you originally for the agreement for the use of the AES Capital Fund. That was worded in such a way that the AES had to follow the correct procedure. They had to go through the RFP process. They had to go through CIP. But they kept control of, and they needed more of a selection of approval for their capital projects. But, you know, they got to run it if they got it, they saw troubles. And I still think that's
probably appropriate, but, you know, that's ultimately, that's not my fault.
They did have a good point, though, with if there is gonna be a capital project or, you know, done, who does when we get to that conversation, who oversees it? You can't you can't have it one way and that way. It makes sense if we all want the experts to be overseeing it and running it, like a parking lot thing or a building, you know, addition or something like that. We would want the experts to be overseeing it. And does and and Valerie did make a valid point that time, like, who would be like, she said, what if she used the word, which is great because I see it in schools all the time too. We have workers, like, going through the hallways and everything, and I'll call, like, our building and maintenance department, say, were they supposed to be here, you know, doing this? Like so just the overseeing it question that you've said. If we want it done a certain way, we're gonna have them follow certain rules, then I don't mean to add more to your plate or whoever oversees projects, but the inspection wise or whatever. That's all my thought is. Is that what you were thinking too?
Well, I was going into this thinking that the school was gonna go and both run the project, you know, and deal with the contractor, And the town would essentially supply the specifications, number one. We supply the inspectors both for quality control for compaction as well as on-site to make sure they're giving us the correct thickness and then the nuclear density testing for the asphalt itself. Mhmm. And then we would have had to do the backfill behind the curve, because they had never
they didn't build that into the price to begin. Gotcha. That's the word, the oversight of those things that you just mentioned. Right? Making sure they're correct. Okay.
And and, I mean, I think it's possible that within the school community, they have the technical knowledge to do that. I mean, the town is an engineer. That's, you know, for that reason because some of these things I know a lot, but I don't know a lot too. So so I always hand it off to somebody who knows more than me when it comes down to the actual monitoring of that. I I think that one thing to consider would be
because these these are some good points, that the review and approval of any project should probably have some kind of problem that would identify who would be the primary manager, wherever the expertise be drawn from, etcetera, that kind of thing. So if we keep that in mind that, hey, if you come to us with, and this could be any town department, it could be whatever, and you come to us with a request and read your expenditure. You know, we're gonna kind of know, okay, how long is this gonna pay? Who's gonna do the oversight? How are we gonna finance it? Who's gonna, you know, do the inspection? Who's gonna do the eighty day on-site? You know, the confidence to see percent of that's gonna probably be Eric or Jay or something like that. But that would be a way to clarify that. Because I do think that in a lot of these things that the school might be undertaking, really, unless they ask for assistance, it probably should be on them to manage the project. But for us to, you know, sit down and make sure that there's a level of expertise for the oversight for the sign offs, if you will. And, you know, I think that that's a reasonable approach. But they say, hey, this is kind of really out of the wheelhouse. Could we enlist some of these resources
to do that? And certainly, that would be a welcome suggestion in that case. I think I'm.
Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, obviously, I'm not looking for more projects to manage. I'm gonna be fully in love with you. Right. Understood. That's very successful. Right. Getting grant funding. I'm sitting on way more projects than I can manage and you know and it's problematic right now and I'm admitting that so I don't want to I'm not looking to manage any of their projects in particular
I'll save that for a little bit discussion, but I do have a point on that too. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that. But we do have a lot going on, and there's not an you know, another small town maybe. I guess, yeah, but probably I guess something I just don't understand why it got to this point where the town where the school is expecting the town to handle it all. If it's a school's project, isn't it their priority and their responsibility to oversee it? It wasn't that like, because I kinda if if you don't mind just for a second, she that brought up a valid point. Like, she didn't expect it. Like, she was she brought up a point, like, if we are doing capital projects, who will have oversight? Right. Kind of like a discussion. She wasn't pushing it off, but it does make sense, like, being in a school. People come to me always like, hey. Can you sign up on this or this or that? And I'm not I'm not saying naming me, probably my superiors, but we know where to go for the people that will sign up on those things because, obviously, I'm having a school that's part of a town that's having a project done there.
But we can manage the day. I can tell a worker where to go. I can guide a person to the other workers, you know, me being in a school, but I'm talking about, like, the expertise of the signing off. Well, yeah. I can understand an expertise of someone doing the actual job, but you have I mean, a lot of people go through the town for certain things, and they're overseeing their own project. You have to make sure you go to the town to get everything. You know? I think we're saying the same thing. The same thing? Yeah. Yeah. Like, they can do they can deal with the I think sorry. And I yeah. I don't think they were setting a cost at all. To run it. Don't they run other projects as well? Not at all. I don't Yeah.
Not LD, not the instructions.
You know I mean? Know people out there don't know their educators. They don't have all paid. And how had it gotten involved yet and you we wouldn't have the right soil drainage, compaction, that they would just have paid. So we can't just say, oh, that's what the project wanted because they're educated. They're not paid. It's not built. It's not people. Yeah. They don't want to You can't have people that have expertise in those areas. Yeah. So Yeah.
So there's two possibilities. I'd say, one, them hiring their own tactical people, which, I mean, let's be honest, Ryan has a building manager whose job is to oversee capital projects and suit the nuts that building. And I don't know what he makes, but I suspect probably makes more value. So they're they're well paid individual,
but they're good. The budget five minute. Well, no. But I'm not I understand. I just think it's gonna we're gonna cut somewhere else if we do that. Or can't Yeah. I'm not saying that's both. No. No. I hear you. It's an option. I mean, the other option is to use the same
engineering firm that the town uses for a lot of it. I mean, that's that's the reason why, you know, Nathan Jacobson is our on call engineer to be able to give me a set of prints for installing propane tanks behind here because, you know, we can't do that ourselves. And that's fine. But the town doesn't have the the engineering budget to cover our projects and their projects. So either the town has to increase its engineering budget if we're gonna be covering those projects that, you know, the technical ends of those projects, or the school has a budget board separately, either,
you know, hiring their own engineering or or use ours with their money. And any of those three solutions are possible. I I I do wanna say that I think we're getting a little bit off task here. Yeah. Yeah. Frankly, this isn't our charter for board of finance. Right. Right. I think it behooves us to review a project and feel confident that the people who have asked for the project to go forward or ask for the funding have a plan and they have the resources to do it properly. In the same way, the CIP or somebody might do as well. But I don't want to get into that. I don't think we should get into the And we're exactly the way it then. Mean in that particular point. I think that that is more aligned with
the more selecting the board of education and and they are. So Okay. We don't have an institute, we need to see the money well spent. Right? So but some thoughts. Anything else on the part of that, Providence?
No it's just so it's the thing that started the conversation yeah you said with the account and with the baby stuff so that's all I we can walk it back I think you know you're right thank you for bringing it back and you know we'll will decide, the people that need to decide as we go along. Yeah. This is just the first thing that came up that opened the door to talking about capital projects. There may not be. There may not They're gonna have to save for a while before a project comes. You know? There's gonna have to be some funding done. So thank you.
Okay. Well, let's go on to item six, which is new business. So this is the review of the going forward meeting. So someone think Brian, you were there? Yeah. And Joanne was there. Oh, yes. Yeah. Was there Yeah. I'm not sure.
So some so some of you had were there? I wasn't there. You weren't there in the movies? Yeah. I think Rob was there. Rob was there. So I don't know if you guys want to somebody wants to give kind of a two minute summary, or did the decision was made? How how did did the It started negative. That's something that Bill, you jump in. And, unfortunately,
I think we all came together in a good good, well meaning way, and then we had our public speak where whether it meant to or not, you know, I'm not blaming anyone. And, they, the board of ed, a spokesperson, I don't know him, he must be a new member, had brought up some things that got kind of negative. And it and that's why I had brought up the audit, talking to the audit because they had Eric's letter that addressed the audit. So well, not meaning at all. It just kinda brought it on there, so we all kind of, like, brisk over a little bit. But my 2¢ are overall, I'm glad it happened, and maybe that's why I'm kind of being thoughtful in the way I think now moving ahead because of some of the things that happened at that meeting. There's a lot of hurt. I what I could sense, I don't and whether it's I don't know where the genesis came, but you can tell there's a lot of distrust clearly. I mean, I've been here for seventeen, eighteen years in town, watched it all. And being a person that can appreciate another person's feelings or whether there's real facts behind it or it's just been dragged through for years, I still have to respect how certain people feel and try to move forward and make things better. And that's a couple of things that I said as the meeting was going on. I get that this happened. I am sorry about this, but we really do want to have a positive
impact moving forward and just be collaborative and work together. So Were there any decisions taken? I know that Shannon and Ross were working on a joint kind of a joint policy guy. Right? So but anything It wasn't this. Right? We could look at this document,
the non lapsing right we were or the purchasing policy too which I Eric had given this was the document that you had given as a draft right which was well written and had some good points in it. And is this the thing that they are working on? Yes. Yeah. Correct. Because
they were speaking on their concern. You know, and I'm not saying it's not a valid concern, is that when you put money in a permanent fund, you know, at the end of the day, you as the Board of Finance can move that money if you need to, you know. So if you had to raise any permanent fund to, you know, for whatever reason, because we had a natural disaster and we needed the money or whatever, you have the ability to do that. And that's their concern is that they put money in this account. You know, they build a finessing of $250,000 and the board selected and the board financed read it to, you know, build a bit of wallpumps. You know, so in in that is that is one of their big concerns, and that's And they did voice that. Yeah. Yeah. And and I I get that. Sure. But I think we all could have
I would not want that to happen with everything that we've witnessed and everything in the town there's a lot of funds that could be I wish we did a little hand to because they were coming around I felt like at that point Eric if they asked a question I don't mind signaling just to you because you are you and you're going to answer truthfully and you say that I think at that point you're like well it's in a fund it could be moved it could be this and it is true. I'm not gonna lie to him. I didn't want you to lie to him. Not ever. I don't want I'm very open as I'm speaking. It is. I just wanted to say, you know what? With all that's happened, we're not, that we wouldn't ever touch that. I think that would be And for your the board of makeup made it very different. So Okay. You know? You know, there could it's or, like, Eric said, that that was that. Mhmm. Really not those figures. I
think that we have to represent the town and we have to obviously take things at face value. We've got accounts and we've got the road funds that money is for the roads. Right? There's a school capital fund. That money is competitive to school. And we need to be very judicious in moving any fund, I think, because frankly, that's what the Thomas expert voted. They voted that money for the road fund. They voted that money. Know, we're gonna do that with the schools. So so we would be, I think, not appropriately presenting the the comp wishes if we would do that will be knowing. So I don't think think we would. That would open a bill for us. But That's all I wanted to express was exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. Was there a resolution?
Well, I'll tell you. I did talk to Rob at at night before the meeting. I'm gonna maybe try to pass him in, but it's just we didn't set it set up. He's still recovering. But what he what he did tell me is that he said, first of said, we don't we don't we have he and Shannon were working on the policy back. And they're not that he said they made a lot of progress and he said but it would be better he said he goes to the board on the site to have the documents ahead of time so we can review it he said he didn't like they don't care about anything that's quite ready at the time He said that the one of the things they did is they kind of understand this part of the EV were taking out some of the language regarding the 2% lapsing fund that they thought it was more important to focus just on capital fund and the policy for that. They felt that it was important to come up with a common understood definition of what a capital project is, which is, I agree, is important. So you want to attach that as exhibit A to the policy. That makes a lot of sense. So he and I talked about what some of the parameters of that might be. And I think that there probably are some guidelines and
governmental account policies and procedures and generally accepted things. Generally, the capital project has it's for a physical asset. It has the lifespan. It can be depreciated or considered to be depreciated. In other words, it's going to particularly lose value over time. So there are you wouldn't it's going to have a significant value within the capital expenditure. Used to be companies that do it on a laptop, but they typically don't do that anymore because the value isn't that high. But, you know, so something that India has been $15,000 We had we had put some kind of guidelines and make that would be something that certainly should be considered for a capital asset. But the 10,000 software license contract that would not be a capital asset, which is no physical thing. So there's some guidelines that we need to be put in place and they wanted to work on coming up with a commonly understood definition of what a capital project would be. Let's see what else are they working on. There's one other thing that he mentioned that they were probably but I think those are the main things that they're that they're kind of working on Okay. Putting in place. He said they were they made a lot of progress. It's not quite. Then hopefully, they had something for the next meeting and having something to do to get ahead of. Okay.
So Because it seemed like the board had they were the sticking point was, can we get things done quickly? Or, you know, they Fair enough. Yeah. Well, I don't feel like we've ever paused on things. You know? I think we've reviewed things and kind of then tabled them or whatever. So I knew that's great that they are working together on it because I feel like that will maybe do a lot to make them feel better once we have it done. Again, I'm just about landing benches. I'm like, that's all I, you know, I'm reacting. So I'm I'm curious to see what Brian and and Bill thought about the meeting and her ass. I don't know. Well, let's start off on the. You can just imagine how you say they're a very distraught thing. Mhmm.
You know, in most towns, it's a proper relationship. You know? You know, we are not an outlier in this. You know, this is a frequent conversation, you know, starter among town administrators and town managers. You know, in a sense, it is a question, you know, if you're being honest, it's a question of, you know, municipal finance is essentially a zero sum game. You know, the taxpayers are only gonna give you x number of dollars. You know, you have to figure out how to divide that pie up. Education is typically by far the largest single expense of townhouse. In the town of Andover, it's now roughly 70% of the total budget, which is a much better ratio than it was because when I first got over, you know, education was running seventy, seventy, 90% of the budget. And we look at the the metric I try to look at is the number of dollars spent per taxpayer for the general government. And we just flat out weren't spending enough. We've gotten a lot better. We've been able to absorb some increase. But there's always going to be an intense relationship there. In my mind, the big thing that
there is still non agreement on is financial court.
Right. That was the other one that that was yeah.
And I thought the one of the really good things is they bought brought in Tom Moody. That was very You know, was probably Goodness. He has an education lawyer in the state of Connecticut. And our letter clearly
Yeah. Stating that he can't open. This isn't excellent right here. No. I know. And then know Dennis, there is a copy of of Moody's
book on anti Asian law because that's He's very well known. I've seen him.
Yeah. And that was excellent that they brought him in. He really knows. And I think the thing that, you know, we also stated upfront, which I was happy to see is that, you know, he said, as far as the financial accounting, that the town was not asking for anything that should not be available to any citizen of the town via Freedom of Information Act request. So but if you listen to where they were going, the tone of the school board members, they keep hammering on the they have to supply the information once a year at the audit. And I mean, I look at it and say, ultimately, my job or the job of the treasurer is to keep the board of selectmen and board of finance, one of them fully appraised of the finances of the town of Andover. And right now, and fortunately for us, RAM is carved out of that because regional high schools have their own separate state law. So we can, in their case, write them a check and not worry about it because we don't have any legal authority over that, which is why they go to grad program separately to improve their budget. But with the school, we are still, you are ultimately
still responsible for their expenditures in their budget and them not allowing you or me or the treasurer any access to that information, that's really that's not acceptable.
That's where my questioning came in because in that financial reporting document that we had, we were requesting it monthly or Cheryl, the first draft. So I didn't know if we could make it quarterly
or if that, you know, Cheryl wouldn't approve of that. That's what Catherine and was just gonna make sure that's how they Right. That's Oh, we wanna have them. They wanna do it together. Please. Right.
I was planning to bring that up. I didn't couldn't breathe their faces then, you know, when I brought that up at the you know, it was kinda no reaction. I think they wanted it, but I I don't see why we can't request that. And so wrapping that up, maybe that's something we can try for, you know, the document as a compromise, you know, as quarterly seems fair, just so we get an idea. We understand certain things can't be spent till certain times of the year, kind of like with the town with the roads or something. But So so there was no real resolution to the point? Exactly. There was kind of not a reaction to the compromise, you know, when I was just kind of throwing it out there instead of once a year at the end of the year is kind of tough.
But their lawyer again did say that it's freedom of information. Anybody can request that, and they're Mhmm. Done fine with that. Mhmm. Yeah. My my view is either they're doing it monthly, and they should therefore, it shouldn't be too complicated to get it to us. Oh, right. Or they're not doing it monthly, and they're not doing a good job. I'm just gonna state that for the record. No. That's good to have. Consolidating, and they're just simple finances on a monthly basis. You're not really gonna be a problem. I don't know how much extra work would be to get some of the data over to the town, but it doesn't seem to be that much, but so That's my experience. Maybe there is a compromise if we work for everybody. I don't personally. I think it's probably more a control issue. I wouldn't stop at the end. I understand what their concerns are. That's kind of good. But at the end of the day,
the town charter gives me the legal obligation the legal right to ask any agency or or commission for information that they're obligated to provide, and they just refuse. I mean, that to me is the you know, as soon as I ask for it, it doesn't mean they have to give it to me instantaneously. But, I mean, they just don't call me now for sixteen months. I mean, the last bit of financial information we got from the school was in July 2022. They have not provided the things since then. And one of the reasons why that concerns me is, I mean, they're writing check for, you know, a fairly big end of year check due to this paving. But are any of us sure that they actually have the money to do that? And when they buy, it comes out, they're not gonna be over. And the answer is probably because the one fiscal control we have is we know exactly how much money we give them because all they have is what we, you know, transfer electronically
to their checking account. So we have fiscal control, you know, and this this was the long long conversation I had with the auditor, you know, because part of what my job is as a town administrator and the finance director of job slash treasurer is to maintain fiscal control and have fiscal controls in place so nothing really stupid happens if you don't find out, you know, that somebody walked off with $2,000,000.
Right. And and just to clarify, I mean, what I'm talking about, you know, and and is that we don't wanna get into the business about how to spend this money day day. You know? We made that clear. Yeah. You know? Everyone's
not a problem. It's sort of select. There's a very clear delineation
of power and responsibility. It's their responsibility to send the Resolve the Resolve Yeah. Right. But our our responsibility to ensure that, you know, that things are not, you know, guardrails on the number of basically to some degree. Right. There's not a major problem.
It was I know what you're talking about. It was a special ed related expense. Ah, okay. And what was interesting about that article is unless they have something funky in their town charter, that should not even be a board of finance. Believe it or not, by state law Okay. It is the treasurer responsibility. If they go to the treasurer with an unanticipated special education request, she has to pay it out if they don't have the budget to absorb in their own. But, you know, Cheryl's point is, how do I know they have money to absorb it if I don't even know what they have? You know that's part of the reason why you actually have an ongoing financial basis and you're sitting down you have that accurate record and something happens and a student walks in that needs really significant care and you've got an extra quarter million dollars in expenses you weren't anticipating, which is very possible. You know, all of a sudden, you know, now you have that awareness and we are obligated to pay that out if that occurs.
Maybe that's a separate working committee. I mean, if you consider that Rob and Shannon had been a working committee over the policy, maybe there's some kind of separate proposal that somebody could make and work to come to some resolution. But to me, it's you can't leave that one done if you want. It's probably that. And so we again, we need to define we just need the minimum amount of information. You know? I don't know. That's kind of something I think we cannot go against you all. And
I think we did make it very clear that neither the board of finance nor the board of selectmen has any oversight in how any of the school's money gets spent. That's what we're saying. Yeah. Other than interaction with the town for a capital project. Because of that, there has to be coordination with both entities. Yeah. It's crystal clear on the charter.
So that's an overview. A lot of few things that have to be, like, sold out. You know? And and that's why I thought it was good to have tonight's meeting while it was fresh, you know, to kinda get it out there so we're all kind of reviewing and staying paged together as a group and then try to move forward. Sorry. No. I was not.
I guess my question is, does the school have to comply with the town charter, or is there a state
that said detail. It's what they does say, whatever it's saying, that the county any county agency or department Can request. Anything plus. So
there are certain things. The state law sets the minimum reporting requirements, which they haven't done either, to be honest. But that doesn't connect. It is a whole normal state. So for most things, a charter can override state law unless it's the charter can make you do things in addition to state law. The state law kind of set the minimum bar. But in our case, you know, it's not really well defined. I mean, it's definitely defined in the charter that they are an agency of the town, which, you know, they have disputed for a while, but I think they're trying to make fairly clear to them that that really was the case and really were part of them. Now they do have some requirements to the state that are unique to education, and they have a lot of authority that no other department here has. So they're incredibly powerful agency with a really big mandate, which is the education children, which is why they consume, you know, the vast majority of the town's budget. But the town can request information for them from them. And the when you get away from just strictly education law and you look at the sections of state law, which pertain to municipalities, the role of a town treasurer is clearly defined,
and a town treasurer by state law is automatically the school district treasurer. So whether they like it or not, Cheryl is the treasurer of ADS. She's not the business manager. Doesn't mean but they really have no legal basis for denying her information.
That's the part that's hard to understand. I think I would want that backup of someone of her knowledge and experience and looking over the records as a double check. That's what I find hard too because it's not the control of how you spend it. Cheryl just wants Cheryl has done this in other towns. She's a treasurer somewhere else. She has no problem working with the school districts or at least she gets the information she needs. So it's that's the part that's hard for me to get a grip on. That was why you wouldn't want that. Why you wouldn't want someone saying, this is good. You know, this looks good. You know? Yeah. So that's where the whole I mean, clearly, we're you're not gonna solve it, but that's hard for me to understand where she's here as a part time person. She just wants the information to, you know, keep Andover rolling.
See yeah. Right. And so just let me ask you this last question. I feel like did that letter that they passed out in the negativity, you know, the audit findings, that's why they in which we will get the report in November, they seem to think that with the establishment of their own checkbook and everything that maybe am I reading it wrong, that that's where they think they don't meet? They kept saying, well, look at this. Look at this. You know? I feel like they feel like now that that's been done, they don't have to report to us. So
I agreed to and wrote that corrective action plan. It's certainly not the first draft I wrote this year. Mhmm. But I will mark the part Thoughtfully longer is the draft I would have submitted for a proactive action plan probably would have gotten at least the board of finance board board of education finances taken over by the state. And maybe the towns too. And the only way because the reality is they were not sharing the information. It is technically possible to have our auditor do the financial statements. Okay? Ordinarily, it would be Sheryl's role to do the financial statements for the town, and then those financial statements are audited by the auditor. I mean, essentially, what we're doing is we are agreeing to supply two separate sets of documents to the auditor, and then the auditor will pay the auditor essentially to merge these, produce combined financial statements for the town, and then audit on that basis. So the treasurer technically has the ability to essentially subcontract, for lack of a better words. Mhmm. So she can allow a sub entity to submit those books independently, which is effectively what I kind of forced her to do with that corrected action. Well, that's that's she wants to do, and it almost made her quit. It took me any longer calling her now and keep her from quitting at the back. But it was the only way I could see to do this to not get our finances taken over by the state of Connecticut
because we're not sharing information
and we don't have transfer of information between dementia. So they are all connected is what I'm saying. You know, like, because we haven't ever had the the meeting yet with the auditor to understand all of that. And then Sure. I know that you sent us drafts, and that's why this was the document that created the big hoopla at the beginning, which I think is part of the reason they feel they can be separate. Right? Well right. And I I don't wanna make this long. I know we'll have another long discussion, but it just fed right into what you're talking about.
Sure. And what I would say is think of this as two different things. The audit is a final check-in balance that occurs long after the spending occurs. And then you have the day to day fiscal management and oversight. So even if we as a TAO would agree to and we have to essentially send the auditor two separate sets of books
That's the same. Auditor combined, which is what the correct Right. Sense. Yes. Okay. Yep. Okay. Even if we do that
Mhmm. That doesn't mean you give up your responsibility for the normal checks and balances. And that's really what's allowing what giving the information to them. I mean, realistically, every month, you should be getting financial statements from the town, financial statements from the school, reconciliation from the town, reconciliation from the school, chapter and the degree of both entity, or maybe you decide to do it quarterly and have this as one meeting a quarter per review. You know, you're comfortable with at the board, know, as professionals should be supplying you with that information, Cheryl should be. Cheryl could be giving even if they're reconciling separately, which is fine. If they just gave the town that reconciliator. And that's why in the original policy document, we had built in a delay. So we don't expect it right at the end of the month. We give you a month and a half to reconcile after that month's over you know sixty days later or whatever the date you select you know then you have the information the reconciled information from both entities.
Okay. That ties it all together. Thank you, Eric. Because I know this had a lot to do with why they thinking that they were sent with. No. Yeah. Not so.
Any other discussion on that? Okay. I guess we'll move on to agenda item seven, which is the approval of the meeting is. It's 09/27/2023.
I would actually ask that you not approve the meeting minutes because we know there's a couple errors in the meeting in the next minutes, and I wanna get the verbiage right. It it has to do with the actual motion that you made for the transfer of funds. That was right in the It was. Right.
Could we add after a lengthy discussion, like, the money was there for years and years and yeah
yes yes okay so let us come back to you I would suggest that you table it and let us come back to you with the correct verbiage so you can approve it
Alright. We'll move on to agenda item eight, which is administrator's report.
Okay. I don't have a real long report. Well, I'll be honest. I'm kinda buried right now. What I am trying to do is I'm trying to advance as many projects as I can in about the next six weeks before I ever put my head down to let that seed to begin. So that's really been my singular focus. We put out an RFP for the kind of design project for a pathway between this location and the rail trail as part of, you know, the town's overall plan for connectivity. We got six proposals. The board of selectmen elected a three person committee to review them. We're probably going to do that and get that project going as soon as possible. That is a 100%, you know, funded. That's not any taxpayer dollars. The study is a 100% funded. The reason why we're really pushing this right now is because I'm trying to put together a grant application for a program called LOXIP, and I've been doing a lot of homework, including meeting with the staff, the staff at Croghan who actually administer that program and also with the with the state DOT. The reason why I'm pushing to do it this year is I think this will be the last lots of submission for at least three years. They've already said they're not anticipating one for the next year, and they're probably not gonna be one with the year after disabled fully funded their funding pipeline for this program. So either we get it in February or, you know, we we're waiting about three years to try to fund it. So I'm I'm really pushing for that one. I think we stand a really good chance of getting it. It should be you should be able to put together a pretty strong brand application.
And, you know, I've been meeting, you know, one on one with all the people that are the reviewers for this. So I've been kind of doing my homework ahead of time to make sure that I get their questions ahead of time so we can put a grant that addresses all their concerns. So I'm trying to push that. I think I announced that the last meeting that we got the seat grant for the recreation and fields. So we did get a half $1,000,000 sleep grant that will have to go to town meeting for approval because one of the things the state has been doing most of their grants is requiring towns to have a significant amount of skin in the game. You know, and it's funny that none of the project documentation shows that as a requirement. But if you look at the projects that got funded through the seat program this year, there wasn't a single one that got funded that didn't have at least 20% talent contribution to the overall project. So it will require somewhere between a 100 and $150,000 of town money to execute that. But, you know, we're leveraging that by getting to spend a half million dollars in state money. So I think it's something that we can sell to the public, but we'll take a public meeting to do.
So the great thing about the Watson program, and one of the reasons why I wanna go after that is although the town will be on the hook for the engineering, the actual cost of construction is a 100% grant funded if we get to that point. So we still have that hanging in the wind, and we should hear hopefully in the next month whether we get something called a trip grant, which is another one I applied for. It's basically a grant to do a bunch of roadwork and that would be a $1,100,000 So we've been very successful in the last couple of years with grant writing. Our problem, and it's a good problem to have, is grant administration and being able to in project administration.
That was my only thing when I said bringing that up, is just getting us spread too thin with the prod I love that we get grants and we get all those kind of things. It's just having the manpower to manage them all. We have the community building wherever my you know, that too. That's gonna be a big thing and just not getting overtaxed for a small town. Not not tax. Tax money. Just overlooked is the you know what I mean? With with you managing a lot of these projects, like you said before, breaking out of the that's all. So I think the budget budget budget So
anything, we're gonna have to start thinking about, you know, some kind of additional resources for project management to them, whether that's volunteer or paid position. But, you know, we've got, I mean,
we've got a lot of money out there. There's a lot of things. Know even in the time that I've been on the board, I know a lot of things have come up. Yeah. Firehouse is good waiting. Right?
You're right. And, you know, we're dealing with group lead over there. So that I suspect the repair of that is gonna be under the threshold that, frankly I'm somewhat struggling to find because it's the flat roof that's leaking finding you know I got one good commercial flat contractor that's bidding on it. And I think it's it's gonna be low enough that I can single bid that and not screw around. And I'd like to do that just because it's taking me a month to get them out here to look at it. And most of the other contractors, you know, you know, everybody's giving me project timelines in the spring. It is active group week, so I'm I'm trying to get on that one. But you're right. I'm I'm way behind in a bunch of projects, and and I admit that. And I don't it's a problem right now because I don't I've been way too successful in getting money to do projects,
and now I gotta figure out how to actually do
Well, the town has a lot going on. That's all. Yeah. I mean, it's all good. So It's a good problem. It is.
Should be so bad for No. Figure out how to make it work. Yep. Right.
That's all I got. I'm starting to think you know, I don't wanna think too deeply about budget season right now, process because I think it's important to keep in mind, you know, kinda like what the big picture you're trying to do
and then derive a budget from that. Obviously, there's a lot of lumps and bolts things that that come out of it. We added a lot last year to the trucks and everything. And plus, if we're gonna have the mass, like you said, coming up with the grants, even though it doesn't sound like a lot, but a $100 here, a $100 there and funding for the trucks, We're already adding. We wanna bring on the AES Capital Fund with funding a little bit. So there's a lot a lot we're adding. So that's why we're all that's all. I'm done. Yeah. I think
yeah, we're gonna have to start thinking about we're gonna have that building That's what we need. The context. But at the beginning of the next next fiscal year, and we really need to be looking at a staff person to to manage and start thinking about what programming
that we wanna I think it's perfect for your secretary and a manager for that, like, full time position because you've never rehired. Right? Little bit more second. Oh, sorry.
K. Any liaison reports? She said it's Rob with CIT. Guess we have nothing. We'll go to board open discussion. Is there anything else to the board that we should talk about? I guess the only thing I would mention is kind of follow-up on what Eric said. And I spoke about it earlier, but we are coming up in the budget preparation season. So I think it's something for our next meeting. We'll have at least one of the board members I mentioned. Brian, don't think you'd like But to really the we've been through the budget season. So the early part of it, we really have that much. But I think we want to be with the new canvas of the tone and you know, get to know how it's done during the process. It's at the end of November. It's the it's the Wednesday after No. You see, so that one, know, by that. Limits, turn this up, and you do not You do not. What I'm told. Yeah. That's why you were in the last meeting. Right. Yeah. Right. Because there's three?
Yeah. There's three there's three so Louise, Brian, and Linda's firms are all off. Mhmm. And yeah. Right. Right. It's not running. You're running. So if that opens back Right. But since when it's not around again, we have them. But it would be a good opportunity for us to kinda talk about the budget process and then let's see. I suspect that we probably won't have the December meeting. It's in the middle of it's currently scheduled for the twenty eighth or twenty seventh or something like that. It's just a week between Christmas and New Year's. I personally will be out of town. I expect, so a couple of theater. But, you know, again, I think it's like a really late for an hour. We don't need to let this evening. Right now. Anybody have anything else? No.
Okay. Hearing none. Found the correspondence. I have not received any correspondence other than an email from the community access television on there about the recordings. I'm gonna call them my walk off there and see if he had something that they may need to use.