Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
January 19, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Allegiance. We all stand. I pledge allegiance
to the flag The flag. United States Of The Republic which it stands
nation. One nation. Under God under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Joanne Hebert would you like to make comment during public speak?
Just interested as always in the process and supporting stable taxes but understand you guys have a job to do. Looking forward to next year with you know your new hires that you were able to put into place this year and seeing how that goes thank you all right thank you very much
Let's move on. Budget workshop. Let's discuss the twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two town budget. Eric, would you like to start us?
Sure. I'm going to share my screen. Amanda, can you give me the power and the glory here to share my screen? You should be good to go.
All righty. Okay, so you should be looking hopefully at a summary, which says summary of budget January 19. Is that everybody's looking at? Yep.
Okay, so what I would like to do first is kind of talk about the big picture, where we are with the budget and what the budget items are. And then when we get through that, obviously ask any questions you have as we go along. And then after that, depending on what you want to see, we can start in on the nuts and bolts of the budget. So the first thing is that we're very fortunate as a town that we have very low debt obligations. Total service on debt in the town of Andover is less than 1% of our budget, which is you know kind of a great position to be in overall. If you look at the next pie chart down at the budget, you'll see that the town's portion as presented represents about 27% of the total budget. And this is an increase from previous when that percentage was it has been as low as about 20% of the budget. So relatively speaking to the other to the overall budget, the town budget has gone up over the last two years. So, and these are all very preliminary numbers, the Andover Elementary School, their budget, they had their initial budget presentation, they had proposed a budget of $4,230,000 which is up from last year 300 and something thousand dollars. Andover elementary school debt, we have one more year to go paying off the debt. The interest on the debt this year is going to be a couple of thousand dollars. It's going to be a pretty low number. Not sure exactly what that number is,
got to pull out the paperwork for that. But the interest payments around 9 or 2,000 and the debt payment is 90,000 for the year. The RAM middle school and high school budget. So I'm assuming that we're looking at around a 3% increase in that budget, but there's a lot of unknowns. What we do know with RAM is that they have a contract with the teachers that has about a 3.5% raise built into it. And then they have an administrator contract with about a 2.5 increase in it. And we know healthcare costs are going up about between 56%. And their employee costs are the majority of the costs at the high school. So it's pretty safe bet that there's going to be an overall increase with their proposed budget somewhere around 3%. So you got to figure that in. And then the thing that's going to affect us the most is that the last two years we've expended a lot of money from the unexpended fund balance. Two years ago, we tapped $950,000 from that towards capital projects. Last year we tapped $415,000 from that for capital projects
and then we also reallocated about $365,000 in other you know in basically underutilized funds for the capital for capital projects. So taken together which is the town's budget, the elementary school's budget, and the RAM budget as it stands right now, it's somewhere about a $1,300,000 increase in taxation. So it's a big chunk. It's a really big chunk. Andover Elementary School, their initial proposal was an 8.8% increase. Student enrollment is basically flat, about 153 students K through six, and then about 30 pre K students. There's also apparently around 258,000 between tuition that the school brings in and state aid that gets applied to pre K. And then my understanding is the town's portion for funding the rest of pre K is around $73,000 RAM, we talked about that budget just briefly. The student population at RAM is estimated to decline another roughly 10%, somewhere just over 100 students this year. So the one thing that's going to affect them pretty dramatically is there are apparently three new special needs students that are coming into the district and all three of them require outplacement. So there's going to be a pretty expensive chunk for increase in their special education costs. So now I want to turn to the town general budget because that's the thing that we as a board can control. The rest are pretty much range. Of So the first thing is increased capital spending on roads, bridges, culverts, the fire department, etc. These were capital this is basically the capital spending plan from last year prior to COVID. You know, as you know, once COVID hit and we were not able to go through the standard budget process,
we trimmed a lot of the capital spending out of that budget and we offset much of the rest with unexpended fund balance. So putting those back in is the lion's share of the increase in the town's budget. There will be an increase in health care costs that's estimated to be somewhere between 56%. We don't have the numbers yet back from the RAM healthcare syndicate. MRF, the employee retirement fund, our town contribution is currently 14.9%, but we don't know what it's going to. The state has said it might go up to 18% at some point, But nobody knows when they have not released the numbers for this year. They released those numbers year after year. Fuel and diesel costs
are going to go up about 15%. That's just because last year we were able to lock in at an incredibly low rate. And we're locked in this year, but we're not locked in as low as we were last year. This is also the state does two year budgets. So this is the year that they redo the budget. So because we're not in the middle of a budget, you know, we're looking at an entirely new state budget, it's really unclear what the state funding picture is going to be. They are apparently going to be running a deficit again, or you know they're proposed to be running a deficit again next year. So how that affects us, I really don't know. So once again, in the past essentially two years, Andover has raised the fraction of the total budget that is the general budget from around 23% to around 27%. And this gets us in the ballpark we knew we should be at because most towns spend somewhere between about 2933% of their total budget on the general government budget. There are towns that are more and less than that obviously. In that budget, the town's budget works out to about $1,100 per capita, which is pretty comparable to what all the surrounding towns are. This is up significantly from years ago when it was running around $840 And the majority of that are capital costs. So if we look at what the major cost categories that the town has, the first and largest share of that is employee costs, and this is salary and benefits and just general costs of employment. That's around $1,188,000 which is around 32%
of the total general budget. And the rest of the funds in there are without employee costs. For instance, like public works it says it's $190,000 that's $190,000 in addition to the cost of the personnel. That's what the employee costs subtracted. And depending on how you want to see it, I can redo the numbers to put those costs in the departments if you want to see them or out of the departments. Just depends how you want to view the numbers. So the biggest things there are employee costs, the capital fund transfers, those are the monies that are going into standalone capital funds like Public Works Equipment Fund and the Roadwork Fund. After that is Public Safety, that's the fire department and the resident state trooper. Public Works, transfer station, the just general expense of running a town hall, the town office expenses, cost of insurance, and then basically everything else looped into one category. And you can see it kind of graphically there. So if we take that 32% of the town's budget, which is the employee cost, that's about 9% of the total budget that the town faces. So that breaks down to just over $800,000 in salary, a little over $60,000 in FICA, healthcare is around $232,000 and MRF's around $94,000 And that's what that relates to. So you can see the majority of the costs are the employee salary. The reason why the percentage of the salary costs is so high is because a lot of the employees are part time employees so the cost of benefits
is not as great in the overall budget. So that you know, Andover has nine full time employees in this budget. Four of them are in public works and five in the town hall. And of the full time employees, six of them work forty hour weeks. That is myself Marina and the four public works employees. One person works a thirty four hour week and two people work a thirty hour week. There are three employees that work twenty six hours a week and the remaining employees are part time working less than twenty hours. All right, so we talked about the second biggest chunk of that being capital funds. Here's the kind of breakdown I gave at the last meeting a list of all the capital funds. There's a couple small ones on there that like the money we put into the reval fund and the money for the planet conservation and development that I didn't list here. I just listed the major ones that you'll see on the pie chart,
which is public works equipment, the multi use building fund, which is for the senior center, fire department, public works equipment, road improvement, trees, Bunker Hill Bridge, and Bridge And Culvert, and the general building maintenance capital fund. So that's kind of what all those are. You've already had them, you've already seen them. And then the last thing is, you know, what are the big things that we and you specifically need to consider as a board? The first is the general percentage salary increase for non union employees that do not have a contract. Per the charter, you as a board set that. So you set the salary and benefits essentially for all the employees in that category. Typically that's done generally on a percentage increase.
We can talk about that a little bit more. And there are some requests for increased funding. And I don't know whether Wally's on the call. Amanda, is he on? Do you know? Anyway, okay. So the registrars would like to make a case to both you and Board of Finance that they're working an awful lot more hours in this environment than was ever budgeted for, and that needs to be accommodated in their budget. The town clerk has requested a increase in her salary. The library board has asked that the town consider an increase in the number of hours for the director of the library from twenty six to thirty hours. And we should also consider my administrative assistant Amanda and increasing her from nineteen to twenty six hours. So those are the things that are really kind of up for discussion unless the board also wants to revisit the capital funds. So that's kind of the one over the world overview and what I would want to know is where you all want to go with this now. What do you want to see? How do you want to proceed?
Well, before we go into this, the Board of Selective members, I just want to verify, let's do some housekeeping things before we get into this. We're going to meet for two hours. Any more than two hours? Doesn't make sense. Does anyone have less than that? Anybody? Anybody? We good? Okay. So the budget workshop will be two hours. Eric, my biggest problem on everything you presented was you basically said in the beginning of this that you have a $1,300,000 increase from taxation? Correct.
All right. Can you go back to that slide and show us what went up?
Eric, can you zoom in on it because it shrinks it down on your screen to our screen? Okay.
If you make it the width of your screen that would be helpful. Thanks.
All right so the Andover Elementary School is looking at an 8.8% increase. So that's some, I don't know exactly, it's somewhere around $300,000 The RAM, I'm just, I do not have firm numbers for them. So I'm projecting, you know, somewhere around a 3% increase, which is going to be what's 3%? 1 and $75,000
Right. And the town budget is going up a little under 100,000 total. The non capital budget is going up somewhere around $40,000 total and capital budget is going up somewhere around $300,000 total. And the remaining is just the fact that it's not the budget is not increasing beyond that. It's that we're not off setting with revenue from unexpended fund balance. That's the biggest difference between last year and this year is there's somewhere around $750,000 less money available to decrease taxation.
Okay. All right. So we're going to have to work on that. That's not something that's going to go real well. Correct. It would help Well, how do the members of the board really want to go at at this? Do you want to go at a section by section? Do you want to go at this from big picture or from Andover Elementary School? It helps, Eric, if you put what last year. I mean, I was trying to look at your spreadsheet that you gave. Is this a spreadsheet that was prepared by the previous treasurer?
In part, yes. All right. Hang on. Let me share that screen.
When we get to our next meeting, it's going to be very helpful if you have all of the expenses by department benefits related in each of the departments so we can see it, so we can understand the total cost of those departments.
So the improved budget, let's take RAM. Last year was $5,227,000 I just arbitrarily assumed it's going up at least 3% based on They haven't actually published a budget, but they've published a bunch of notes about the budget. So if you take the totality of what they're doing, because they're not really reducing staff in any significant way, and we know what their fixed costs have increased, so we can guess it's at least a three percent increase in their budget. So that's RAM right there. And then AES, last year's budget was $3,902,000 What they proposed is a $4,232,000 budget, which is an increase of 3 and $29,000
Hey Eric, can I interrupt you? Are you it says you're sharing your screen, but I have a big line down the middle and I don't see anything. Can you can
you unshare and try sharing again? It looks like something's up with Zoom. Sure. Yep. Well. Did that work?
Now it's all. That's it. Thank thank you. Okay. Sorry.
So that is AES. And you can see the other one from the big one in the town's perspective is the large increase from in fund transfers of about $315,000 Those are essentially the capital funds, that's roadwork, culverts, bridges and equipment basically.
Eric, do we know if the add number adjustments here take into account the reduced state funding? Because we had a scheduled drop if I'm right.
So the answer is I looked up and I couldn't find anything that said what the state was going to do going forward with the biggest funding the school get or the town gets for schools is ECS funding. And I don't really have any guidance on what ECS funding is, where that's going. So I assumed it was gonna be held level from last year.
I thought it was an additional drop each year. So we got to They had a bigger cut several years ago and they spread that cut out over several years. So I thought there was an additional cut this year as well. But I'll see if I can find that.
Yeah. If you do, I'd be happy to incorporate it. Okay.
What's the I I think kinda like what Jeff said. What what do we wanna tackle here? I mean, we can talk about RAM ACS all day, but they're not really we don't have direct input on them.
We're we're expected to decrease by 65,067. Say that again, Jeff. ECS is going down from $22,064,000 to 1,997,000. So it's 65 ish? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Can you send me the documentation on that, Jeff? I'll send you the link. Okay, thank you.
But what bothers me about that is our number doesn't even, why doesn't our number match up to that? So keep going, Adrian. I mean, listen, I'll just be really honest that there's no way we're going to get that number through. Obviously, we realize that we have to talk to some of the groups within town to talk to them about their Yeah, I'm wondering if this is 2021 grants. How do they do their fiscal year? So they sit there and say this is fiscal year 2021, or was this year fiscal year 2020? What are we in right now when the state talks about it, Eric? I think we're in fiscal year 2020. Yes. Yeah, think he's correct. State's concerned.
Okay. So fiscal year 2020, we were supposed to be 2,064,996. That doesn't match up to the second page of your spreadsheet, Eric. That's $64,000 off. So that'll have an impact on what we're saying. And then this year, they're saying 1,997,657. So, okay. Well, Eric gave us some items at the bottom of his list of things that we can do. I would sit there and say, let's not do those all tonight. Let's do those at our next meeting. I'll come back with your understanding of what you want to offer the different groups within salary increases and everything else. I think we should talk big picture, first of all, like as a board, what we intend to do.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we'd be in a world of hurt asking for how many mills is that Adrian? 1,300,000. Over like sand. Can
I ask a question or make a suggestion? Sure. So would it be would it make sense or would it be appropriate if we start we start looking at the big picture and then do we invite some of these people on our next call to sit? Feel like last year we went around in circles for a lot of different reasons, but we were kind of assuming things or trying to figure it out without having people on the call. So what if we and I don't know how everybody feels about this, but our next call or maybe the one after that, you know, I don't know, maybe we have some of these people on and ask them direct questions. I know, you know we're kind of sitting here guessing but just to kind of let's have them all on Paul that's a great idea so maybe maybe at the end of the call tonight hopefully we can make a list. I have no problem contacting them if I'm if I have to send an email or if Eric wants to it but I just I feel like last year we were just on the hamster wheel trying to guess and understand and why not just you know ask them directly and and go from there. How does everybody else feel about that? Sounds like a good idea to me. Adrian, Jeff Murray? I'm
assuming Jeff and Adrian, you guys are both okay with taking sections of this and inviting the people from the departments that are putting the budget requests in to come visit with us.
No, I don't have an issue with it. Are we doing that and then trying to develop a big picture after the fact? Is that what we're talking about?
I mean, so we're not gonna look at anything tonight or No. You can look at all of it. I mean, personally, I would take all the budgets that have significant increases and invite somebody to come talk to us. I'd like to have our representatives from RAM come talk to us, our representatives from the Board of Education should come talk to us, We may not have the ultimate authority over any of it, but we have to sit there and set the parameters. Honestly, I hate to go there, but if you're not going to have a student increase and you're going to have additional expenses, if they're not tied exactly to contracts, then what are we doing?
Yeah, think we just have to get a better understanding you know what these increases mean. So I know the registrar said they wanted to you know increase I want to you know I'd like to ask them a question and say well you know pitch it sell me on it you know so that's how I'm looking at it.
I mean, I will sit there and tell you, you know, the registrars, the registrars are asking for $4,000 Right.
Against a budget of how much though? Against our budget? No, so against the budget of how much? What's their current budget? Their budget was 14,726 and they're asking for 18,700. Yeah, but so your $4,000.4000 against 14.
Oh, I get it. You can pitch them. I'm just telling you where the big numbers are and that's not
great. So on the town side, the big number in terms of increase is really strictly the capital funds. I mean, is where we cut the budget last year to get down to zero. Well, got down to zero for two ways. One, we shrunk the elementary school budget. And number two, we transferred a lot of money from the unexpended fund balance and we repurposed a bunch of funds that weren't being used. So but you know that's 700 something thousand dollars that we just isn't there and the year before that the town spent $950,000
from the unexpended fund balance. All right, so with the luck, can we talk about that Eric in detail right now?
Well, let's agree to this. Taking Paul's point into account and before we start delving into this, let's agree that we'll let's bring in everybody that's asking for, you know, an increase that is, I don't know, pick a number more than 5% and within the town budgets and let's talk to them and then go from there. I think you're right, let's look tonight at the things we currently can have bigger discussions about like capital. Let's bring everybody else in. Like I want to know why the library is looking for more hours. I want to know why we're asking for more money at the registrar. I mean, know they're little things, but the two things we've proven in the past is that if you go line by line,
and the Board of Finance has shown this, if you go line by line, you have $5,000 in every budget and you find 20 budgets, that's $100, that's close to half a mill. Those things add up. Then I think that we need to have a bigger conversation about capital and allotment and what falls into what. You know. Yeah, no question.
Okay. If we're gonna do that, I don't care if we ask every person. I mean, should rank the budgets in order of the total dollar increase, Eric, and then ask them to come first and have the discussions. There's only going to be so much money so many places. Adrian's not wrong. You can go through every line, but let's go after the biggest numbers we can and understand why and come back to the board and sit there and decide what we're going to ask them to cut, because we're going to have to ask these groups to cut money. I mean, it's just what it is. So Eric, if we're looking at a million dollars for the capital budget, do you have a breakdown of that and we can actually see in detail? Yep, hang on, 2.6. You're going down to 1,100, Eric?
Yeah, was just trying to think whether it's easiest to go down on this sheet or I think I'll just go.
Yeah. If you do eleven zero one then people can fall at home as well. The board. Yeah.
All right so these are the major capital items. So the the big ones are the roadwork. I mean that's the biggest single one that's $300,000. The next you know one is the Bunker Hill Bridge Fund and if you remember last year we put $160,000 in that. We know we're looking at costs somewhere around $400,000 minimum for the town outlay and we know that's probably going to incur not this fiscal Yep.
Can you increase the size of your screen like so we can see this? Like can you zoom in on the spreadsheet? Yeah.
Even if you just move your box key around like right now you're sitting on road improvement but we're talking about Tree Bridge. Thank you. Okay. Does that make more sense?
I can see it now because I will tell you when Jeff Murray responded to this on Sunday that none of these numbers are in the one that I downloaded to look at during the meeting. Let's Can
you scroll your box down to Bunker Hill so we're on the same line? Yeah. Thank you.
So, I mean, are the major, I mean, this is the real difference between the last, this year's budget and last year's budget and the budgets that went before it is before we just frankly, I mean, the reality is we just deferred maintenance and capital expenses for a lot of years. And the big increase has just been the fact that we haven't been accounting for that and we haven't been keeping up with that. Now I also recognize that we may not have the ability as a town to properly fund all of the things we should be funding. So this is what we should be funding and there's probably going to be some other number which is what we can actually fund which is exactly the decision we made last year.
All right. So just so I can get a better perspective, the road improvement fund of $300,000 Correct. Is that on top of other money that we have in the general budget?
No, that is in terms of pavement preservation and repaving. That is basically what we have. We supplement that with money from Towne Road. And if you remember, we also have money, we also have some money we're gonna have for the next steep in this budget for the steep grant. So we will have more to spend than this.
But this is our, this is the number that we've worked out we need year over year to maintain what we have. Correct? Correct.
Okay. So if we go less than this, long term it costs us more.
And so there's nothing under building maintenance fund, Derek? Because that's what I'm seeing on the screen. Under building mean more funds?
No, no, no. I just wanted to know if there were any other lines. It totals down to your 1,100,000 on capital improvements. Correct.
You know, since this is our biggest area and we're doing a two hour allotment, I mean, we just, let's just go through this line by line real quick. Let's go. Alright. Transfer Multi Use Building Fund.
That is the senior that is the fund for the senior center. There's currently $450,000 in the fund. We didn't put any money into the fund last year. Okay. We can fund it this year, we cannot fund it this year. It's kind of at your
I personally would like to see us hold off on that given everything else that's that's in the works. We may be spending hopefully through the building committee. Hopefully, we'll be at a point this this spring where we can, you know, ask for approval to spend money. Jeff, would you say that's correct? You know, to probably send someone out to get to get some numbers? Hopefully. Couldn't hear Jeff. Is
Jeff muted? My mic, I've got a new webcam and the mic's not working that great, sorry. What was your answer? I would like to see the money in.
Okay, but are you gonna send the project out for any quoting, any bidding? What is your plan? What are you thinking about? Probably be this fall, this summer. To send it out to quoting though, right? Yes.
Scott, do you agree? Yeah, that's what I would say, yeah.
So if we go out this fall, we're not gonna really, again, we're not looking at spending this money in the, you know, at the very earliest till next year. And although I want to fund this, we do have enough money there to get the process started and we have a fairly good portion of the, you know, our projected building expenses there. We wanna stay under 1,000,000, so you know, we're good portion of the way there. And given all the other expenses in this budget, eventually we have to make a decision to take money out of somewhere. I mean, just seems like low hanging fruit to me. And if we don't make these decisions, then the board of finance is gonna make these decisions. So I think we need to step forward. We're sitting here talking about the school and in other places. We have to take responsibility on the town side for what we're spending. If we're not gonna spend this money in the next twelve months, then I don't think it's fair to be parking it there unless it's first. We know that we're gonna be pushing forward. You know, we know if we put the money in the fire department equipment fund,
we know they have stuff coming down the pike for this. We know if we put money in public works, they specifically have something and it's going to get spent. I don't see that happening in that fund. That's why I'm suggesting it.
Well, I personally believe you bombed that whole project once you know what you're doing. Right. You could take that money out and not suffer as long as the board Right. You to the point. The town wants to get it done. We want to get it done. We just bombed for that. Paid over
fifteen to thirty years and you're better off. Yeah. We're going to end up needing to bond for the balance anyway. Does you
anyone have a problem with removing that initially from what we're doing? Anybody? Okay. Eric, take that out.
Well, okay. I do, but it sounds like I'm outvoted.
Actually Jeff, I was just gonna say you didn't get a chance to
reply. Well, hooked up with audio to my iPhone. Listen,
we wanna vote on all these things because we'll do it.
Jeff, I understand where you're coming from. I want that building also but Adrian's right that it I won't be until
mean, pretty concerned about the school budget and the class sizes and some things. It's not that I'm anti school or anything like that but that is our biggest hit. And last year we kind of rolled the senior center community center plans back to accommodate the schools. And I think kind of our seniors are getting short changed on this and it's about time we start putting some attention towards them. I
totally agree with you, Jeff. Don't That disagree on and roadwork. It's really though about we're gonna end up having to go to bond for the community building, you know, and for a bunch of the roadwork. And so, I mean, you know, I guess looking at that right now, I've reached out to try to get some information on it. Bonding market's really good right now, the rates couldn't be better. And we may have even some other options. There are some small banks, Chelsea Groton and Dime Savings, which want to loan directly to towns. And we fall perfectly into their category of what they wanna bond and and the credit risk that we are. We're we're we have such a good credit rating and very low debt. So we may be able to do something with them. The rates are, you know, two and a half to 2.75 and it could be even lower for us. That's based on like Wyndham's rates. So I think we're gonna end up having to do a bond package and that will help with a bunch of these things. It's not a magic wand though.
Yeah, what I'm saying is you're gonna have to pass, that's gonna have to pass. And I don't know if that's gonna happen.
Well, no, totally agree but this budget has to pass too. So step one is this, right? So, you know. Fire Department equipment fund.
I'd actually like to bring this I'd like to bring the senior thing to a vote. I'd like to be in the community center thing to vote through that. I wanna have people on the record saying that they're gonna defund that.
So can we go on vote with a comment saying that we want to fund it. We just wanna bond it. Mean, do you want us to do, Jeff? Do you want us to sit there and all step up and say we want to take $50,000 out of the budget for the senior center or? But we're taking $50,000 out of budget that doesn't exist yet. Literally building a budget, so let's be honest about it. Post budget that we're deciding on so.
Yeah, but Jeff, this isn't a political football. This is a real, this is a reality budget in a year that we know we're getting hit. It's no different than last year, you know.
Oh Adrian you know if we're gonna be defunding the school, the new building budget I would expect everyone else is also gonna be defunding. Correct.
You're going to go through the whole list. Okay. Let's actually do this, Adrian. Hold on for one second. Let's do this. All of these things are necessary on this list. I'm willing to support all of them as long as everybody on this board is willing to go in a fight to try to get a 4 mil increase. I know now I'm going to ask No, it's not four mils. It's 5.05.
Okay. I'm willing to spend all of that money. I I think all of it is important. I would like to be spending it rather than just putting it into
Alright. Let's do this. Instead of taking a vote on it now, let's go line by line, talk about each one, and then we'll go back and decide what the priorities are, and we'll vote on each one.
The only reason I was saying not to fund the senior center is because we wouldn't be using the money and we have Exactly. But of all the things that are going on in town, is, Jeff Murray is absolutely right, it's probably the most important thing that we should be funding. So what we're doing, we're gonna defund that, then we're gonna also take stuff off everybody else here.
That's the only way I can see. I, you know, I disagree with that because when we spend money in public works, we buy a plow truck that gets used to plow the road that year. That's not a fair statement. We buy stuff for the fire department. Adrian, let's go to the next line. Fire department equipment fund, a $100. Right. What
do we wanna do there? Do we wanna put that money away and save it right now when we're asking for everything else? Or do we defund that as well? So the fire department is looking at replacing an air compressor that's 20 something years old,
right, that fills their tanks so they could breathe when they go into a fire. But you know, if we don't think that that's gonna get used immediately, maybe we should cut that, you know. They're also looking at getting a washer dryer, a commercial washer dryer that's made for washing fire gear to meet the new standard that the state has for washing
gear after each turnout. Okay, so is the compressor broken right now?
No, but you don't have it's not like you could just go out and buy a backup when it breaks either. I'm asking a general question. Sorry. Is that still operating?
It is a functional twenty five plus year old compressor, yes. So Jeff, can so the fire department went to CIP
and they had essentially three capital requests this year. The first was to replace their jaws of life unit for getting into cars that are crashed on the side of the roads and their point was most of that was 25 plus years old and it's all if a car is off the road it requires them to lug the generator down there with them to plug in and run the thing because they don't it's not a standalone.
It runs off a power unit and they're looking at going to a battery pack system. Correct. So the fire department came to CIP and asked for a couple of small items saying you got us a fire truck and we'll get by if you give us just these couple of things and here are the list of all the things that are we're gonna need going forward. So we're asking for this this year, we're gonna need this the following year and this the following year. But the stuff that they're putting off is just as important. They were just trying to be like, well, we got a fire truck, we don't wanna be greedy. At the same time, the stuff that they're putting off is stuff that that, you know, make sure that they can they can function as a fire department. So, you know, there was a conversation on CIP about it and it made more sense to try to pick off their smaller items as a chunk, you know. And so that's why this number is what it is. It encompasses a bunch of small equipment purchases that they've, you know, been been structuring out for a while. And
just for the record, the $100,000 value came up originally because we took the fire department's essentially fifteen year capital plan for replacement of their equipment and said okay if the total cost in fifteen years is about 1,000,005 every year the town is going to chunk you know the the yearly cost of that is roughly a $100,000 and that's why initially we baked that those values into the budget with the fire department and also with public works because that's essentially the replacement costs, the annual replacement costs of the equipment that they have.
Okay, so which is it? Is it Adrian's concept of jaws of life, the generator and we're going to spend that money in 2021 or is it we're putting it away for No, all that
money would be used to equipment. They've got, you know, the washer dryer units, they've got compressor, they've got jaws of life, have a they have a bunch of different small items. I say small relative to say a fire truck, but you know. Okay.
The fire department, we trust them with our safety, but you know it's important stuff.
Right? Yeah, and the stuff that they're asking for doesn't get cheaper, It only gets more expensive as the years go on. The cost of increase of goods, it gets more expensive. It's not up to them. It's just that these things get more expensive every year. It's like, you bought a car this year versus buying a car last year, you may be in for sticker shock. I know I So, just don't want to let's leave the $100,000
for now and go through them all and then let's all come back and circle at the ones that we think we need to go at. Works.
Public works equipment fund. Again, this was based off the fifteen year capital plan for public works. The most critical item on here is replacing the sweeper. The sweeper new is going to be somewhere around $240,000 We're actively trying to find a used sweeper to buy. So we had one that we were looking at pretty seriously, but Jay thinks it's probably not in as good a condition as it was originally purported to be. If we're lucky, we can get a used sweeper in the 50 to $80,000 range if we're looking at somewhere around a ten year old machine.
So question though, Eric, given that like a specific purchase like that, do we want to pull out like out of the equipment fund? If we know we have something specific like we know we need to get a hot box and we know we need to get a sweeper. Do we want to pull those things out so that we don't have to go back to town approval to spend those funds and you can buy something as they come up? Well,
so this is a question I have for the town's attorney. But the reason why we did the budget the way we did the budget last year with capital funds was so we didn't have to go back and ask for permission on each piece of capital equipment. And I'm going to get an opinion in writing before we do it. But I think the town can spend out of those funds without going back to a public meeting, even if it breaks the 0.5% of the budget threshold. So I think if we had a $50,000 sweeper we could buy right now, I could ask the Board of Finance for approval and if CIP said yes and Board of Finance said yes, we could cut them a check. That's what I think.
I mean I But I want a legal opinion before I do it. No, I
would tend to agree with you but we definitely need to get an opinion.
Absolutely. Eric, as you said that what's in the what are the starting balance of all these funds when we talk about? Besides the only one that I know the number was the multi use building. I thought the actual is to the left.
No, that's actual expenses. That's what we put in the year before. Like is that the balance? Is the fire engine truck fund $4.12? The answer is no, we spent all that. Gotcha. The multi use building isn't $2.50?
No. Right, that's what was put into it the last time. That was the document I gave you at the last budget or at the last meeting listed what was the balances in the capital fund. If you give me a couple seconds, I can find track that down again. Okay. Jeopardy theme music. All right so let's let's let's
But okay so the fire department fund if we need to buy the jaws of life and something else a washer dryer over there Is that $50,000 Can we change it to 50, Adrian?
I don't have, let me see if I can pull the CIP. Same thing with the public works fund, the sweeper's only gonna be $65,000 they don't need 110.
Well, don't, the sweeper is dependent upon what they find available used, and then the other item I know we definitely need a public works currently is the hot box. Eric, what'd you figure on a hot box? 15 or so for a used one? 15 to 20? Yeah. A hot box allows us to go out and and fill potholes, basically. It keeps the tar tar warm so you can Yeah. Box. Yeah, we had been borrowing but it's
it's a little, it goes Didn't like that or what? No, let's,
let's get our own hot box so Eric can go out and fill those potholes on Bear Swamp. It's not practical because what ends up happening is when you get a nice day, the other town wants to use their own box, you know in the middle of November.
Okay. So Eric, public works sweeper, and that's just a number that you're putting out there that's
one fifteenth of the total number. Okay, so I'll go through since you asked the 2021 public works capital recommendations at this point. One number one item is newer use sweeper just because the existing sweeper is 38 years old and it's really tough to keep that thing on the road and running. Can We've heard about the sweeper a 100 times. We know it sucks. Right. Plow truck number three needs a significant welding repair, but I think, we debated whether it was better to re body it or whether it was just to try to fix it. I think we've ultimately decided that funding wise we're going to need to fix it as opposed to replace the body.
Give us numbers on these things as we go. It's about 12.
I think we can actually buy it out of this year's budget because it looks like, you know, as long as we don't have a big snow event from here on out because we're running under right now on snow budget. Asphalt hot box that's you know about 35,000 new but it looks like we can find them somewhere around 15,000 used.
I'd say 15 to 20 depending upon if we're getting a dump bed out of it. Yeah. So I would say you probably wanna be at twenty.
Yeah and after that the other thing that Jay said he would be very interested in getting is something called the Kreg Boxer bucket for the loader. We were actually out there demoing one today and just seeing. So what it is, is basically it's a bucket for the loader that swings in from the sides and kind of claps itself like a pair of hands. And the advantage is as you're sweeping up the road or as you're scraping the side of the road, just clap it together, pick it up, drop it in the truck and go back and get another scoop. So it just, we were seeing how much road for, you know, thinning out the sides of the roads, how effective it is. That's about $16,000 to buy.
So that's going back to doing something we used to do, which was, you know, cut down the edges so that the water sheds off the roads. Is that Correct. That's interesting because we had several residents note that when we're doing all this road work if we're going to go back to that. So that's kind of cool.
Yep. And then so what I'm having the crew do right now is do it both ways. Do it with the loader and the Kreg boxer bucket and then go back to the backhoe which is how we've done it specifically with the same operator with Tommy running both pieces of equipment and say how much do we get done in a certain amount of time and is it worth the extra money for the boxer bucket versus doing it conventionally the way we've done in the past.
So are we paying for access to try this or are they loaning it to us thinking it's gonna be a sale? No they're loaning it to us hoping we're gonna buy one down the road. And what is the cost on that again? It's about $16,000. Okay.
And then the last thing that you know we got to consider is that is another pickup truck because with four guys and only two pickup trucks this summer we were spending a lot of time especially doing road work and road guard and stuff where you know we would be out doing you know traffic control running out of two large, you know the two large trucks. So that would be probably the last thing on my importance list but that's the last thing in terms of Why a
pickup truck though? Why can't they drive the bigger truck? It's not like we're a big town and they're driving miles and miles.
Oh you can but have you ever tried to grab road signs and stuff out of the back of a full size pickup truck? It's kind of a pain in the ass. I was watching Mark do it this year, you know versus a truck that's at a human level as opposed to six feet off the ground. So that's the only. It is doable. I mean we're doing it now. That's why I'm saying that that's our of the things we're looking at that's the least in terms of priority.
Okay, but that so so that's not in your list. You got $20.12, 16 and how much for the sweeper?
Sweepers somewhere if we're looking used it looks like we're going to be somewhere in the 50 to $80,000 range for any kind of decent one new that's about $250,000 today. So those that's your range.
All right. You're thinking you may be able to get the You were one item you thought you could buy out of this year's, the body?
So I think we can do the welding repair this year. It looks like we should be able to do the welding repair this year for two reasons. One, for whatever reason we have not run into any big maintenance expenses so far this year. Don't say that out loud. But so we're way ahead in that. And so far it's been a fairly mild snow winter.
So if your Craig box was included, you're 116 for purchases. 80 on the sweeper, 20 on the hot box and then 16 on the Craig boxer bucket. And how much do you have in the fund right now?
We have, I'll tell you, we should have approximately 82,000 in the capital fund.
Is there any way that you can put a line next to it what we have available? It would all
So it was on that sheet I gave you for capital funds. What he's asking is so that we don't have to flip back and forth when we're looking at it.
It's a convenience issue. Right, no, I get that. Just not exactly sure how I'm doing it in that budget. It screws up your spreadsheet totals, right? Right.
Can you I'm not saying I can't figure out how to do it. Can you split B? Can't you put in an extra column?
Put up a different column or something. Yeah. Now the sheets are already a little unwieldy width wise. Absolutely is. Alright. I'm just saying Make copy
of the current one, put the info in and save it as something else. Boom. You're welcome.
You know what, Paula, could you fix that on the sheet since you Fix it.
How to do that so quickly? Fix it, Paula. And I wanna I wanna see what happens when you hit the boom. And I wanna see you do this right name. Xcel sharpshooter. Only sharpshooter, an Xcel sharpshooter.
Well I think Jeff Maguire needs to do that because he's he's the numbers guy, right? I'm excited.
Heck I built one that was one page for each one of these things not this mess.
All right so you got you got 82 in there Eric. So your asks your ask items for this year if we go by am I correct Scott that you're saying find for what we need. You wouldn't have any extra funding going forward. But if we funded you with another 3,000 and $3,034,000 should get you there. Is that correct that air?
I mean that's assuming we can find a used sweeper, you know, and accepting the fact that we're not going to get a pickup truck and accepting the fact that in two years when we come back to ask for a plow truck, you know, we're going to be asking for the full Monty, you know, because we won't have put anything in the account. We will have cleaned the account down. Right. So, we fund the $100,000 We're funding you to your fifteen year capital plan.
That's all we're No, no, no. That wasn't the agreement. We're gonna go through
every single line and then come back. That's the agreement. No, I understand. Wrote down the things he wants to buy. Understand we can cut that line if we choose to because we may not spend it. Just like we should put back in multi use building $50,000 We can cut that if we choose to. I mean, that's like all of this. We can cut it if we choose to or we as a board can go to the town residents and say, we're going to increase your taxes based upon this. We can go back to the town and say, hey, listen, we want a bond for this and
we're going to pay for it over fifteen years or twenty years. Well, think you guys are missing a step. We can decide to do a lot of things but the board of finance gets their say on this stuff too. So we need to go before the board of finance and justify what we've put forward and why we put forward. So if we're going to them asking for whatever it comes out to be for the town side, know, then we need to justify that number. Okay. So Eric just justified
what he would spend it on if he had the opportunity to. Right. Okay road improvement.
So road improvement total you know, so we looked at the length of the town's roadwork and said, okay, given under reasonable conditions, what does it cost to maintain? In other words, the roads get no better and no worse. And that number practically is around $350,000 a year of total funding. So we're proposing putting in $400,000 which is a little more than that, not a lot more than that, but then also being able to apply the steep grant the 128,000 from the steep grant. We do have money in the road improvement fund that's currently in there. How much is there? So right around $200,000 but part of the reason is that you always do better if you pave and you do extensive work before the next fiscal year because most towns are kind of broke before the next fiscal year so you do better leaving some money to be spent in the spring which is kind of what we did last year. And remember that of that $300,000 roughly $128,000 of that is the match for what's going to be put in the steep grant, which is what will be used to reconstruct the section of Long Hill Road, as well as the section of
Shawty Mill. Okay so how much do you how much you have spent for your road work in the coming year and how much money do you have available? Yep you have 300, 128, there's 100 in Townade Road and you got 200 in revenue. So we're talking, you know, 700 and some odd thousand dollars.
Well, remember that would be if we spent every last bit and saved nothing for next spring which we're not gonna do. I mean we're gonna save enough for next spring that we can at least do the pre work just like last year. That's why it would be good if we could have one more column here, Eric.
Yeah. But that column's not gonna tell you what he's got committed for spring roadwork, is when you get the bulk of it done, spring spring into June. Keep in mind this budget doesn't take effect until July. So like if you put a line in there for roadwork, you also need yet another line to say how much you've got pre allocated for projects. Right. Now that's a good idea.
So basically you're going to keep money in Tommaid Road in case you have a problem and you're going to spend the money out of this line item or out of our
No, that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that you have to have, you don't have every dollar spent when this budget is put together. Adrian, I get it. I'm not saying that.
When you say that, hear that and think that that's what it is. Okay, well.
Let's just say in a twelve month period next year, I anticipate spending about $550,000 Out of an allotted budget of Say that again? You had $5.50
and you're spending $5.50 basically. Or you had 600 and you're spending $5.50.
So I'm saying we're going to have, we're gonna put into the budget next year roughly 400,000 between the Road Improvement Fund and Town Aid Road and we're gonna add $128,000 and we're essentially gonna spend that whole thing, but we're gonna spend some money that's in there right now ahead of time and probably leave a little bit of that $520,000 for the following spring for spring early work. Okay. Is what I'm saying.
So in a twelve month cycle, you're spending pretty much what we're giving you in general.
Correct. Thank you. And last year I spent more because there was more, I started with more, you know, which is why I was able to do a couple $100,000 worth of work before the budget cycle even began. And then I spent all of that plus Town Aid Road, you know, plus a significant portion of last year's roadwork budget. Yep.
So just so this is clearer, Town Aid Road is what $192,000 $193,000 a year. Yes, correct.
So that's one part of it. You're asking for $300,000 in road improvement funds. Correct. Now we're at $500,000 I'm rounding.
Right. So, but what I would say is that the Town Aid Road, what we've been doing historically is spending roughly $100,000 out of Town Aid Road towards actual road improvement. And the other $93,000 goes for all the little incidentals like guardrail repairs, centerline striping, you know, all the other little things that go along with keeping roadwork that really aren't funded in the budget.
Okay. And so just so we're clear, got $500,000 in the 2021 budget. You're going to spend all $500,000 on projects plus the $185,000 you're going to get from a Steep grant for a total of $650,000 It was 128, Jeff, but yeah, 6 and $25.05. Dollars $6.25. Is that accurate, Eric? That is accurate.
If you're by roadwork including guardrails all the other ancillary All things then the money. Okay. Yep. Okay.
I mean, roadworks one of those things I will spend as much money as you gave me. If you gave me $200,000 more than that, I'd spend $200,000 more than that. There's no shortage of roadwork needed to be done. Okay.
The projects for that are on the road plan, so we need a page for that. Just for community center, for the community purposes, we should get a page for that and say, This is the numbers. Tree removal, Eric. Yes, we have a lot of trees.
We can cut that down. I mean, there's no question. Last year we funded that with $50,000 pretty much realized quickly we were gonna go over budget and got board of finance to backfill at the end of last year, an extra $25,000 into that. So we've spent 61,000 so we actually have 14,000 there. You could easily cut that back to $50,000 and we could still get a lot of tree work done. Practically, I think we've got more than just knocking down the dead stuff. Know we've got well over a $100,000 worth of work to do but if we don't get it done next year, they'll either fall down and take out the power and we'll cut them up that way or we'll get them the year after. Okay. Bunker Hill.
So Bunker Hill, again, there's $160,000 in that fund right now. We know the bill to the town is going to be somewhere in the $400,000 range Until we get a preliminary design estimate back, which should be sometime late this spring, you know, we're not going to be able to do any better than that in terms of what our total costs are. But this gets us, you know, basically 280,000 of that put away. So the following year when we actually start construction on the bill, you know, we're not left with a really big bill to make it happen. And your expected start date on that project?
With a little bit of luck, that project will go out to bid next winter with a construction date starting somewhere around April of next year.
And we can't get the other monies approved until we have our side funded, correct?
Those projects we have to pay for everything upfront anyway and then funded
by the Fed. Well, we need a rolling capital for that but I'm saying we can't, the federal dollars aren't available to us until we've done our side.
So we've already locked in the federal dollars, the federal government and state government have already agreed to fund their portions of this. So the funding is fully secured for this project. And we don't actually have to lay out any money until construction begins because the project we used, the state has assumed the additional cost for the design work. That's part of the deal with the program we signed up for because that saves us somewhere around $80,000.
So what's our funding requirement for this then? We have to have it all at start date or? Did have to do that Eric for
Yeah, that's why I'm asking. Right, so the reason, you know, and that was a question we had for the auditor a year or so ago. And I think the auditor basically told us we had enough of a, we're running enough of a balance. We could basically self fund that without, you know, setting aside a standing fund with,
you know. No, that's for the capital payment. That's for the pay, the capital instead instead of of having a separate capital fund that you pay these bills out of and then get reimbursed. I meant, how much of the money for the actual project do we have to put us do we have do we have to have every dollar put aside on the first day of construction? Is it a one year project? Do we have to have it all before it starts? Or if it's a two year project, you know, can we have it structured like this where let's say we're putting in 80,000 a year and we maybe that last year is that's our last 80,000 on the year two of the project.
So the engineer was estimating from initial road closure to when the bridge is you know has clearance you know is gonna be in the six to seven month category.
So it's within a one year timeframe? Correct. So we need that money in the budget cycle of the start date.
It will cross two fiscal years if Eric's start date of April 2022 is accurate. So that's a question. Adrian's right. Let's find out if we have to have it all put away before this or if we can fund it. I mean, we should be able to fund that out of our general operational funds.
Mean, Yeah, but then you're drawing down against the 10%. Can fund it as long as you're getting it back or putting it back.
All right, so that 120 gets us to $2.80, which is half of what we're gonna have to spend, percent of what we're gonna have to spend. Correct. The culvert fund.
So the culvert fund, we know we have seven or eight culverts that need to get replaced at some frequency. There's really only two that are critical right now. You know, one is a roughly $200,000 project that's small enough that it's not eligible for state or federal matching funds. The other would be eligible for state matching funds. So one project will cost the town roughly $200,000 The second one will cost the town roughly $300,000 dollars Right now we're in the middle of the surveying, you know, and wetlands portion of the first, of the less expensive one. That's not very expensive that's in the 3 to $5,000 range. Once we have that data, we can, our engineer will produce a preliminary design and then we can bid it out or wait till we have enough money in that fund to deal with it.
You're telling us between the two culverts, we have about $600,000 that we're going to have to come up with and over roughly what period of time?
I think if we're lucky, you know, we've probably got five years, at least five years before we really have to replace them without anything catastrophic happening. Say that again, how many years?
Five. I mean, you know, the engineer has basically said both of them are vulnerable. If we had a really significant flood event, you know, there's a chance we'd lose one or both of them.
Can we claim it on the insurance if that happens?
Just looking at all avenues, Jeff. No, I mean, if I love that, Adrian. I love that. I love that. Great. You know what? If that happened, that would make us eligible for federal funds to replace both of them. So I mean, in some ways, that would be the best thing that could ever happen to us. Know, other than the fact that we'd be out of bridges for a while. Financially, that would be a great thing for us. But I mean, can't count on that.
All right. So this one is one that has to get funded. Now, I mean, they all need to be funded, but we are going to run up against that. I was down at the Missoula Road culvert this morning. I'm assuming that's one you're talking about, Eric? That is the that project is somewhere around a $600,000 project.
All right. So the two projects, so we're all on the same page. Two projects are that one and the one that you want to do first, which is located?
Oh, on Hutchinson Road. What do you call it? On Hutchinson Road. So there's Hutchinson, Basola?
Yeah, it's Lake Road but at Basola is the expensive one. And the other one which is the one that's getting surveyed now is the one on Hutchinson. And what's your breakdown for each again please?
So the one on Hutchinson, the best guess we have right now which is preliminary until we have the hydrology is around $200,000 And Basola Lake? Basola Lake, that's roughly a $600,000 project. And there's no funds for that? The $600,000 one when we get to do that we're going to apply for state matching funds for that. So that's probably three.
Is that how that works? Yes. So Ballpark, that's 300,000. The town would be out 300,000 on that one.
Okay. And so Eric, you also stated, just so we're all we all get the same info, you also stated there were other culverts you have on the list. How many more? I think there are seven total that are in
kind of marginal shape. And are any of them state matching or all smaller?
The only other one that I think we stand a reasonable chance of getting a state contribution to is the one on Juravadi because it's part of essentially it's the end of a state dam assembly. I think we can successfully argue with DEP that they have a since that's an outfall of their system that they would need to contribute to us repairing that one.
Okay. How much do we have in the fund currently?
We currently have 60,000 of which about 5,000 is committed right now for survey wetlands flagging and very preliminary design sketches. So we don't have much in there yet?
Nope. We just got started on that last year, Adrian.
No, I know that. No. I was stating the obvious. I thought that was the point of this meeting.
Right. Let's give it to you. All right and building maintenance Eric $60,000 So
we pulled out of most of the individual budgets the maintenance funds and we put together one kind of master building maintenance fund, know and randomly said somewhere around $60,000 a year. You know I can tell you, you know I can identify you know a solid $250,000 worth of projects that would be worth tackling now. Obviously we're not going to do them all in you know in one year and it's going to cover a kind of range of projects. My goal is just to chunk off the major building maintenance issues we have over a five or six year time frame. That's kind of where I came up with that value.
Okay, are there any other questions related to all these projects or capital expenditures? You know, I don't think we do at this meeting, but we should all come back with what we want to keep or leave or get rid of or cut, unless you guys all want to do it now and you want to come down to something that we can, or do we want to leave them all the way they are? What's the desire? Okay. Thoughts anybody? Paula, Jeff you're still muted. Still marinating. Well, you got twenty six minutes to marinate.
I know and you know, again, partly this is a legacy of a really long period of time where we didn't invest in capital. Know and frankly you know if we had been replacing culverts all along, we wouldn't be in this position. And if three years ago or four years ago, when we brought it to town meeting, the town had approved replacing the Bunker Hill Bridge, we wouldn't be facing that. I mean, the reality is we just let everything go to shit and now we are at the unfortunate place of having to make up for years of neglect and that sucks. I mean I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
Adrian, how much are you expecting us to reduce the budget by? How much would that cost? Say what again? How much are you expecting us to reduce the budget? What what is sellable to the public? 2%?
Well, I don't think we need to address. I personally don't think we need to address the school directly. It's it's that's that's between the school and the board of finance. Obviously, we we'd like to have a say in RAM, but we don't. So I think we need to look at what our personal increases on our side and then then figure out where we're at,
You know? Right. How much so how much are you suggesting that we reduce the budget by?
I I don't think we can I personally don't think we can go for more than probably a mil, you know? Eric what what's our side of it?
Hang on let me go back up to the top. So town general budget right now is about 2 So we're actually under a mill right now.
On the town side, yes. On the town side. And that's with all the capital investments.
But remember though, that that's just the budget. That's not taxation. The increase in taxation is going up a lot more because we don't have the offset from the unexpended fund balance to effective.
Let's pull that number. That's the number we really need.
So we go to page two. $2.38, 415,000, and then it's in revenue. Sorry. 365,000. So that's the the difference. Hang on a sec.
The use of fund balance at $4.15, is that shifters is that shiftings? Where's that $4.15 coming from? Or was that last year? That was last year. Okay. Yeah. That's okay. That is last year. Sorry. There's there's so many columns on this thing.
So that's basically those three things together are 1,000,000, just over 1,000,000, $1,018,000. On the town side? On the town side. Well, mean if you're I'm saying without the school, what's R naught? R naught is just over $1,000,000 $1,000,018
Yeah. So we got a lot of work to do.
We're all gonna have to sit there and accept the fact that we're gonna have to go up somewhere. We're not gonna be able to take that whole thing.
Yeah, the question is where? Eric's right. The problem is it's a legacy issue and it's been something we've been kicking down the road by using fund balance. And this has always been the conversation is that even when we when I personally was on the board of finance and then obviously we all had this conversation last year that if we use fund balance we're just we're setting up the town for a bigger conversation and a and a harder conversation Down the road. And and now now we're having that conversation. Now we're having that conversation.
And look, we knew last year when we kicked it down the road, we decreased the fund allocations and took all the money, that it was gonna be, it was gonna make our jobs a lot harder this year. We just said, hey, we're sitting in COVID, we can't bring the budget to the people, we have no other real alternative. So that's where we are right now.
And what's the amount of money raised by each mill? Adrian, Jeff, what's your number? 57, something like that. $57,000? $2,257,000. $2.57,
$2.59, I don't remember exactly what it was last year but it's in that ballpark.
Yeah and I haven't included that because I don't know what the grant, we don't have the grand list completed No, no. And that sometimes that helps you, but So go back to the capital thing, Eric. So
add add that up. How much is it? A million dollars? Yeah. So you cut that all out. You'll be all set.
You could do that if you don't wanna do any road work
or anything for a year. That's how that that's what I'm getting at. That's what you have to do to get this back to where you guys want it. Otherwise, you're gonna have to do all that or, you know
And the reality is, Scott, is that there were years in the past Where we did that. As a town didn't
we didn't put any money into the road work. We spent only what we had in Downaid Road. Yeah, I know. And we added nothing from the town. I mean, we've done that in the past, but, you know, that's why our PCI of our road network was 62, you know, So that's really the And the other thing to keep in mind, Scott, is that, yes, this sucks, but when you look at what our per capita expenditure is for the town government, even with all this stuff built in, it's about right. So this is not a super heavy budget. Most towns, if they had that to spend in their general budget, they'd be somewhere where they wanted to be. You know, we're still only 27% of the total budget. And if you look at a lot of the surrounding towns, that number gets as high as about 36%, you know, for some of our surrounding towns. So it's not like we're spending an excessive amount of money, you know, on a per capita basis or an overall budget.
Eric, there's no need to explain this to me. Right. I don't have any problem with spending this money and bringing up the bill rate 4% if that's how you guys want to do it. I get that this has gotta be done, really does. I was just bringing the light, you'd have to bump all this stuff to get to where you want. Not gonna happen, so we're gonna have to scare something else out. So pretty much if you dump all the capital Then you'll be fine. Because you're at a million, Eric?
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I mean, that is the difference. I mean, go back two years ago.
Yeah, no, no, I get it. Jeff, did you have any conversation at all? Did you get over to Dime?
I have not gotten to Dime, but I will. I have them up on my screen right now, Adrian. So I will do it.
Did you get an emergency? There's no way that we'd ever do that, Adrian. What? Bond for that stuff? That should be yearly expenditures.
No. No. I think there are some things in here that are yearly expenditures. But when we talk about culverts, that's not a yearly expenditure. No. That that's not. No. That that's not. So I I I guess what I'm talking about is if we can if we can look at our bigger road picture going forward and pick off some of these bigger things that we know we've gotta do, whether it's, you know, the culverts or bridge, we know we need money for the community center. If we're gonna finish that, we're gonna we talked about bonding that anyways. The problem is it's smaller chunks, none of it's worth it. Know, at 3,000,000, we're not an attract it's still not an attractive bond. You need to get something closer to 4 is my understanding before the market's really gonna take you seriously
and give you good rates. The only thing I can see in here is the multi use building bonding for the balance of that. The rest of this should be yearly
Well, you could, but you could do that. You could do the culverts, right? And, you know, we could we could pick off some of the bigger equipment purchases that we know are coming down at the same time and our roadwork backlog. Because right now this 300,000 is maintenance. It's not the bigger picture of total roadwork allocation. Right. You know, we still have that coming down. Are we am I wrong, Eric?
No, I mean, I think if we're frugal, I think with what we've got, we can slowly improve the condition of the roadwork network overall. I mean, we're not gonna pick off, you know, all our bad roads at once, but over ten or fifteen years, we can address,
you know, most of the bad roads. But what bonding will do for us is spread out our number over 15 to 30. Well, AJ, what is the number of years that most of these bonds will be on?
Twenty to twenty five, it seems to be the, and we talked about a thirty year road cycle anyways. Certainly the culverts are older than that.
It's something that definitely has to be looked at because to sit there and present a million dollars to the community, which I agree a 100%, we should spend all of it. Should put the $50,000 back in the multiuse. But if we bonded for all of it and bonded at a significant amount so that we could do all of this within three years, not thirty years.
But it but again, this goes back to the conversation of you have to pick off all of your major stuff because you can't go for a bond this year and then come back in two years and say, okay, want the fire truck now because that's a million dollars. Or come back and say, I need whatever piece of equipment for public works and that's $300,000. You have to lump everything together so that you have a big enough bond to make it work for the banks and the bonding companies. And at the same time, the public needs to know you're not coming back in three years and saying I need another two or three mills. You have to be it has to be all encompassing so that they know worse once we once we agree to this bond number, that from a town side with the exception of, you know, with the exception of something happened in an emergency or, you know, or the regular cost of doing business, I. E. Salary, healthcare increases, things like that that you know you're gonna get. With the exception of those
things, we're not coming back to them for something else. If we don't do it like that, I don't think that it has a snowball's chance. Because you can't, they need to know we're not coming back for four or five years with anything major. You know? Because you need to give the grand list time to catch up. You know, you need to give the community as a whole time to digest. Because even if we go to bond and we come back, we're still probably looking, if we're gonna be bonding say 3 and a half or $4,000,000, we're still probably looking for 1 mill to cover that side of it.
And that's not encompassing the conversation of the school increase or or the RAM numbers. We're we're we're looking at Long Hill Bridge as soon as Bunker Hill is done. Right? I thought it was a 10 time frame.
Well, it's deteriorating slowly. Structurally, it's down to a five, which is not good. Out of? 10. So it's already in the range that it's eligible for state and federal funding. But the good news is that that is it's got a slow deterioration curve. So it's already in the range where it should be replaced, but I suspect we could go at least ten more years before it would actually be condemned and you couldn't drive over it anymore.
That's my guess. Is it true that someone I saw somewhere that somebody said that they could see through the bridge to the water? I mean, yeah, I looked.
Maybe if they have x-ray vision, but I've looked, I've never seen but did you see that also somewhere? Yeah, somebody
said that, but you know, people say a lot of things. Right right I never saw it maybe it was just water in a hole. So
just as perspective if if we bonded for $5,000,000 at twenty five year payout the Total payout is about $240,000 a year at 2.5% interest. What I said, one mil.
Did he say that? Paul, did you I said a mil. I I didn't hear. I he said a mil. I I didn't get do you understand what a mil was earlier, and I said 262,000 give or take. Sorry.
I should I should have annotated. So they so they so that's a mil year that that's gonna be a standard for twenty five years, a mill year just to pay the bond. Well, it's not a mill because the mill will change. It's $240,000
a year. Not close. Close to it. Yeah. But but also in the as part of that conversation, that bond won't kick in. The bond payment won't kick in until it's complete. Right? And so even if you got the if you got the town to agree for the bond, it take you give or take a year to put it together. And timing wise that will time out because this is the last year on the school bond. So the school bond covers give or take a little over a third of that new bond you'd be going for. How much was the school bond and for how long was it? I don't remember what the amount was or how long, but I know that the yearly payment's been right around 90,000 or so. 90, yes. So it's been right about 100 with the interest.
I feel like that was had to have been about a ten year bond.
Yeah. Why do we wanna go with twenty five or thirty year bond? Because the amount of the first of all, that's generally the standard for those types of bonds, bigger bonds. And it's not a school bond, right? So it's not a project specific bond, right? Just a bond. It's just an overall general obligation bond. Yeah. So, and there's a possibility for us if we're in that price point, instead of going to a regular bond, we may be able to go directly to a small bank. The advantage of that being, we still need a bonding attorney, but we won't need a placement specialist. And the bond company themselves and the placement specialists take a fairly high percentage of your money. If we can avoid those and make an agreement with a local banking facility, I. E, Chelsea, Dime, whoever, even maybe our own personal bank, then we'll avoid that secondary layer of fees and that allows us to keep more of the money. And because of our good credit rating and because of our lack of other debt, we should have a good shot at that.
Okay. So I don't think anyone on this call wants to sit there and make any of these cuts tonight, do you? Mean, this is where all the money is anyway. So It is. I'm not what to do with it. Right.
So our two hours is coming to a close, and I know Paul would like to stay on another thirty, forty minutes. Let's do it.
So so where put that 50 back in the Multiuse Building.
Okay. Anybody else wanna have anything else to say here?
Alright. So what's the plan for next week? Just so we know how to prepare.
Come come prepared to talk about these items and if you wanna cut them or not. And if No. No. No. I disagree with that. Let's get Eric to line up
the folks that have increases and let them come in and and pitch us a story.
Okay, just so that we're clear. We're talking somewhere in the order of 5,000 for the library, 3,000 for the town clerk and another 5 or 6,000 so all total, we're only talking somewhere around $20,000 max between that. The
money's here, Adrian. Right. So It's not, not the town I get that. But
again, I don't care where the increase is coming from. We just went line by line on capital and we all know we need to spend it. Right? Uh-huh. Sure enough, I wanna hear to have the same conversation with everybody else in thing. I don't think it's fair to say public works doesn't deserve a hot box, but the library deserves their hours. Personally, I think good roads are just as important as as, you know, as a library.
Well, then why do we wanna bring them in? They're fucking $4,000
Why do you wanna? Cause I wanna have that conversation though, same way we just had this conversation. Eric gave us all the numbers, why can't we have a conversation with them? Well I that makes know why we need more hours. I mean, realistically, if we're gonna be candid about it, you know, more people are using electronic library materials than they are books. So where are those hours coming from? And given the limited amount of hours that the library has been open, you know, are we expecting a mad rush come spring? You know? And maybe that's the case. Maybe that's the answer, but I still we still need to have that conversation.
Is it that Wally is working a lot of hours?
I don't know. I'm not in town hall every day to monitor like you. I can say I see it a lot more of Wally and Linda than I would have expected to see them. Why the sudden increase
for them? Well, it's been this whole year. Part of it is part of the offsetting factor this year is that the state has put an awful lot more requirements on municipalities than were in the past. Know, hence the reason why we had to plus up, with an assistant short term for Carol too because we just didn't have the manpower to do it. So I really think most of that right now comes down to state mandated requirements. What I don't understand, you know, and I don't think anybody understands at this point is is that a permanent Eric we're gonna sit there and give you you have
Jesus you have more decreases and increases in the top of the budget
Yeah, I'm cutting every place I can, you know, I mean Don't be distracted from the conversation.
I want heads on the platter. No, No, mean, seriously, are we seriously saying we're not gonna do our I'll
in bring so we can have fifteen minute conversations with all of them and they can tell us why they want what. They're supposed to do it anyway. So if we were physically somewhere that would happen. I'm just trying to get an understanding. Is going
the Board of to ask for the same? Anybody? Say that I can't hear him. Is the Board of Finance gonna ask for the same thing?
Don't know. I don't want to assume that somebody else is gonna do their job. I know I just want to do mine. I'm just wondering if it should be a combined presentation
with the board of finance and us just to save everybody a little bit of time.
So here's what I would say is that if you don't want to deal with it, so here's one thing. If you look at the charter, you don't get to set, you set the salary for everybody except elected officials. So you technically don't set your own salaries, you technically don't set carrels, and you technically don't set the registrars, which is why I gave you that note to that effect with the budget stuff last week. So you can punt all of that to them if you desire, or you can make a recommendation to them, but ultimately that's their choice. All the other employees
you set the salary and benefits for. Eric, we are going to make the recommendation to the board finance. I think that should be what we do as a board.
Sure. Priorities. Ultimately, they could put the money in or out or
cut But it at least we're setting priorities. So if we sit there and say, The town should fund the $1,000,000 in capital projects, at least we're on record of saying we should fund it. I just think it's just setting the tone. Think in the past, the Board of Selectmen never set a tone. They didn't set anything. To me, it's set a tone, tell people what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it, and then if the Board of Finance sits there and determines that it's too much money and we've gone too far, then fine. That's their job as well. But if all of your numbers are in here, Eric, and your total change is like $9,000 from operational.
I'm cutting a fair bit from our ops budget because I know we're screwed this budget season, and I trimmed a bunch of things. Now there are some things that are your choice not mine like for instance you can make recommendations to the board of finance for whether you want to take a salary and what that is. I can't make that recommendation that's got to be you. You know there's some things in there but yes the general budget I trimmed as much as I could because I know we're going to be in trouble. Now there's a couple things that I want you to be aware of that are controversial. The first is I took out the funding again for the standing standalone senior services coordinator and kept that with Roberta at really reduced funding and that may piss some people off and I want you to be aware that I did that and we can talk about whether that's a reasonable idea or whether we should restore it. But I looked at this and said this is going to be you know a really really difficult year and from my perspective other than capital spending you know I'm trying to limit the change as much as possible. Okay when is our next scheduled meeting next Tuesday? I
think so, yes. Does anyone have any issue that they want to address right now before we close this meeting? Well, what's our plan for next Tuesday? We dragging people in or are we putting it off? And if we're putting it off, do we need a meeting next Tuesday Or do we want to push it out another week so it gives you and I more time to get some background information from banks?
No, have the meeting next Tuesday and drag people in because if we're gonna set the tone, wanna know why we're setting the tone, right? Okay.
Eric, can you reach out? Okay. So you wanna hear from library board, Carol and Wally? Anybody that's got an increase above, you know.
Above background noise, got it. Yes. Do you have a target in mind for a percentage increase, a general percentage increase for town employees? Austerity.
Let us come back with that one so we can all think on it after this meeting.
Okay. Well, to be clear, we're talking about what employees specifically. So I gave you an Excel spreadsheet. Can
No, no, just give us the highlights. It's been a long night. We're all slow. So
that is everybody that is not a union employee basically.
So it's you, Amanda, well, you're contractual. So it's Amanda.
So I'll go down the list. Carol Lee, Wally Barton, Linda Derrick, myself, Amanda, the assistant registrars, Sylvia You just said we don't set half of those salaries.
So you're right. The first three are technically set by board of finance. My error there. The fire marshal. Assistant fire marshal. Assistant fire marshal,
dog warden, transfer station employees, zoning agent, library director, library employees.
Well, mean, I looked at your spreadsheet and I think you said is it, you know, like based on you had standard, you know, cost of living and whatnot and you know, a bunch of stuff in there so.
Right, to match the cost of living is about a 1.2 to 1.5% because this year, unlike last year, there's no health benefit reduction this year. So really the minimum to keep people level would be just covering the cost of, know, cost of inflation. So that's just like around 1.2%. And I think if you look at the budget, the overall budget I put in there, that is what the, that is what it's put in at. What are their contract increases? They're not under contract, most of them. So the But what are the contracts that we have? Oh.
So most of the contracts are around 3%. Say that again. Most of the contracts are 3%.
I personally think 3% is generally excessive, but that's my own opinion. I'm conservative so. Did we lose Jeff?
I think so. I'm looking at the numbers that you're thinking on. No. Murray. Jeff Murray decided to call it quits.
Oh, he he was hard he was he was definitely off at nine. Okay.
Are we inviting somebody from, the school to talk about school budget? Are we there yet? We should,
I would, we got to think about that because we have to decide who is actually coming to do that for us, which probably would be Shannon.
I'd like to hear from the new superintendent if I'm gonna hear from anybody.
Got that, Eric? We could ask him. Mean, Eric, when you do spreadsheets like this or when the finance department does spreadsheets like that, they should put the calculations in, just numbers. They shouldn't just be typing in the spreadsheet. They should be going, Here's the calculation. When you look at the formula, can see that Where that came from? Where came from, How much the increase was. On some of these, Adrian, the increase is one point. It's not this spreadsheet Eric, it's your employee cost one. I'm looking at it on a different computer. Yeah. Got 1.5% on some of these increases. Then on some of the contracted ones that actually have formulas like the assistant assessor and the assessor, it's 2.5%. Because those are contractual?
Correct, they're contractual. It goes to what Scott was asking. What is the increase? From what I can see on the spreadsheet Scott, it's 2.5% in the assessor's office. So that contract, that's how it was written. So all right. Let's all come back. Let's marinate
for a week. We'll talk next week. I think we also need to talk about admin assistant and some of the other,
know. We all have to look at that spreadsheet that he provided about costs, employee costs, and make sure that we're comfortable with what he's proposing or what we want to propose. So forget what Eric, Eric has given us a guideline. We have to decide if we're going to stick with that guideline or go some other direction. Yeah. Correct. All right. So we're shooting for next Tuesday.
Okay. So does someone want to make a motion to adjourn? Motion to I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Do we have anybody on here for public speak? Did anyone stay with us? Anyone, anyone? Hello? Hello? Joanne Hebert's still on. There is.
Thank Thank you for all your hard work. That's it. I mean, I'm really impressed. I really, really am. I've been following you guys for a year. So thank you. I went to the board of ed meetings with the budget it's so different. You guys really take it seriously look at everything. I won't keep you but thanks again for all your hard work.
All right thank you. Thanks Joan. Jeff one thing real quick just so I have it clear so you're asking to speak with the rep from the library board to talk about the library director Carol to talk about town clerk and Wally or one of the registrars to talk about the increases in registrars. And then you would like Val to be on the meeting to discuss the school board's budget. Is that correct? That's a great start. Yes. What other deliverables do you want for me for next week's budget?
My deliverable for you, Eric, is can we get funding from any state source, any federal source? Where is there money that we can use to offset the taxes that the residents
of this town because we have no commercial base are going to have to incur? Yeah, we want to your next deliverable is to increase the commercial base by 100%. Exactly.
We need a competing pizza place. You know what? Even if they increased it by a 100%, you know, that would decrease the budget like 0.1%,
you know? Hey, I'll take what I can get. Yeah.
Okay. So I know. I wish I had better news for you. I don't.
But you can see where the money's going. Well, hey look, five mills from you and four mills from the school and, you know.
All right, does someone wanna make a motion to adjourn?
I make a motion to adjourn this meeting. I'll second. All right.
All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Eric, Amanda, thank you. Yep. Good evening. All right. Good night. Bye. Thank you. How are we doing Amanda?
Good. Just press, stop on the recording. I made you the host.
Aw, look at you. Oh, me? Passing the buck. Well, there goes your race. Oh, man. Hang on. So I gotta stop share. And what do I have to do? Just hit end?
Yeah. Yeah. Just end the meeting. It'll stop the recording.
Good night, guys. Oh, I could say end recording then.