Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting Part 1
May 26, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I'll call the. Okay, 701 I'll call the meeting to order. First of all, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all.
Thank you. Okay, just a few comments before we get started. First item on our agenda is the public speak. I just want to remind everybody it's normally our policy to try to limit our first opportunity to speak each of you to about a three minute period if you have more to say that you haven't been able to say within three minutes, we can come back to you, but that's the way we generally proceed. Let's try to stick with that please. I also will make the comment that as anybody who's been following along with this process knows that we've had a lot of public comment over the last three months, many, many meetings, and we know where a lot of people stand. So we've heard a lot of information. So if you have something new to add, we're very, very much like to hear it, new information or change your mind etc. Otherwise, would, I would ask that you keep it very brief. If you do feel the need to speak. We have considered a lot of what's going on, especially with the budget very, very carefully. Again, if there's something new, be happy to hear that. But we do have a lot of ground to cover today, so we wanna make this as efficient and effective as possible. That being said, I'll go ahead and open it to public speak. Amanda, you want to go around?
Yes. Okay, welcome everyone. We will kick off with Kathy Palazzi and Mike Palazzi.
Well, I'm just the only one here for the moment because he's mowing the lawn. He'll be in. Okay. Thank you to the Board of Finance for all the hours you have spent on the town budget. I want to thank you and I also want to thank Elaine Bruckard for filming and Amanda Gibson for the great Zoom work she's been doing and with the agendas as well as all the attachments. I hope tonight the Board of Finance will consider putting the 25,000 back into the road commitments. Also I would like you to consider the bottom line of what AES actually needs for their budget to keep them solvent. I understand you must take away some but 138,000 plus 44,000 is really over the top. And the other thing that I'm thinking about, I hope I hope you are as well because you most of you will be back next year.
For your next year's budget, I'm wondering that there'll be no 250,000 to help us. I'm just wondering what we're even thinking of next year for presenting to the budget to the residents. Are we thinking more like it's gonna be maybe 3 or 4 mil increase? If it is, maybe you should kind of tell them this year a little bit of what you're thinking might happen to us next year because I don't know if they're going to be grants around and I don't know if we're going to be getting help from the state. So that's all I have. Thank you.
Kathy, can you change, adjust your, your laptop? All we see is the top of your head. Oh, but it's a nice top of the head, my dear Kirk. I understand that. Except
that you look like Cousin It. Right. I'd rather see your face. Thank you. Okay. Next up we have Val Bruno.
I am okay at the beginning. Everybody knows where I fall on the pendulum. Thank you for being here. Kimberly Person. Nothing right now Amanda thank you.
Thank you. Next up, Shannon Loudon. Shannon, you're unmuted. Go right ahead. We cannot hear you, so we'll circle back around. Right. Jerry Creme. Can you hear me? Yes.
I want to thank the Board of Finance for all your work. After seeing what you do and how much you do, remind me never to run for the board of finance. A monumental task and it seems like no matter what you do, nobody's gonna be very happy or 100% happy because you can't make everybody happy. But if I can help out just a little bit, let me just tell you, I don't mind paying a few hundreds of dollars more a year in taxes as a taxpayer. I know everything goes up and I think this town does a great job and I don't mind paying more to live here. And I don't know if anybody's ever told you that, but or how you people will feel about it, but to me it's worth it. Thank you. Thanks, Jerry. Mike Beckwith.
Yeah, I just go ahead and echo what what Jerry said is as a resident, am in full support of paying what is necessary to make sure that what the town needs is fully funded. So, if if that does mean paying my fair share of taxes and in the form of, know, $2,300 extra dollars a year, I'm in full support of that. So, I'm going throw myself around what Jerry just said. So thank you for the time. Thank Thank you. Adrian Mandeville.
All right, there we go. Just a couple of things. I just wanna be very clear that my own take on the COVID relief money is that we need to be very careful how we spend that money. And very specifically, you you look around, no one's using it to offset their budget. So I think it would, if it was a doable thing to just go in and offset your budget, you you'd see it the bigger cities, Hartford, all the majors would be doing it. So I think I have some concern about the discussion that's been had about that. So I would encourage you at least to stay away from that. I think that's kind of a concern of mine. I'm a little frustrated with the statements that are made about the Board of Education not being able to give you guidance, because they have to figure it out.
Only because I will say that when I was in your position on the board of finance, as much as Sally Maeve and Laura had some faults, they very consistently every year for the four years I was there provided us with options so that if nothing else, you understood what the impact was. If you did make a cut, you know, so that, you know, you're that you were, you were looking at possibly, you know, taking a teacher away. If that was untenable, then you've stayed away from that, you know. So I think it's disingenuous to say that you can't, when someone else before you has consistently done it. I think that's it. Know, I, I don't envy you. I've been there. Good luck.
Thanks, Adrian. Thanks, Adrian. Okay, we're gonna try Shannon Loudon again. Shannon, we still can't hear you. Maybe she's not near her computer. She Oh, it looks like Amanda's frozen now. Amanda, do we have I'm
sorry, Shannon. Still can't All right. She says she's going to call in from her phone. Next up, let's see. Liz Lokiak? Nothing at this moment. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Lynn Dove.
I just would like to second what Jerry and Mike were saying in terms of I I'm fine with paying more taxes to make sure that what the town needs is able to be fully funded. Thank you for your work. Thanks, Lynn. Mercy Miner. Nothing at this time. Thanks. Thanks for joining. Joanne Hebert.
I'm not gonna say too much. I always say a lot. I think people know where I stand. I sent an email today as well. And I think you were on the way track with what you were doing Sunday, and I hope that that just continues today because, like Adrian mentioned, it is nice to see the scenarios they were asked for and not presented. And that said, you know, I think you're on the right track and you have a tough job to do and it's finances. So thank you.
Thanks, Joanne. Okay. It looks like we have Shannon Loudon calling from her phone. So Shannon, you'll just press 6.
Did that work, Amanda? There you are. Go ahead. Terrific. Thank you very much for accommodating me. First of all, I wanna echo the birthday girl, Kathy Palazzi. Happy birthday, in thanking the board of finance for all of your tremendous work. It's been a long budget season for all of us. I learned my lesson on Sunday afternoon, so I'm gonna go ahead and put forward a new idea, Mark, and that is this. I'm gonna ask that the Board of Finance this evening consider increasing the AES budget by a total of $97,000. That's a compromise figure that I have discussed with other board members and with superintendent Bruno that we could make work. How did I get to that amount? You approved a 175,000 that then went to referendum and failed. The $37,000 increase failed last night. 97,000 plus 78,000 that we could move forward from this year's potential surplus to next year's budget brings us back to the 175,000. But it's only a $97,000 increase for next year's budget and the Board of Education acting on what I understand superintendent Bruno would ask us to do at our June meeting of moving forward $78,000 from our potential surplus in this year's budget to next year's budget. And I believe that is a very reasonable compromise, and I believe that could certainly pass. And from the parents who were there last night and hopefully from the townspeople as a compromise. It's somewhere almost halfway between 37,000 and 175,000, both of which have failed. Thanks for your consideration, and please mute me Amanda.
Just to clarify that by the way, before we go further, that's from the standpoint of where we were at after Sunday, just so I understand and make sure that I'm clear on this from our Sunday meeting that would be plus 60, correct? Correct, Robert.
Thank you. So it's a net $97,000 increase from last year's approved budget. So it's roughly half.
It's splitting, almost splitting the difference between we the cut we made on Sunday and where we were before with the referendum that failed.
Correct. And I think the added benefit based on a question that was put to Mark last night would be if superintendent Bruno could affirm this and Jerry Creme could affirm this. They were the two I saw when I was actually, looking at the meeting on my computer. But then Mark could represent at next Tuesday's town budget meeting that in fact it does the budget being put forward and the increase being put forward has the support of the Board of Education. And I think that would be an added bonus. Thanks for your consideration. Okay. Thank you, Shannon.
Mark, can I ask a question real quick? Sure, go ahead. My only concern is that the charter does not allow the Board of Education to do that. So you guys would have to make that agreement amongst yourselves, and then make that vote for them that they could roll their budget forward, they can't vote to do it without. Understood.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So what Adrian is saying is that would, that's not actually part of the budget agreement would be talking about moving the money from this. This year's budget forward to next year, which is that's part of our process every year. Let
me just respond real quickly and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I've got to go to another meeting. And that is this, what I was suggesting is that instead of us asking the board of finance to put $78,000 into our non lapsing account, which is what we voted to do at our May 12 meeting, we would use that 78,000 prepay as much as we could for next year's budget from the current surplus that may exist as of June 30 for this year's budget. I'm not suggesting that we do anything that couldn't be done. We can prepay some of next year's expenditures from the surplus from this year's budget. So it would require no further action by the board of finance, but simply at the board of education's June meeting, we could take back our request from the May meeting in which we asked the 78,000 be put into our non lapsing and allow the superintendent to prepay whatever she would present to us at that meeting. Okay. So you're gonna take care of that in this fiscal year then?
Exactly, sir. Yeah. Alright. Got it. Okay. Thanks for clarifying. It wasn't clear. It's important. Yep. It is. Thank you. So I wasn't ready before when you asked me. Hold on, Amanda. Were you? You go ahead. Yes.
Guess whoever's next there. Okay. Marcy, did you want to participate?
Yes. Just wanted to just let you know some of the things that people are saying to me. They just want actual cuts from the school, not any increase at all. And they're starting to talk about other towns that would take the kids. So I'm just wanting to let you know that that's what I'm hearing. Okay.
You, Marcy. We've had a couple others join us. We have Melissa Jelquist. I have nothing to say at this time. Thank you. And Kelly Hagerty.
Hi, how are you? Thank you so much, Amanda. I was just confused by that last statement, if it could be repeated, please, that Mercy, I'm sorry, you stated that parents are looking in other places for their students? Shannon, I think you're unmuted, just a heads up.
So. Guys, we really should not be having a dialogue back and forth. Oh, sorry. Comment. Yeah. I I I'm sorry to mean to stifle it, but, you know, we could we could you know, there's another public speak session at the end of the at the end of the meeting agenda,
So that might not be a bad opportunity for click to ask for clarification, Mark. Okay. So, thank you so much for letting me know. And I just wanted to point out that, yes, we can all hear things from, our fellow town members. But, as a mother of three and a long time resident of Andover and forever resident going in at 93 Townsend Road. Think it's really important to note that we need to know.
Oops we lost you. You just went to mute Kelly. I don't know if that was intentional or not. Did not sound like it.
It was not for mine. From my, from my point. So with that being said, I think that it's reasonable, and I think the Board of Finance the Board of Education, everybody who's been involved in this, the Board of Selectmen, I know that this isn't an easy task. But I think what Shannon Shannon has asked for is reasonable. I think finding a happy medium is really the way to go, especially seeing that you have informed us over and over that next year's budget might be even more difficult moving forward. So if we were to cut it all now, there's nothing we'll ever get back. But thank you very much for your consideration and thank you for your work in this. Okay. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks, Kelly.
Alright. Let's just double check to make sure we got everyone. Oh, we have Boris Ipan. Would you like to participate? Hi, yes, it's Erin Boris.
Just want to thank the boards for, you know, having this meeting and sort of having these discussions. I hope it's a discussion in which people sort of let everyone know their own opinion versus things that are heard around. People have ample time to attend the meetings and attend the Zooms to give their own feedback versus a collective, I think, we, when those folks should be on these Zooms to express their own opinions individually. Also, I feel as though Shannon brought up some great points. Money should be returned where the budget had been. Our school has continued to be open during COVID. I don't understand these conversations about cutting further. The seniors have paid enough. This town needs to come together and have a unified sense versus an Us and them. And I don't know where the Us and them has come from. Honestly, I haven't heard a parent say don't build a senior center or community center and don't be a cohesive unit, but I have heard quite a bit of the kids have gotten enough, education has gotten enough and it's pure insanity and it's disheartening when there's only a few thousand people in this town. My apologies if my voice sounds angry, but it was infuriating last night. So my hope is that the board recognizes
how much parents, teachers, and children have been invested in this community, and yet at the same time are hearing from other populations that they should be cut. So my hope is that there'll be continued discussions about reinstating the finances. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Erin. Thanks, Erin. Did Melissa Litesco want to participate? Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Scott Persson, I know you joined a few minutes after. Would you like to participate? You're muted. Are you all set? All set, Amanda. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I believe we got everyone Mark.
Thank you. Okay, very good. Thank you, Amanda. So just to make sure everybody's aware and if you looked at the agenda you probably are that this is a normal monthly Board of Finance meeting. Will be reviewing the agenda in this meeting, I'm sure. But there's a lot of other stuff that will be talking about also. So the next agenda item is additions and deletions of the agenda items. So I guess I'll pull the board there's a couple of things I think we can do. We do have item for a two which says plans for upcoming referendum and budget process we don't actually have a referendum right at this time, because we don't have an approved budget. So I think we can either talk, you know add that budget item as a subcategory
of number four, or we could put it under, you know, old business and discuss at that point. Is there a preference to the board on which we do first, you want to try to tackle the budget now and handle the other meetings later? Or do you want to, or the other business later? Do you want to try to take care of the other business first and then and then roll to the budget discussions? Discussions. I'm I'm neutral neutral on on this. This.
I'd like to just dive into the budget and deal with that and then we can talk process. That's my take. I agree to that.
And so we grabbed you want to make a motion I think we should put on the budget, I think the print the budget on the agenda explicitly. So I'd suggest we do item, you know, for a or, you know, for be the budget, you know, work and we do for a just do a recap discussion and then kind of go through that. Or we could do make it for a move for a to for b.
Okay I guess I'll move that we add agenda item as agenda item for a discussion of the budget, the current status of the budget and then we move what is on the agenda as for eight and just renumber that for B.
Okay, I'll second that. Luis seconds thank you Luis Any discussion? Okay. All in favor, aye. Any opposed? Any extensions. Okay, unit motion passes unanimously, so we will move at an agenda item for a which is to the budget review and discussion, with the aim of getting I think a recommended budget. And then item 4A will move to item 4B. Okay. Any other additions or deletions to the agenda item, Eric? Mark,
two things. I would like to delete under new business item nine a, and I would substitute that with item a being timing, you know, for tax collection, for the upcoming year, because depending on what happens in the next couple of weeks, we are likely to end up sending out an initial taxation to the public and following it up with a supplemental appropriation. So I would like to talk through that a little bit with the board.
Okay, so we want to submit a motion to, Well, I guess I'll just go ahead and do it I think it's procedural probably agree to that so I'll make a motion that we delete items nine a under new business and replace that with item nine a which is to discuss the timing of the, of the tax taxation tax bill submittal. How would you succinctly state that Eric. I think that's fine.
Okay, I'll second. Okay. Any discussion. Okay, hearing none that they can vote all in favor say Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Okay, thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Eric there was another one and I, somebody was talking about it last night about setting up an account for the. I'm not sure what that other account was that we were talking about at the meeting last night.
So there are a couple of L accounts that the Board of Finance is going to have to authorize Unless Sherry is prepared to discuss that right now, I don't think I'm ready for it. We are hopefully gonna get an allotment of money fairly quickly from the connectivity grant that's been about three years in the making. We finally got all our Is crossed and Ts dotted, and hopefully, we'll get that funded. And that's one of those grants where they give us the whole thing upfront, and then we have to justify what we spent later. But that's for a specific construction project for this season. Yeah, and what was the other one, Sherry? Oh, the Board of Selectmen asked that we create a non recurring account that the monies raised by the recreation commission for various different things can be allowed to roll over. Because one of the selectmen was very unhappy that the money raised for all the athletic events that was specifically put into the recreation budget and then not spent by the end of the year ended up stuffed back in the general fund. So he's requested that. But I suspect, yeah, I suspect we're gonna have another meeting between now and the end of the fiscal year, certainly. And we'll be ready to make that at that time. As long as we do it by the end of the fiscal year, it doesn't matter. Correct. Okay.
Sherry agrees then? Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Just need far more information than be able to put something together. Okay. No worries. I
don't think we need to add that much more to this meeting anyway.
Yeah. Well, it was a specific request. I just wanted to make sure there was some timely nature to it, know, time sensitive nature really took care of the business so. Let's get on the agenda for next time yeah. Would suggest that. Okay,
good. Right, any additional changes additions or deletions to the budget. I'm sorry to the agenda. It's on everyone's mind. Yeah. Okay, so let's roll into agenda item number four which is to discuss an act upon the following. First one is the budget discussion with the intent to come up with a recommended budget for the town to be discussed at town meeting. On Tuesday. Okay, so I think I don't have to tell anybody here about the history of the budget. Clearly, after we had recommended budget that had a significant increase for the town and for the, especially for the elementary school. Was significantly voted down in the referendum. We thereby revise the budget downward significantly primarily impacting a yes. That was presented at the meeting on yesterday, and it was fairly narrowly defeated. So, the question to the board is, do we make changes to that recommended budget. And if so how, or do we submit that same budget back to a budget town budget meeting next Tuesday
with possibly some further explanation or discussion and see if it passes as is. So those are our two options. Options.
Right, so I'll go first. My take is that we got, look a budget that cannot make it through town meeting is useless. A budget that cannot make it through referendum is useless and no matter how well grounded it may be we have to get something passed. We've gotten public signals in both directions. My take as you all know because I was the one person who voted against it was that the $138,000 cut we made last time was excessive. And I had proposed something more moderate that at the time was not acted upon, but is actually in the very, very close in the ballpark to what is now being proposed by the board of ed and our superintendent with their support. So to me this seems like a middle path that we ought to take and see what happens there. With respect to how each were defeated, I would just say this, I ran the numbers and I may be doing the math wrong but
you know last night it was like 50 three-forty 7% if you look if you do the math and I don't think the referendum was that far off of that. I respect the fact that in town meetings can be less representative than a referendum. But we have to get through both to get to our end goal. So to me, the obvious thing to do is to split the difference a little bit, put some money back in the AAS budget but not as much as was originally requested and see how that flies. So I'm generally supportive of the proposal that was thrown out there by Shannon and Valerie and I think we should try that and if we can get it through town meeting, if we can get the advisory questions firmed up and put on the ballot that can give us additional feedback whether we pass or not
so that we have something to go forward with. So you know just that's my take I would personally after we discuss this I personally intend to make a motion to this effect but I want to have everybody discuss it a little bit before I do that.
Okay. Other members of the board, anybody want to comment on that?
I am very concerned about what's going to happen next year. Because so, because of the unknown next year and knowing that awful little bag of tricks that we had will no longer be around. I'm very much erring on the side of being conservative on this because I don't know what next year is going to be like. And let me tell you, don't want to. I think it's going to be harder next year than it is this year. And I think this year is very hard. So that's my biggest concern is making a cut big enough to make a difference to get it to pass
and not being foolish with our money. So that's all I had. So, know, the proposal from the board would bring their increase at two and a half percent. I think that's still a little bit too high. So that's kind of where I stand. So I'll let everybody else have a little.
Okay, thank you, Diane. I'm just doing some things on a spreadsheet here.
Mean, I'm happy to make a motion anytime. I just didn't wanna jump the gun a little bit. Yeah, no, I think it's fair to have some conversation around it.
Any other members of the Board of Finance care to make other comments before we entertain a motion?
I mean, if anybody's wants to know, the number in my mind for compromise would be a 2% increase. Okay. I'd be looking for another half percent. So would add another about 30 eight?
So that would be an overall cut of a $100,000.
No, right. It was what I'm saying in terms of adding back from where we were last meeting. Yeah. It's adding back. Yeah. So it was giving them an increase of 70. It it you know, you're at plus 38. I'm at plus 60. Yep.
You know, understood. That's kind of concerning for me to even do 2%.
I agree with you that next year is looking daunting. And I've worried about this for years as we used our unexpended balance. I've been warning about this for years that the train was coming down the tracks. So I totally respect that. But given where we are and everything I personally am supportive of going with the board of ed proposal which I think is a significant compromise on their part after all said and done. So that's my take, but anyway, is there anybody else because otherwise I'll just move and then we can have discussion of that.
You look like you're ready to speak. Yeah, Mark, I'm on the same
same idea as, as Diane. I think that's a good compromise based on everything that we've gone through up, up till now. I was I was actually raised basically to set the exact budget that we had proposed last night back back again next week. But I kind of think, you know, what Diane had mentioned in regards to 2% increase would be more likely palatable for both parties and I'll leave it with that.
I also, yeah, I also I'm up for compromise as well. And that's what I was actually thinking last night when I left that we have to have a compromise and I'm thinking more of what Diane had mentioned as well. But appreciate Shannon. Shannon requesting that. And I'll go along with that too.
Okay. David, any comment before we entertain a motion or do you want to wait for the motion?
No, I'll come. I'm concerned looking forward. I won't be on the board. Yes, member of the public. You guys know where the two areas are. You have the trooper and the heavy yes and it's gonna be very difficult next year. So I would lean towards kind of what Diane said. Okay. That's you. I'm sorry, what's that? Rob. I haven't even mode. I've been dreading.
You know, I'll say one thing in that I recognize that next year is going to be tough when we've been saying it all along we've been thinking about it we've been planning for it and to the degree that we can. Know, we had certainly some verbal commitments, I think, if maybe that's a little bit of a strong word, but I think we had some verbal commitments on behalf of the superintendent that next year was going to be different. That this year was in her view was important to fund the schools, where they were in order to do some cost avoidance and do some mitigation of impact from the COVID. And that next year, we would be taking a much harder look at the structure, and I would absolutely say we would plan to do that. We have also certainly offered and had positive response from the superintendent and the board of Ed at one point to kind of help structure the budget documents so that they're more clear and amenable to most of the public so we can understand a little better what we're doing year to year over the last two or three years I did a lot of work after Valerie did a presentation to kind of do line item by line item, and actually kind of understand where that was and it was still cumbersome so I don't know it's accurate and I never really, you know, publish that or put it out there but at any rate, I think there's a lot of work that can be done and must be done to kind of bring us back in mind.
Don't know that this year is the year that I would cut it as much as we did. I'll be honest about that. I am going to abstain from this boat as I have done on each school line item vote because of a potential personal conflict of interest due to a personal connection to the school district. But I just will say that I do think we cut pretty deep. I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt to some degree. But I also expect that we would hold them entirely to a pretty tough standard next year, understanding that, you know, we would have gotten past COVID, we're pretty close to getting done through it at the end of this year. And we need to get back on track. And I think everyone understands kind of where the. Kind of where we are now, so I guess that's just what I'll leave it there now that the next year is going to be. Needs to be taken either regardless of where we go this year it's going to have to be a hard look at it. Eric, are you raising your hand? So, just wanna clarify
because I started looking at the numbers. What Diane proposed would be, as far as I understand, you're saying an AES budget of $3,300,000,977,616. Is that correct?
No, so I'm looking at an AES budget of $300,000,978,008, which would give them an increase of 75,608.
Okay. Does that work? Say that again just so I get the numbers correct. So I'm looking at 3,978,008. Okay.
Which should bring them in at an increase of $75,006.00 8. Okay. To this year budget, which I get as being like 1.94% increase. That's pretty close to 2%. Okay, if we do that 2% is 39.8448 just for the record, but
Right, so if we do that, that would end, you would end up with an estimated mill rate of 36.51, which is basically a 0.9 mill increase over what you have now. And that would be a 2.53% increase. Just so you have the numbers extrapolated through my math. What was that percentage, Eric? 2.53. Okay, and right now we're at 2.76
with the current budget. Budget. Can we just quickly run the numbers if we restore 60.
If you restore to the 97 that that. I'm sorry, the board of Ed proposal, if we put 60 back in since our last meeting, the Board of Ed proposal would take you to I think if I have this right 36.59 mills, which is a 2.76% increase.
We're talking about a quarter mill right between the two proposals. Yeah, it's not a lot of room there.
That so that gets you a total by Diane's proposal gets you a total increase by taxation of 5.3%. But obviously because the grand list is going up, we get some for the lead. Right,
right. So yeah I mean you were literally talking about a difference between roughly 78,000 and 97,000 right so is it $2,119,000 dollars difference between the two concepts we have. Yep.
All right. I think people put it out there I'm going to try anyway so I'm going make my motion I move that we restore $60,000 to the board of ed budget which will take them to a $97,000 increase as proposed by you know at least communicated to us by a member of the board of ed and our superintendent.
Rob can I suggest that we just state that in a number term that what you're proposing is to fund the AES line item at $3,999,400 which is $97,000 more than the current approved budget for this fiscal year? Friendly amendment cheerfully accepted.
Which is a 2.49% increase. Further discussion. Oh sorry, do we have a second. Okay, For the purposes of discussion I'm going to second the motion. Okay. Do we have any other. Any other discussion.
I just I'll just throw another thing out there before we vote. I think I know this is going to go but I'm going try anyway. Again my goal here is to produce a budget that is both reasonably responsible and passable. I think that if you continue to push a little too hard on the school budget, you're going to continue to get parents coming out at the budget meetings and you're going to have trouble getting it through the budget meeting to get to referendum. And we are at the point now where we're crippling over $30,000 not even $30,000 $19,000
Correct. So my take would be give a little on this and support this and we can go in with the united front and get this thing passed. If we want to stick to our guns and go with the 38 or the 60 whatever. We're gonna have a split again and we risk what happened last time which is that the other part of the town is going to mobilize against it. You're gonna have and bear in mind we have problems on both sides of this budget as everybody knows. I understand that for every vote we get by putting some money back in the school budget, we might lose a vote on the other side. I respect that, but I wanna get this budget to referendum and try to get it passed. I think this is the best way to do it. My take, y'all are free to disagree, obviously. That's what I'm trying to do.
I think the concerns are certainly valid. I think you've stated it, but we do need to pass a budget, that's for sure. As you stated earlier, we budget that doesn't get us through town meeting doesn't do any any more good than a budget that doesn't get us through referendum. Referendum. Right, we got to get through both.
A bit of a it's a needle to thread guys and you know I'm trying to thread it, I respect everybody else's opinion on this I think this is the right call. Again, we would have the buy in of the board of Ed on this. That's that's the for me, a major selling point.
Take it as you will. Just to just to state the numbers that we're talking about a difference rounded. It's a proposal of what diana suggested was a $78,000 increase versus a $97,000 increase so. I believe that's the number so. Further discussion. Hi,
I don't know, maybe it's maybe it's just me, but I prefer to see that at 2% or under. Know it's just a fraction, but to keep it more in line with it's still more than the town budget and the RAM budget went up and I feel it'd be Also a compromise. Personally, I'd like to keep it as 1%, but I'm willing to go to 2%. We all make our compromises.
As much as we don't always want to believe it. That's the American way. That's how we've gotten where we are. This is how this works. All right. More discussion from the board members.
Mark, I feel the same way as Linda and Diane. 2% is a real good compromise, I think across the board for both parties.
Okay, thanks Kurt. Further discussion. Okay, I'd like to call a vote. Those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Aye.
Okay, and all those abstaining say so. I will abstain. Okay, David were you a no, I wasn't sure. Correct, that was enough. Okay.
Okay, the motion fails. That's five to one with one abstention. Thank you everybody. Okay. More discussion more motions.
So I will like to make a motion to bring the school budget in at $3,978,008 which would give the school about a 75,608 increase, which would bring in at a 1.94% increase a hair under 2%. Can you repeat that number for me again? 2,978,008.
Eight. I will second. Yeah, 3,978,008 that's an increase from last year's approved budget of $75,608 or an increase of 1.94% and Kurt your second. Yes, sir. Okay. Discussion further discussion by the board members on this amount. The motion before us. Okay hearing none let's call a vote all those in favor say Aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. Aye. Okay, and I will abstain any other extensions. Motion carries five to one and one abstention. All right, further action on the budget. Have any more discussion or proposals.
Want to say, I know it's difficult and I appreciate everybody's feedback on this because everybody together as an opinion and it's good to hear everybody so I appreciate it.
Yeah. With respect to the rest of the town budget, my gut reaction is especially since we haven't returned as much funding as the board had proposed, I'd like to leave the town budget where it is rather than restoring funding to the road fund as much as I think we need that roadwork. Just from a standpoint of equity, I think we need to leave it where it is. I'd agree with that.
One question. Yep. So, and I was just looking at the year to date expenditure report so I was trying to get a handle on where we're going to come in. Nothing's changed like there's no little bit of extra money that is magically gonna show up in the next twenty five days.
So, Diane, what I would say is what I don't have a great feel for is revenue, and I'd be honest with that. On the expense side, it looks like we're gonna finish in the black, but barely. And I'm not even 100% willing to tell you we're gonna finish in the black. We're gonna cut into contingency, we're gonna chew up all of contingency to stay positive, is what I would say at this point. But I think we will still hold the budget under the line.
The one thing I'm concerned is, I don't like cutting the, what was the road fund we cut 25,000, right? Yeah. We made this ten year plan to fund the roads at $300.00 a year. Every time we change that, we kind of kick the can. And we know that kicking the can doesn't work. So, I'm just, just gives me a little angst on that side. That's why I was wondering if there was any magic money.
No, there's there's no magic magical money, pots of money, a golden tree, you know, nothing like that. Quite frankly, I just want to say something here. As a finance director for both the town and the board, you know, I'm a little bit disappointed in the way we're nickel and diming everything. And we're not putting in on the board of Ed side. We're not even putting in the amount that we need to meet our contractual obligations, two contracts we just negotiated with our staff, you know, that puts me at a very difficult position to find the money. And I'm going to tell you this budget, there's no finding any money. I mean, it's very, very tight. So I'm a little bit nervous going into it, knowing that I'm already upside down some money and I don't know where that's going to be coming from,
to be honest with you. And then as far as, you know, the town goes is that, you know, we listen to the taxpayers and they say, the roads are bad, the bridges need repairs, the trees need to be cut down. Well, quite frankly, when I'm going home from these meetings, I don't want to be hit by a tree, you know, and I'm going the back roads, you know what I'm saying? So that makes me a little nervous too. How many times are we gonna cut into that tree budget, road budget, whatever? I mean, this town needs something. It needs a shot in the arm. I mean, it needs a little bit more money. And the people that live here need to kick in a little bit more to make it happen for both the town as a whole, that we can flourish and we can grow. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed that, you know, we can't attract people to come to go to our school, you know, if they're going to see all the trees and the roads and the bridges, you know, that we don't take care of. It's hard. You know, I don't know what to do, but I'm a little concerned at this point of meeting our obligations by Franklin on both sides, the town, and we're just going to make it then closing out in the black revenue there's no way to turn. I mean, pretty cut and dry. From what I can see. So thank you. I just wanted to voice my opinion on that. I appreciate it, Sherry. Thanks, Sherry. You're welcome.
Yeah, I mean, I would say from my perspective, you know, I've gone to budget meetings starting with my parents in the 70s. And the town is very frugal. And regardless of what, so I look at my job and say, my job is to present an initial budget that handles the priorities of the town. And then if the taxpayers of the town are unwilling to support it, my next job is to figure out, given what they will support, use it as best we can. And you're right, there's a bunch of priorities and a bunch of needs unmet. I can tell you in this building, I've got people very upset because
we haven't had the heat working in the community room all winter. But I said, we're not really using it. The AC is not really working too well on that. That we will probably have to address this summer. We're making a lot of compromises. It would be nice to have more money, but the reality is you only get what the voters give you. And it was pretty clear from the referendum that what we asked for initially wasn't gonna fly. We'd all like more money.
Yeah. Any more discussion for the board members. Any more motions,
comments, I can I just say something? Absolutely. Okay, I've been in town for since 1975. But besides that this past year and this upcoming budget. My little family, family, my husband and wife and the neighbors. I know we're all doing fine. But this past year with pandemic. We do not know how many families in Andover are being hurt financially and what a raise in their taxes will to to them. And that's my concern. That's it.
Does anybody want to propose any other action on the budget as it stands. Does anybody want to make a motion to accept the budget as it stands now as the recommended budget for the Board of Finance. Mark I will make that motion.
Okay. Kurt makes a motion to take the recommended or the budget as it stands and make that the town, the recommended budget for the town meeting on Tuesday, we have a second. I'll second that. All right, Louise seconds it. All right, further discussion. Okay, hearing none let's go ahead and have a vote all those in favor say Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Do we have any abstentions? Okay, the motion passes seven zero zero. Thank you everybody. All right. Any further discussion on the budget? Sherry?
Can I just point out one thing? What we said is there's any residents in the community that are suffering because of COVID and tax increase. We can take some of that American Relief Fund grant money and help some of those people out because that's exactly what you're supposed to do. If if there are people in your community that truly are down and out because of COVID and everything else that's going on around them, including a tax increase, we can help them out. And that would be a perfect way to use some of the money anyway. I just want to point that out. Thank you.
Okay. Hearing no further discussion, let's move on to item agenda item 4B, which is just a recap of the following meetings. I think you were all there. So you know what happened. Does anybody have any question or wish to make any further discussion on what's going on to date? Okay, hearing none let's move on to item for be to which is plans for the upcoming referendum and budget process. I think everybody understands that the way the process works is that we now have a recommended budget for the town. Following this meeting, we will present it again on Tuesday or present this budget for the first time on Tuesday. That's June 1, I believe. And we'll give this a shot again. Does anybody have any questions or comments?
If we do, if it passes at the budget meeting on June 15 or June 1, then it will go to referendum on the fifteenth and presuming that passes, we get the tax bills out on time. If it did not fail or did not pass on the fifteenth, we're not going to make it.
Okay. I think you know if we go to town meeting next time and it fails the you know one of the most first orders of business is deciding how we handle that tax bill process. Yeah I think that's one of our agenda items. I believe and I and I think I said this before that we did that once in the past. During my time on the board, it was a while ago Linda may remember it. We sent out we kind of guesstimated frankly and we sent out tax bills and I think memory serves and you can correct me if you remember different but we actually ended up sending out tax bills that were just a hair too high but it was really, really, really, really close and so in the end I don't think we did a supplemental because we actually overshot just a hair, do you remember that Linda?
I do, but I don't, yeah, I think I do. Doesn't the charter dictate Don't what we
we just keep with the same budget, we don't exceed it? Now the town, the charter, think the way it works is if we don't have a budget and we go, that's the spending side. Okay, if we don't have a budget and we go into the next fiscal year without a budget pass, it defaults for spending purposes to the prior year's numbers.
Can I suggest we pawn this discussion off to 9B where it's on the agenda?
Yeah. It's also conjectural. So, you know, may not really have much practical effect here. Yeah. Good point. Good point. Okay.
Okay, I have a question, Mark. We're still adding those four questions to the ballots, right?
That we discussed before. Yeah, correct. We'll be making a request to the Board of Selectmen, if the budget passes at the town meeting first has got to pass the next Tuesday's town meeting, then the plan was to ask that at a referendum. Okay.
I would also say just for the record that what I'd like to see is us make that permanent. You mean asking of those questions? Yes, every referendum here on out. Good practice I think. We'll set on that. Yeah.
Okay, further discussion on the topic at hand. Thanks for pointing out, Eric, that we will have the vote if it does pass on the first we would have the vote on the second following Tuesday, which would be the fifteenth. All right, hearing no further discussion on this topic, we'll move to agenda item five, which is the town administrator's report. Eric?
Okay. So I'm gonna keep this fairly brief because I think everybody's has most of the information I would have wanted to put out. The first thing I wanted to say is the town of Andover for the first time in seven months and twenty two days is back to zero cases of COVID in the town of Andover for the fourteen day rolling average. So it's been a long ride. We are slowly getting back to normal. One of the questions I had for the board and also for Val is what we're gonna do. Obviously, a lot of people were not overly happy that they still had to wear masks inside the building. For the record, the first selectman has decided to wait until the next board of selectman meeting before making any decision
about the town hall. So in the town hall, you're still obligated to wear masks in common areas. That has not changed. So I don't know when that will change. I've put forward some suggestions as to how we can transition back to more normal operations, but so far that hasn't taken place. The other thing I wanted to talk a little bit about since we had, it had been discussed is we spent a fair bit of time looking at the potential uses for the COVID relief funds. And I just wanted to talk through, I mean, ultimately my intention is to present it to the board of selectmen and say, what are your spending priorities?
And then kind of go from there. That's my approach. I don't know whether you all want to weigh in with the Board of Selectmen. That's neither, that's not for me to say. So the first thing we can very definitely spend it on is waste and storm water management. Although we don't have a sewer system, the rescue plan defaults to the EPA guidelines for clean water funding. And one of the things that's doable under that funding is stormwater drainage structures. That's obviously something we have an immense backlog of work to do. We are doing a bunch of stormwater drainage work this year. So I think we could probably spend some of that money to rent the excavator since we don't own one. And we were planning on renting that out of Town Aid Road. We could potentially spend that money to repair a lot of our basin tops because a lot of our basin tops are badly degraded. So that would be a reasonable use of that money. The second thing, if we decided to do it, would maybe make some of the budget cuts a little more palatable, and that is to spend the money to use
to repair the septic system at AES. Because the EPA considers that a decentralized wastewater system, and therefore that looks like that would qualify. You could potentially also address an expansion of the septic system at the town hall, because it appears we're probably going to need that if we add a community center with a kitchen onto the existing system, which already covers both the fire department and the town hallcommunity room. I think it probably would be appropriate to consider a sizable donation to the food bank at the Andover Church. And the reason I think that is that last year, during kind of the height of COVID, we used them in conjunction with CERT very extensively to be able to provide food to the seniors in need that were afraid to go out and shop for themselves. So they really kind of bailed the town out and it was a great asset. I mean, I don't wanna say it's a great asset to the town because obviously they're their own entity, but I think a contribution to them would be appropriate. We could also consider assistance to Hop River Homes, because as most of you know, that is Andover's only low income housing. And again, that's not a town entity, it is a private entity,
but that would be a fundable thing. The other thing is one of the We've been kicking around for a while is the purchase of a vehicle for senior transportation. Now we are in the process, we're getting ready to submit another grant to fund the purchase of a 15 passenger van or bus. We did not get that funding last year, we applied for it and did not get it. But one of the big issues we've had is we do a lot of trips for seniors, where we're taking one senior in either a 15 or 20 passenger van. And purchasing a small car, like a little SUV, like Ford Escape or Subaru Forester or something like that, give the option for when you're running the single people, the medical, we don't have that many that are handicapped and require the handicap access capability in the bigger vans. So that might long term be a really good fit for the town because it will enable us to do some of those runs with a much smaller scale vehicle. I think we ought to consider additional programming and services for seniors, because we're clearly allowed to do that with this funding. The other thing that we have looming is, and we took it off the agenda item because Jed, the chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission could not make this meeting, is the town has to develop an affordable housing plan. And at this point, we've got a little less than twelve months to do it by state statute. Now, we've got a lot of the information for it because I wrote a grant about ten years ago to do an affordable housing study for the town. So a lot of that information
we can simply plug in, but we're going to need to do it and it's something that really is critical to the long term success of the town. That's another thing that could potentially be funded through this if we chose. So basically, either we have to do a really half baked one now to get us by, and then do a serious one with our next plan of conservation and development, which we will be starting to work on, we, the zoning commission, in about a year and a half, or we do a serious one now, and then we use that as a major section of the plan of conservation development in a couple of years. So that would be a reasonable spend for the money. And there is a bunch of categories for things related to tourism. I've kind of looked through the fine print and I think, you know, so we thought, could we do some of the work of historical society through this? Maybe, but that's a pretty good stretch of the rules. Not saying we couldn't, but we would be working a little bit, I think, to justify that. The other things we can spend the money for is addressing
educational disparities and potentially also assisting with after school programs and pre K. I'm not saying that's the direction you wanna go or the board wants to go, but those are areas where that money can be spent. And that's pretty much all I wanted to say about that unless you got questions. On that, could we be talking about there?
Oh, it's an existing expense right I mean the whole concern over doing something with a term is that we got to fund it by statute right right we have to do something like that you so we can't offset current planned expenditures.
Yeah, and unfortunately the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities post own their training session
on you didn't get to go to that last week? So
the one last week was for the bigger towns, and they held that one and realized that there were enormous number of questions they couldn't answer. And the presenter at that apparently, he had a bunch of things that probably weren't really correct. And so CCM basically said, you know what, we're not gonna do the one for the small towns, we're gonna wait, we're gonna push that off another week until we can address that in a little more reasonable fashion. So that will be sometime early in June. Any of you who want to attend that, I'm more than happy to send you the login information or just sign you up for it if anybody on the board or anybody else wants
to attend that. And that's basically all I have, unless you have questions for me.
Now you said something about wanting to get Val's input I assume it was on the masks on the school thing. Is that what it sounded like you were asking at the very beginning.
You're talking about the mass in the town hall and people weren't happy about it. Oh yeah so for our next budget meeting. The question happens is a lot, there were definitely a lot of grumbling at the meeting about why people were still wearing masks. And I was thinking that that's really school property. And that's not really Is that our say or is that really the school's say? So I just wanted Val to kind of weigh in on that. Yeah, Val, can you hear me? Okay. So
children under the age of 12 are still not eligible for vaccinations. So our policy from now until the end of the school year is that any events where the children are there, adults do have to wear masks unless it's a situation where there is not only the six feet distancing but it's an activity that would be safe. For example, when we had DARE graduation last week it was outside and so the children did proceed to the seating with their masks on and then once they were seated six feet apart, they took them off and then put them on when they went from there. Families were able to sit in close proximity to one another And if they chose to remove their mask at that point since they were six feet from everyone else and very far from the children, they were told they were allowed to. But we are going with the recommendation from now until the end of the year when the children are around and they're not able to be vaccinated to still continue. Eric, to your point, the meeting last night, there were children there. And so we certainly would not put the vaccinated people wanting to take their masks off over the safety of the children. It was a different event. I absolutely would agree. And I don't know what we're going to do for next year yet. Their guidance changes weekly and so we'll follow. Okay, anybody on the board have questions for Eric.
No, I'm just interested in learning what's in that funding in that American Relief Act. I did save the document today. And in my previous job, is really what I did do is read federal regulations and dissect them from the bank. So, I will kind of go through that to see if I can glean. For the school, for the school budget, for the school budget. You know, and then so, because realistically, whatever money is in there, I think it's a pot we should share throughout the town, whatever the school can use whatever the town can use we should just figure it out. Adrian, you're unmuted just so you know. Okay.
I agree with that by the way that we should try to equitably share that money to the extent that we can if we can use it for school need, town need and so forth. Anything that is multi use great. I like the idea if we do expand that septic system to accommodate the community center, a septic system is already handling the town hall and the fire department. That's great. Like it kind of hits everybody. You know, if we can use something for the school, whether it is to deal with their septic thing or if we are dealing with an cost because they still have, I know the overall billing still went to you know went consolidate under us, they still have some billing there for services. I would really like to see that shared as equitably as possible between the two as much as we can. But it's good, Eric, I was happy to hear that we've kind of drilled down this a little bit. We've come a long way from where we started on that. And then we need to keep going and see if we can tighten everything up and come up with, when you talk about the drainage work, I brought this up the last time drainage on the roads. If we can quantify that come up with a dollar figure that we could realistically apply for or you know, spend and then justify, that would be helpful.
Well, we have way more than $160,000 in primary drainage work we need to do. So, I mean, I could clearly spend that entire $320,000 on storm drainage related work, but I mean, I'm not sure that's that, we have so many needs. If you want a quantification of it, I'd be happy to provide It just so to me, it almost makes more sense for you guys to think logically about what buckets you think are most important and we'll fund and then we'll come back with what the, how we can, or what we would do if we had X number of dollars for a thing.
Okay, I get it. We could throw the whole thing at that. My thought is, again, I'm trying to think of how we can chop this up in such a way that it's fair to everybody and everybody gets a piece of the pie kind of thing. And so maybe it's more, maybe we need to hear more about what can be thrown, not thrown, what can be used to help the school. And then we can say, okay, so we know that it's kind of pardon the parlance but a bottomless pit it comes to our needs as a town for the roads, for the drainage of the roads. So, okay, if we're gonna look at it and say, maybe we're gonna try to split this in half or so or 40%, 4020% other when you mentioned other things like helping out the food bank and helping out the low income housing, maybe we could look at it and look at what we can target for the school. I
be recognized please? Although I appreciate you guys wanting to have this discussion, it's not the purview of the Board of Finance to decide what to do with the grant money. It's actually up to the Board of Selectmen to propose and then for you guys to decide if you agree or disagree.
So you're kind of preempting here. Yeah, we think we may be a little bit ahead, but the discussion is kind of worth having a little so.
Okay, thanks. Fair enough, Adrian. I have one other issue. Mark, my phone kind of blew up. Apparently, you have a conflict with the Board of Ed budget or something. Is that correct? How about if we talk about this later?
Unfortunately, I'm bringing it up now because there is a town policy. You're not supposed to be running the meeting for that part of it, if you have a conflict as a board chair, you so if you would just kindly turn it over to die and struck at least until the for anything has to do with the school. That would be appropriate and. All right, so noted, Diane meeting is yours. Thank you. Apologize for interrupting. No problem. I appreciate it. You're muted Diane. I'm unmuted now right. Right. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay.
I don't even have the agenda up, so that's how prepared I am. Hold on.
Right now we're in item five town administrators report still. Haven't moved on. Next item up would be six finance department rule. All right, let's do it. Are you done, Eric? I am yep I'm done unless you have further questions for me. Anybody have any further questions for Eric? Nope. Gary we're up with the finance report.
Okay. Finance department report, I submitted to you in your packet, town budget summary report up to date, the revenue summary report, town aid road spending, detailed account, and you have the over expenditure report as well. The town budget summary, we're still continuing to pay all of our bills as things come in and we're trying to hone in on where we're actually going to be at towards the end of the year. There's some things that need to come in that we haven't received yet. We're working on getting that rectified. The revenue summary, I'm working on posting all the current year's taxes to the revenue report. I will be doing that tomorrow to make sure that's up to date. I posted all the other entries for prior year taxation. So they those got in. I think at this point, after I do that, we'll have all the entries that we know need to be made. There might be a few other revenue entries that I need to make, but that is going to require me going through the bank statements, which is the next step in reconciling those. Down aid road spending, that's the detail, it's up to date. And then I did the over expenditure report, basically just taking all the line items that are in a deficit situation to the left of the report, to the right of the report are some areas where we have money to potentially cover what we have going on currently. It's pretty close, but we could find some other, hopefully other savings down the road as we close out, hopefully. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one.
So with that, if there's any other questions that you may have that I can answer that, know, I'd be happy to do so.
Sherry, just to kind of clarify on that last item you mentioned. So you have, it looks like you have two subtotals on the one on the left and one on the right. Yep, of those accounts that are running a little low or a little high. The $122.07 49. That's the, the shortage in those accounts and then the $143.17 is the overage in the other accounts. Am I reading that correctly?
Those are positive. The positive amounts in those accounts. If you look at it's contingency I believe 50 is, I don't have the document in front of me right now but the intent was to have the first column to the left identify all your items that are overspent at that time when we pulled it. And the other column to the right are is just indicating areas the lot in the budget, the line items have money that are super positive that potentially will be used to cover the overages. Which has to be discussed. Eric and I need to get together on that and decide what to bring forward as budget transfers for June. Okay. That's my understanding. That's my understanding, you know, because it has to be done line item by line item to cover within the budget. So we have more work to do, which we will certainly do. But that was my first stab at it to get a picture of where we're at.
Just one question on the Veterans Monument. We had put aside $20,000 for that, but I don't think Eric, we're not going to spend all that. Right? Didn't we have, because we didn't have to drill a new well, right? Muted, Eric. You're muted.
So, we didn't have to drill a new well. You know, it's still a little vague, honestly, because a lot of it depends on how much Jerry ends up fundraising. We're going to have to do a lot of digging. We're going to have to put in a We're going to end up paying for the sprinkler system, and we're probably gonna have a fairly good bill for topsoil in some form or another. So I think we're going to maybe not run the full 20,000, but we're gonna end up not that far from it.
Does anybody have any other questions? Good today because I don't have two screens. One is budget transfers, I think. Do we have any budget transfers or Not yet. Not
yet? Not at this time. Not this time. We're going to have something in the June meeting. Okay. And we don't have any other over expenditures. You're going to wrap that all up with the Typically,
I like to do that all at sort of the end before the end. Okay. Yep. So I know where I'm at a little bit better. You know, take another snapshot of it and just get a feel for where I need to move the money around to make things positive. That'll be in our next meeting. Yes.
Perfect. Yes, definitely. I'm going to be talking to Eric and we're going to put our heads together and come up with something. They will find it. Old business. Old better software transition.
Yes. We have another meeting scheduled tomorrow at 11:00, and they're going to be discussing where they're at. I provided them all the reports that they requested from both the town and the Board of Ed. So they have all that. They have the data from both sides, town and board. They pulled that off the server over at the school. So at this point, they're just going to review everything they have, where they're at, discuss the database situation and if they were successful in doing what we want them to do. And then what's the next steps of how we're going to proceed with all of this. Eric, did you send that to Jeff McGuire? I did not. Okay. I didn't have the address at home see it came in at home. So I was on my laptop. So I sent it to everyone. But I did not have his email address at home. Okay. If you want to give it to me, text me or something,
I'll gladly send it. Yeah, I will email it to you right now. Okay.
Thank you. Yep. So that's where we're at as far as the transition goes. I did indicate to him that we wanted to go live on July 1. So, you know, there's not much time to waste, so to speak. And he indicated to me that he's well aware of when we want to go live on both sides, town and board. So the next one is audit status. Reviewed the audit reports. And I found them to be in line and everything seemed to be okay at this point. I didn't see any discrepancies. I reviewed them with Marina and we, you know, made just to make sure that the figures made sense. They certainly make sense to me. So I sent a reply back to the auditor saying I was okay with the financials and the single audit report. I also cc'd you, Eric, and I have not heard from him yet. I assume that any day now we should have the final audit to us that we can start,
you know, addressing it and distribute copies to the town and the board.
What will be the timing for us to get a presentation of your audit findings we have like we had last year? Is that going to happen in July or? So what they did is they came in and did a presentation last time. Oh, okay.
Yeah. I I would I would think that would be the case, but I will email him and ask them. Okay. When he, I don't know if it's going to be via zoom or in person now. I think that's what I need to find out.
Mark, I can't remember. And Eric, maybe you know, last audit, I know we had a president, was it, did, do they do a presentation for the board of selectmen and the board of finance?
Yeah, typically they'll do a combined presentation together. Yeah, usually what happens is the Board of Finance invites the Board of Selectmen and then they do a combined presentation.
I don't think we did that last time, but that would be I think the first time we might've done that previous year. Yeah.
I mean, a lot of things were off kilter last year. So yeah. And we've been having audit polls for years. But I think that was once upon a time, this the proper process.
I'll say it's significant that you feel that we need to know about before the reports issue. No magic accounts with money in Yeah, no magic accounts.
Magic accounts. And we did so I did send to both Mark Brinker and the First Selectman the draft copies in case you guys had any comments too. Right.
So, I didn't really hear back, you know, definitively from either of you. If either of you have any comments, we'll pass that on to the auditor too.
If there's nothing material, I might as well get it wrapped up and get it done. And maybe get it done earlier next year. Yay. That's my hope and my goal, certainly.
We'll have you want to. I certainly would want it done and all wrapped up by December. Typically, I've had that happen. So I'm going to shoot for that for next year, hopefully.
We're betting on you, Sherry. We'll be really happy. I've
worked with Disorder too before and him and I really work well together. So I'm looking forward to that relationship. And with that, as long as we get all the information to them in a timely manner, there's no reason why they can't, you know, draft a final draft and get a report out either December or January. So I'm going to shoot for that. This is way too late for me. I mean, you know, there's other things that I got to do, you know, like putting in the opening balances and things like that in the balance sheet. You know, this is accounting work that I need to have done and it's quite late in the year. But we'll work on that.
So while we're discussing the audit, I do have one final thing and that is you guys all know we had the ACH fraud issue last year. That has been almost completely resolved. We did get paid out by the insurance company and we were able to recover some of the money from Regions Bank. The final difference between those two was $5,000 between what we owed essentially after the insurance payment and what we got back from Regions Bank. I had suggested and sent to both Mark and Jeff that we had discussed it briefly with the auditor and kind of agreed that we would split the difference if that's, but you're the board of finance, I'd kind of like to run it by you. I mean, I was gonna bring it up with the board of selectmen since I didn't really get a response from Jeff either. So I don't know what if any of you have feedback on that. Eric just a quick question.
So the $5,000 difference accounts for what exactly? So that's basically our deductible. No, I
mean look I work for an insurance company I get deductibles I just didn't know if you know you said you're approximately usually deductible specific amounts. Well all right approximately it is $5,000
okay exactly $5,000 it's a penny if you want to. Okay thank you. So it's just a deductible we have to eat basically. Yeah. Well, Well, what we're hoping.
Who was accountable? I mean, obviously the insurance company paid the claim, they think the fault was on the accounting firm and not us. We didn't have a proper process in place. Get that for verifying wires. I got that part.
I know subsequently whether our insurance company went after the auditor's insurance company. I don't know that. I know our insurance company paid what they thought was their portion of the claim. And apparently what happened was at some point about five months or six months after we notified Regions Bank, somebody made another deposit into that bank account. And since we already essentially had a lien on it, they snatched that money back and refunded that to us from that account. And that's what we ended up getting. So between those two, of the $32,000 all but five essentially has been accounted for at this point. And so what we're proposing to the auditors that we split the deductible
with them because they've acknowledged that they have some fault in this also.
Weakness and controls on their side, weakness and controls on our side. So it's an equitable.
Correct. Yeah. And I mean, just from the standpoint of fault, I mean, that's not what the insurance policy is really about anyway. You know, just as an insurance guy, you know, it's a question of if the town had tenant claim and it was a matter of, you know, a claim that was covered under the policy they pay, it doesn't even necessarily have to speak default.
I get that I was just trying to say if it was really more on the accounting firm side, would want them to eat the. I see your point. That's where I'm going. I see. I call you. But if it's, you know,
both sides of the house had weak controls, I guess the board of select one would have to weigh in on that. I think that Yeah.
I mean, gut is, you know, if we do, we acknowledge that we could have done a better job than, you know, it makes some sense to chop it up, whether it's a fifty fifty split is the proper and equitable split. I don't know, but first blush, you know, you tell me, you know and plus the other thing is of course we have this the auditor that we're using we are continuing to use correct? Correct.
So there's that too in terms of our business relationship with them so to speak.
Right and realize we're a year behind in making them whole and they've gone along with that. So I think they've been reasonably accommodating with us. We both understand that both sides had some fault in this, at least that's what I would say from my perspective.
Think or slow motion select when should weigh in and then we should just make sure. Yeah. Understood. Anybody have any other questions? Do I have to run this whole meeting or just the school stuff I have to do? Good practice.
I'm on vacation part of next month. Oh God. So
next item is the community center. So the building committee for the community meets monthly pretty much at the gazebo. Really what's that's going on is in kind of Eric's hands and the town engineer's hand to go out for a site survey. And once we get that, correct me if I'm wrong, then we'll go back out and get some cost bids to see what we're talking for dollars. But that's kind of where we're seeing it's moving slow. It's not going to happen this year. It'll be a next year event. Yeah, think we got a good update from Adrian at the town budget meeting on the status. So, what else is on there.
Town budget meetings that's not really relevant to the fiscal budget for next year right.
No, but I mean, he gave us the rundown. Yeah, well we'll see where we are next month. Right.
Okay, so item E building and land use department permitting system. We have signed a contract with the vendor, they're still promising, well, they're not going make June 1, which was their original deadline, but he seems to think he's going to be working on our project early to mid next week. So we should be starting to go through the motions to adopt that. That will be budget neutral to the town because we are just flat billing everybody who pulls a permit for the cost associated with it.
How long does it take to get this thing up and running? Are we keeping up with, I mean, I know we have no staff.
It's not that we have no staff. We just trimmed the staff a bit. So we do have people working. We're pretty close to caught up at the moment, actually. We're not in terrible shape right now. We had been quite behind for a while, there's no question. You know, a bunch of people kicked in, you know, and spent some time working through the backlog. So we have at this point done a pretty good job of getting back to kind of normal, close to normal. Anybody have any questions? I'm good. No.
Alright. Is that we have a two page agenda? Hold on.
Yep. New business discussion request for funding and zoning commission to hire a consultant to develop an affordable housing. I thought we weren't going to talk about that. So we did strike that. There we can't that. We shot that. You're right. You're right. Hey. Thank you.
Apologize. Discussion about sending out the the tax bills relevant to the process. Sorry. Okay. Right.
So I'll just say that if we make it through this next budget cycle, we are on track and we'll be okay with getting them out. If we have a hard fail at the next referendum that pushes everything three weeks back before the earliest we could have a budget and we would definitely be in the kind of bonus time.
Same thing, Eric, I assume if it fails at town meeting.
No, actually, if it fails at the town meeting and we do a town meeting, the next meeting, go two weeks later, we can just squeeze it in. They will not be happy with us, but they will accommodate. But after that, it will not be on time. So there's basically, if you think about it, there's two options. One, if we thought it was going to be a short delay, like we thought one motorcycle was likely to do it, we could simply roll the dice and wait two weeks and push back collection for the first quarter by fifteen days and be okay. Because remember, we have a little bit of an operating cushion anyway,
you know, in any given year because expenses always lag collections. So we always have that window, you know, that so we would be okay for a short period. We could not go very long that way though. So if it looked like it was gonna be, you know, thirty days or forty five days, we would not wanna do that. So there's a little bit of ambiguity. So we have two things, we have a charter and we also have state law. And I've asked the town of Green for a legal opinion. He sent me a bunch of case law, which I've read through, which seems to indicate that the board of selectmen can set taxation kind of where they think they need to, to manage the town. But that's a little contradictory to what's in our charter. And I've asked him to review both and give us a legal opinion on what has to happen. Because the way the charter kind of reads, you have to go with last year's budget. But it's not clear to me whether that means last year's budget budget or last year's amount of taxation because those net two very different numbers.
Can I correct that question? Adrian, are you still on? Because if you are. I'm here what's up? You remember I mean you were on the board I believe at the time the last time this came up. About what? I'm sorry, I was on a call. Oh, no worries, sorry. So we're talking about the situation where if this drags on to the point where the tax bills need to go out and we haven't finalized the budget.
I mean, we can the Board of Selectmen or the Board of Finance can Board of Finance can set it and and and the Board of Selectmen can approve it or the Board of Selectmen can approve it and the Board of or can set it and the board of finance can approve it. And both of them have to touch it. And then you can send out bills accordingly. You basically set it at what you believe the town needs to run or what your expected budget will be. But you can't, you have to leave yourself some leeway like you can't.
We probably need to talk about that, or, you know, if we're to get there we're probably going to need a legal opinion because it is a little vague it says explicitly in the charter, Any such expenditure shall not exceed the amount appropriated in the last approved budget.
Right. And so that the, but it does reference the general statutes which Eric said they have some other language so right and that's the signature side. The thing though is you're going by yes you're going by expenditures, and it's a total value so it's it's kind of a catchphrase too because like we took a lot of money, it's not taxation right it's expenditures. So we took a lot of money out of capital to pay for those expenditures. So technically, you could set the mill rate anything you want up to that as long as you're not raising more than you expended. Do see what I'm saying? Yeah, it says the Board of Finance may authorize expenditures
and provide for the raising of necessary revenues, right, pursuant to the provisions of section seven dash four zero five of the general statutes. However, any such expenditure shall not exceed the amount appropriated in the last budget. Exactly.
So, but it's appropriated. So because we were using money from cap from reserve. Technically you could raise money more money from taxes as long as you didn't raise more than what you also included from reserve previously. In other words, this is so much from reserve in previous years. You've got a lot of leeway there. Yeah,
so that's my recollection too. Thanks Adrian because that's what I was kind of getting at is that we had the ability not that we want to do this by the way, I really don't. Nobody wants to do this but we did at one point ballpark, we threw a dart at a board. It was a good guesstimate and we were very, very close but we kind of picked a number and we sent out tax bills.
Yeah, mean your other option is just to set it at your previous year's rate and then make an adjustment when it comes out. Other towns do that. Wyndham did that two years ago when they had a school board issue. They went through eight referendums and didn't get a budget set until October. Actually, they set it in October and then it technically actually didn't pass until December. So that can be really wrongly.
Right. That seems to be the safest route would be set at existing rates because you're not gonna, we know where the budget is not likely to go below it. No, so correct.
Right. And like I said, I have asked for a legal opinion for him to lay out exactly what would have to happen in that case. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, but I just want to have our ducks in a row if it does.
I mean, really don't have to really make any decisions till our next meeting. Yeah.
A side note to the board select minutes, we'll have an emergency meeting. I did talk to the, for this budget vote, I did talk to the register of voters and talk to Carol Lee, it would make the most sense to try to condense the questions. So if we limit it to three questions, then they can use the tabulator. So we're gonna try to get, you know, is the town budget, you know, is the town budget, you know, too high, too low or just right kind of thing. Is the school budget too high, too low or just right? And then maybe we'll have a separate ballot sheet that has to be hand counted for Trooper or the other issues that you guys laid out, issues or capital. But we'll try to get the others on the tabulator so it's easier for the registers. So okay.
Approval of minutes. Is that where we're at? Yes. Yes, it is. I want to make a motion to approve the minutes for Wednesday, April 28 regular meeting and Sunday May 23
special meeting minutes. I'll move to approve the meeting minutes for Wednesday April 28 and for Sunday May 23 special meeting minutes. Second, second,
Rob second. Rob did you I second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Opposed? Who's saying none? Okay. Passes. All right. Doing great. VA is on reports.
We really kind of talked about everything. Is there anything on this? CIP didn't really do anything last time. We have a forum, so we didn't have a meeting. Okay. Anything else? No. Okay. I think we're back to vote comment.
Nope. Discussion. My fault. Any other board discussion that we need to have that anybody wants to talk about? I know everybody just loves talking about the budget.
I think we've said we have to say I think. We're
under a severe weather alert. What? Moment. Are we serious? Yeah. There's pretty nasty line of thunderstorms that are expected relatively
relatively quickly. Oh, well, I'll really start a little. So what for your lives basically?
I'm eating a turn. Know. It's already thought Don't get ahead of yourself, Rob. Yeah. You know, a boy can dream. I
I will say it's very, very dark and crazy here at the Andover Lake. Wow okay.
All right so Oh boy yes, I see the radar. Let's
go around. Amanda are you still there? Okay so public speak we shall carry on. First up we have Scott Person. Scott, are you there? All right, we will circle back. Jerry Cremay.
Yeah, I'd like to say based on what I heard this evening and especially what Sherry Holmes has shared with us, I'm very concerned. I have a strong feeling that if you raise my taxes 5%, it would cost me $500 a year. And I would gladly pay that so that to avoid having to go through all these discussions, referendums, town meetings, I gladly would pay it. And I'm wondering how many residents feel as I do that for this sake of this town, the town side, the senior citizens, the school, I will pay that gladly ended on. And if it saves this town from having to go through all of this. I'm all for it. Thank you.
Thanks Jerry. So Bruno. Hi, thanks Amanda. I do have a couple of things to say. There were a couple of comments that was made that were made. I know that Diane had said it was difficult. The budget was difficult for the town because they've really kicked the can. I have a problem with the fact that the school has not kicked the can. They've taken care of all of their obligations, all of these gears. We have the largest building in town, and yet we take care of it with the money that's been given to us. And I feel that that fact is being ignored, that we have not neglected our responsibilities to the children, to the facilities, and to the town. I am disheartened by the fact that I feel that the town rightfully so gives Eric a chance to get his job done and supports him.
I don't feel that these two boards are supporting me in doing my job, and it was apparent tonight with the responses that Sherry's comments were ignored and that she therefore is not being supported as a town employee in doing her job. The three of us are not elected. We're we're all hired to do jobs, and all three of us need to have that support. I expressed that we need $125,000 to meet the obligations of every single contract that was negotiated, and that's with nothing else. And I really feel very strongly that that should be taken into consideration and we should be taking into consideration the needs of the school. I also was upset at the thought that you're already thinking a year in advance as a board and saying that the responsibilities are gonna fall to the school because we're anticipating things getting worse now and into next year. And so we have to take it out on the school because otherwise we won't have any other way when we know that the conversations have to happen about the town, the school, and RAM next year. And I feel like you're already planning to make sure that the the school itself has to pay. And lastly, you know, I do wanna acknowledge that there were a number of times this year that I had grant opportunities that when I had extra money in that grant, I gave it away. Gave it away. I had extra money in a homeland security grant. And the first thing that we did was speak to the Board of Selectmen and say, we are willing to gift on the end of our building, we are willing to gift security
cameras that will assist in not only the town, but in the building of the community center that you didn't have planned for and we already have the monitoring. And so we keep looking out for the whole town, not just for the school. And that is poo pooed away and slapped in our face now that we have to take on the responsibility of the fact that the town hasn't done what they need to do. But they're also not saying thank you for the things that we've done to help the town out. I spoke with Kathy Palazzi, and Sherry and I had talked last week about the fact that we had a security grant and that there was still some money left in that security grant to offer
fencing from our soccer fields to where the proposed garden will be next to the senior center. And we could do that for her. We could do that for the town. Because Jeff Murray had said that his concern was that it was going to be so close to our children and the area where they play soccer. So we had that fund available to us and we made sure to offer it up right away. So I'm very disheartened that I've shown in the ten months that I've been here, as Kathy Balazi said on Sunday, I've shown that I have a plan not only for the school, but to make sure that things are done in the best interest of the whole town. And those things are being ignored. And the price of the as as Diane said, kicking of the can so that the other thing she said so that they can keep their bag of tricks is that it's going to fall on us.
And I really hope moving forward that we can get beyond that because all three boards do need to work together and Sherry works for all three boards now. Thank you. Thank you, Val, for your input. Mike Beckwith. No comment at this time. Joanne Hebert.
Thanks Amanda just a quick one not going to comment too much. It is very much hard work. I think the board has shown that they really do respect everyone involved all sides. Know they've been so diligent and taken a lot of time with considering the Board of Edsci. Probably more than I mean it's easy for me to just kind of be down the middle and be straightforward and give an opinion because I'm not going to take offense you know I'm just it's just a business it's just finances but I care I'm a really caring person so all I wanted to do is say that I've seen this board really agonize over things so they have considered the board a bed. Thank you. Thanks Joanne. Liz Lokiak.
Hi, thank you for letting me speak. I have to say I'm a little disappointed and a little bit insulted about some of the discussion that suggests that the townspeople just don't want to pay more taxes. The fact that people want more details and more transparency to know where their tax dollars are going doesn't make us cheap. It makes us prudent. People have made comments that it's only a few 100 extra dollars. I'm willing to spend a few 100 extra dollars and frankly, I'd be willing if it was only a few $100 too. But with the reval that's coming up, you're going to double the value of our house. And guess what? I don't think we'll only be paying a few more $100. We're probably talking about doubling our taxes. In light of that, I would like to ask Valerie, considering that Andover has the highest per pupil spend in the surrounding towns,
Can you explain to me the rationale for maintaining classroom sizes in the K through two classrooms of between ten and twelve roughly students? By consolidating these classrooms, we could save, and this is just one suggestion. This is just one suggestion. We could say the salaries and benefits of four teachers, and the obligation contracts that come with those.
Mark, I'm not sure that we're supposed to do this in public. No, you're not. No, you're absolutely not. And and, unfortunately, I know she'd love to ask that, and and people would love to have the answer. But I would I would just say look at area towns in terms of their budgets. And if you could I have. I have. And I could email them to you too. And, again, it's not it's not appropriate for you guys to be talking back and forth. It's Liz, and you'll see. You'll get a number. You'll see that that's not true. Liz, you're more than welcome to email her. Okay. That might be the appropriate. Alright. Thank you. Was there anything else Liz? Evidently not. Okay. Thank you for participating. Thank you Amanda. Linda. No comment right now. Thanks. Thank you. Mercy Miner.
One thing I want to say is Amanda, great job. I really love the way the meetings are run, very professional. Thank you.
Thanks marcy board of finance does a great job hosting the meetings kelly hagarty
Hi, Amanda. Thank you so much. My goodness. I feel like I don't even know where to begin. I've revised my notes a few times. But, Jerry, I stand with your idea and I thank you very much for stating that that idea. But I do have to say that I'm really compelled to speak, Adrienne, about you. I think it was a little bit irresponsible
and irrehensible. I'm not sure this is the time and place. I specifically have some concerns to bring up, but I know it's appropriate for email, and I know it's appropriate for private conversation. So as like a newly elected board member, I hope you will practice restraint and that you'll seek some I also have to address the rationale behind combining the small class sizes. I have taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and fourth grade for nearly twenty years and I currently have a fourth grade class of 13 students. That's partially because of COVID and what we had to do to make our school doors open. So respectfully, if there was any year that classes of 10 needed to happen, this was the year, and it shows in the way that our school remained open throughout the entire school year. Further, in my professional opinion, kindergarten and first grade students should be in small class sizes of 10 to 15. We can't accommodate that 15 so yeah we take a hit in our budget in that area because our kids are worth it. Could we combine second grade that's something that could be on the table?
I'm sorry? You're kinda fading it out. What?
I think that too, Rob. I don't think it's Kelly. I apologize then.
I'm sorry. With that being said, I know that combining second grade isn't anything that neither the teachers, the principal, the superintendent, or the board of education would want to entertain. But I do understand and hear from the very strong point of the townspeople, the need for trees and the need for a community. And I think that's what it is, more a community than a community center. And I'm really hopeful that when that it does come to fruition, that we will feel a sense of community here more than maybe we do at this moment. I thank you so much for your time. I do understand that I'm new into the finance process.
We all have to start somewhere. I have been involved with the Board of Education for many years, as Shannon may have pointed out last night. We do thank you so much. I thank you so much. My husband thanks you very much for your time. We're in this position and it's not ideal. And I do appreciate seeking some mediation at this point. So thank you very much.
Kelly. Erin Forrest. Hi there. I just hope that people who are on this meeting and folks who do watch back and listen back, listen to some of the things that are said from Sherry, Jerry, and also Val. I mean, I'm blown away by the fact that there's the back and forth about