Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Special Meeting
June 29, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay.
Okay, let's call this meeting to order at 07:02PM. And let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance. 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 and justice for all. I do not see anybody here for public speak. Look at that zoom zoom zoom. All right, let's move on to town administrators report. Okay.
I don't have a formal report, but there's some stuff I want to go over with you just to keep everybody in the loop for what's happening. So the first thing is union negotiations. As you probably are aware, starting on July 1, neither of our unions are going to have a contract in place with the town. I bugged Theo, who's our rep from MEIU, which is the, the, one that should have been signed a year ago. And he basically said, yeah, yeah, he was hoping to review it. Our latest red line copy that we sent back to him and have any questions or concerns he had with it. He has not gotten back to me today. I will try to poke him again tomorrow. One of the issues that always brings up is that when you have a new year and you have a no union contract, the question becomes, do you pay the employees
what you're anticipating the raise will be or do you not? And it's kind of a balancing act because we're also increasing the healthcare percentage contribution. So we would be paying them more salary, but then taking out more contribution also. So we can, and ultimately I think that's a board of selectman decision, not a board of finance decision. I'm just letting you know that, you know, they haven't really made any decision, which is my fault because I should have given them, you know, that information a month ago. We do have a couple weeks to decide and we can always just pay them retroactively, but employees tend to get pretty wound up when, you know, they don't get the pay raise they think they were expecting. Can you bring that to their next meeting?
Yeah, that will definitely go to their next meeting. Okay. Right. No question.
Sorry, before you, are you moving on from that? No. We can I mean, I know I've talked to you about this, and I plan on calling? Thank you. I planned on calling you tomorrow too. Today got away from me. I know we've emailed back and forth. It's and I understand what you're saying, but just publicly I'm saying it's just so counterproductive, you know, in the whole negotiation process. That's kind of what it is. But again we can talk tomorrow but I know you said employees get wound up but that's the whole purpose of negotiations. You either you know you get raises or you know in I work for a town like I said so if our insurance is going to change if the contract's not settled we don't change the insurance either you know So I understand it's hard because then you have to retroactively do all these adjustments, but it's just so counterproductive to the whole process of having union negotiations with the committee management versus the employees and going back and forth. That's all. Yep, for the record it's just very counter breath. Thank you. Understood.
That's really all I wanted to say about union stuff. We did get one piece of really good news today, which had me dancing in the aisles. And that is they finally announced the funding changes. The DOT announced the funding changes for the federal local bridge program. As you know, we have Bunker Hill in the state managed design program for the federal local bridge program. I asked permission from the board of selectmen to start the application for the Long Hill Bridge. And I did that anticipating they were going to change the funding and the state was going to increase their funding level for the bridges. They finally announced that they're doing it today and they made it retroactive as long as you're not already under contract for construction. And it's a 100% match. And the other really awesome thing is I got the notice of fund level for Long Hill Bridge. What that means to us as a town is that saves us around $1,200,000 over the next five years because we got 100% of the cost of replacement for the Bunker Hill Bridge and the Long Hill Bridge through the additional funding from the Investment in Jobs Act, the new federal funding. So as far as I'm concerned, that's pretty awesome. You know, I thought we were going to be able to get at least one of the bridges qualified. I wasn't sure, I wasn't really expecting we were going to get two. So, I'm super happy for that. You know, as you know, we've been putting away money for the Bunker Hill Bridge replacement. And the only thing I don't know at this point is that normally in these programs, what has to happen is the town has to pay the money and then the federal government reimburses you.
You know, like basically every month you get billed based on the, you know, how much construction is done so far. So I don't know whether they haven't really announced the details. Just announced the big picture in the eligibility requirements. So we meet the eligibility requirements, you know, and we got both bridges in the program already, which is key because now everybody and their brother's going to be applying to the program, you know, once they know it's free, essentially. So, we're in great shape there. I don't know whether we can transfer that pool of money that we have to other uses now, or we have to use that to fund the expenses until we get reimbursed by the federal government. So Because if we're under construction
and we've got all these bills coming in, it's a reimbursement. So we have to pay for it upfront. So we're going to need a pool of money to churn, so to speak, because where are we? Also, we're to find the money if we had a $200,000
bill in one month? Well, we've, we, you know, we discussed that with the auditor before, and you can basically use the unexpended fund balance as your pool, because it is essentially town money. So, can write against that if you have to dip into your basically your savings. But I don't think we need to discuss that right now because we, you know, we have that pool of money that potentially we can use. But what I'm saying is that that's going to be, you know, 160,000 reduction in next year's budget for money we don't have to sock away for that. So that is huge. So that's my good news for the day. The bad news for the day is not really bad news, that just not changed news is that they're not going to cover, They explicitly don't allow funding for the under 20 foot bridges, which means we're not going to get additional funding beyond the 50% state match for our, our covert work that we need to do. So that's, know, it would have been nice to get that too, but you know, we're going get well over a million dollars back out of this. There's no sense being too greedy. So, we also have sat down and reviewed all the bids from the engineering firms for our town engineer. We got bids, I think, from 14 companies and myself and Ed Serizli, who's got a doctorate in construction engineering, and then Jed Larson, who's the chair of Planning and Zoning Commission,
reviewed them all. We have reduced it to four firms that we're going to interview. And the interviews are going to be Wednesday, July 6 from one to 5PM and after that we'll have a recommendation back to you know and as you know since that is an ongoing service we kind of have to go to RFQ and competitively bid that because it's going to be an ongoing service. So, Board of Selectmen have to approve you guys as the evaluating committee for that? So, I asked that at the last board of selectman meeting and told them I was intending for the review panel to be myself, Ed Serizli and Jed Larson, and they didn't have an issue with that.
Our purchasing policy says something different. If it's not CIP, then it has to be so many electors of the town on the committee. So, and it's the board of selectman's decision of who they make this committee be. All
right. So, I'm putting that purchasing policy on our agenda for the next fiscal year for us to work with CIP and tweak it a little bit and get it. Because I was reading it today and I have a hard time following it.
Me too. And I mean, it is, there are some areas in there where it's very difficult to do things on a timely fashion and truly follow the policy. And and I don't want to you know that's why I try to always at least tell you. If I'm if I think I'm going to violate the policy and exactly how and why And we can discuss that again later because I think that's I
did send that out to everybody so if they had a chance to peek at it because I didn't dig it up today. Yep.
So, we'll discuss it the next time. I see it's eight pages. Did it, but I didn't look at it yet.
Yeah. It's got to be part it's, you know, we'll touch on it a little bit farther down in the agenda tonight because we have to talk about the steep grant stuff.
Yep. Yep. So, I'll leave those notes for the Steep Grant. The other thing I was a little disappointed, So I kind of lobbied Crogg hard a while back to push the state to do a rural transportation improvement program. Because one of the problems we have in Andover is we don't own any roads that are major collectors. And one of the biggest funding sources out there for roadwork is something called LOTSIP. And we don't qualify for LOTSIP for any roadwork project. Could qualify other things but not that, which is really annoying because it's one of the biggest funding pools out there for that kind of stuff. So they finally announced they're going to do a transportation rural improvement trip program and then they sent around the draft notice. This is not their final and what they did is they only punched it one down, one road category down to minor collectors. The only minor collector we have is East Street in the only area that's a minor collector. The town has already reconstructed, you know, in the last six years. So, like the only road in town that would qualify for this project. We've already spent an enormous amount of money to reclaim and repave.
But when you say East Street, is that 316? No, that's State. No, that's East Street.
Like at the end of Boston Hill there, East Street? Correct. Hebron? Okay. Long Hill is not considered a minor or no, it's not even a minor collector.
And I will tell you that I went to the Department of Transportation twice, and made them do traffic counts one on Long Hill Road and one on Hendi because I was trying to make the argument that they were major collectors, which I knew they probably weren't but it was worth trying because it would have opened up some other funding DOT both cases did the traffic studies and surveys and said, no, those aren't even minor collectors. Nice try. But, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to Crogg and talk to the executive director and see whether because this the trip program is just in draft form. They haven't finalized it because it's not coming out for a couple months. I'm really hoping we can get them to consider other rural roads because there aren't that many towns in Prague that technically meet the percentage of rural. It's really us like Hebron and maybe Columbia. So, it's one of these things where we would stand a really good chance of getting funded
if we can get them to qualify one of our local roads. So, that's in the works. I don't know whether it's going to be a fundable or not, but that's one I'm keeping an eye on because we will absolutely put in a grant submission for that if we qualify. So, that's pretty much all I wanted to say under my portion. I mean, we have a bunch of stuff that obviously I'll discuss later in the agenda,
unless you have all questions for me. Does anybody have any questions for Eric? No? Okay, let's move on and talk about give us an update on the audit status. And then I can give everybody an update on what I've been doing too. I've been working with Jeff McGuire to get some of these spreadsheets put together to try and rebalance our account. Very far from getting there, but Eric, you've given me an update of where you know. Right. So the basic problem is that
there is a mismatch between the cash according to the auditor between the cash and the bank statements and the cash for the reconciliations that were produced with Phoenix. Now, one of the issues with trying to reconstruct that is the fact that Phoenix has crashed. I did formally request that EASCOM provide us with an incident report explanation of why, you know, why this crashed and how they were going to reconstruct it. You know, I got bumped up the chain. I finally talked to the COO, you know, of Eastcon, you know, gave me a fricking spiel. In the end, they agreed that they would provide the original backup data, as well as the program install to the town's IT, and we will install it on the server here so we have access to it. I followed up with David Hicks today, even though they promised they would be working on it as of Monday, nobody's reached out to David. I reached back out to Eastcon, to Tyler Davis and said, Hey, what is the status? We haven't heard a thing. Why don't you know, why aren't we there? The director of the COO is back on Monday or Tuesday from vacation. If I don't have a response by then, I'll call back to see COO and figure out why they haven't supplied it to us yet. You know, that's an issue right now for both us and the town. Now, what Jeff McGuire is trying to do with Diane and with Marina is absent having Phoenix to work with to basically put all the check register, all the ACH payments and all the transactions into a spreadsheet into this in an identical spreadsheet to what we have with the bank balances
and kind of manually reconcile month by month and see if we can identify what the differences are. And that's pretty much where I am. Diane, you want to?
So Jeff kind of created a a balancing spreadsheet, is kind of it's very nice to work with. It's easy to do that. So he, you know, he got all the checks dumped in there. And then I went in and entered all the deposits in the ACH transactions and got that. And so and to get so we've balanced our check register against our bank statements. But the big missing piece we have in the next steps we're gonna go to, and we've only done the big account, the general fund account. We've gotta do the tax collectors accounts and things like that. But after that, we have to balance to our accounting system. That's where the that's where the data's gonna be wrong. You know, right now, we've kinda got a good handle that. You know, okay. From all the checks we wrote and all the deposits and everything we have, we're balancing to the bank but there's something on the accounting and the accounting system side. And that's why it's gonna be important to get access to Phoenix in case we have to go digging in there to look at. And we've only done it through '20, you know, through fiscal year end 2021. Right. And
once we're done with 2021 and once Jeff is traveling this week, so I sent out the spreadsheet this morning. He's going to add more information to it. And then we're gonna go to the next step and I'll help enter whatever data we need to get in there. And from there, we're gonna have to go to the accountant and, you know, figure out once we get close to where we think we can find the money, the difference, go to the accountant and see what he thinks. And, you know, it is what it is. We're not going to be done by July 1. We're going to be far from there. So, you know, probably get a little report written to the state about that we don't have it. And, you know, we'll just have to say, you know, we had a system crash and, you know, we're going to be late and end of story and try and get this balance. Once we get the twenty twenty one year done, we have to do all of this fiscal year that we're just closing. We cannot close this year out instead of going back from the beginning and rebalancing the entire year.
So we'll have to do the entire year for this year that we're just finishing up on again. But once we get it down pat, it should go faster. And then all this year's data is in Edmond. So, should have Do you know what I mean? So, it should be easier to do. And then hopefully we get the proper processes put in place and we'll have a nice clean slate moving forward and everything will run the way we want it to.
Yeah. And the other good thing is if you are gonna put it all in one Excel spreadsheet, you know, one of the things with Edmunds is we can, so we can dump all the bank data and all the check registers essentially in one shot and we can do it in, you know, an Excel format and comma separated variable format. So, the good news is we can push instead of trying to recreate it from old hard copies, which is what we're doing now, you know, we can push that data, you know, kind of in one shot in an Excel spreadsheet. And we can also do the same thing with Edmonds and just basically export the entire check register in mass from Edmonds. So, think we can produce all the data kind of electronically without anywhere near the work level that we're doing now. Marina, would you agree that that's a fair assessment? Yes.
No, we're going to have a lot of work for the next month or so to get through.
I do have one small update on audit. Like, it's a big update, but Sherry shared with me today. She was emailing with Samantha who was working with Michael and she sent Sherry an Excel sheet something, you know, one of the Excel workbooks we were working on with all of the findings that I found and seems that she was almost balancing at the end now. So I didn't get a ton of details on it. Sure. Was waiting to hear more from her, but, hopefully, that's a positive thing here. During what data? Because we're recreating everything.
What we had given them before. I'm not sure. Really didn't get a lot of details out. I'm hoping to hear more tomorrow about it.
Mean, Jeff's doing a lot of work. I wanna make sure he's in the loop on this because he's putting a lot of time into getting this. Yeah. That's what I was thinking too. He's straightened out and, you know, he should be because he's a CPA, he should be looking at it.
Whatever I hear, if we hear tomorrow any more details, I'll let you and Jeff and whoever give an update on it.
Right, so audit status will stay on the agenda for a long time until we get it done. Does anybody have any questions
or anything? No, I do. Okay. So clearly we're talking still 2021 because that's the audit, right? And I mean, you to you and Jeff McGuire that are putting all these like hours in to do something from last year and to get it. And I understand, know, there's new employees, old systems, new systems, new, so I'm not throwing any shade or anything like that. It's just, thank you for doing that. It's just frustrating as a town taxpayer or person too and now on the board of finance getting involved that it's just been years and years and then hearing today and thank you to Marina bringing that up because if there is a development
that Sherry somehow has on like almost the last day of the year, that's nice for you guys to hear that because you're putting so much time and effort of your own time into recreating something. So if there's a big development that's, you know, because now it sounds like whatever they gave, it's almost balancing. There's still a lot going on, you know? So I know that there's a lot to get it to a new point, but we're so far behind. We're still waiting to, you know, have the audit status from 2021. Again, with new employees, Maureen only came in, came on board November 2021. Sherry was beginning of '21, whatever, but all right. So thank you for your time and efforts. That's all.
Anybody else have any questions? Everything's good? Okay. Let's move on to the finance department report. I don't have any questions in all this unless anybody does, but I do have one question for you, Marina. The the expenditure report that we sent, is that through June is that through May 30, or is that through June, like, twenty second, twenty third? I'm
not sure, Sherry, did the reports for the There's no dates on this report, so I have no idea what it's through. And that would be help because I I really wanna know, like, the numbers we're looking at when we look at the budget transfers and looking at this report now. Are we looking at data that's closer to the end of June? Or are we looking at data that ended at the end of May and then we have another month to go? Do you know what mean? We have another month's worth of expenses to come in. What
I was going to say is the one that we ran that you have that was prepared by Marina, we basically printed out the form as of the date we did that. That was last Friday? Yeah, that last
Friday. Then we also supplied that. That was after the last payroll and that was after the last time we cut checks. That should be pretty much everything that we know of. Marina did a really good section and notes for all the things we know we have outstanding that we just flat out don't have bills for like resident state trooper. We don't have the final bill for the landscaping, that kind of stuff.
So, this report that you sent with the budget transfers should be through June twenty second twenty third right Friday was the twenty third. '20. Yeah, whatever morning that was twenty second. That's the most I was there that Friday the twenty third. Did you send the report out that day? I can't remember.
I didn't send any reports. I know Sherry prepared the reports for the meeting, but the budget one that I said that Eric and I worked off of nothing else has been cut or
taken out of those numbers. Did you say that Sherry sent in this meeting thing has the same numbers as your report? So that's why. Oh, okay. Budget transferred. So. Someone I just I want somebody to affirmatively confirm to me what the date through is on this so I know I don't want another whole month of expenses to show up. Yeah, I don't know what it was.
The one that we sent you separately at the same time as we sent you the budget transfers? Remember sent you the two? The one that came from Marina, yeah. The one that came from Marina that was as of basically that day you got that we did the transfers or we established the transfers.
Alright. And that's I'm thinking that's the twenty third. That was Friday? Is that Friday? It's probably the twenty second because we twenty second. Yes. Was on Thursday. It was the twenty second.
Because that was like the last payroll, right? That was the last payroll? That was after the last payroll and after the last time we cut checks. So if you looked at Edmonds today, as far as I know, unless Marina's done journal entries in the last couple of days, everything that's in there should be in there.
All right, I'm just making that note online so I know everything. I did not touch anything.
All right, so that's good. The only questions I have and you know the budget transfers I kind of looked at those those look okay to me is I'm just trying to get my handle around the selectman salary why it's over $1,300 I know there was a reason, but I can't remember for the life of me why it's over $1,300 because that's such an easy number to hit because it's a flat fee that we give them. Right. So it
is over because we incorrectly paid the first selectman. The first selectman had elected not to draw a salary. And I brought this up to the board of finance the first time, like four months ago. What had happened is he in previous years had always just had his entire salary sent to taxes. So that's exactly what we did as a town. So we did file and basically pay taxes for Mr. Maguire. The problem is that you can't unwind that with the IRS. So we can't go to the IRS and say, we didn't actually meet to pay you for this person. So that's what the issue was with the Board of Select. That's, you know, definitely our screw up on the downside.
Okay. So as far as the trooper expense, can we for this year, can we encumber that $176,000 so we get closer to some final numbers?
You mean for the next budget year or for this? No. This for this year.
It it we should be able to encumber that expense in in Edmonds. So it shows as, you know, being encumbered.
Yeah. I can make a purchase order. I can make a purchase order for it just to take it out of there.
Right. Yeah, if you want it to disappear you could do that. The only thing I will caution you is that that's a very variable number and I suspect we're going to end up spending less than that because when that number was generated, we had a different, more expensive, more experienced resident state trooper. But we also don't have accurate information year to year what their cost not their cost of living but the percentage of overhead they're going to charge us because even when they tell us what they're estimating they're not obligated to stick to that and at the end of the year they charge us whatever the heck they want. Hence the reason why last year, we only spent $155,000 even though they told us that it would be 170 something thousand. And I think we're in the same, you know, same position this year.
I just want to encumber that expense somehow. It's tagged as being spent because we're gonna be far from closing this year outcome August or September. I'm gonna tell you it's gonna take us forever. So hopefully we think we're gonna get the final invoice by August.
In years past, we've usually got the bill from them in August at some point, which is crazy, right? Because I mean, it's for last fiscal year. And how do you not even know what you're charging somebody until, you know, almost a month and a half after the year is over? I mean, it is nuts, but it's the state and, you know, all attempts to get them to behave better, you know, are not productive.
I just want to make sure we get the expense tagged. So it shows up that way. That's allowable?
You're not supposed to have, maybe you're not supposed to have invoices that have a June date on them? I mean I thought when I worked in accounting in my town office everything we paid in one year had to have a date as of June 30. No, I mean, so maybe it's different. Well, that makes a lot of sense.
We shouldn't accept and pay in August. That's why I had all my questions the last meeting. To We interrupt always, we have to be on the phones again. I know it's hard to get everything invoiced and everything in, but I'm not saying I'm an accountant by schooling, you know, I I don't know what the rules are in town. I thought to pay it in a fiscal year, it
Oh, we can encumber it. We don't have the invoice just for the final number, but, you know, we just need to be very careful that we're paying it out of last year's, you know, budget and not the future budget. Do know what mean? Because Yeah.
Sure. Thank you. Alright. That's That's the only questions I had. I don't know if anybody else had any questions on the numbers.
Hey, the really good news is we're actually in the black, which I was pretty nervous about. So, I mean, I got to tell you, we're barely in the black. Right.
But I also told you at the beginning of the year, given what we budgeted, considering how close to actual expenses we budgeted in any given year, it's a toss-up whether we're going to make the budget or not. You know, unlike the old days where we budgeted a little bit of slack in there, we're not budgeting any slack in these budgets.
Well, I kind of did a really quick, you know, and I'm basing everything on that expenditure report. So, I did some quick math for what we have left in there. I took out the school number and, you know, and then when I took what the town had left and there's things that aren't posted yet, so there are bills here. So and take out the 176 with the two, but I kinda get that. We have about a $100,000 left in the town budget, but we don't have all the other things that are going to hit that we have. You know, I know that but the notes that Marina have, we have some invoices that are coming in and we know are coming in. So I don't know how that's all gonna shake out. So until so we won't know more until our July meeting. By the time those last invoices get processed and everything, we should have some more solid numbers come July.
Yeah, and we're going to work really hard. I mean, we should be able to get the number from Hebron pretty much as soon as July 1 comes around. We'll have the final landscaping stuff. We should have most of the final stuff, you know, pretty quickly.
All right, just because I knew at this this year so you're saying that we'll have the numbers from things that still have to be charged to this year's budget.
So marina's budget transfer notes that she attached in that file I'm reading them. I'm Itemized some things of invoices that are still coming out. So we have a few stragglers coming in.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around that because that's not what happens where I work you know so I'm sure it is different and I'm trying to learn and being a member of the board of finance having attended everything I just would think we'd have some of the invoices. I understand that some of them can't. So yeah.
So we're waiting. We're just paying the auditor. You know? We you know? Like payroll service, you know, we pay a payroll service fee every month. And
I know such things can get billed right to the end of the month or spend Right to the end. So Of course. Yeah. We had So understand and ask questions to learn. Oh. Oh, thank you. I'm reading it.
Got it. They should put some things that that there's some, you know, supplies that were just ordered that the invoices haven't come in for, and so we know a few things. So our job is just get as many invoices in and finalize, you know, by the end by our next meeting in July.
Right. And and I mean, we should have all the Amazon stuff, we should have all the credit card stuff, and there's not a ton of things because we asked employees to get all their purchasing in by like the June 6. So we would have it by the last period. But you know, there's always people that run out of paper or run out of this or you know. So there's always last minute stuff you're going to end up paying out of.
No, I'm jumping all over the place here. So I guess I'm skipping six. Are we ready to talk about the transfers and get that done? Am. Do you have my spreadsheet up? I kind of looked at the budget transfers. It looks pretty okay to me. The balances, I ended up both columns. So we're doing $109,520.31 transfers. Debits and credits. And then we'll have a little bit of cleanup come July when all the final stuff comes in. Yep. How do you want to do this, Eric? I mean, does anybody have any questions on the items on the budget transfer things?
It seems all reasonable to me. We took as much as we departments, then we went outside of departments where we had to to find money. But it seems like no questions for anybody?
It's pretty straightforward. I'm just looking real quick, Diane, because I thought I had one, but I I'm I'm not getting my hand on it. But
And that is one of the things, you know, the way we do it by by line item instead of category, leads to like, we're going to keep doing really tight budgeting, I mean, I think you're going expect in future years to see 200 to 300 transfers by the end of the year to cover everything. You're going to probably run realistically a third of your line items are going to end up over in one form or another.
One of the things we should be doing during the year. So let's talk about during the year, A particular department. If a department has a line item that's going over the budget, that department, and if they have funds within their department, we should be moving that money when those happen because it's within their department. I think the cross department budget transfers we can't do until the end of the year. But if somebody, know, say in the town clerk's office overspent their, you know, training, but they knew they were going to underspend another piece and they wanted to offset it. We could make those transfers during the year as a line goes over 100% and if it's within the department. Because then they're managing their own money and they're making a choice and saying, okay, I'm not going to need this much in supplies. You could take the extra $100 from supplies and put it into training because I need to send them to this course. We could do those kinds of transfers during the course of the year to cut down on all the, and only do the outside of department transfers at the end of the year.
I don't mind seeing this. I think it gives us kind of a good overview of where money was spent or wasn't or needed, at least for me for this first year. Can I ask a question on the employee benefits line, Eric? We probably covered it at a meeting. Did you say it looks like we were, we needed to credit 12,898 to employee retirement? Was that we just the percentage was higher than expected or was it new employees added during the year?
It was mostly the fact that Murph came back to us long after we had a budget in place and said, by the way, your town contribution is now like 17.5 or 18%. All along we had been figuring out a much lower number, You know, so, and if you remember back in, I don't know, early in the year, like September, I gave you a list of all the major regulatory changes that occurred and what their impact were going to be on them. You know, and that was one I gave you. The second one was the fact that because we had split the personnel back again between the land use office and the town clerk's office that we were going to be over budget on those. So, I mean, I didn't know exactly how much but I knew we were definitely going to be over a long time ago. Yeah, think the percentage I remember from last year's budget was around 14%
as I've always leaned in on this and then then I knew it was going up to like the 18 so I just rounded up to 20 or whatever it's yeah it's a lot so no I get that and so that answers that so there was a change mid year it ended up being almost 18% last year gotcha. Right. And did we so is it still at that figure in the budget we just passed? Because I thought it was around 18 or 19 this year as well.
I think we got a letter from MERF early enough this year that we were able to put the exact number in the budget. Yep yep. Gotcha.
Thank you. I think that's it for me. Any other questions on the final budget transfers? No? Do I have a motion? Can somebody make a motion to approve these?
I'll make the motion that we approve the budget transfers.
Motion made by Kurt. I'll second. Second by Louise. Yes. To approve the final budget transfers as presented. Any further discussion? Any other questions? All in favor? Aye. Aye. All approved.
And I would just like to thank Marina for putting this all in, She and I sat down and spent a whole afternoon going over that, but she's the one that actually put it all in an Excel format so you could read it easily. Thank you, Marina. All right, that's good. Did
find, I was looking through my email when you guys were doing the motion so the new merge rate for this year for the employer is 17.55% for 2223. Okay, so we are now on nine B.
Can I make a request, and that is you deal with item 90 the skid steer first, since the public works director? All
right, so, go ahead. So I saw in the packet we have quotes, right, from this is where I'm getting I went back and read our purchasing policy. And so don't we have a form that people are supposed to be filling out for purchase requisitions? And then when we approve it, it turns into a purchase order. Not that I know of.
I thought there was a form that went with this policy. Because in the policy, talks about a purchase requisition has to be submitted to the treasurer. The treasurer posted make sure there's appropriations for the funds. And then if there is, then it goes to you, Eric, and then it turns into a purchase order and gets a final approval, and then they can purchase.
I created a new purchase order form. I have one. Yeah. Is that what we talked about the other like? Yes. That's never been in existence in the town like something. It doesn't matter it's not critical. Barbara had one before me but then I kind of created one from what the schools looked like just because it was an easy template to put you know all the information on just to have a better paper trail of, excuse me, ordering and. Especially because you don't on the town side do a lot of purchase orders of course, So which makes I had thought, so that was interesting for me to hear and I think that's a great thing that, you know it's just so easy to refer back to. Right. Yeah, I mean, you put the account number right on it, know, you put like public works, you know, equipment or, you know, firehouse, food. Then, I mean, that I did without a degree, I mean, I had classes, but I don't mean that as just trying to be funny. Thank you. Right.
So I did for my first two years, two and a half years here, I did have a word document that I produced purchase orders from, but that was just, you know, and I still have a file of all the purchase orders for big ticket stuff I've ever done. But that's a big difference between doing purchase orders within the system in Edmonds, which is kind of where we're trying to go for big orders.
You know, which We'll I think a lot of deal with it in the next fiscal year. Just got to get right now this policy is what we have and we need to follow it. So if it says we're supposed to be doing something, we should put it in place until we get to advise it.
Good. Where I work, we just have, we call it requisition and it's just the paper trail. And then we could turn it into a purchase order, but if Andover decides not to. We only turn it into a purchase order if it's over a certain dollar amount. Oh, gotcha, by the policy. I'm just saying to even find loose ends or have something to refer to.
Eric or Diane, correct me if I'm wrong, but like I I emailed you the specifications on the air conditioning system for the fire station. Yep. And then the town administrator puts those out to RFP or bid, whatever he decides. When the three bids come in, I present those one to the Fire Commission and also to the capital improvements of which one we're choosing. And- and I know the last large purchases that we made next door at the fire station were all, were all done, that way and and, we took a little bit on each, both for the tanker truck, the, the, extrication equipment, and any other big ticket items that we do. Then once you, once the company's picked that's going to do the work, then a, a purchase order is, is, is put out to them from the town, and then they come and fulfill that purchase order, you know, and then when they're complete, they, you know, you pay them. Is it anything different that anybody else was thinking? That's what I'm I'm trying to figure out. It's been done that way for a long time, and I think it does follow the Charter, you know, front to back.
Yes. My policy kinda says that there's supposed to be a requisition first for any item. And then if it's over 5,000 but less than 15, we have to have three quotes.
You know? Right. Right. Then once you get over 15, it's gotta go out to public bid. Do you know what I mean? Right. But there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of items that would require just just that, you know, that requisition from that, say, board or the selectman or, that that should come and those are the smaller ticket items,
you know, especially when there's only like one vendor that that you got, you you that you can use for a certain thing,
which we find out, you know, a lot, a lot of it, especially now, you know, after COVID and stuff, know, all these other companies went out of business. So it's not there's not a whole lot out there to choose from.
That's a work in progress. All right. So, let's get the facts on this good steer. So, what's the deal? Jay, you wanna leave this one off? We have approval from CIP for it, right?
Yes. Yes, we do have an approval from CIP. So, good evening, everybody. Sorry I'm late. Got some possibly new baby on the way, so grandkids, so I was a little detained with some Congratulations. Congratulations. We'll see. Waiting. Anyway, yeah, as far as your questions about the following the purchase policy, I did provide three quotes, several quotes. We discussed with CIP and the Board of Selectmen, the choices and the reasons why for the machine that we're suggesting that we purchase. And I put that to an email to Eric and that's where we're at with that. Specific reasons why we chose went with the Bobcat, why we're highly recommending that versus the other machines. It is a little bit more money than their second in price. And this machine doesn't use pollution control methods that the other machines use. And it's just a better machine in the long run.
My question is on, so because it's over $15,000, you know, we have to follow part three public bidding. But public bidding, there's carve outs if we use these consortium websites. Is that where the quotes came from? Yeah, so We don't have to do the whole formal.
Yeah, we initiated Sourcewell. Okay. For, in the beginning with most of the companies, Some of them have their own municipal side where they qualify. And in the beginning, Bobcat went through a change, they retracted from Sourcewell, and then they reissued it back on their government side, which I'm not, we wouldn't be purchasing from the dealer in East Hartford. It comes from direct from the manufacturer and they use the source well. Format. For the for the bidding and that's what and that's in the. The quotation. So it's it's we're purchasing direct from the manufacturer and the dealer in East Hartford is a servicing agent. If that makes sense.
So in the purchasing policy, there's a carve out for the use of state of Connecticut or other government cooperative purchasing programs shall be considered sufficient to fulfill the requirements of this part, meaning the public bidding part. We go through these cooperative government sites or federal programs we're able to eliminate that public bidding process. Yeah it's a Sourcewell contract number 40319CEC. Covers that. So That's on the bobcat quotation.
So, so what is so who's the recommending that's what I don't know. Recommending body who's making the decision of which bid we're going with the lowest cost. Is that what's being done?
I mean, no, we're not going with the lowest cost machine. We're going with the second lowest cost machine just because we're in, we've experienced it with among other things, our F550, which we had major issues with, know, just the, the bobcat does not use DEF, which is basically a urea method of pollution control, you know, and it's simpler and it tends to be less problematic and still meets federal requirements.
So did CIP agree with that and give you approval for that? Yes. Yes, we did.
Then we're all set then. Yeah. Rob's not here and, you know, that that that Bobcat's a really good machine and coming in, you know, they're they were second to the lowest bid. I think for the you know, what they're gonna get for, operation from the machine will far outweigh the, you know, the, the added cost of the machine compared to the low bidder. And keep in mind that, I'll just, you know, me for instance, selling fire engines, probably out of out of the last 10 fire engines we've sold, as a company, it's done with either Sourcewell here in Connecticut, it's done with Sourcewell or HGAC Consortium. Every, a lot of towns are doing it. It's saving them a lot of money with advertising and so on and so forth, and it lets the end user do most of the work figuring out what they're, know, what they need for their application and things like that across the board. It's the it's the only way to go today and it does save the town some money. I think you do save the minimum of one and a one or 1.5% off the total cost anyways just by using source. That's all made up in in the cost of the machine.
What was the cost that was approved by CIP so we can? Believe it was up to $75,000
Yeah, you didn't you want it? There was a couple additions like attachments or something you're talking about? If I recall.
Yeah, the machine itself came in at $59,226.19 and the attachments which consists of a snowblower, an industrial grapple bucket, an auger drive unit with a 12 inches bit, forks, you know for lifting pallets, and the machine comes with a bucket. And the other thing that we added on to this machine is a five year warranty rather than just the two year standard. So it's a five year three thousand hour or three thousand hours warranty on it and the price for the attachments 15,792.23 And the actual actually the when since I updated this quote last last month, was about $200 a little over 2, call it $300 more since the original quote back in, was it February? I think it was February or March.
I wanna model our motion off of what CIP approved for us. So what is there?
Do you have what? It was a packet. Right? I'm pretty sure it was up to up to 75,000. Right.
We never we never said a we never said a thing, but it it's a it's actually, you know, he he'd be probably spending under that with with the attachments needs. Correct, Jay? Code a vendor name in that or in their approval?
So I can read it to you. Jake Tuttle provided more information about the skid steer that Public Works department would like to purchase. Adrian Mandeville made a motion to approve the skid steer machine with associated attachments in a trailer for a price not to exceed $90,000 Robert England seconded the motion. The motion passed with Kirk Dowling voting no. Thanks, thanks for that, Eric. Oh, you're welcome.
Uncle, you said no, they shouldn't buy it? I I explained my reason. Okay. I've had I've had second thoughts since.
I thought we had done this already was going to be my question. So I just So I haven't seen it ever went to CIP before when we got Yeah, we discussed
it. So you did I looked back through the minutes of the Board of Finance cause I was hoping you'd already approved it and I wouldn't even have to bring it back to you. And I could just order the damn thing. But the board of finance did discuss it at two meetings around the December timeframe, but you took no action because you didn't have the money allotted then to pay for it. So now it's coming back to you now that we're in a new fiscal year, we actually have the money to buy it. If
it's approved, that's the reason I voted enough. They have the money. Kurt, you had a reason.
Well, 75 plus 15,000 for the attachment. So basically, we're just making it, we're formalizing it because I remember the conversation and, you know, listening. So what's the total you need? It's not $90,000 though.
No, right now it's at $75,000.08 75,018.42. That's what the two quotations, the recent quotations that I received back from the manufacturer.
See if I can craft something. We can make a motion to approve the purchase of a skid steer for the Public Works Department where it costs not to exceed $76,000 Does that work?
And I would say I would describe I would say as the description which is a Bobcat s 64 t four skid steer loader. So it's clear what you're
you're purchasing. I see. I don't have so I did can't even remember that now. So a bobcat so we need the motion crafted here. So, the board of finance making a motion to approve a bobcat. What is it? S64. S64. T4. T four. Bobcat skid steer loader. Bobcat skid steer loader. Yep. With attachments. With attachments. Not to exceed $76,000 Does that work?
As far as I know, as long as there's not any escalation fees of fuel. I will make that motion. I don't know any more than that.
I will make that motion. Second it. Joanne seconds. Does anybody have any other questions? Had one question,
Eric Jay. Is the machine readily available or do you have to order it? I have to order it, but I was told they have some in stock. Where it's coming from, I don't know. Lucky
you. Heavy, heavy equipment right now has taken up to two plus years to get, when ordered. So you're already, the thing's already two years old before you even get it. Yeah. That's across the board for trucks, fire trucks, dump trucks, cruisers, you name it. I
did talk to somebody who had a tractor delivered. And the manufacturer delivered it without two front wheels, because they were back ordered. He said he made six payments on it before they delivered his wheels, and he could drive it. He was not happy. Not amused.
Any other questions on this motion. All right, let's vote. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Kurt, are you a yes? Can't hear you. Yes, I'm a yes. Yes, yes. Okay. Louise, are you a yes? I mean, yes. Okay. So that's unanimous. Okay. That's done. Thank you.
Welcome. Okay. And while Jay is here, can we do item E and just talk real briefly about the cost overrun in the steep grant for paving? Is? That is So item this is Shoddy and Bunker Hill? This is
a portion of Shoddy and a portion of Long Hill Road. So as most of you know, we went to RFP on that about a month ago. We ended up getting I think six bids back from paving companies. It's our intention to go with the lowest bidder, which is B and W paving. The problem is that when we originally put in the steep grant was two years ago. And before I put in the steep grant, I had a proposal from one company to actually do the work. So steep grant amount reflected what the actual cost would have been if we did it two years ago. Paving costs are through the roof right now. The lowest estimate we had was, oh sorry, it's what I wrote was incorrect. It was $378,000 plus the cost of curbing. And we initially estimated it around $2.65. So we are considerably over what we originally estimated. We the steep grant amount is fixed. So we're getting 128,500 in funding from the state towards it. But our town costs have increased more than $100,000 for that project. Basically what that has required us to do is trim some things off of our shim and chip seal budget and then eliminate some other items which we really should be doing, but we just can't do it and do the reconstruction also. So I'm just, kind of letting you know that that's the reality that we're facing.
So we will ultimately fund what we can afford to do cutting back on certain things, and we'll be using the Steepgram plus Towneigh Road or whatever. Correct. Plus the $330,000
allocated worker work funds. Yep. So, not pretty, but I mean, given some of the other bids I've seen come back for other projects, know, and that was a discussion today on when they were talking about the bridge funding. Pretty much everything is coming back really high. Coventry had one that they estimated at 2,700,000 that came back lowest bidder was 5,100,000. So, everybody is really scrambling to cover, know, just the cost of petroleum is killing everybody right now. Drew?
Can I ask just a quick question to widen my knowledge on paving? Just sort of related. I'm getting into my road work. What what's good what would we call and I like it what's going on on Bear Swamp Road? Like I know those little strips those you've told me what those are I know we're having like patching and paving done and good chunks of it, good chunks of the road. What's that called? Paving?
You're seeing is just how you described it. It's basically patchwork. Okay. That's what we call a shim or scratch coat. It's basically long and short, it's a preservation. Don't have the proper funding to I shouldn't say proper funding. We have funding to do what we can do. And we're shimming filling in the low areas, trying to get the road back into shape so it sheds water properly. Yeah, keep the water off the road, get it back to the drainage ditches where it belongs and and catch basins. And then we're going to seal it with chip seal in what's there now? What's that? So
when you seal it, you seal it right over? Yeah, parts. Okay. Yeah,
That's the same thing we did in the lake area last year. You know, Bear Swamp needed a lot of attention. And so it's took Yeah. Quite a bit
What's that? I said, yeah, I mean, I know I saw you marking it that one morning and I know I have some neighbors that have been talking about it for years. So No, thank you. Thank you for telling me what it is. Yeah.
Yep. Yep. It's about the minimum we can do to try to get things done and accomplish a lot.
Is that going to happen Jay on Hendy too? I know people were talking or it has it already at the same time? Well, shimming the shimming's been done on Hendy and Long Hill. The section the section along hill between Hendy and Bear Swamp. And so it's just basically coming from Route 6 and drive to Bear Swamp that whole section. All right, thank you. Welcome questions. Okay.
Okay, that was just more of an FYI and I don't think I think that's all I have that involves Jay unless you as a board have other questions for Jay while he's on.
I don't have any questions. Anybody else have any? Everybody good? I think we're good.
All right. Jay, talk to me in the morning and you know we'll square away the stuff for the bobcat. All right, thank you. Have a good night.
Go back to nine B interview panel for new treasurer.
Correct. So, broached this with the Board of Selectmen, but I think, you know, in large part, the Board of Finance needs to have significant representation on the interview panel for new treasurer. And for the record, I don't think we've actually seen any applications yet, which is a little scary. But when we do get applications and we have a candidate pool to evaluate, my recommendation has been to get at least one other finance director from a neighboring town. I would suggest both either Columbia or Coventry since we have fairly good relations with both those towns. And
or both, if you want to on the board, there ought to be at least one board of finance recommend, you know, representatives. And my suggestion was going to be, you know, that Diane, you take that, but that's, you know, your, I think the board should decide who you want to represent. Right. I'll talk to the board. I mean, I'm willing to do it. I'm
retired. I have time. So, to do it during the day or, you know, to be a little bit flexible with schedules. But does anybody else have any desire to wanting to be on this interview panel? Kurt says no.
And this is no. I think you'll be a good rep. If you need to, I would step up but I mean it looks like you're gonna have a panel. Louise, do have any interest? Yes.
I've had some interviewing background a little bit in my career. I can barely hear you. Oh sorry I'm sitting outside. Are you there? Yeah Can you hear me? Yeah.
We can't hear you, though. We can barely hear you.
Oh, okay. Wait a minute. I'm outside. I'm not sure why. Hang on. Let me just go back inside. Maybe it's I don't know. I think it is The door. Can you hear me now? Very, very sweet, but we can hear you.
Oh, that's really weird. I don't understand it. Because I have it all the way up. But I would be interested in doing that.
You would be interested? Yes, I would. Okay. All right. Can you have two members from the board finance. Why not. Yeah, you might as well. So let's say Louise and myself. Perfect. All right.
We will have questions and stuff like that given to us to ask, right?
We will probably develop a list of questions and things like that So we can work together on that. That's not an issue. Better get some applicants first though. I know.
Mean, Diane, I'd be happy to send you the list of questions we asked the last time, but I'm not telling you those are the questions you need to ask or you can, you know, develop whatever set of questions you would like. And
I'm assuming we're gonna get somebody from the Board of Selectmen side, correct? Yes.
And I suggested Mr. McGuire would probably be the ideal candidate if he's got the time. Right.
Okay. All right, we're done. So we are on to the state grant submissions.
You're up, Eric. Okay. So I'm going to go through some initial stuff and then we'll kind of talk about where we are so far. So first of all, the Office of Policy and Management approved a steep grant round of funding, and they approved it about two or three weeks ago, with a very tight timetable. So grants due August 15, which is unfortunate because that's a really tight timetable to do what it is that they've asked. So the good news is they approved 30 and bonded $30,000,000 in funding. There's 130 towns that are eligible for steep grant funding because big cities are not. There's a $500,000 max grant amount. So if every single town applied for the maximum amount,
there's a fiftyfifty chance we would get the grant. But the reality is when you look through past years, not everybody submits. So I would anticipate probably a 100 towns submitting a steep grant, maybe even a little less because of the tight time window. And not everybody will go for the max grant award, which is another way of saying that if you put out a good grant, there's a better than 75% chance that we'll get it, which is why I'm willing to expend a lot of energy to put this thing out there because I think we have a reasonable chance of getting it. Our track record of getting steep grants is pretty good. There's two issues with this grant submission. The first thing is they put a really high, they don't mandate that the town has matching funds for it. But they also said very clearly that they will not evaluate any grant that doesn't have 20% matching funds unless they can't fill the pool with grants that do. So in other words, basically the first cut they're making at these grant applications is who can guarantee they've got 20% matching funds. Now, in this case, because we have a multi use or building fund that we can tap for matching funds, we have an easy way to meet the 20% requirement. So, that's one of the reasons why the Board of Selectmen agreed with this being our steep grant project. And the second thing the state has made a really high priority on, and that's because in the past, you know, towns often took four or five years to actually execute their steep grant projects. So, and they kind of changed them or they changed the scope or they did all these things. So, the state has said no more of that crap.
We are going to only fund projects that are shovel ready or near shovel ready. And we can talk about that a little bit before. So, the Board of Selectmen has asked for a steep grant application for tearing down the old firehouse and replacing that with what will be a four bay garage for senior transportation that will also have storage capacity above. The problem with this is that trying to get through and meeting all the technical requirements of our purchasing policy and doing it in basically just under putting together a full blown application in two months is very difficult. So what I'm going to talk about is kind of how, what my approach is to get as close to meeting our purchasing policies as I can and still make the deadline. Now, thing is, is that if, if we can do this, this has a chance of getting one of our major priorities done and accomplished without spending much in the way of town money. And the good news is that all the kind of pre money that the town will spend to get to a fundable grant is countable towards the 20%. And if we don't get the grant, we can talk about other mechanisms where we can do this. It's not like we can't do this if we don't get the grant. We
have a chance to fund this at the state level instead of paying for it ourselves. So, it's worth it to go down that road if we can. So, basically the things that need to happen is I've already applied to the Planning and Zoning Commission because one of the things that has to happen is you have to have what's called the eight twenty four statutory referral and you know, by the Planning and Zoning Commission. So, I applied at their last meeting, I discussed it, they'll give me a judgment at their next meeting. I'm sure we'll get approval with that. Second thing we need to do because of the age of the building, have to do asbestos and lead testing. I've already given a contract to Mystic Air Quality to do that. That'll be a max of $2,600 depending on how many samples they need to test. They've already come out and done the testing. We should have results by either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I mean, chose Mystic because in the past they've been the low bidder. We've put out two previous RFPs for that type of project and they were the low bidder on that. Plus it's under 5,000. So technically I don't need to anyway. So I just sent that out. So the second part of that is we don't have an accurate survey for that property. So any way you cut it, we have to get that piece of property surveyed because in part we are going to need to go to the zoning board of appeals and get a variance
for front yard and side yard setbacks, which means I got to get it surveyed fast. I reached out to two survey firms, a company called Franklin, who we've done a lot of survey work with. And frankly, I can't get it from them. They're out six to eight weeks to get started on the survey. That's out. So, the second one I asked was BSC. BSC was the low bidder on the town community center site work. I asked them for cost for both the survey and a cost for the foundation structural design. And the reason I need that is because we're building this thing into the hillside and there is going to be a significant load on the foundation and that will need to be an engineered foundation. So, basically the structural design will cost us around $4,000 and the survey will cost just over $7,000 and frankly, he said he can be in, you know, either tomorrow or Friday to start the survey. So, the reality is if we're going to get the survey results back in time for me to go to ZBA before this application is due. That's what you know kind of had to happen.
That does not conform to our purchasing policy because the reality is I had no ability to get multiple bids in a timely enough fashion and get it back in time because that's one of the first steps I needed to do in this project. The big costs are going to be the cost of demolition. I've asked for bids from four companies for the demolition costs. I've got one of them back now that said it will be $30,000 or under. I should have a hard cost from a second vendor that's right in Coventry in the next couple days and the third one hasn't come out and looked at it yet. And the fourth one said, well, you know, the fourth one hasn't really responded too well to me yet we've talked but they haven't come out and looked at it yet. So I'm hoping to have four estimates for demolition costs but not send that out to RFP.
Demolition is over $15,000 Yes, it is. Okay. Yeah, which requires RFP under our policy. Correct. Okay. Correct.
Yep. And then the second part of it is finding somebody to actually give us an estimate for the building because remember we need both the design and a cost. So, we need essentially at this point a design cost, a materials cost, and a cost to actually be the general contractor in the business. So, the only way I could practically think about to get that in the timeframe that we have is to do two things. One, I went to a company called New Holland because they have a local, they have a good reputation for doing work locally. And I requested a design and materials quote for them because they will give us a set of stamped plans if we buy the materials for them. The other thing I like about them is they use the one of the most expensive things in the materials is the cost of the trusses because we're probably going to use what's called the bonus truss. And since we're setting this thing on three concrete walls on these two sides in the back, you know, the truss and the structural part is the major, you know materials cost for this. They have multiple truss manufacturers that they bid for for the package. You know and the last thing is I'm trying to get Millennium Builders to give me a quote. There's two problems that we run into. One, we're using state money for this if we get this grant.
And if we use state money, that means we have to meet a whole series of guidelines for use of minority contractors, both small business contractors and then women or minority contractors. Part of the reason I'm going this way is because the Capital Regional Council of Governments has a pre bid process. And what that means is every year they go out to bid for a general contractor and then a road work and site work contractor. So they solicit all the bids and then they have essentially a pre, they have a list of about 10,000 items and basically a cost per unit for all the standard construction items there are. So, with that, so it's pre bid by CROG and then all you have to do is agree on what the material quantities are and how much you're doing and that spits out the bid. We just did that with a connectivity grant that was they were very competitive. It wasn't Millennial Builders, it was
Martin Lovario was the company, but that process seemed to work pretty smoothly. And as far as I can tell, that portion seems to meet our purchasing policy. And it does the second thing, which means Millennial builders has the responsibility for meeting the requirements for minority contractor and the small business contractor, which relieves the town from that responsibility. So, that's kind of the reason why I'm choosing that approach. Frankly, it's the only way I think we can get an actual shovel ready project, you know, designed in on the books by the time the grant is due. And that's why I wanted to raise this with the purchase with you as the Board of Finance, because the Board of Selectmen's on board, you should have a say in this also.
So what items are we violating policy on because so going through the crowd thing seems to meet that consortium government bidding thing so we don't have to go to public bid for that. So survey and engineering work.
The only thing initially I think that we're, we're violating on it is the cost for survey is over the 5,000 threshold that it should be bid out. The
Well, it doesn't have to be bid. It has to have three quotes. Right. It's not over 15.
Right. But what I'm saying is I can't practically get that back to you in time Because that's almost the first thing I have to do is get the survey back because that's holding up a bunch of the other steps. And I think in the long run, I wanted a surveyor. If we used Franklin for the survey, they would be survey only. Then we would have to get do the structural engineering separately, and then end up paying the surveyor to put that data back in the original survey. So by using BSC, you know, we get the survey and the engineering all done in house by them. So that's one issue. And the second issue is that, at least at this point, I'm not planning on going to RFP on the demolition costs, but I will give you multiple bids from, you know, state approved vendors for that.
Here's my question. Bottom line is, so the RFP for the demolition, it's going be over 15,000, which according to our policy requires CIP to be involved and competitive bidding. So there is no place in this policy that allows for an exception on that that I could find. I could see an exception for bid postings that you don't have to keep them out there twenty one days if you get the board of selectmen to approve a shorter time frame. So, there's something there to shorten timeframe.
I mean, look, if I absolutely had to, once we got the grant, if we knew September 15, we had the grant, we could immediately go to RFP for I mean, honestly, right now, really all I'm trying to do is get a bomb proof number that I know we can meet for the grant itself because what I don't want to do is I don't want to estimate it's going to be $20,000 and then find out later it's 40,000. So if I had to and that was a deal breaker for the Board of Finance, if we got the grant I would go to RFP for the grant prior to actually you know, because the reality is, if they tell me September 15, judging by the work we've done with the state, if I know September 15, I've got this grant, by the time I have, you know, one of the official letters like I have for the other STEEP grant in my hands is usually four to five months later. So if I had to, I could go back to RFP for that. If you guys are not willing to go for just three bids on that.
Eric, I have a question. Sure. How about have you looked into in a source well under municipal buildings? I they do everything from like I said, from pencils for schools to, you know, to to to to fire stations for God's sake. And and I I took, the town of Salem added a three bay station on the back of their existing firehouse for the extra room, and they had an outfit out of, Pennsylvania come up here. It's like, it's like a, you know, metal, you know, metal building, peaked roof. It was three very large bays with storage area, you know, heating, air conditioning, the whole nine yards down there. They did the whole, the whole project for less than a 100,000. You know, you they use some local local contractors and stuff to do the different things, but, this this company came up with their crew and the entire building on on, tractor trailers, and they, they come in on a Friday night. And by Monday, the building was, completely, pretty much put up. You know, the the walls were up. The roof was on. The you know, everything but the bay doors were, were were mounted. And then they had a a finish crew come back after that and finish everything up. But they were based out of Pennsylvania and I do remember Adrian taking a bunch of literature and information from these guys.
Yeah, and honestly, the state is not funding it and we're funding it, I suspect we would end up using New Holland and using one of their Amish crews to build this thing instead of local. This company could be New Holland for all I know. Right. The only problem I have with that with, and I discussed this extensively with the rep from New Holland is that there's a lot of BS involved in doing the paperwork for the state. As a company, if you're bidding this and you're getting state or federal dollars for it, there's a lot more hoops than we would jump through if me as a town or we as a town were funding this completely, we would ignore all of the state requirements for that. Oh yeah. And we would just, you know, we would sub it out directly. By the way, any state money.
In this case, I don't think in, and that was one of the questions I had for the rep at New Holland was, did they have a crew that was experienced at doing state funding projects? And his response was, no, we don't. You know, we've done a couple of them, but you know, when we did that, we weren't the general contractor, we were just the builder. So, yeah, that's an issue.
The piece I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is what are we asking for exceptions on? And if you're saying it's that survey and engineering piece. So my question for you is I'm looking at page four of this purchasing policy and the applicable, and it says the following supplies, materials, services, or construction may not require sealed bids. And when I'm saying and I'm reading between the lines when it says sealed bids, that means the public sealed bid process, how I'm thinking of it. And there's and they have a bullet item that says those providing professional consulting or technical services such as architectural, engineering, planning, medical accounting, data processing, legal personnel or management services. So it seems to make a carve out that we don't have to do the sealed bid process for those types of services. But because of the dollar amount, we still have to have the three quote thing to evaluate. So And I don't see any place in this document where we can get around the three quote thing because there's no carve out for anybody having the power to make that exception.
Unless it's So, you are the Board of Finance. That is your policy.
You know, you are the body that can determine whether it's tied to the Charter. It's tied to the Charter. So, the Charter references this policy and if you don't follow it, there's a whole lot of things they can do to you legally in the charter, you know. So that is my concern. Think we still need to make our best efforts to get the three quotes. And I think if we wanna really move forward with this without having at least the three quotes, to me, the Board of Finance does not have the power alone to do that. To me, that would be a three party decision. Board of Selectmen says yes, I'm willing to waive that. CIP says yes, and Board of Finance says yes. I think it would have to be all three parties involved. There's nothing in here that says that, but those are the three entities that are charged with implementing this policy.
Well, what I would say is the Board of Finance is the only entity responsible for determining the Board of Finance policy. I would also say that having a $5,000 threshold to go to multiple bids in this day and age is crazy low for anything in the construction realm.
I know, but if we wanna do something different than what we have in a policy right now, we have to get everybody's buy in is what I'm saying. No, I would not make that decision alone. I don't know how anybody else on the board feels about that, but after reading through this, and it was a hard read, it's not an easy read. I've got to tell you that people. And
that is why I'm bringing it back to the board
explicitly. But the charter says this policy will be developed jointly by the Board of Selectment, Board of Finance and CIP. So, it's tied to the three of us. No one person has the power to do it on their own. Okay. So that's how I'm reading it right now.
I, I, I don't think that'd be hard to do, Diane,
amongst the three boards. But I do agree with Eric, that $5,000 fee, you know, to do bids. I don't know, I don't know of any of it, of any other municipality that has it that low, you know, they're all above, you know,
10,000 or, or even 50,000 and up depending on what you're buying. I would be willing to make that exception with that, with the other party's consent. Think it takes a I great agree.
I agree. And I think we could do it as a joint thing. I don't, I don't think it would be hard to do.
Are the deadlines always this tight or did this grant just pop up? The you know, it just we're making all this It happened June 1. Didn't it? June 1 to
and you have to have it in by August 15. So, it's just a short window. Is it tied in with any ARPA funds, Eric?
It's not tied in with ARPA funds. This is strictly the steep grant application. And I will tell you the last one we did, they had a thirty day submission window. You know, so they gave us more time this one, but I mean, you know, I think you're kind of putting, I will say you're putting me between a rock and a hard place. And I understand your point, you know, and if you tell me absolutely that you're not going to authorize me to spend the $7,600 on the survey then you know I'll take that back and we won't do it
until we have three bids.
I can't remember a steep grant and we've got a, you know, we've got a number of them next door throughout the years that required bids though. Am I, am I right or wrong? I mean, I, I don't. Well, you're so pretty much, pretty much if you, if you had an idea going in what you wanted to use a steep grant for, like, like the furnace, like the furnace, Right. You know, that was easy to get three bids, so we did. But I think the state wouldn't say a word if you only got the one. No, it's violating the town policy. Well,
The grant state basically says you have to, you know, you have to deal with your own policies on this. You have to deal with state guidelines and the town guidelines. I mean, my problem is strictly that the bottom line is I need to go to the zoning board of appeals and I can't go to the zoning board of appeals without a survey because I need to tell them exactly what the change in front inside yard setback is. And until I have a survey and until I have a foundation design, that's not happening. Well, the Selectman already gave you the okay, correct?
Yes. They gave us the okay to do to apply for the steep grant. They didn't specifically give the okay to violate our purchasing policy. That's what I'm hung up on. Yeah.
So that kind of wasn't my just my question. If they've they've already given him in the okay to go forward with this, or they would take us in the and CIP, which wouldn't take much to get get, you know, get get us together there either and just just give it the okay for this one one time thing because I think it's a good idea to do.
But you want to do that too and I think, you know, I am more than willing to have, you know, a special meeting of the Board of Finance or a special meeting of CIP to pull the people together just to discuss this and say, yay. You know, it's not like we have to wait for a regular meeting. We can call a special meeting. Set it up, Eric. Let's do it. So
why I hate to lose it. I just hate to lose it. That's all.
I'm the same way, but I still don't think we alone can make
I understand. Let's get all three together and these representatives from all three and go for it. Can I get into a motion?
I mean, I was looking for through this policy to find some kind of exception, but it really doesn't even follow under the emergency thing because it's not life or limb kind of thing. But even if you have the emergency powers, still have to go through and button it up at the end. Don't have don't know what Eric needs to do just to get what he needs to get the application. Do we have time to get what we can get done according to our policy to get the application submitted? And then we can do all the quotes and everything after the fact before we hire a vendor.
Right and Diane what I'm saying is the only thing I can't do the only thing I can't put off and we go to RFP later is the survey work because I need survey work to get the variance and no variance I don't have a shovel ready project. That's my take on it.
The same idea, if we ever want to sell the sell the land for to whoever you need a survey anyways, wouldn't you?
Well, there's no question we're going to end up surveying this. Yeah, so just do it. Whether we regardless of where we develop it, regardless of whether we put the building up above or down below, know, we still need to demolish the building and we still need to survey the property one way or the other.
We submit the steep grant application saying that our variance is in process. The application has been filed, but we don't have approval yet, and then we have time to get the bids and get it done?
I mean, if this is what I have to do, then I will try. You know, the farther you are away from shovel ready, think the less likely you are to get this bid flat out.
Because that's So, choices are get the applicable people together to make the conscious decision to not follow the policy and go forward or to try and do what we can do to get the application submitted and then button everything else up before we hire final vendors. Mean, that's the only choices I see. Anybody see it any differently? Go ahead, Linda. How can we change? How fast does it take to change the policy to give it a higher number? Because it is in this day and age a little ridiculous $5,000 You have to get CIP to look at the policy us and the board selectman. Okay, I just figured I'd throw it out there and we should look into Yeah, it
I think this should be on our agenda in our next fiscal year to get revised.
You know. I asked you in the last fiscal year to revise. I know, but I'm not the chair.
Right. True. I can appreciate both sides of the argument. I understand following processes and policies but then also not wanting to lose you know a nice grant but all I was trying to say in between a few little button pushes was that I just don't have enough experience with this kind of thing so I'm just sitting back and listening to you all, know, taking it all in. It's also, as we can see, we're kind of missing a couple members tonight. I mean, I know, and I don't mean that meanly, when we think about getting everyone together during vacation time and all of that. Mean I can do it depending and it's I know maybe we don't need our full boards. Just know, but I agree with you Diane. I mean it's hard to have all the weight of us making the yes decision to go against something, maybe getting representatives together, but I don't know. Are you talking about the whole boards together too?
Well at least whatever forum we need to make decisions. Okay.
Eric. So, I do have one and this is the legalese coming out. So, if you look at what the policy says under competitive bidding, a minimum of three responsive quotes bids shall be obtained for purchases in excess of $5,000 but less than $15,000 This is not a purchase. This is a professional service and it says capital services, capital purchases and or contracted services of any value require public bidding. But there is also a carve out for professional services that say they don't need to be bid. So I think if you wanted to, there's enough wiggle room in there to approve.
I read this as competitive bidding for purchases. I'm thinking purchases purchases of anything, services, goods, whatever. Purchase us for the town. So I agree. I think there's a carve out that we don't have to do the public bidding for the survey. I kind of put survey under engineering. I don't know why, but I kind of think of it like that. And there's a carve out for those technical services. But there's no I don't see any carve out for not getting three quotes unless it's under $5,000. Can you hear me okay?
You got to speak up, Louise, because you're very faint today. I know.
Can we get Dennis' opinion on this? So we have a It's just more time we add to the equation.
I know. I mean At least we're not going around in circles. I'm not sure how long he would take to say yes or no to us.
I mean, what's your opinion? I mean, I know he's pretty quick. I don't know if he would quickly say, hey. He's gonna come back with an opinion and says your charter says this, your policy says this and you have no carve out. I don't know. Right.
Well, I'm just trying to see. And I don't know. And the piece I'm missing, which Dennis would know, there's a whole host of state regulations that sit behind our charter that I did not do the research on. Because our charter refers to state regulations as well as this policy does too. Yeah. So, and I don't know what the state regulations are on this stuff.
Part that made me feel better was when you guys were talking about we need a survey regardless. So it's not money, you know, clearly going to need a survey, But again, that's But it's still, we still are And bound then by purchasing not Must be good. Wasn't needed to be spent.
Look, I'll just put it out. And so let's not belate this. I would feel better if we're gonna violate the policy that we get everybody to agree to violate the policy. And then I would be more than happy to say, I agree. I don't think me as a member of the board has that power alone.
I would go along with that too, just so we don't delay Right. The grant. Oh, Diane, you're talking capital improvements in Boroslik plus Yeah.
You want capital improvements to have a special meeting, board of selecting to have a special meeting, and then Have a joint. You wanna come back and have a special meeting and agree to it. That's what you're saying.
Let's have a look at it. Can we have a joint meeting? Can we just
explain explain the situation and and what you know what's your time frame is and then we all vote on at the same time.
Always this informed consent. Do you know what I mean? It's just like and then we do have to take on revising this to make this more of a workable policy. Okay.
I think that's a big task because you gotta get everybody to agree. Do know what I mean? It's not a quick thing, but we can work on it. I'll be more than happy to write it. When's the next Board of Sloughwood meeting? Is it in like a couple weeks? Is it quick? Not for a while. Yeah, don't even worry about it. Cancel the survey
and I don't know. I don't know whether I'll even bother. Yeah, if that's what you want to do, that's what you want to do as a board. Anybody have any other input or
anybody think anything differently that we have the power? I mean, the only thing I was going to say is obviously we're going round and round and we've discussed this part. So we're not going to go any further here. If there was going to be some kind of meeting, I'm just taking Eric, if there was like a joint meeting like towards the end of next week after the holiday, Is that enough time or that's still not enough time?
Well, should be enough time and we just wanna get everybody's consent to not follow the policy for the items that are over 5,000 under 15.
And I was gonna say maybe Eric would call one of the board of selectmen and see if they think that's a good idea. I don't know I'm just putting it out there. I agree there's policies we should follow but I'm agreeing to I would come to a special meeting for a ten minute meeting to go over it and you know.
I mean I don't think it's a it's a quick meeting it's a fifteen-twenty
minute meeting. Right and I'm just thinking I don't think you know we've already been in this meeting two hours so going over I mean unless anybody has anything further maybe tomorrow morning Eric would wake up and say yeah it's worth it I'm gonna try one more time I'll talk to the board of selectmen and then if they want we could try to have that joint meeting.
I mean I think probably we'll just cancel I mean, I'm honestly, I'm kind of thinking that the timelines are tight enough. I'm not going to continue because this is an enormous time suck on my part. I get it. I don't have the time to put in if I don't have a realistic chance of doing a grant application. So, I mean, I'm probably going to bag it. That's where I'm, you know, maybe I'll get up in the morning and I'll have a different approach that I think I mean, the only thing I can think of right now is what I write the check at the town a check for $2,600 and I fund the portion over 5,000 out of my own pocket. Would the Board of Finance agree to that? I don't know the rules enough. Go ahead, Diane.
So here's what I'm going to say. Obviously, the charter and the policy was written for a purpose in mind. Yep. And this is the desire of how they want it to work. Yes, it's a little outdated. It's not as nimble as we want it to be, but I think, I still think you can't circumvent the policy just because it's inconvenient. I think we, if we want to do it, we just suck it up, we do it, we get the approvals and we go forward. And we'll have time to get the application in. It's just, and you know what? You call the meetings, you get what people you can and you have a conversation. That's all it is. I can't, you know, if I was the chair of the board of finance, I could not make this decision by myself based on what's in this policy. It just isn't. Okay.
I know it goes against common sense and all that, but I think we have a way around it. I think all we have to do is get consent from, you know. I don't want something to happen down the road where CIP or the board of selectman comes by and say, why did you violate policy? Because there's no way I can justify that by saying, well, it didn't work for us. You know. It's okay to say it didn't work for us if you're talking to all the parties that are involved and everybody agrees. I think that's a whole different story than having one group make the decision and not include the other two groups.
And by the way, I am perfectly serious. Would you accept it if I wrote a check for $2,600
I don't know. You're asking me a question that's totally out of scope. I mean, They were still trying tax dollars? You know? I would to keep it going, personally. I think
because this these policies these policies were, outdated when they were written. We've always had problems with the person policy. As you know, it needs to be updated. It's been needed to be updated for years and here we are looking, staring at it tonight with something pending that that would have gone probably straight through, prior to. But, you know, the, the, the charter, I mean, that's why there's another charter revision going on. They haven't, right. They haven't, they haven't figured everything out on that yet. Have they? I didn't, I didn't make the, the meeting, but, No, but it's not going to be it's not going to revolve this. Right, right. I understand that. So I'm just saying that these policies have these person policies have been an issue. Well, for the twenty some odd years I was fire chief, they were an issue for us next door. And and since it since then as a Commissioner, there's still a problem, know, with us next door and everything else. That's why you know, Derek wants to put the money up. I'm just to just to keep this ball rolling. I'll I'll I'll be willing to to accept it for now. Yeah. But how does he get his money back?
I don't. He he doesn't. He just he he he just right now he's rolling the dice on it. That's all that that we can come up with three boards in between. He can still he can still go on, but we can we can have this meeting we want we want amongst the three different different groups and get the okay to do that. I mean, I I just I look at it, Diane, and I say that I,
I hate the town leaving money on the table. The chance to not get a steep grant application out in a reasonable timeframe, you know.
Zurich would the company be willing to just what about the survey company would you could you talk to them and have them bill you a certain amount now? I'm not I don't know like a part one payment and part two or whatever not anything that's illegal or wrong but or is that out of the question? I
mean this is what the Charter said the Charter says every payment made in violation of this Charter shall be deemed illegal every official authorizing or making such payments or taking part therein and every person knowingly receiving such payment or any part thereof shall be jointly and severably liable to both the town and individual parties. You know, so there's penalties on this purchasing piece. Gotcha. You know what I mean? Nothing about the rules. And
it's basically, you know, if the town loses money, you have to pay for it yourself. So, I mean And this is about people entering purchasing contracts without getting proper approval according to a purchasing policy because of all the fraud that's going on and the favoritism. And that's what it was designed and it's got teeth in it. It's the only piece in our charter that has teeth to it.
So, you haven't answered my question. Oh, gosh. If I write a check to the town of Andover tomorrow morning or this evening for two thousand six hundred dollars will you approve it? Do you have an issue with that? And I mean that in all seriousness, because I don't want to walk away from this grant if I don't have to, and I need every day I can get.
Why can't we want to select them weigh in on this? Why? Because they're
probably not going to have a meeting. I mean, they would, it would have to be a virtual meeting. It requires forty eight hours notice, which means you're going to have to talk to them tomorrow, which means it's probably not going to have to happen till after. And remember now you're talking about getting three boards to all have a meeting and come back and approve something. So that's at least a week's delay. You know, what I'm saying is I'm willing to gamble that eventually you will approve it and write a check for $2,600 if that's acceptable to you knowing that if it doesn't get approved eventually I lose the $2,600
I I can't make that decision. I mean, do you guys wanna vote on that? I I it's really. Are we allowed to vote on that I mean I don't know it's just way out there do you know I mean it's beyond our purview I think
I think it's a great gesture and I think that it would be nice and all of that. I just, I don't see why it would be so hard to call the Board of Selectmen and just have them weigh in on it. I don't know.
I mean, it just means I don't have to, I don't get to start the survey till earliest middle of next week. Whereas without that, they would be surveying either tomorrow or Friday. I mean,
what about just catching our, you know, I know it takes a while to get people to get everything, but what about just doing an informal quick phone call? This is the issue. Is this something you would entertain waving? Yes or no. And we'll put a meeting. You know, once we know that in concept people are on board, then I don't have a problem with us, you know, going out and getting the survey. Because I think everybody will come together and I think reasonable people will get together and approve this. But I
don't feel comfortable doing it all on my own. Guess it's the board of finance. How about if you do this, if someone instead of doing the joint meeting, Diane, I get where you're going. If Eric makes the phone calls, gets the approval of the two other,
has them maybe call you and say they approve. I don't know. I don't know how it can work if that's doable. Well, if they approve the concept, they would entertain the idea. If you get resistance from them, absolutely not. We have to follow purchasing policy. Then, we know there's no use having a meeting. You know, an informal thing. This is the issue. This is what we're up to. We'll button it up with a meeting, get proper approvals, but do you think you would be willing to make this exception? Yeah.
I would just like to decide pretty soon because the meeting's going long. I don't and I'm usually good for as long as it goes but I think we've kind of spun it a million different ways. Whatever you wanna do. Okay. I'll just, I'll just go. Is
anybody willing to make a motion to wanna make a motion on this or just let it die? I'll make a motion that we take a
poll of the members present of whether they would like to, I'm not I can't put it that How would you put it? Yeah. They're having they're violate the outdated bill purchasing policy. But I just like to get a straw poll of the members present, you know, that and kinda give Erica a little idea of where where where we're at. You know? So but you understand that? I don't know if I if I put it across the right way. But, I mean, is that
And that doesn't mean then not getting a meeting together too, but just to give him the okay pretty much to just to, you know, to spend his own money to do this.
I don't think we should ask anybody to spend their own money in town business.
Oh, I agree with that also. But the man offered and he wants, he wants to get going. He doesn't want it to drag.
What you want to second that? That's where I'm at. I'll second it. Anybody have any questions? Want to vote? All right, ready to vote? I say no. We just call everybody? Kurt says yes. I say yes. Linda says yes. Joanne, I can't hear you.
You're muted, Joanne. Sorry, we're voting on if he should spend his money.
Yep. The motion on the floor is. Yes. So I say, I'm saying no. So I'm a no. Linda's a yes, Kurt's a yes for that motion. Joanne? Yes. Louise? Yeah, it's a bit unconventional, So not that's four to one, so it passes. Okay, fair enough. Thank you, Eric.
This is really what you want to do. I'm just honoring your request.
Know what I want to do, but I think is realistic if we're going to get this out the door.
And then let's just follow-up and try to get the other two boards to agree to, so we can just not let Eric hang. Yeah.
And I can't speak for the old board, but I will push along to try and get this policy revised even a little bit. It'll take a little bit of work and coordination, but we should work on it. All
right, let me see. We talked about the steep grants, good steer. Is there anything else we have to do now or can we push everything else off to the next meeting here? So, get everybody going to 09:15. There's nothing really urgent left right on the agenda that has to be done today?
No, not really. Just, I, the other thing was the EV charger grant. That is that is a Eversource program that we applied for. The cost to the town will be less than $5,000 It doesn't really have to come here. So,
the total cost is over the $5,000 threshold, but the cost to the town is considerably less than that. I would argue that since it's not state funding it's funding by a utility company it doesn't require it's not you know state or federal funding so that as long as that the town's portion is under $5,000 I don't have to go deal with the purchasing policy on this one.
So, I'll just read you one little piece on the purchasing policy, which I was very surprised to see was in there. It says, therefore, this policy shall apply to purchases made with funds received by town agencies, meaning the town, via means other than taxation, unless specifically waived by the grantor of such funds. So, it's saying grants fall under this unless the grantor who's giving us the money agrees to waive.
Well, since we've given the bid and the vendor to Eversource, If Eversource agrees to the grants,
they will agree to it. But that's still a single source supplier, Right? So it really doesn't go out to doesn't have to bid. Right? Does it fall under?
Well, no, because there, you know, we chose a particular type of charger. There are multiple there are three I think manufacturers that the state approves for that program. So it's definitely not sole source. Those furnished by monopoly utility.
It is by. I mean the funding comes from the utility.
I was having a recording a single source of supply. Those are the carve outs. Again, don't want to go down that rabbit hole right now. We don't have enough time. So is this one of those grants where the town has to spend their money first and then we get reimbursed? It is. Oh, we have to follow the purchasing policy then.
Right? There are deadline on this one too? I'm sure. Mean,
Well, we don't have to accept that grant, even if we get it, we can just turn it down. That's fine too. Oh my God. You know, right. But I mean, our decision to
put in an EV charger is based on getting not having to fund it all of ourselves if we were to fund it all ourselves we'd still be approving it we may not.
Right my I guess my problem is I use the electrician to prepare the grant. Having done that, I just assumed, since it was less it costs the town less than 5,000 out of pocket that I wasn't going to be I wasn't going to have an issue with it. If you're a subordinate finance telling me we are, then I think we're either probably going to cancel it or we'll have to, I don't know, maybe rebid it some other time, some other way.
Or we add this to the list that we're going for the steep grant and just say we have this other issue with EV and this is get everybody's take on it and say, they're okay with The problem is the policy is not clear. So it we really have obviously, the town's spending money and we're getting reimbursed later, then I think the purpose of this policy is to spend the money because you can't be guaranteed you're gonna get the grant if you don't do it right. Right? So I don't know. This did not address that kind of situation.
Right. Love it if can do $24,000 worth of work and it only costs us 5,000 out of pocket and it gets us the EV charger that we're going to need when we purchase a senior transportation vehicle. We're way ahead. That's how I look at it. But I realize that's not a technical that doesn't necessarily mean that that you guys all buy that argument?
Well, all we can do is follow what we have written in policy right now. And we'll kind of got our hands tied. So, think that could be addressed with the other thing, and I think we should do it. But I think with consent, informed consent until we can revise this policy. And maybe the board of Selectmen will feel different that they have the power to make that themselves and they don't need CIP. Do you know what I mean? They may have a different take on it. They may say we're the governing body of the town. We can make that exception. I mean, of all Well, finance is not the governing body of this town.
CIP normally doesn't weigh in on anything that's not a capital. In a $7,500 project wouldn't be a capital project. Did you go to CIP for approval for the community center?
Yep. Okay. We did that first site work, yes. Oh, but that was a 35,000
plus dollar project. Right. So, All right, so stop gap. I'll write a check to the town for $2,600 and I will keep the survey in motion and we will set up a series of meetings with the three boards and see whether they agree with it. Okay,
sounds good. And everything else can wait. We'll push everything else to the next meeting. Sure. 09:30 can be adjourned.
Yeah. I think everybody's tired. If there's nothing if you're telling me there's nothing that has to be done tonight, I would like to push this stuff to the next meeting. Is that accurate? Yeah. Works for me. Alright. So, we will take the remaining items on the agenda, which would be items nine, FG, and item 10, and move it to our next meeting. There are no liaison reports. Does anybody run open board discussion? Does anybody have anything that they wanna say? Everybody's good? We have no public speak. There's nobody on. All right, we're ready for adjournment. Can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Her motion is adjourned. Do I have a second? Joanne seconds. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Louise, did you say yes? Yeah, that was me. Okay. Right. Meetings adjourned at 09:25PM. All right. Cheers everybody. Thank you. See you later. Bye.