Meeting transcript
Town Budget Meeting
May 12, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
You don't have
Well, my name is Jeff. I'm the first of Tom.
I actually have a pulse. I I was elected with 512 votes. So, a lot of you had to vote for me and that's about 7% of my electorate. So, just let you all know my wife and I do pay our taxes unlike some people that like to throw stones. Okay.
All right. So, before we get started, I just want to do the same thing I did last time. we will not be we will descent. It has to be a good discourse, not a poor discourse. It's all about working together. you know, when we work together, good things happen. Like the bathroom project that's going to happen here at the school is going to save $260,000, not 260, $200,000 because we worked together. And it wasn't easy to get it done, but we did work together. All right. So, things good can happen if we work together. So before I read this in everybody needs to know there's there's things we're doing. First thing we're going to do is elect to model that. The second thing we're going to do is the board of finance is going to start running me and then we do a presentation. The third thing we're going to do is ask some questions to any of the boards. You can ask questions whatever you want. And then what's going to happen is we're going to adjourn. There will be no motions that we'll be able to undertake. No reductions of anything that's been done by the board of finance. what the board of finance has put forth is going to go away on the 26th. All right. So, long as we all understand the game plan. All right. So, my requirement is to read the notice and we get it started. notice of bifocating budget meeting Tuesday, May 12th, 2026, 7 p.m. The electors and citizens qualified to vote in town meetings at the town of Andover are hereby notified by the bifurcated
budget meeting of the town of Andover will be held at the Andover Elementary School in the gymnasium, 35 school road, Andover, Connecticut on Tuesday, May 12th at 7 p.m. for the following purposes. to choose a moderator for city meeting for review and discussion of only no action upon the bifurcated budgets of the town and the handover elementary school for the fiscal year July 1st 2026 to June 30th 2027 as prepared by the board of finance and voting will be deferred to the budget referendum in the handover town community room May 26th also we will adjourn the proposed vice budgets of the town are available in town clerk's office voting by abs ballot or any other meetings is not permitted for this meeting. So, we're going to get started and we're going to sit there and do item one to choose a moderator for set meeting. I like to second that.
so, Liz Latchet did the nomination and who?
Louise.
Louise did a second. Does anybody have a a further nomination for moderator? Okay. So, if there are
Sorry, sorry. If there are no other nominations, we're going to let in the take over meeting.
Good evening. Hello, welcome. we will just jump right in, but out of curiosity, how many of you did get to attend the finance meeting after maybe after the referendum failed? Is there anybody on that? Yes. Yes. Just curious. Just curious. So, some of this won't be brand new, but a lot of Okay. So, gentlemen over the guidelines. also, we'll hand it over to Mr. with for letting us know how this is going, but also when we come to the speaking part, we're going to have everybody come here and use the mic instead of running around with the mic.
And as usual, it'll be an address and also just that, you know, there's a saying, we can't necessarily control the wind, but we can set our sales. So tonight is sort of part by setting sails that we're asking questions, getting clarification, we're sharing opinions. We will keep it to three minutes, but please, you know, add your add your two cents to the audition.
It's yours. Turn off the light so you can see better.
Yeah. You can actually see. Hello everybody. We're back here. Robin on the board chair there. Too many lights.
It's not those stories. It's It's budget. It's budget.
It is those choice.
Apologies if I look down here in my lap time. I'm not all that confident. So, one thing I want to mention is rather some of this because we've done it already. for those of you not here though, there is this is just a basic budget process slide. We go over the various budget requests from the various town departments and the school boards. And then I'm going to run you through what we did on the 6 at the board finals meeting following failing referendum and my revised math on mil race. People are usually interested in that. Bear in mind those are all provisional and some sample property tax calculations. So this is what's happened so far. I've added two. The first bit of this is no not news to any of you who've been following along. what happened of course is that when the budgets failed spoke indicated in the advisory questions they felt the budgets were too high. So now the budget binder becomes split. So we vote on it separately from now on. so we took this issue these issues up at our meeting on the 6th to review and discuss changes and then we'll be taking this budget to referendum as Jeff said on the 26th. Some things that have changed since the first thing that came down interestingly enough was the state decided to allocate additional aid to cities and towns. Our share of this is listed here and I hope you can read it, but basically it's $80,000 towards education and 17.7 you know 51 in supplemental town B. My understanding is since the ed budget is rising you know we can use that to
to frame it and there's been some back and forth on state guidance on that but my belief is that the latest and greatest is that we're from there. So, the board of finance went through the town budget again. we made some relatively modest cuts on the town side, on the town operations budget. $16,400. Little changes here, little changes there. $5,000 reduced for the town administrative assistant line. We thought that we'd be okay getting away with that. 5K from treasurer clerk wages. again discussing kind of with the treasurer about the open position and programs at the community center. I think testing it due with the number that we ultimately arrived at and then there was a little bit of a a very small
cut to the recognition. Then we looked at the school budget which somehow my lightability item here didn't make it. we reduced $50,000 from the school budget, basically triple the cuts on the tariff side and then we voted to use $100,000 from a side fund balance to defay taxation. Again, apologies for not having that bullet point on as we did reduce it by 50,000. We also talked about another thing that hasn't, you know, action has not been taken on yet. So, I only put in the signal here forformational purposes. The number is not in the calculations. the 425 audit is just about done. We should have some money coming back from the budget which we could use. but
we have not voted on that. as you know both RAM budget their capital and ops they're meeting as I understand it as a city to address. I can't tell you what's going to happen. I got a text they may have made $100,000 cuts and you know I'm not watching that meeting. I hope that's true. But that those numbers are not as I could possibly have known going into this. So, oops. Sorry. So, here's my little chart of our expenditures. Again, as I think I read you guys through our last meeting, the RAM number, this is the true number for their our levy, right? not counting as many of you probably heard the the returning money that that they are giving us back because they kept money for five years that they should have kept 258 is accounted for but it's not in this expenditure line item which it doesn't belong there budget versus the adjustable so you've seen it go up by 3.5 the end of her BE this reflects a $50,000 cut that still leaves it as plus 9.8 more So, this is I, you know, I went through
this last time. I'm gonna, again, if people want me to go over this again, I will. Otherwise, I'm going to kind of speed through my little history documents here and get you to changes. Again, as I just said, $15,000 cut brings us down to 9.8 on the school side.
Okay, this is RAM. Nothing has changed on this side. hopefully they've made a a decent cut. we have a 12.65% share of whatever their budget is. That's the key thing to I think keep in mind.
So those are again budget history documents. We can go over them if you want to.
Miller, Robert,
could you slow?
There are people myself hard hearing
and some of it is the acoustics and some of it is just the rapidity. Yes.
Oh, saving money inside.
Just just just so you know, like the heart of hearing, myself and my father, we have a really hard time hearing because of the rever.
Yeah.
In the gym, the echo does not go well with hearing aids and I don't wear a hearing aid. So, I am completely deaf in my left side.
So, just think really
that's true for everybody from Alabama.
I'll take my best I can.
Thank you.
So, we can revisit any of the stuff that I already talked about that you might have missed. Back me up in a question. Happy to do that. Apologies for my being. So, as you guys may remember, if you were here last time following the process, there calculation is a little complicated. If we go over a certain figure, the state of Connecticut a couple of years back capped how much you can charge on auto tests. We are at this present moment just slightly above that threshold which results in a split mill rating. It's pretty min and I think by the time the RAM situation is sorted out, we'll be
under this number again. But again, I made the presentation at 4 p.m. today. So this is my chart of the norm and how it's calculated. We know we need to raise by taxes just over $10.4 million and that is applied to our grand list and it results sorry down here in a split mill rate. Again like I said the auto is capped at 32.46. You kind of have to calculate that take it off the top and then find the number for the remaining the real estate and personal product the rest of the green. list. And that's 32.
Robert, can you make it bigger? Can you make it?
Yeah, I'm gonna try to. I hope it doesn't cut everything off. Hang on a moment.
Just put a tissue.
Yeah, that's easier.
Sure.
Does that Does that help
a little bit? I know there's a lot of numbers on there. I apologize. The the answer is for the number that most impacts everybody. It's right now this budget would be 32.57 on a million. Again, the auto slightly lower, but auto is minuscule in comparison, I think, to most people's house, right? So, this is just how I calculate. This is just literally the basic method. The auto is capped. We cannot raise more than this figure here, right? because of the state law. So then that's how I arrived up to 32.57. And again, I would simply express that that doesn't actually get set until after the passive. And in between now and then, if Ram makes the cut than I hope they're making, if the state suddenly changes and pumps more money in it, then we would of course address it. So these this is an updated version of a slide I had last time to just give you a sense for at this rate level what real estate taxation would look like visa v last year. So depending on what your assessment is, and again I answered this last time real quick, your houses are are assessed at whatever the their supposed fair market value is at 70% of that figure. If your house is worth $500,000, you're assessed at 350, right? 70%. So if you are at that 350 that's your assessment the tax increase this budget will require as currently written is $343 a year and it'll be a few months on the auto not oh we did we I did have this slide so as you can see depending on what how
nice your cars are it's literally 15 20 25 bucks it's nothing compared to this is where the need But anyway, in the interest and a full disclosure, that's how it works. So, this is just my history slide. Again, I've updated it. I also want to point out that the last time I did this slide, I had an error in it because I used an old formula. When I created the cumulative, whoops, the cumulative number for the last five years, not including this bucket, I had originally had it in my head that I would do a rolling average, and I left that number in. It was wrong. General actually point out the very first question that got meaning he was correct. I had a math error my fault. Thanks to that guy helped me correct it. the overall number was right but the the last the 5year 21 to 26 was wrong. So this is the undead. So if this budget passes over the last six fiscal years you know inclusive of this budget the tax increase would be 2.6%. to be raised by taxation. That does not mean your individual taxes because majority are revalued valuations can fluctuate
depending on what's going on with the property. I should also mention I do believe next year is our reval year. So this we haven't had an evaluation in town for 5 years now I think and normally this year but it's next year now the state I think backed it up one year on us. that will change everything once that helps.
so that's our presentation. I know about as much about the state money as anybody does, which is to say it's been emails flying back and forth from various people trying to get there. I genuinely think I have on my arms. But just be aware it was very last. The state does do that sometime unfortunately. So, I will get there. I don't want to take up the whole time this and we'll get to questions and hopefully answer.
So, we're going to have folks come up unless you can't and then we'll bring it to you microphone, please.
Thank you. I would like to amend the rules for this meeting stated by Judge McGuire the moderator to include not only during the public speaking not only questions but to add comments as well. So we're able to make comments rather than just questions. I we did say that. So, is everyone the end of the weekend? Let's ask that we include not only questions but also thoughts and considerations.
Yeah.
Sure.
Three minutes.
Anyone over there?
Can I come up to you?
You come up to her. Yeah. All right.
Name and address.
Oh, my name is George Conrad. I live at 117 Link Drive.
You have a little
There you go. when I wrote my letter to the editor, I was contacted
when I wrote my letter to the editor, I was contacted by Dary Ball. and she sent me a message request and it said, "If you have found any superintendent of school contracts that is lower than mine, I would like to bring that to the attention of the board of education to be considered." Neither myself nor the board could find any. And I did some research and what I found was, let me get to that screen is it says part-time school superintendent salaries for small towns under 44,000 population in Connecticut typically average between 40,000 and 125,000 according to PARs connection media analysis while full-time large district is very small so roles exceed 200,000 these part-time often multi- town or smaller districts lower compensation with some part that contacts in contracts in Lichfield County pay from 36,000 to 95,000. The average is 65,500. And we have part-time superintendent who I'm told gets full-time benefits. if that's right. And I feel since the board of education gave her that raise, they should find the difference in their own budget instead of making the town taxpayers pay for that raise. I'm sure she's worth it, but not in a small town like Andover. Thank you. When you put that into AI, it doesn't give you superintendent of schools salaries by district. We have gone through the districts and 65,000 is not the salary. So again, I do encourage you to find a specific contract for a district and bring it to the board of
education because we did go through them and that is why both the board of finance had a conversation and the board of education and going through them and it is still the lowest salary in the state. So, I absolutely would love to see them. If you missed one and I believe in that message I said I do, if you do find a specific contract, please bring it to the board of education. And again, there wasn't a town contract there for us to consider, but please, I know Lynchfield is not a contract that is lower than nine, but I wouldn't encourage if we found another one to bring it to the board because that just isn't the case. 65,000 is not accurate. Sure.
Also, if anyone is interested, I'm at Katie Greenhouse for those of you who don't know, I am the head of the board of ed. if anyone is interested, if you personally want me to email you a graph that compares the salaries for superintendent according to a point two, so that everything is equated, right, for a full-time versus a part-time for our town and similar towns. So like the towns that are in our DRG where we're listed as well as the towns that are surrounding us, I'm more than happy to email that to people individually.
like what is the word?
Yeah. So sorry that compares like the the district area for towns that are similar to our town. so if you guys want that information, I'm more than happy to email it email it to you. It's a It's a graph that that shows all of them.
Kaylin, could you share with us the action contracts that we're that we want help with just a graph?
the contracts are all posted on the AES website. There's a contract. the contracts the contracts that you use to prepare
for the superintendent. Not not
I I'm not going to email you like contracts from 20 times. Is that what you're asking for? You guys can also find them.
Okay. So, we can do the work. Instead, we can just sharing it and working together.
Yes. And sharing the summary of that information, which is far more valuable.
Okay. Anybody's okay?
I I believe a member of your board did do that as well.
Sorry.
Can I just ask a question rather than get
he question is just really will that include the number of students in each of the superintendent districts?
No.
are you able to just asked are you able to offer a comparison that would look at not just superintendent salary but superintendent salaries in town districts of 200 or less. How would you help them?
Yeah. So the comparison is actually and I can list all the all the towns out but it's comparing us to towns that are near us. So like he and Marboro as well as towns that are similar to us like Salem. and in terms of comparison, it's not based on the number of students that the superintendent is overseeing. It's based on how many hours they work. So, are they a 2,46? So, you're taking the salary amount and equilibrating to like how much would that would that salary earn if it was a 2.
If you want to speak, you need to come up and you need to say your name in that rules.
Yes. Sorry, I intended to My name is Kathleen Barrett and I live at 44 Lakeside Drive and I intended to speak but really there just wanted to ask the question so that I was confident that we were comparing apples to apples as we were looking at and evaluating the superintendent salary. and I guess I would also ask the question, was there a raise of 11% this year in the in the budget for the superintendent salary or am I mistaken by that? If that is correct, I would ask us all to consider is it 11% raise? If it is, then if it is, then I would ask us all to ask the question, when was the last time we had an 11% raise in our salary? And it's about my similar.
So yes, it is an 11% raise for the superintendent. I hope that we don't spend the whole meeting on this. Do you know that the town treasurer also got a 33% raise in the upcoming budget? So she is not the only employee to get a large raise. And I will tell you it doesn't have to do with Valerie directly, right? She's phenomenal. She's a great superintendent, but it's also about our town being competitive when and if we have to go hire another superintendent so that we can actually hire lunch. thank you. I'm glad you're here.
Thank you. I come to this as a mother who loves children. I come to this as a citizen who loves my community. And I hope that we will be able to find a way to negotiate and talk together and work through perhaps new solutions than the solutions we've found so far. When I looked at the size of the Andover budget for the elementary school, I did some research and I looked and I asked a question. Oh, I forgot to say I'm also a former elementary school counselor and I was a school counseling professor for just shy of 20 years. and so I would ask as we ask ourselves the question, what shall we do to deal with this problem that many small communities like ours face that sees shrinking enrollment which is happening all over the state and all over the all over the country really. the decisions that we make now are decisions that are decisions that are going to come back to us several years from now. But we I hear a lot of talk about class sizes and what the
ceiling should be and is a class size of 10 to 12 something that's really good for our children. And I would say to you to do a little research and look and perhaps you'll find that a size of 10 to 12 for students in early elementary school grades kindergarten through three is wonderful. It's great if a town is wealthy enough to be able to offer that. But for children in grades four, five, and six, I do not believe in my heart that that smallsiz classroom is a benefit. I think it's a I think it's a disadvantage disguised as a benefit because kids in the middle childhood gearing. They're developing socially. They're developing academically. and they need to learn things from a bigger classroom environment than one that includes 10 to 12 children. and so I could say more than I'm sure three minutes is 42 seconds about
I love our community. I love our kids. I think we need to be reasonable. And with my remaining seconds, I want to say I hate the the the the division that this has created in our town. I hate the attitude that all of us who are elders who might voice opposition to what you in the schools would present are enemies, you know, or are people that should be spurned or should be looked at as not caring about children. We care about children a lot. We just or I just I'll say I just see my community as inclusive of a wonderful school but greater than that wonderful school. Ron Lighto22 He Road again just this
far is not great
I'm Sorry.
So, I think I think the board of education I think what people are having trouble with is struggling with stuff that they don't understand. We're hearing things like Valley or contractors due to expire July this year, but it's already been renewed before the budget. And I think that's what people have concerns with. when we care about the kids, when we care about the the community, it's it's working together like let's wait until after to see and then go from there. If you need a psychologist, hey Boris Leman, you're looking to get a psychologist, let's work together and see if we can do that in the next couple of years.
And I think that's where it all comes apart. So, we're just asking, you know, clarity of why did it get signed before you? Okay. And you know some people are saying you can be full-time benefits. Is that true? If you are and you are part-time, how come? That's what we just want to have. I think if we get clarity on everything and it's transpiring, we're not going to have this discount. This town has always worked with with this school. There's kids that have graduated from these schools that have got great jobs and that have done well and they'll continue to do so. And the town wants to continue to work with the school, but they don't want to feel like they're held hostage over the school every year. So, that's I think what we're I think what everybody is looking to hear. This is clarity.
You have a question.
No, I can answer that.
Absolutely. Welcome to
Okay. So, a few of these things have been explained before. Of course, I know not everybody was here at the last meeting, so I'll be happy to submit them again. With a contract, when you have a three-year contract that's set to expire, you can't wait till the last day of expiration because what happens if in fact it's not going to be renewed or somebody's not going to stay. So, there's at least a three month span, at least a three month span because let's pretend I was going to retire. They would need time to find someone new and they would need time to go through the hiring process and fill that position. We did see what happened. Unfortunately, we had a couple of open positions on the town side where we were without somebody. You never want that to happen. So, you make sure that that position is
going to be filled. The other thing is the superintendent puts the budget together before they give it to the board of ed. and then the board of ed adopts the budget and then it goes to the town. I'm not the one that decides my contract. The board of ed is. So I can't put a dollar figure in my proposed budget until I know what that number is. So it is always done that you would do a contract months before
March
it's set to expire. So if the last day of this contract was June 30th, which it was, it would happen in October, the day you would decide what that new contract would look like. So that if you were parting ways, there would be time to fill that position before June 30th. So that's very common. There was nothing non-transparent about that. That's actually the way it gets done is that you do it a few months ahead of time. Ron, the other question was, were they include benefits?
benefits. Yes, a contract does include benefits. Just like on the TAL side, we actually have part-time people that get stipens for not taking benefits. It is a part of a contract. So, yes, when I was hired originally, I was hired to fulfill a position that the retired person had been in. I'm not retired. So I took a salary cut to have benefits. They said this was what the amount was that was the whole package to the superintendent and I said I need benefits for myself. So I took a cut in salary so that I could have the benefits included in that package. I didn't get anything more. And there was a third one.
Yes. About 80%.
Oh yes. We said this before. Thank you. We have to have a service provider. Some schools have a social worker, a guidance counselor, and a school psychologist. We don't. We have one person. So, I I feel like sometimes if it was called a guidance counselor or a social worker, people would think that it was more appropriate. We just happen to have of those three possibilities, we have a a a school psychologist who does the testing for students. was mandatory that we have a support position. In our case, it's just a school psychologist and she wasn't always here. We had a fair amount of her salary covered with a grant though for 3 years and that grant is expiring. And her class sizes four through six, they are all 23 and above. There aren't small classes being fourth,
fifth, and sixth grade until this year we added the fourth and the fifth. salary. We have to have somebody inv jailable. It doesn't mean we have to have a full-time psychologist.
Are you kidding?
That's not true, Ron. I wish it was, but it's not. And if we contracted a psychologist just to come in and do the testing, the cost as a for a contractor would be three times the cost. It's about $150 per hour for them to come in. So, we do have to have this position. Ron, I I wish we did it. That would be a place we could cut. We cannot. That is a required position. The banks.
Okay.
And I just want to clarify it briefly, but one of the reasons frankly I shouldn't redo this slide. The $90,000 figure we start to believe the full cost and a here for for two or three years running. We had $45,000 coming in grant money that went away. So the net change to the 10 is the 45. So, apologies if I if I confused anyone with my slide.
My name is Michelle Lorettes. I'm from 149 Lake Road. I've been here for 33 years. A lot of you know me. All right. So, just so everyone is aware because we can make comments this time. All right. Special education is not a joke. A school psychologist is not there to give therapy to children outside of school. A medical diagnosis is different than an educational classification. If your child has dyslexia, if they suffer from ADHD, autism, or any other mental health diagnosis, and they need help in school to survive, they need a psychologist to give an educational classification. Without that, they don't get services. Okay? Now, the institutions have been closed for 20 years. We no longer institutionalize these children. Does everyone understand so far? They now are in the schools. It is inclusive education. Okay. So, you cannot deny them their right as a special education teacher. Okay. As a a parent with two children that receive services and they have since they were three years old both speech and psychology services. Okay. You are denying not only the children in this town, you are denying my children the right to an equal and equitable education. And that's not fair. So you say your taxes are getting
higher. Yeah. Yes. It's $5 a gallon. Okay. But here's the thing. when you don't look at the budgets equally, the town budget and the school budget, really, are you looking at the budget at all? So, my question is, I understand that we run on volunteers in this town. Okay, I get that. But my question to you is, are we really taking into consideration why people are voting no? And are you voting no just to vote no because you don't want your money to go somewhere else? All right. Do you really is it really that your taxes can't get higher
and you can't afford it anymore? If it is, you should be relying on your social services that your tax money paid for. Okay? There's services in towns. There's services in the state. But with that, the other thing is when we were at the board of finance meeting, there were positions that were being budgeted for that haven't been filled in 3 years. I only heard two people speak up about it. So, what are we doing about these proposed things, these proposed positions? Can I just ask quick clarification? So, we did make some adjustments to a couple of the salary line items and at least one of them was for a position. I don't think we've filled exactly. We've been using so the assistant line for instance for the town administrator. We have been utilizing some money in that role and we've been paying money but we have been hired I think a specific an extra person we looked at that why they need to cut it. So can you just when you can you remind me the other bits that you were curious about that why we didn't that we may not have cut I just want to make sure I'm addressing your question properly. figures on here.
So, so the assistant line we cut a little bit the project managers were using that money. That's different.
Yep.
There was a whole building.
I'm trying to remember which one that was then. I apologize, but I can't even position.
Oh, yeah. I think you were the one that said we could cut it a little bit, but there was no reason to cut it in full because we might actually get someone talking about the property manager.
No, not after.
Was it the community assistant?
Community center assistant.
Okay.
It had to be someone that wasn't able to be hired for years. I can't remember what it was, but it was in the video and I was kind of shocked at that. I can go back.
Okay. I I apologize, but I we'll see it.
Yes.
Because I would like to just specifically if I could genuinely though I I don't recall other than that assistant to the town a lot that we talked about.
Sorry.
Did you have a question? Yeah,
Louise Lake. I just want to know I just want to let everyone know that the special ed monies are mandated. We do not reduce any of that special ed money and we never will.
So, a psychologist. My daughter is in that field as well and special ed is very important and has never been reduced. They do require the social workers to do the testing and there has been social workers already doing that testing. So we are not reducing the AES at all in that manner. I just want to clarify
just the board of finance doesn't have line item control order budget where we cut $50,000 from them. They're going to have to go back and figure that out. Where they take it from, that's not up to us. So, I don't know what impact specifically that $50,000 cut will have. So, it works. That's going to be their problem. and they haven't gone until today. So, I don't know where it would go. I don't think it would be cut from the school psychologist, but just FYI, we don't know. All we can do is look at the bottom line and say, is that number good or not? Hi, my name is Phil Huffy. I live at 218 Hebrew Road. I don't have a question. I have a plea. I rely on seeing your mouths move so I can understand what you're saying. So please no cross conversations. We're all coming up here so I can actually see you speaking as well as hearing. The mics attenuate the sound. The reverberation also affects the sound. So please if you're having cross conversation do it over the mic and let me see your
mouths moving. That's all. Thank you. Okay. Georgia Conrad 117.
I've been town I've been in town 57 years. And when I came to town, I volunteered everywhere and I eventually got on boards and things like that. I was on the board of finance for a number of years. We have never had special needs children institutionalized.
Yes, you did. And so I just wanted to clear that up
because when I was on the board of finance and I was chairman and this is like 20 25 years ago, they were not institutionwise they were educated in the handover school and if we had to bust them out to a place where they could be educated because we didn't have the facilities we pay for them.
So let's clear that up. Oh, sweet.
I'm sorry, but that's the
fact and all right. Hi, Linda Fish 111 Townson Road to
I just have a quick question. I understand getting salaries up to par. It is a small town and I know other towns, other instances when you're trying to get somebody up to par you do it over two or three years and not in one fell swoop. it would make it easier on the budget and for people to understand. So I'm just curious why all at one time, not gradually.
So it's not actually all at one time. It is gradually. We needed to make that much of an addition in order to get her closer to the bottom of the pack of where everything is. She's still at the bottom. And I can definitely email that out to you guys if you'd like a bit more information. I I just I guess my my comment back is why are we spending this entire meeting talking about the superintendent's raise, which is equal to about $10,000?
Is $10,000 a large percentage of your taxes? Is it a large percentage of what your tax increase is going to be? Are there other more giant ways that we could take money away from things that is not the superintendent?
11 possessed just an awful lot and people don't understand that. I've had the same salary for over 15 years and I still work. U so just seems like a big job to me. So, Robert was asking she had a $5,000 increase last year. That is correct. it was part of a previous contract. So, if you guys want to look at the actual contract, you're more than welcome to do so. They are posted on the school website.
Hi, I'm Ashley Johnson. recently moved here from Texas. Howdy y'all. Yes. Yes. My address is 191 Lake Road.
Bring the mic.
Oh, I'm sorry. okay. So, first I just have a question for everybody. Who believes that education is important? Please.
All right. Everybody in this room saw all the hands up. All right. Cool. Who likes Andover?
All right. So, can we all just admit that we all love this place and that we're all trying to do what we believe is best for our town and our communities. 11% is a bit of an increase, especially net focus focus, especially for people on a fixed income. So, I can understand why anyone would bulk at that. Yes, there are social services for people. Yes, there are things that we can do. But anytime that you're going to ask more money from people, we're all going to have questions. We're all going to want to know where exactly it's going. It's not that we want to say no. I certainly don't. Shoot, my kid goes here and I love this school. just remember that we're all on the same side and we're all just trying to figure this out together and to maybe give everyone the benefit of the doubt and not throw little snide jabs here and
there cuz I can guarantee you that ain't going to help anybody. Thank you. Hi, Stacy Kaufman, 164 Lake Road. what's sticking out to me about this budget is that this the Andover elementary school budget failed, but the RAM budget passed in this town. I know it didn't pass in Heert and Marboro. And that is shocking to me because that per people expenditure is $32,000 per student from the document they shared. And I don't know if that's the norm for regional school districts. I'm not overly familiar with regional school districts, but that seemed extremely high to me when most
towns are maybe between 19 and 26,000 per pupil. So, the fact that that one passed in this town and the elementary school budget didn't pass, I felt like nobody was paying attention to that one. And we care about our kids obviously at all grade levels, but the things they've presented here are things that it appears they need. They're not trying to pull one over on anyone. They need all of these things. And yes, preschool is legally mandated and we would have to have it regardless. So, that was my takeaway. And I just maybe think you should look at the RAM budget also in
order to push our cost down.
I'm going to take off my badge and say something as Linda symbolically. maybe Caitlyn to respond to your thought maybe we haven't mentioned tonight it's not all about Valer's salary. It's also about a huge increase in the AES budget overall. And when I look at budget, and I am not on the finance committee, thank god, but when I look at the whole town, we do love our whole town. If it's 100% of the budget right now, don't we have 79% going to education and 21 going to the rest of the town? to me. Okay. A little
It might shift a little, but it's a very small amount for the town to do everything else besides the school. To me, so I don't think we're just harping on your side. It is unquestionable, but I think we should also, and we did the referendum, say, "Nope, it's too high." And we're probably going to say it again next week.
I don't think that's what we say. The one thing I would just add regarding our educational expenses is in ex this is part of how it's presented in our budgets and has been for years. But you know we receive that $2 million from the state every year the ECS fund the educational cost share grant and that's what they in my mind they're taking that $80,000 additional aid out to when we display the budget. You know, it's not awesome that what we do not do is show that coming off the ed budgets, right? It comes off the whole town budget, which fine. But when the only reason I bring it up is if we're going to discuss, you know, kind of the pie chart of where our money goes, the whole idea, you know, we're spending 70% of our budget on education usually in any given year. Sure, that's where our expenditures go. but we also receive the state aid. I have issues with frankly how we displayed a money grant money in general and I'm going to continue to address those as my time on this board continues. but I just want to point that out that if you're looking at it from the standpoint of what we are paying for, there's expenditures, right? And then there's expenditures less funding, right? So that's the one thing that could skew those numbers. I think you could get two different numbers and both be valid. Just point that out. Marcy Miner, a West Street. I just wanted to address the board of finance
because I sent a letter and I requested that we when we look past this budget and we look at this budget pass or fail whatever that we do not include the money that's coming back from the state and from RAM because what I understand is especially the money from RAM is a one time refund. So I do not think that we should be looking at that when it comes to this budget. Any increases that we receive now are permanent. Budgets don't go down. So I don't think we should be looking at that at this budget because even if budgets are flat, it's going to be increased next year because this money is a onetime thing. So I would just say that on the expenditures we pulled them off the expenditures. You're correct that there are one time there are onetime chunks of money coming up. The 258 from RA and the additional CA8 I presume is a oneshot deal unless they up and do it again next year. Wouldn't count on that. That's that's true. Same with use of fundamental. We've done it in the past a couple times. It's not new that we're doing it, but again, that's a one shot from our reserves, not recurring revenue. So, that's true. Our expenditures have true in here. I, you know, I I'm not I hope you don't think I've misrepresented what
we're actually having. and I I came up with a couple of different ways to address the RAM, the 258k that they're giving us back for the money they kept too long. if you take an at conversation, this by the way with the RAM superintendent about how we presented in that referendum, I want to make sure that it's the true number when you saw that when my slide was I think 4.25 million for RAM. That's our levy without the offset because it's it's misleading to Mar's point. If I were to pull that number off, it looks like RAM's giving us this big cut, which isn't really true. Okay. So, it's always a question of how to present the information to show you, okay, we're doing this to re reduce taxation this year. But yes, you should all be aware
that all things being equal, no other changes that 350,000 versus 258 from 98 from the state goes the way yesterday. Yes. Correct.
Point is is that it wasn't deducted from the line. line item is the actual budget line item. We didn't deduct it and we're not hiding from the fact that that money's there. That's taken out somewhere else. Line items are what they are. We didn't deduct those amounts from those line items. You're seeing the accurate budgets whether we get that money or not.
Right. We we it's only when we calculated the taxes that you know you pull that money out.
So basically we overpaid for a number of years. And if I were to come my way, I'd say, give me the refund cuz I had a property that I paid taxes for a whole year and I overpaid on my taxes that year. Now, I'm not going to ask the town to do that because I know that would be arduous. All right? But that's what I'm just saying. You know, don't use it to tell me that we're saving money this year. Use it, you know, later. I mean as one time it's one time refund.
So one thing I want to remind and you know we we kind of have this conversation every year. Our budget always says 8year school budget and the assumption is that that $4 million is simply for what goes on in the classrooms. And the thing is is it is 35 school roads budget. This gym right now, when it gets heated, it gets heated on our budget. That's $10,000 a year in oil to heat this gym. And we use the gym half the time in basketball and pickle ball and town meetings. Use it the other half of the time. We're only in school 180 of 365 days in a school year. So all of those expenses are our expenses to pay out of our school budget for the largest piece of town property. Everything about this building is in our budget. We also do not have a capital budget. Almost every school state in Connecticut has a capital and an operational. So when you're looking at our budget, it is our operational capital budget up until now
all rolled in one. We talked about RAM. When you look at RAM, just because it's our neighbor or Hebrin or Marlo, those schools have an operation and a capital budget. I do not. So, everything that needs to be fixed in this building up to this date has come out of our operational budget. While the oil, the heat, the hot water, everything comes out of that budget. It is not just what goes on in the classrooms. the cutting, the grass, everything is on our budget.
Jeff Magguire, 422 Lake Road. I kind of have a problem with that logic because we're one town. We all have to pay for everything. And there are things on the town budget, let's say, like plowing the parking lot for the school that are not paid for by the school, paid for by the town. So that whole logic drives me insane. Just to let everybody here understand that now, thank God we don't allow the school to operate the capital budget because the town would have been out $180,000 on the bathroom. So, thank God they don't allow the schools that we handle the capital project. And thank the superintendent for acknowledging that this is a town building. Everybody heard it, right? It's a town building. It's our biggest asset. It's what we need to take care of the most. And I really have a problem with the focus from the board of finance on how we're paying for what we need to pay for because you have to focus on expenses. I I'm I'm I know I don't have a lot of qualifications. That was made painfully clear, but I am a CPA and I own multiple businesses and I deal with budgets all the time. I have never had anyone come to me and give me a budget that I just passed through. Right? And since I am the board of finance for my companies, I have never let anyone come to me and sit there and said, "I need this increase because I need it. I want it." And I have never sat there and just let anyone push it right past you without any
changes. That's happened for two years. The board of finance has sat there and taken what the school has asked for and sat there and passed it right through. Right? And I'm not sitting there saying to cut crazy. I'm sitting there saying to listen and to collaborate because I'll ask the board of finance my question. Here's my question. Did everyone on the board of finance get all of the information from the town that it needed to make its decisions and from the board of education? All of your questions answered?
No. No town. Did the town screw with you?
Did not screw with me.
No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm asking if you didn't get information from the town, did you not get all of the information from the town?
I would say actually to my satisfaction personally as the visa board chair, not really because we had massive turnover at the town hall. It's nobody's particular fault. I'm not casting blame. I hate to do that. What I am saying is I had some questions about what the balances are various capital funds. I do not feel we have a sanctity on that. We have the almost finished audit, but I wanted a new treasurer to true up those numbers and reconcile. She has not been able to do that yet and for all of the funds. This is not some great travesty. She's working hard. I understand. But if you ask me that question finally like that, yeah, the answer is not quite. It doesn't mean I don't think your town much
fromations got information.
You know perfectly well that there have been requests made by members of my board that they don't feel have been appropriately answered. Yes.
Question.
No, we're not. so so those are problems I have with how we conduct business within the time because if we are not collaborative to the point we need to be and if we were collaborative this would be a lot easier process a lot and so the other thing that I have because I always ask it and I'm going to ask the board of education members right here I won't ask you the normal question I ask is if the prek is costing the taxpayers money I might ask you a question because it really goes to everything. Have you considered raising tuition on the prek program?
So, this has been discussed multiple times. As everyone is aware, if you've been to any board of education or town meeting, starting next year, so not this coming school year, but the school year after, preK is mandated for our entire state starting in 2027. It's not an option. It's not only for kids that are special ed. It is mandated by the state. We are waiting to change what we do with the prek program until we get direction from the state on what that entails exactly because there are different amounts of money that are given for different children in different income brackets and they to be honest quite frankly haven't sorted it all out yet. Look at how shortsighted our state is in terms of giving additional funding to our towns at this time. So, we're not going to make changes to that. But yes, it's it's a great point because next year the education budget will include all of preschool. When you guys look at it, it's going to look really different
because it's going to have positives and negatives. It's going to have tuition in, it's going to have grants in, and it's going to have money handed. And to be clear, special education is mandated currently for kids between age three and five. So after they age out of birth to three until they start kindergarten. If we had those costs in our budget for all the kids that need those services, the board of education budget would likely be close to $200,000 more than what it currently is. we are able to take advantage of some of those services being grantfunded because the teachers are grant funded because they are part of the preschool program.
I I also have a question. I have 40 seconds.
Okay, take your time.
Okay. So, so my my my question related to that I'll ask the other question. Are all the grant dollars that the board of education receives included in this budget that we see or are there grant dollars that are received and extra costs that are spent by the board of education?
Everybody needs both.
So the difference between what you're asking is if something is supplemental or if it's supplanted. Is that correct?
In our expenses that we see on
So any grant that could be subtracted from a line item in the budget, it is subtracted. So that line item looks lower than what it would look like, but the grants are not in the budget. You're not seeing those in the budget. You're just seeing the end lesser total. And there are many grants that the school gets that are they they are in addition to or for specific things. They're not to take money away from something. So for example, like the afterchool program grant, that grant is not something that could have replaced something in the budget. is to to provide additional services.
So So you and I could have worked together to really get all of the information out and done a really good job and made everybody here comfortable with how all of the spending was done if we would work together. I'm just saying that's me, right? So I'm done.
I'm Bill D. grocerers 232 virtual vote and board finance member and I think exception Jeff what you just said this board spends hours week for 3 months going through the budget we don't pass anything through we ask Randy to come talk to us we have to explain line by line everything that's in that budget we ask as many questions we as we can to try and understand every line item from every budget every salary We never take anything and pass it through. And I dare anybody here to say that. Do we do we just pass it through? We labor for hours trying to make sure we understand every single thing in that budget. We never pass anything through. Yeah, you don't have the we don't have access to a lot of level detail of
Well, I I disagree with that. We see her full budget and we see
21% increase in insurance cost, $45,000 increase for the psychiatrist, which is mandated by law. You lost the grant. I can go on and on and on. It's not a frosting on the cake here. It's real expenses to run the school. It's not just, oh, let's do this, that, and the other thing. It's it's all real stuff. We don't pass anything through without going through.
Sorry, that's just accident.
Hey Gabby.
so again, 191 Lake Road. So, wait, Ashley Johnson, we're allowed to comment, right, on what other people have said.
Three minutes starts now. Okay. I'm so sorry, sir. I forgot your name.
Jeff McGuire.
Jeff Maguire. Okay. So maybe I'm going to say this and not trying to be mean. Again, I'm texting. I'm southern. So if you want to work with people, you have to meet them where they're at. That goes for everybody on this board. And I know everybody knows that. We're in a school. We all learn this in prek and kindergarten, right?
I'm I'm going to be nice.
Oh, don't make me Oh, honey, bless your heart. so you say that you and this young lady could have met together and worked together. I will say that sometimes your tone does make it a little bit hard for people to address you, just as sometimes her tone can be a little bit hard because we're passionate. you're both passionate people about this and maybe Okay, so I see whenever you go ahead and you send out a newsletter to everybody in the community on your own dimen paper, by the way, like that's some good quality paper. So, you're sending this out on your own dime. I see someone who cares, but I also see somebody who could it could maybe be taken as kind of undermining the the school budget and that is not a way to work with people. So if when you're saying that you want to work with someone, we give everybody respect. Thank you for the information that you give out. However, you do need to show respect to these and to these young ladies. And then you don't have to drag our butts out here at 7:00 at night when I could be at home in my comfy PJs. I'm wearing a bra for God's sake anywhere here. So, I would just suggest that maybe y'all show some respect to each other and bring food. It always does. So anybody who has not anybody who has not spoken yet
134 Bears Road I just have logistics questions really I know I usually have a lot of comments suggest suggestions, all those kind of things. can we please get u posted on the website the manil rate page, you know, or you know, that really gives us all a lot of information because the total tax dollars, the cuts, you know, the glad to see that we have put fund balance against it, but I kind of want to see the total projected expenses, things of that nature. It's hard to really all of us to make good decisions about our voting when we can't see that end game, you know, and know what the cuts are. The other thing I did want to ask is, you know, it was brought up that that health employee benefits are a big cost and a big driver. Salaries, of course, things that can't be changed. We all get that. Val, I just wanted to ask real quick in the board of ed publication, do we have the health benefit line on here that I
could
There is a there is a health line in budget. Yeah.
Okay. Because I know where the benefits are. I'm just trying to get a dollar amount. I mean, it's very expensive what the town does pay on health benefits. We all know they're skyrocketing. We also I also want to personally point out I'm very much in favor where I'm going with this that I think all of our employees need to get the best of benefits. I'm happy you know that we're able to provide that and we want to keep that going if they're qualified. So I was looking for the dollar amount so that I could have forecast what I know what the the town I think is going to be paying 254,798. I just couldn't come up with the board event number. So my only thought to maybe the board of selectment, it's been brought up quite a bit of times that we do have this healthc care stipen that's in the budget, you know, under healthcare benefits. again, I want anybody that needs insurance to get insurance, please take it. Family, single, two people, whatever that is. But the stipen has gotten to a really high rating since healthc care has skyrocketed. So now I think we're playing paying some of the employees
maybe $7500 not to take insurance which equates to maybe 145 a week, 600 a month and a big a big draw on our budget. So it's been talked about for years dropping that to a level that other towns do. So, I'm hoping that the board of seleinant is considering that even 2,400 would be 200 a month, which is a nice token. If this was a good idea, you know, every other town would be doing it. There's no other town that I can find. They have statements, but they're like 2,2400 things of that nature. So, I'm personally hoping that we can drop that this year and we can work on that in the budget to a more livable extent.
So, as we start to kind of wrap this up, right, have much more discussion, but just a couple of more questions. Yes, I can hear you. Just a second.
I guess. Yeah, as Joanne was asking about well I just want to make sure she understood it. because I think there was a question in the beginning there about you know what we looked at one of the things about the payment in lie of the healthcare thing for simple child employees as I understand it and I can be correcting me if I'm wrong about this course that's tied to 50% of a individual plan what it would cost now I think it would be up to them to alter anything so to do so but the the flip side to that obviously the risk is And then people say, "Well, all right, then I'll take the insurance," which would be probably drastically more expensive. So that's why for my money, I'm I think we're doing an okay job there. That would be money on that. Okay. and then I'll I'll just really quickly, I just want to mention one other thing about grant funding and what's in the budget, what's not in the budget. This is something that spurred me now for a little while and I intend to continue to work on it. as board of finance chair, with our new town administrator, with our new treasurer, there's not everything on the town side is displayed. We get it should be. I agree, but it's not and it never has been. As far as I know, this board
probably since I've been in town since we don't show you the town a road grant and then the total amount we spent on roads. Let me show you what we're loading into the town road fund. That's not the same thing. So, I am all for I want to get as much information out there and accurate as possible going forward. But if we're going to talk about what's not in there and not in there, this is a both sides of the house issue. Just to be clear,
she's going to she's going to talk more, but she doesn't really have to say. Go ahead.
I'm sorry. I'm going to have other people who have not. So, if you want to come up, you want to talk, come up,
but Michelle has spoken.
All right. All right.
Can't see us. and somebody
Joe King 86 school road and back.
I want to know why you aren't soliciting from the top or exactly why they voted up or down on the budget. Are you guessing what they changed? What they want changed? And without that information, you can't do your job properly. And what are you going to publicly do about it? If you want, I want you to address and wear t-shirt in person and Zoom meetings as well. She Okay. So, you understand what I'm talking about? I got it. All right. Rebuttal. I'm not trying to rebut anything. First of all, we didn't what was I just want to so I want to make sure you've seen and we just
Okay, sorry.
We discussed this before the meeting. I don't feel like we see exactly eye to eye on it. However, my take is we see the vote totals. We see the advisory questions. We get public feedback either in the form of emails from residents or comments at our meetings. There is no perfect perfect information but I also don't really understand the mechanism by which we would canvas the whole town for there or at least the the people who participated there are threatened more than we do. That would work. I don't have a problem with more information. More information is great but I don't know how we would go about doing that functionally that would work. It would
be a workable process. And as you point out, and we discussed this before the meeting, there's issues with what's representative, who shows up at this meeting, who comes to the board of financing, who answers our queries. All of those would be subsets of the people who voted in the referendum. So, I'm open to ideas, yes, but I don't quite follow how we would go about doing getting more information about the precise changes that town residents want to a given portion of the budget than we already did. That's my take.
The public speaking meetings with the mult there are multiple evidence of this as I said. representatives. There are the referendum results, the advisory questions at the referendum, comments at our board meetings, comments at these town meetings, letters or you know emails sent to members of the boards of personal conversations as well. Of course, there are always an option if you know some of us and you know for those that monitor social media, I personally don't. I admit there's plenty of chatter there as well. All of those things represent subsets of people who would vote on a referendum. So which slice is the accurate slice? You know, we do our best. That's my Hi, I'm Bob Hamburger, 101 Shotty Mill Road. I've only lived in town 38 years, not like some of you long-timers. I want to talk about something that is really just a very small subset of what's been discussed here. something that I feel though would be operational and could reduce some of the contention, some of the friction that we're seeing here. And this this idea that I'm going to talk about is actually something that is done to some extent but not rigorously by the various boards and commissions. And that's the level of documentation that we have to back up our ideas. Now, I come to this as a
lifelong electrical engineer. I've worked in industry. I've worked in university research settings and when I come up with an idea I have to make sure that it is bulletproof. It is defensible. It is justifiable and to do that I have to establish a rigorous chain of documentation for the ideas that I have that lead to the conclusions that I draw. Now some of this was alluded to very early in the meeting. Caitlyn, you responded to someone on this side saying it would be egregious to have to email them the 20 or so contracts that were used to justify Val's compensation. And Val, I don't mean to pick on you, but it's a it's a good example of of what I'm talking about. So I think it behooves everyone here on every commission, every board when you're doing research, if you're doing something online, you find a piece of information, you find a document that you are going to be using to justify a position, you take note of that. You copy and paste that into a spreadsheet or a word document or something like
that so that you have an irrefutable documentary chain of where these ideas originate and how they relate to the conclusions that you're drawing. This is the kind of thing that's always done in academia. Val, I'm sure you did it when you put your thesis together. I'm sure you have pages and pages of references. A document like this where the curious reader as they say in academia can go back to the original sources can be made available electronically. We can post it on our website and I think it would cut down tremendously on the amount of friction that we see back and forth because somebody who challenged something we can say no here it is this is what I'm basing it on. There's no question about it. That's my idea. So, as we I I know I know I'm just throwing out the a moment of breath and check in because it's pretty soon we're going to wrap up, you know, a good discussion, good questions, but we'll start to move towards that if
someone at some point in the near future tonight has a motion to adjourn. So
yes,
this is super 30 seconds. Joanne would ask something and I totally want to answer it. I flute it out of my mind. Yes, I will try to get the new presentation with the bill rate calculations posted to the website. I'll get to Kate and I'll ask her to put it up there. Right. And I want to ask you to weave up the old one so people can toggle between and say, "Okay, this is the change." All right. I'll try to get that done shortly.
Good evening everybody. I'm Jerry K. I live at 8 Woodurn Way in Angola. I've lived there since 2005. I'd like to thank the people who volunteered their time. the board is fine. I've always wanted to volunteer. I I never wanted to be
just on a wall when I retired. So, the first thing I did is I read a briefing to River had an ad. They wanted somebody the board of education write your letter of intent. why he wanted me to be on the board of education. I'm implying I was the only one. There was nobody else. And I thank the people who are here this evening. I don't care. I care also. I care from a couple of different directions. I am a senior citizen. I've had lunch with our seniors. I've enjoyed senior citizen activities. I am a senior citizen on a fixed income. It's been that way for over 10 years. But that's okay.
Every time we've had one of these budget meetings, every year after year, I hear the same things. Now keep in mind correct me if I'm wrong. Jeff, you take care of people for the cab. Correct. You you take care.
Good boy.
And you you said our board was responsible for hiring the superintendent.
So I take responsibility for that, hiring the superintendent. She was the best decision I think I've made in my 71 years of living. She's done an outstanding job and she's made this school and the town shine on the top of the building and she's applied for grant. I think she's got a super job.
I think the people you hire, if you want good people, you need to hire them carefully and be willing to pay them.
I know it's hard on a fixed income as a senior citizen. I also come to you as a former elementary school teacher. I taught at South Windsor Pleasant Valley Elementary School for 17 years. Prior to that, I taught at Bley Elementary School in West Gartford with special ed. And that's where I I found that I really belong. I It's not about me. It's not about me. It's about people. It's about kindness. It's about love. It's about care. caring for your family, being kind to the people in your family. I want to thank you for coming out this evening and for being here. Please appreciate the people who are living in this town are your neighbors and stolen residents. And keep in mind, we don't get paid and we we work hard, but that's okay.
We signed up for that bomb. And I hope you go out in here to have a much warmer heart for your people who take care of the child. They do a super job.
Andrea Kane 115 Lakeside Drive. I'd just like to move to a journal. Second.
I'll second.