Meeting transcript
Board of Finance- Regular Meeting & Budget Workshop
March 22, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Started Eric. Alright, thank you. We are calling to order the Board of Finance regular meeting for the town of Andover on Wednesday, 03/22/2023. We will recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic to which it stands, one nation, a nation under God liberty
and and to stronghold. Okay, thank you. We'll move on to agenda item number two, which is public speak. Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak? Doesn't look like we have anybody, Eric. Is that what you're seeing? You're muted, Eric. You're muted, Eric.
There doesn't appear to be anybody that's a general meeting participant.
Okay. Very good. We'll move on to agenda item three, which is additions and deletions to the agenda. This is where we can make changes to the agenda. So Erica suggested since the treasurer is here, we have her quickly cover the audit status and the, you know, the update of the Finance Department first so she can go, and then also we have Colin McNamara from the RAM district who is going to present the RAM budget, and we can possibly probably move him up ahead as well. So I would go ahead and just for the sake of quickness and clarity make the motion that we change the budget to move the under 6A old business to fiscal year twenty one-twenty two audit status update, update of the Finance Department to agenda item four and follow that by the 5A, which is a presentation by the RAM budget by the Superintendent Collin. I move that ahead of the both of those would be then moved ahead of the town administrator's report. I'll second it.
All right, thank you, Rob. Any discussion? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you very much everybody. We will, any other additions or deletions of the agenda?
Just a quick question. Mark, you have on there a CIP request. Is that the, thing I was I emailed you about?
Yeah, so that that was Eric. I think Kate had that and Eric I presume that is because of the request from the Fire Commission for the apparatus.
Correct, there were a CIP voted on two. It's it's obviously nothing you're gonna discuss extensively. It's just on there to make you aware that that will be coming whenever you want to to hear that application
from the board of fire Commissioners. Okay, just clarifying. Okay, very good. Yeah, would, you know, had a couple of email with Joanne about that, but I think probably that's just a quick, you know, Rob, maybe you can kind of give us the rundown once we get there on that. As best you know it, obviously not a detailed decision. The other thing I would suggest is I think we're not really in a position today to review the draft policy on the financial reports that needs to get addressed. I think we're all in agreement on that, So I mean, I would personally I would strike it from the budget or from the I'm sorry from the agenda, but we don't need to do that necessarily. We could just take no action on there, but I think that's something that we get we need, you know. Today's meeting I'm hoping we can focus on the nuts and bolts of the budgets and kind of get through most of it, and we have a couple line items that I'm sure are going to take further discussion, further input, but we can, you know, really focus on getting the rest of the budget kind of through. We'll go through it and come to some agreement that would really put us in a decent position, I think, to get this prepared
and get it ready for the town in time for everybody to digest it and review it. I don't know if anybody has any comments on that, if we just want to pull ahead or we want to take that out.
I'd be in favor of removing it from tonight's agenda to the purchasing policy. Do you want to make a motion, Joanne?
Yep, so I make a motion that we remove item C, reviewing the draft review of policy on financial reports from this agenda to move it to next month's meeting. I'll second that.
Okay, any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Hearing none motion passes. Thank you. We'll strike that from this meeting's agenda. If we decide we don't want to add it to the next meeting we can do that or the one after our. If not as John proposed we just put it next month I think so.
Mark? Yep are we gonna hold off on the meeting verification of the minute the Minutes as well.
Yeah good point. I sent an email earlier, but the packet did not actually have the 02/22/2023 meeting minutes in it, I didn't have a chance to download them or anything and I'm not going to chance to review them during this session so. I think we can just vote on those on our next meeting if anybody has any objections, we can strike that to if somebody wants to make a motion.
I'll make a motion to strike the minutes from this session.
Okay, so Louise For approval. No, that was the second from you? Yes. Okay thanks so Louise is motioning to strike item eight which is approval of the meeting minutes is anybody we have a second from bills or any discussion Okay, hearing none, we'll have a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, we'll strike that. A lot of changes. All right. Any other additions or deletions to the agenda. Okay hearing none we will move on to our new next item which is the fiscal year twenty twenty one-twenty two audit status and the update from the town finance department. Okay Cheryl it looks like you're on. Thank you for joining.
You're muted Cheryl.
Still not hearing you. Looks like your mute is off, but we're still not hearing you. Yeah. Still nothing. We could probably come back if we need to.
Cheryl, what my suggestion would be is to call in on your phone and use the audio from your phone if you can't get the computer audio to work.
That's usually Swing your hand if you need the number. Okay.
K. While she's logging in, do any of you have any questions? In the packet was the, budget versus actual. Does anybody have any questions on that?
Which one is that labeled, Eric? I'm seeing a lot of PDFs.
And it should say interim budget versus actual July 2022 versus February 2023.
Yeah, it's thoroughly the second page of the packet. It's just kind of the budget, the expend report. It's typically how we've seen it in the past. We haven't really had the detail. Just two columns, right? That shows us those two graphs side by side. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Never mind. Never mind. Four columns. Yeah. It's it starts on page two. Yep. I see we're only 17% for the snow removal, Eric. You expect that to be a surplus, I hope?
It will definitely be a surplus. We did have to go back through and spend. As you know, a lot of that has hit fairly recently. Is
that me? Not me? Yeah. Cheryl, you just mute your speakers on your your laptop.
Can you hear me now? Yep. We gotcha. Oh my goodness. Eric, this is your fault. It's always Eric told me I had to upgrade my stuff, so I, I will admit I'm not I'm a great accountant. I'm just not very good with technology. So I apologize for the screaming.
Okay. So I will let you take over. We're just having a quick talk about the interim budget versus actual.
Okay. So all of the information, that you currently see in your budget to actual is through February 28, either coming from one, monthly journal entry from Edmonds, and I'll get back to that in a second. And as of February, preparing checks through the QuickBooks system. Marina had been working on that. Now that we have the new finance person in the office, I met with her yesterday, and I had her physically going in now and entering in all of the checks. They had already been put in. Marina had already put them in, but we had them put to a temporary account pending the allocation to the proper line items. Christina spent most of yesterday, I think, and today. Good way for her to familiarize herself with our different accounting and our different department classes. She spent most of the day doing that, and I got an email from her about three hours ago saying that all checks have been updated. So as soon as I get done with the auditors this week, I should be able to go back on, reconcile July through now. So your reports for the end of March when you get them in April should be pretty close to the same, but there may be some adjustments to it depending on as we found other items that should have been recorded. Okay.
As of today I'm sorry. Does anyone have any questions concerning the budget to actual?
Seems like there are a fair amount of accounts, and I haven't had a chance to go through this extreme detail, there's a fair amount of accounts, seeing a few under the town clerk and some of the others that are at zero spend. It just makes me wonder, we are we just not spent the money or are we not caught up, for example, town clerk you're at conference seminar training equipment maintenance, you know we're pretty low on some of the other stuff so but everything is.
Yeah. Yeah. Anything that I was able to locate in the Edmunds system has been entered was originally entered into the system. I'll have a better idea once I get rid of the journal entries that I made and then review all of the classifications that Christina just recently did on all of the transactions. So I'm sorry. I don't have a good answer for you right now, but pretty much everything that I had found in Edmonds is in this report.
Okay. That's not a bad answer. Thanks. You're welcome. Just as you know, we don't none of us like surprises.
Of the things I see on there is, you know, it doesn't have we just not been billed for the resident trooper?
No. So we will get billed for the resident trooper after the fiscal year is over. Okay. If we're lucky, they will bill us in August.
Okay. Yeah, because it's $170,000. So, know, it's kind of a big item. All right. Yes. That is something actually we're trying to address legislatively
because that's been an ongoing problem for lots of towns that there's this highly variable bill that you don't even get till six weeks after your budget year is over. And they will give you an estimated value for it, but there's no real correlation between the estimated value and what you finally get for bill.
That's kind of what I expected to hear, but I thought I'd ask. Yep.
Eric, can I ask a follow-up question? Cheryl's there too, since we're doing this part first. Isn't that an issue, Cheryl, I mean, we're supposed to be billed in the fiscal year by June 30. So I know you said, you know
Well, we we're fully aware that and so are the auditors that they're not billing us until August. The auditor will since the services were provided in the twenty two, twenty three fiscal year. And when the bill does come in, it will reference that fiscal year. I'll be able to put it in as accounts payable and show that it came in in August and that we're paying it after. And you're accruing. Part of Right? Somehow? Yeah.
Yes. Right. I mean, just it's part of my hope going forward for the 2223 audit is that I would like to be able to start submitting all of the financial statements, all the funds, everything, the audit book in full to the auditors by the middle to the absolute latest September with the hopes that they will be in in October, and have us out issued to the OPM, everything done before the December 31, deadline for the 2223 audit. That's That's certainly my hope, and I really don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to meet that expectation. Great. Thank you. I have a question. You're welcome. Louise?
Is there any way to keep a tally on how many hours that goes into the state trooper? And then just multiply that times? Is there an hourly rate or is it a dollar amount per year?
So I can answer that. What we get for from the Connecticut State Police is we get the salary line for our resident state trooper or the resident state trooper at the time, at the pace that he's at at that point, and they'll give us an estimated amount for the indirect costs for the trooper. But they don't actually set the final indirect cost rate until after, till the end of their budget year and they see how they're doing financially and how much, you know, they're gonna pass on to the towns. So, I mean, I do have their estimate now for next year, for next budget season, for instance, and I have the one for this year. But what I'm saying is that in years past, the correlation between what we actually pay and what they tell us we pay could be plus or minus $30,000
in any given year. So that is the problem. We've estimated under more than $30,000 before. And we last year, as you know, it came out $45,000 less than we budgeted. And it's nicer that way, but but, you know, it it's just a it's a very unclean process with the state in that particular regard. And
I I think just to to clarify for Louise, it's a salary, not an hourly. Right.
So but it is a black cover the entire salary and cost. And then incidental
whatever multiplier they put on there. Right? Too bad it had to be done that way, but it is what it is. Well, like Eric says, hopefully legislatively, they tighten
that up because it's hard to plan when, you know, dollars 45,000 off. It's tough to budget that way. Anyway. Okay. Thanks.
Other questions on the actual spend to budget or questions for Cheryl? Guess the next thing would just be, yeah, go ahead Joanne. Just a quick follow-up. I know you mentioned Christina,
so you've set up training, a training schedule with Christina. I know she started on Monday, which is great.
While I had her working on transferring information in from Edmonds, I printed up some reports for her so she can start to get familiar with that. She was reviewing documents. I have her looking at the different deposits that have been made for the town for the twenty two, twenty three year, making sure that there are proper account numbers for the deposits, showing her how to enter in the deposits. I still have to work on the entry for payroll for her, and then I will get that over to her, and we'll we'll do up the payroll. We we she she has a very good grasp of QuickBooks, so I don't think she's going to need a great deal of training on proper entering and items. But she's only been here two days, and it takes it's it can be a bit overwhelming when you're learning a whole different process. Funding accounting is not normal accounting.
Right. No. My point is you're you've got her farther along than I thought, you know, with with everything just in two days because I know with the amount of people available to be there with her talk to her so I don't want to go on and on. But since you're here tonight, no, that's great. Yes, I mean, it sounds like she's diving in, you know, and it it'll take time. But yeah, very good. I
I did not expect to get a email from her today telling me, except for a few issues that I have to she wasn't sure where things went, that everything was updated in QuickBooks. So meaning check wise. So I have not had a chance to log on today. I was busy with the auditors all day. So I haven't had a chance to log on, but I certainly will make an effort over the next few days to to get on and see what her her progress has been. Perfect. No. That's great. Thank you for that update.
You're welcome. Other questions for Cheryl on the budget or the actual spend, I should say? And show do you have anything update on the audit status.
I do we all of the smaller funds and you have currently four smaller funds that are reported within the audit Those have all been updated, reconciled. I've inputted them all into the specific Excel workbook that the auditors like. All of the QuickBooks files have been tied out to the general fund, and all of those documents for the smaller funds have been uploaded to the auditor portal today. The auditor also is in doing testing. They requested detailed trial balance, general ledger, from the town and the school. I provided them with the documentation for the town. I I'm on I don't know what the school has provided yet, but I'm sure that the new finance person will will will up upload documents. The there's one thing I'll need to get tomorrow, and I'll have to Eric, you and I will have to chat a little. They want some different payroll reports, so I'll need to log on and get some different payroll reports for them, upload those. The audit book is, I would say, 80%
complete. And what I mean by the audit book is I like paper copy. I'm a old school kind of girl. So everything that has to do with the audit is in a specific book, that the town maintains. So as the auditors are asking questions, in most cases, the it'll explain in the order book. There's copies of bank statements. There's copies of the accounts payable, you know, different revenues, different expenditures when you do an additional appropriation, when we move line items, things of that nature, purchases, assets. All of those things go in the book. We also upload to them digital copies because they like that also, but I like to have the book. It kinda helps the next year's planning when you're looking what did I have last year. I need this again this year. So pretty much we're on target. They're in. And I hope to have everything finished and uploaded, the book all done by the weekend. Great. Good. Thank you. Questions for Cheryl on that?
I just have one quick question actually. When do you think the auditor is going to want to begin pulling information? Have they said when or what they want at this point?
Yes. Well, I uploaded all of those documents because they had already been pulling, information for the tax collector. We had received that, one email about that. I would expect within a few days, if unless they ask for things digitally. I don't think they normally will, but I would imagine they would be in soon. I certainly could check with the auditors, Mike, tomorrow and see if he has a date for physically coming in to start testing. Certainly can do that. Okay.
Any other questions for Cheryl? Okay, hearing none, guess we're all set. Thank you very much, Cheryl. Appreciate it. You're
welcome. I will certainly attempt to fix whatever my audio issue is here on on the computer. I apologize again for the technology challenge.
Keep up the good accounting work. I think we'll work around the rest of it.
I can do that one. That's an easy one. Great. Have a good rest of your night. Thank you. Thank you.
Bye. Yep. Bye bye. Okay. Very good. Okay. So Colin, you're up. Thank you for being patient. We actually pay Cheryl by the hour, so we're trying to get her.
No, the complete. I completely understand it's always good to get a budget update. Certainly in an audit update. I certainly understand that no worries whatsoever. I just you know, I'll just simply say thank you very much for allowing me this opportunity to be here. It is good to see you all. I'll say to you what I say to my board members at Region eight and really every board member that I've worked with, which is I appreciate the work that you do. When I do these things, these late night meetings, they are part of my profession and a part of my occupation and I recognize that each and every one of you are here giving back to your community. And again, I just appreciate and respect that very much. Look forward to chatting with you this evening and talking a little bit about the Region eight Board of Education budget. I'm going to just do my best to share my screen and hopefully my technology won't fail me. So give me two seconds. Going to pull have a PowerPoint presentation.
It says the host has disabled participant screen sharing. Is there somebody who can fix that? Eric, can you hook him up? Yeah. It should work now, Colin. Thanks, Eric. Yep. It sure is.
For the record, we've just disabled it in general because we've had some significant issues with getting hacked lately. So we've had to up our security game a bit.
So it is giving me, I don't know what it's doing. It is not allowing me to share. My PowerPoint, which is on my screen.
Do you have multiple screens by any chance, Colin? No. No? I don't.
Hang on one second. Let me see if I can figure this out. I'm only hooked up to one screen. Eric Anderson, if I sent you a quick email with a PowerPoint, would that work? And then you could put it up?
Yeah. We could, but it says I I enabled host sharing.
It well, it's sharing. It's asking me things that it's the the option of sharing my PowerPoint slideshow is not is not an option. Got it. Okay. Yep. Give me give give me two seconds, Eric. I'm gonna push it to you in cyberspace. I apologize for this, everybody. Give me
We're still working through the logistics of of trying to run more secure Zoom meetings. So
Eric, do you wanna you need to try sharing something and make sure that works? You guys seeing the agenda? Yeah, yeah, it's you sharing.
Yeah, I I again it's the the issue is it's it's asking me something that I'll be perfectly honest with you. I've just not been asked before when trying to. To share my screen, so I apologize. Just give me Yep. That's likely not on you. Always something. Sure can be.
I have my own technology struggles today. I got a new laptop from work, and it's the new lap. My old laptop was old enough that it had a docking station you actually physically put it in. And I have a monitor here that I've been using for probably ten years or more that hooked into that docking station with a VGA cable. Yep. A VGA. That's what? Yeah. VGA cable. The new docking thing doesn't have VGA cable. So I'm staring at my little laptop screen all day. That's awesome. That was fun.
If your eyes are crossed, we know why. Yeah. It's ridiculous. I mean, you know, it's like a 15 inches screen or something. I don't know. So I I was chatting with tech support today about an adapter or a new monitor or something. Just stupid stuff. Eric, you got, do you have the presentation?
I do not. It is not I have not gotten it yet. Eric,
I just sent it. It should be hitting your inbox just momentarily. I literally just hit send. So Okay.
Speaking of technology, my cat just updated my printer software for me, so I'm hoping that comes out okay. The screen flashed a little bit, and so the cat was curious and touched it with his paw and launched something.
Excellent. You have no idea what it did, do you? No. I don't. No. I don't. But if I have trouble, I'll ask my cat.
Probably about as good as tech support. Sorry. That's not fair. Eric, did it come through? Yeah. It did. I'll I'll just share my screen here in about five seconds. Thanks. I I again, I apologize, everybody. No worries. These things happen. Hey. There it is.
So perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So I'll just start off by saying I'm pleased to prevent to present the proposed budget for the 2324 fiscal year for Regional School District eight, which supports the mission and vision of the district and aligns with the commitments identified in the district's strategic plan. Next slide, please, Eric. The current budget for 2324 is 31,139,381 and represents an overall budget increase of 2.85. This budget of this amount is a combination of a net operating budget of 30,598,391 and a capital budget of 540,990. Several factors have contributed to the proposed budget which I can highlight throughout my presentation. Next slide, please, Eric. The town levy for Andover for next year will be $4,000,493.04 13 or 14. 43% of the total budget. I think it's important to note that this is a decrease of $541 $5.40 from Andover's levy from the current fiscal year. Next slide, please. So I again just in an effort to share good news and good trends particularly for Andover in the past two years, the levy for Andover has decreased by $757,000 just over $757,000 which is certainly good for the citizens of Andover. Next slide, please. This chart shows the distribution of the operating budget by object category. As you can see, all object categories have increased with the exception of tuition costs which have decreased by almost 6%. Next slide, please, Eric. So this chart shows the distribution of proposed budget by percentage of each object category in relation to the total budget. As you can see, 70% of the proposed operating budget is allocated to employee salaries and benefits. These are fixed costs associated with staffing our schools.
Next slide, please. So the increases associated with personnel include health insurance costs and contractual salary increases, and they are provided on this slide. As you can see, health insurance increased by about $73,000 which is about a 2.5% increase. I do want to make sure that everybody does understand that's a different percentage than what the increase is for health insurance premium costs. So the insurance consortium just set the rate for the insurance increase to be a 1.5% increase. But the impact, when you factor in all of the circumstances for RAM, is a 2.57% increase to what our current fiscal year is. And you have contractual salary increases of 3.24% for certified staff, 4.48% for non certified, and 3.11% for administration. And just I make that little note at the bottom that I think it's important to point out. The fact that according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, consumer prices for all items rose 6.4% between December 2022 and December 23. And again, that note is from 01/17/2023. So the district has made a concentrated effort over the past several years to ensure that salaries and benefits
for employees are competitive. But again, I'm making sure that I note salary increases for the bargaining units are fair and less than current inflation rates. Next slide, please, Eric. So these are just some of the budget drivers that I wanted to highlight, some of the more significant budget drivers. We have anticipated revenue projections, a $32,000 decrease or almost $33,000 decrease, Increase in finances and leases to the tune of about 24 I'm sorry, 25,000. Natural gas, 10,000. Tech software, 30,652. And custodial maintenance and supply maintenance and supplies, $24,285 increase. Next slide, please, Eric. So I did want to highlight the program and position changes that are impacting our budget. Next year's budget includes a new teaching position that will focus on instructional practices and coordination of curriculum revision and development.
Having a full time staff member focused on improving instructional practices and ensuring that the district's curriculum is current and aligned with state and national standards is imperative to maintaining rigorous and well rounded academic offerings and what makes us a competitive school district. This would be a full time teaching position that works closely with teachers as well as district administration in supporting the improvement of instructional practices through a coaching model. The position will also work closely with teachers, department coordinators, and administration on curriculum development and revision. A stipend would be associated with the position similar to what is paid to department coordinators for taking on additional work and responsibilities. Factoring other staff reductions, this position would essentially be FTE neutral. What I mean by that is we've reduced some positions that I'll highlight later on. So again, it's almost FTE neutral, a full time equivalency neutral position. Another addition to the budget is the inclusion of summer school credit of the summer school credit recovery program that has been in place for the last two summers. It has been a successful program that has enabled students to recover credit loss and advance academically during the COVID-nineteen pandemic. It will continue to be valuable for RHAM students who may be impacted by the new state required credit increase for graduation. While the with the conclusion of the ESSER funding with the pandemic, the cost associated with continuing to run the program has been added to the operating budget. Also, the addition of an LPN for the high school and the middle school. This position currently exists
but has been grant funded for the past two years. The LPN supports the health offices of both schools and has also reduced the need for acquiring a substitute when the school's registered nurse is absent. The budget for next year includes the reduction as well of two part time positions that have been vacant during the current school years. These are the two positions that I discussed that make the instructional coach curriculum coordinator FTE neutral. The first is the district wide instructional technology coach. The individual who previously held this position was hired to be the library media specialist for the start of the current school year. It was determined that it would not be necessary to replace this position as he continues to support school staff with technology integration as the library media specialist.
The position has not been included in the next year's budget. Another reduction is the point five FTE family consumer science teacher position that included in the twenty two-twenty three budget. This position was not able to be filled due to a lack of qualified applicants. And there is certainly a desire to have a family consumer science teacher and running our culinary program that we used to have. However, it has not been included in next year's budget as I anticipate that the position would again not be able to be filled. We also just some some new positions that or some new information has come to light over the past few weeks that has enabled us to also reduce a high school world language teacher, specifically a French teacher. That position is currently vacant. And we after seeing what our course enrollment looks like for next year, it was determined that we don't need to fill that vacant position, which is obviously a benefit to the budget for us. And we also have a one point zero FTE or a full time occupational therapist. We are constantly reviewing student caseloads and needs and it was determined that ultimately we could reduce that position from a point eight to a point, I'm sorry, from a one point zero FTE by point two and make them a point eight FTE. Again, that has a budget impact as well.
Next slide, please, if you don't mind, Eric. So, I know that you all were talking about your audit that you're going through. We recently completed our audit. It was done it was completed in February, and that was for the 2122 budget. Feedback from the budget was or from the audit, excuse me, was extremely positive and and really the auditors were complimentary of the district for demonstrating fine strong financial oversight. It also identified a surplus from the twenty one twenty two region eight budget of 363, $436,000 remaining after closing the budget. The Ram and so let if we can go to the next one, it would be great. So the RAM board has made efforts to be responsive to the shared desire to reduce the twenty two-twenty three, I'm sorry, the twenty three-twenty four budget. And one of the things that was decided by the RAM board was to utilize the $363,436 surplus from the twenty one-twenty two budget and allocate it to the district's capital non recurring account to pay for $362,000 in items or services that were initially in next year's operating budget. So we had
items or services identified that needed to be done in next year's budget that we were able to allocate that $362,000 of surplus funds for. Therefore, we're investing those surplus funds into the towns by reducing our ask for next year. And so again it's it seems like a solid reinvestment for us and it's going to it has made a significant contribution to reducing next year's budget for us. This idea was discussed with the town administrators in each of three towns and all expressed support for the plan and the board did go ahead and make those changes and allocate that that surplus money. Next slide please, Eric. At the last Region eight Board of Education meeting just this past Monday night, the board has continued to make efforts to reduce the twenty three-twenty four budget and one of the things that the board did do was allocate $87,746.52 of our current 2223 budget funds to pre purchase items that had also been in the 2324 budget. These these pre purchases are a sensible investment of current funds to to further reduce the the budget request for this year. And again I'll go back to one of the things that I just mentioned when the when I talked about the auditor's feedback. You know the reason that the district is currently in a strong financial position for our current budget year is because we have good financial oversight of the money that has been allocated to the district. So again, we see this as a very positive way of helping reduce the budget ask for next year.
Next slide, please, if you wouldn't mind. As you can see from this chart of adopted budgets from the past eight years, the district has a demonstrated history of fiscal responsibility. Like other school districts across the state that are contending with rising costs, the proposed budget for Region 8 is responsive to our current financial climate. I really think while I'm on this topic, that if we talk about where we currently are, school districts and towns across the state are seeing budget requests of four, five, six, seven, 8% over current budgets. So the fact that we're coming in at a 2.5% I'm sorry, a 2.85% increase is, again, I just think a testament to the strong financial oversight and really the desire of the RAM Board of Education and the district to make sure that we are being responsible with the money that's allocated to us. One of the things that I think is also important to point out is a 2.85% again is is is good in our current financial times.
One of the things that's important to note is last year, the budget included for for this year, it included a $11,000,004 $82.00 decrease in bond payments from the previous year of 2122. That that decreased bond payment for this current year had that not been in place, our our we instead of being a negative one. '22 for for last year's ask, we would have been a three sixty one. I I I highlight that because I think it's important to know that coming in at a 2.85, again, it just demonstrates we're we're really doing our best to to be responsive to, you know, the current financial situation and economic situation of of towns and towns that we are supporting. Next slide, please, Eric. When comparing Region 8 to other regional districts that are also secondary school system, RAM ranks among the lowest for per pupil expenditures. We do recognize that we do have over the next handful of years. We do have some decreasing enrollment. So that that status on this chart might change as our enrollment decreases. Our our standings on this chart might we might go to the higher side, but certainly we are continuing to, you know, try to be as financially responsible as we can.
Next slide, please, if you don't mind. So speaking of enrollment, this graph shows the district's October 1 enrollment since 2015 as well as the projected enrollment through 2302, 2033. For the October 22 report to the state, the district enrollment was eleven eighty eight. As you can see, current projections indicate that enrollment will decrease across the district through 'twenty seven, 'twenty eight before increasing to numbers above our current enrollment in the next ten years. Next slide, please. One of the things that is important to highlight is that decreasing enrollment is primarily going to be seen at the high school over the next four or five years. This is the middle school enrollment. We currently are at three sixty nine from October 2022.
And you can see that those numbers really over the next four years remain steady before the increases start, where we go up to three eighty five, four thirty two, four forty six, and then again as high as four seventy six at the middle school and 3,233. We also know that and again, I'm going get to it later, is that those numbers are going to continue to go up because the elementary projections continue to go up over the next ten years as well. Next slide, please. So Ram High School is projected to decline in enrollment over the next five years before experiencing the increase from the middle schools.
Next slide, please. So I just briefly mentioned the increasing pre K to grade six enrollment across all three towns. The the numbers that you're looking at are the projections of the combined three towns and you could see that over the next ten years, it is just steadily going to increase and again, if you're looking at that increase at thirtythirty one, thirtythirty thirtythirty two, thirtythirty thirtythirty three, those are all going be numbers that are going to be feeding into RAM. And I think it's really important that the district remain prepared to meet the needs of that increased student population that we know is coming down the line.
Next slide, please, Eric, if you don't mind. So this demonstrates our capital improvement plan projects as the buildings and grounds continue to age, it is important that we plan for the ongoing upkeep of the district facilities, as well as addressing the numerous capital projects that need attention to ensure that students, faculty, and the community have a safe and accessible facility for years to come. Might as well just go to the next slide, Eric, if you don't mind. The funds proposed for this year's capital budget represent a small percentage of the current needs identified. The prioritized items requested for twenty three-twenty four school year as recommended by the Board of Education Facilities Subcommittee. This list and the associated costs were reviewed and discussed in a joint meeting between facilities and finance subcommittees and the projects include items such as chimney restorations, repairs to sidewalks and curbing, ceiling cracks in the parking lot, among other things. The capital budget also includes fun to have a building evaluation report completed to update our capital plan. The last evaluation was conducted in 2015 and we definitely need to have a new one done. Next slide, if you don't mind, please, Eric.
So the proposed budget presented reflects the efforts of district and school administration, department coordinators, staff, and the Board of Education to put forward a responsible budget that maintains the high quality educational programming and facilities the Ram community has come to expect and in meeting the social and emotional needs of our students. It is the result of several months of collaboration which continues to this day between school and district administrations, department coordinators, staff, and Board of Education, and is it intended to provide local officials and the general public with a clear understanding of the district's programs and priorities. The administration and staff of Regional School District eight are grateful for the support of the Ram Board of Education and the communities of Hebron, Andover, and Marlborough to provide Ram with the help and support that we need to ensure that our students are receiving high quality education, which prepares them to make meaningful contributions to society. As you can see from the budget timeline, we are at the last budget presentation. I've done them for Marlborough and Hebron in previous weeks. Tonight, obviously, is the twenty second and I'm doing them for Andover. Next slide, please, Eric. And this last slide just shows the next upcoming steps, which is the public budget hearing in the Region eight Board of Education meeting to adopt the budget which will take place on April 3. We will have our annual budget meeting on May 1 and the budget referendum will be on May 2. This concludes my presentation and I'm happy to do the best that I can to answer any questions that members of the Board of Finance might have.
Great, Colin. Thank you for your time and the presentation. Any questions from the Board of Finance? So you're holding up your hand, Joanne. Yes, yes, sorry.
Just trying to I have a different laptop going, so I don't know where everything is. Can you hear me here? Yep. Okay, great. It's going to be brief. Thank you so much for your time and coming to our meeting. I appreciate it. Obviously it's a it's a big budget. It's a it's a big dollar budget, but you went through it. You explained it, you know, similar to the past. I did have one. I took some time today to go through your your budget and I couldn't find an item that I was really looking for, and this is more community based. So I'm wondering in this $31,000,000 if there. I want to, you know, choose my words wisely, but did you dedicate any funds for? I know there's been a few issues of.
The racial issues you know, I've come to a couple of your meetings and I've listened. I tried to find maybe a professional development line item or you know some funds being allocated maybe to some workshops or some programs for the kids there just because of the you know there's not a lot of diversity at RAM as we know, so you know it's very engaging and well received in the district that I work in, so I couldn't find any funds. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. Well, yeah, no, it's a great question and I certainly appreciate
the fact that you recognize the importance of continuing that type of work in the professional development. It's certainly something that we are absolutely planning on continuing to do. There's really two ways. There is money in our operating budget and I can get you the dollar amount and let share it with Eric and with Mark and then they could pass it on to you as well. But there's money within the operating budget for professional development. It's it's really it's a it's a it's a lump sum. At this point when we are going through the process of developing the budget, I won't go through and say all right, we're going to do this on this day, this on this day, this on this day. We basically, you know, we will budget a dollar amount for professional development that can be utilized by teachers and staff and administration over the course of the year. We also utilize grant money as well. Title II grant money is something that we get annually through the consolidated grant and within the context of that consolidated grant,
there is money that is budgeted for development. Similarly, it's a it's a lump sum of money that we say this is money that we're going to allocate towards professional development. So, to to your point and and to to to specifically address it, you're not going to find Identified PD specifically. We're going to do this on this day, and here's how much it's going to cost. It's more of we know that we're going to have professional development. We know we want to continue to do professional development in that area as well as several other areas, right? And so it's utilizing the funds that we've just budgeted in those larger dollar amounts.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I really did dissect it to try to find even the lump sum amounts and you know thinking Okay, understanding that you don't have it all planned out a year in advance or whatever. That's that's fine. Will. It was only today that I looked at it calling because I've been concentrating so much on our own town budget, but I wasn't gonna not take the opportunity to speak for our community. I know it's, you know, a big thing. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. One other line item. Sorry, and then I'll then I'll move on. There was a huge increase just in I want to say custodial supplies. I mean, I jotted down a bunch, but I'm not going to maintenance equipment. It was like $103,000 I believe. But again, I can send you an email. I can send it through Eric. I know that these meetings go long, so I want to have. I just was jotting down things, I didn't jot down enough to really ask the correct question.
So so I I believe that that large dollar amount has been decreased through the allocation of pre purchases and or utilizing the surplus money that I had mentioned earlier on. I believe the large maintenance equipment was a result of an unfunded mandate. I think it's really important that we talk about the fact that there are unfunded mandates that come from the state. Eric is shaking his head because he lives with these as well. Eric is nodding his head, I should say, because he lives with these as well as the town manager. So, yeah, so there's an unfunded mandate that we ended up budgeting approximately $80,000 for to put sanitary napkin dispensers and sanitary napkins in all of the not all of the restrooms, all of the female restrooms in both schools, as well as at least one male restroom in each of the buildings. Again, so that's an $80,000 price tag that has come with that unfunded mandate. I also, while I'm talking about unfunded mandates, I'll highlight some of the other ones. We have budgeted $104,000 for an HVAC system review that needs to be conducted next year for the first time and then every five years after that. Again, we have utilized the surplus from twenty two-twenty three to do that. You might if you're looking at the budget book that's available online right now, it is not going to be reflective of the changes that the board has made over the past several months by the utilization of surplus as well as the pre purchasing. I spent a couple hours today actually updating our budget book. I really believe we've gotten to a place right now where the 2.85%
increase where don't know if we're going to find many other corners to cut or places to to go to in the next few weeks before we end up going to you know, before we end up having the the public budget hearing and before the board sets its budget. So we're really, I'm trying to update the budget book and I anticipate having that updated and publicly available within the next few days.
Okay, and you are right. That's what I was looking at. I went online and whatever was available today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No,
thank What what I'll do is once once the once the budget book has been updated, I will make sure that I communicate directly with with Mark and Eric and let them know so that they can communicate with you all and say, the new budget book is is updated and available. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.
Other questions for Colin? Okay, I guess if we have known others then we can go ahead and move on. Colin, thank you for your time. Obviously, of Finance members, can, you know, I'm sure it's not a hard guy to reach, if something comes up we can reach out, ask the questions. But I think as most of you understand, we don't have any direct impact or authority over the budget for RAM. This is a referendum driven decision, but it is prudent and appreciated that the RAM Board will come and talk to the board of finance to help answer any questions for the talent. Eric, go ahead. You got a question or comment? No, I was going to say Eric Shevchenko,
who's the board event member, looks like he would like to speak also. Yep, I see. Eric?
Yeah. Thank you. My name is Eric Shevchenko. I lived on I live on, Bunker Hill Road in Andover, and I am a representative on the RIM board of education. I'd just like to say that last year, although the budget passed the first time through, it was voted down in Andover. And I have I have been sensitive to the concerns of the voters in Andover all along, but especially in attempting to help out with with the budget in this current year. I I believe personally that what has been presented is is extremely fair. And I say that with also some confidence that our our students are not being underserved with with this budget. So I know that in the town of Andover, there are some folks that regularly will vote no on budgets. And I would be personally thankful for any communication that comes out of the the town that would that would provide us some support in in the hopes that the voters of Andover would would come through and vote positively on this on this budget, which I see is extremely responsible. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Eric.
So Mark, I know I'll step away. I just want to again, I want to thank everybody for giving me the opportunity to be here tonight. Was it was my pleasure. Mark, as you said, I am I am available if anybody has questions. They could either send them through you or through Eric Anderson, and then I would certainly do my best to get back to people with as much information as quickly as possible. I also just briefly want to take acknowledge Eric Shevchenko and and Kirsten Erlinson, the other Andover Board of Education member. She's also here to support the budget and I appreciate both of them being here and their support of me in the presentation and and helping out with this. Thanks again. You're muted, Mark.
Thank you, Colin. Kirsten didn't mean to skip over you either. Do have anything to add or comment on while we're on the subject?
No, thank you. I have to leave for another meeting now. Perfect, Jeff. Thanks.
Okay, Colin, Kristen, thank you very much. Eric, thanks very much and good luck. We'll see you guys soon. All right. Now we will move on in our agenda to the town administrators report.
Okay, I'm going to keep this very brief. I did not submit a written report because I think the the vast majority of this meeting is and should be discussed or deal with the budget. The only thing I wanted to say is we are going to deal with some costs related to our town compliance with the Uniform Relocation Act. We did have a health code enforcement action against a renter and tenant. And we are we are legally obligated to provide them some assistance, we should be able to recoup the money eventually, but you're going to see some expenses. And that's not something we budget for or however have ever budgeted for. And I may in the next week or two make a proposal to the Board of Finance that we start allocating some money to this. Because, again, it's one of those things that it happens very infrequently, but when it does happen, you know, legally obligated to cover it. I would also say that the budget does not
the budget that you have does not include the decreases that Colin talked about today. I got those this afternoon from Colin, and I didn't want to make budget changes. Now, budget changes that may get made will get made with your permission as a Board of Finance. So that's basically it unless you have specific questions for me. Any questions for Eric?
Wasn't there some questions, Mark, that you had forwarded to Eric that he was going to cover? They were more relative to the budget topic itself,
so I think when we get into the budget discussion we'll probably cover those then.
I guess I just have one question that he just mentioned, Mark. Am I able to bring it up? Sure. I thought his, so you're saying you've got an update updated total from Ram today, Eric. Correct with what the decrease decrease was going to be correct. Okay,
I think I forwarded that to you. It's in a budget book update. I got it late. Know, not sure what time. Yeah, and no Just before the meeting. So yeah. Yeah, no problem. I wouldn't have seen it. I knew it was over 500,000.
And now I don't know if it was $5.75 or $5.35. That was only my okay. Yep. No problem. Thank you.
Okay. Anything else for Eric? Okay, well, let's move on to item five, which the original agenda was item five, is I'm sorry, yeah, budget workshop. So I guess let's let's just knock this tip requesting off. So Eric you had added this and then I think both you and rob had had mentioned to me separately that the fire Commission is looking for a new truck. So you want to give us the thirty second summary of that we clearly don't have the details I don't know rob if you're in a better position to do it or.
We were both at the meeting, so I'll just say that what was presented was this. We have two trucks. One, I believe, is a pumper, one's a rescue. They are very old. They're each roughly 30 years old, give or take a few years, And they want to consolidate down to one but need a new truck. So it would be a combo pumper rescue, I believe. The price tag on, it's about a million dollars. If you were to buy it outright, we don't have the money put aside. Therefore, they looked into lease options. And if memory serves, there were three different lease lengths that they had worked up. It's like a seven year or ten year and I forget the third one was longer. The pricing was a couple of weeks old, and there was some concern that it might not be current. But if memory serves, the ten year cost was a $114,000 a year and change. So that's the request I'm anticipating, but we don't have it yet. I had asked during the CIP meeting if they could get us the updated pricing, get it to Eric for Monday of this week, and then he could get it to us in the events of this meeting. Obviously, that hasn't happened. So, Eric, if you have anything to add on that, please do.
Sure, I asked the CIP rep from the Fire Department, Sean Goble to come in. He and I spent an hour or so going over the proposal and what I thought he would need to present to the Board of Finance. So, which is basically I'm assuming that you guys are going to want to see the fire department's capital plan. The list of what they're actually proposing to purchase. And then at the same time, an understanding of what the town's finance options are, and what the availability of these units are. Cobol will be prepared to present that. And the question I have for you is at what meeting would you like that presentation so I can tell Sean and get the information packet to you regarding that?
Well, my my initial reaction is as soon as possible. That's a big impact to the budget, so they should really have it prepared for next Wednesday. You want it next Wednesday?
I I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Same by just Do they have the updated pricing yet, Eric?
Yeah. I think they're I there is some information out there on the loan loan valuations. Yes. Okay.
Okay. Just for giggles, I went into the budget spreadsheet and plugged in, you know, 114,000 added to the budget and it, you know, right now we have a projected budget decrease about 1% and that shaves it to 0.5% basically. The other thing that came out of that meeting that I remember for the presentation was that it's something like two years to get the truck, which is why they want to do it now.
Because pay the lease That kind of lag time. Down payment.
Yeah. That's the part I don't I don't fully understand, and I think we need a a detailed presentation on. Yeah. Okay. But I I know that that part of the reason they wanna do this, you know, they to the extent that this feels like it's being sprung on us, I think it is partly driven by the delay, how long it's gonna take to actually get the truck.
Yeah, just like the plow trucks, gotta act on the well advanced warning when you really need the equipment. All right, yeah, I mean, I think, Eric, we put this on next week's agenda, and again, just a reminder that next week is a special meeting, which means that we cannot make any changes to the agenda, but we can put this on and if they have nothing to present for one reason or another or they need to come back they can always, you know, we don't need to take action, but I think we should add it to the agenda for next week. Okay. Anybody else from the board have any comments or questions? Bill, is it your hand up? No. Okay.
Okay, there was one other small request that the Economic Development Committee had requested that the Board of Finance consider funding one welcome to Andover sign. This is about the fourth or fifth year in a row they've asked for that. I think this is the first time CIP actually agreed to it. So as soon as I get the minutes from CIP's meeting, which I don't have yet, I will pass that on to you also.
If memory serves, it was $5,000. 4,850, something like that. It one sign or two signs like one either renovator or just one sign? I think they wanted to start with one and then maybe come back and ask for more or some other time. I think that was the idea. Maybe put one on either side of the Dollar General sign. Okay. Well, I guess we'll wait for details on that one too then. Right. That one is a kind of a rounding error in comparison to the truck, but yes, that's common.
Okay. All right. Well, any other questions related to the CAP requests? Okay, I guess we'll move on to the general budget question. So Eric, we did have several questions that we had reviewed and sent to you in advance. So I can either show my screen and go through those or if you want to go ahead and address them. I think that it would be prudent for the board just to go ahead and take those in each turn and you can talk about, you know, my view, they're the ones that are most likely to be controversial or raise questions because they are significant variances from the previous year for one reason or another,
or not clear about the need for the expenditure or what's driving them.
Mark, why don't you share that way I could keep my notes up in the background on my second screen.
Okay. So what I'll do is I'll just pop up, well, I'll tell you what I'll think that I have them.
But I can answer while he's doing that. The first two questions that Mark had sent me was the value of the Dollar General store. What does that add to down taxation? So in October 2022, when it was appraised, it was at the 80% construction stage. So that's the basis for this year's assessment. The land was appraised at 384,000. The building was appraised at that time at 1,406,000. So, the total was 1,790,000, which gives it an assessed, a current assessed value of 1,250,000. So, given the proposed mill rate, that's about 39,700 in tax dollars a year generated by that building. But remember, that was at the 80% completion rate. So, you can assume next year that will go up, you know, dollars 5,000 or $6,000 So, somewhere you can assume that building will net about $45,000 a year in tax revenue to the town. So that's the answer to the first question. The second question has was that regarding the Board of Selectmen's request or the desire to purchase another vehicle for senior transportation. And the question was, do they want to do it out of this year's budget or next year's budget? And the answer is they want to do it out of this year's budget. But the question is whether that's really possible. And I don't feel like we're far enough along in the budget year for me to really be able to tell you explicitly,
we're going to have the money in this year's budget to do that. We've already spent some money out of contingency. And we know we're going to be short revenue in the town clerk's office, as well as the building department, because we've there been a lot less houses sold and there's been a lot less building permits hold than we anticipated in that budget based on the previous year's rates. On the other hand, it looks like the resident state trooper line is probably going to come in quite a bit under budget. But again, that's a probably. I would not bank that one till August. So, guess what I'm saying is I don't personally feel confident at this point that we can definitively say we can fund that vehicle out of this year's budget. So hence the reason why it was in next year's budget.
Okay, Joanne, you have a question or point? You're muted again. Came off and then he popped on.
This this laptop. I just I didn't know if we're gonna, you know, address them as he goes rather than going back. So I just I appreciate knowing that because it is in this year's budget and I had listened to multiple meetings where it was, you know, I mean the budget we're considering next year's budget And I had listened to multiple meetings where it was definitely spoken about as trying to purchase it this year. So I just want the Board of Finance to know that that was thank you. So thank you know, didn't have to be long. Just wanted to make sure we're aware it could come off our budget.
Yeah, that's a that's a really good point. Glad you brought that up and frankly I missed that line item when I was going through and shame on me, but I was really looking for differences year over year. Yeah, because that one didn't even have an account number associated with it. I missed the fact that number was in there and in its subtotal. So until you pointed that out, I adjusted. So it's good to have that information. Just in case, yeah. Thank you. Okay. Anybody have any questions for Eric on those particular questions? Okay. Let's go ahead and we'll take a look at the draft budget. Are you seeing the budget screen sharing? Probably don't need to see yourselves. Let me see if I can like it was just up You're just seeing the Excel file? Yep. Okay. A little small but
It's just because they're in a small laptop. Yeah this is it's gonna be a little tough to to see potentially. Let me try to zoom in here a little bit. So the first set of questions we had were over the revenue line. So one of the things you had here, Eric, is that on these intergovernmental revenues, have governors proposed. The quick question I had originally is, you know, do we have any sense of what the confidence is in these numbers? Do they tend to be pretty solid? You know, what are your thoughts?
So interestingly enough, asked that question today to the Capital Regional Council of Governments, legislative lobbyists, and I also talked to a couple people in the legislature about what they thought about it. So they all kind of felt that, generally speaking, the governor's proposals will probably be the lower limit of what we get. So the revenue probably won't be worse than what that is. The only one, you know, which they're, they're still hemming and hawing on is ECS funds, because the larger towns and the poorer towns are still making a big push to further reform ECS funds and push a greater and greater fraction
to the schools with much higher poverty levels than Andover. So just for everyone's benefit, ECS is educational cost sharing. That's how they reallocate some of the available monies to the maybe disadvantaged or less advantaged districts.
Right. So if we're going to lose something, that's where we're going to lose it. But I know a lot of the small towns and cost, which is council small towns, has been lobbying really hard to reverse that. Because as some of you probably know about three years ago, two years ago, they came out with a new formula for ECS, which would have resulted in Andover the last two years getting reduction in ECS funding. But, so we got some of the reduction, but we didn't get most of the reduction because the small towns screamed enough that they kind of backfilled, even though they kept increasing the amount of money to the schools with high poverty rates, they backfilled the smaller towns. So, it didn't actually go down like it was scheduled to go down. So, the governor said he thought that was it was time to fully enact the funding. And this would be the funding level at that level. I don't know. I mean, I wish I had a better sense for you. But this is the long legislative session. So, means they've got till sometime in June to pass a budget. And typically with the biennial budget at the earliest would be mid May before we have a really solid inclination of what the legislature and the governor is going to have for final budget.
Alright, that makes sense to me. It seems like a reasonable answer. Obviously, the ECS is the biggest line item there, but I think it's good that you got some input from The Congo, obviously, so it's good. Anybody have any questions for Eric on that? Okay, next one we had is the building and land use fees. So this is the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four as proposed. I wasn't totally sure on the note that you had in here, but I'm thinking basically what you're doing is annualizing what we've gotten so far and then basically spreading that out. In other words, this reflects the reduction in the land use fees that we were experiencing now post pandemic.
Correct, correct. And it's basically we have more than twelve months of data through Permit Link for the building department, but we don't because we started using permit link for zoning and wetlands less than a year ago. We don't have twelve full months of data. So, those are some of those are corrected for the fact that we didn't have twelve months of data, but that's normalized. So, I mean, that's the best guess we have that building is down a little bit. You know, so that seems to be a reasonable estimation of what we're gonna get from the building department as a whole.
Okay. Anybody have any other questions from that? Okay. Next line item, mileage. Was just a little confused. It says per contract. Does that just mean there's a per contract mileage reimbursement?
Yeah, so what that means is is our shared services contract has a built in $100 a month expense for mileage.
Oh, it's a built in flat fee it's that is gonna be a fair amount so that is with flat fee. Okay. It. Got it. Okay.
Can I ask a further question? I mean, I so who? Who it so shared? So it is a flat fee. I'm sorry I should have. It's not mileage reimbursement. For.
Well, it is a flat fee, but it it it is for the fact that the building official does not have. He's not supplied a vehicle,
so that covers his cost for wear and tear. I didn't know who it went with because we're doing separate, you know, things and I can't see the look. You for the building official and the mileage. Right, of course. It.
There might be better ways to to look at this. No, you're fine. I mean, it's my eye, So I'm just looking close. I mean, but if the way I had it rolled up, can't really see what the category is. That was it. Yeah, that was my.
That was confusing me because I have it on my screen. I'm trying to follow.
Yeah, yeah. So I unrolled it. I should unhid the other rows. Hopefully this will be a little easier. So this is the mile just under the town administrator. Got it. That was my just follow-up. Yep. Okay.
Alright, so the next item I think we can. Eric probably doesn't have the data for this one. Was some questions we had about the town clerk salary. We'll look for some explanation to more basically the rationale. On the request from the town clerk on this it's a significant salary increase and there's some blurb there, this is what the town clerk requested based on I think claimed was a claim, but the increased election duties and that the salary has been substantially lower than comparable talents for several years. So we have some comparative data on that, but we also I think can wait and see if we get something from the town clerk on that before we make a decision on that. Is everybody Okay with that or did we have anything to discuss there?
Mark, I was going to make a general statement not getting in-depth at all. Just heard we have a lot of new members on this committee. We have some veterans, of course, and even before me. But yeah, I mean, what I had noticed in the three years that I watched was there were percentage raises given that are generally what you see in towns and of that nature. And I believe just for history until we do hear from the town clerk or a response is like I believe it was a 6% last year, so she got a little bit like got it was a bigger bump than the rest of the MI. You know, Eric can confirm that, but I thought that that was just discussed at like board of selectman meetings and then that went forward. And so this year it was significant, know, kind of showed up as a big big amount. So that's all. So I I'm with you if we're waiting for. Have you gotten a response to your request yet?
No, haven't. Yeah. So and and Eric, when did when did you when did all the departments get their requests into you? Was it in January at some point? The initial one? Yeah, end of December, beginning of January. Yep, because I know you request it and then you get that little spreadsheet with all of the Okay, all right, thanks. I'm with you, Mark, whatever you decide to do with this, we can table this discussion. Unless other members too. I just wanted to say my history of seeing it. I actually have a question. Yeah.
Okay. Was that 28% based on the increased number of hours that the town clerk does with the extra, like the election duties and all that? I mean, how was the rationale?
How do they figure out that 28%? To me, it's not clear. I mean, the office hours are set. In fact, that's one question we have. It's about thirty two or thirty four hours a week. I see that. Yeah, but I don't know exactly and I think that's why we requested I sent her an email and basically said, you know we'd just like you to help help us understand this, you can either send something in writing if you prefer or you know or peer to town, you know one of our budget workshop meetings and just explain. Or a combination of both and I haven't heard back from right just sent that a day or two ago.
And that's true for the assistant town clerk as well, you asked for that to.
The assistance, a union position and I'm only in Mark and you know, if it's okay that I speak, I've gotten kind of involved with the employees and the benefits and then on, you know, some union negotiation committees and you know the interview process. I do that in my own line of work, so I took an interest in the town in general. So the assistant town clerk is a unionized position. The rate is different than it's in the contract. I'm gonna be totally transparent with our board here. So we can wait and discuss it all together. But I was told maybe the board of selectmen had, and this is just what I was told, set the rate for the there was a town clerk that came into the office this year. So I think that's where the increase comes from there.
You know, it's in a The part of assistant town clerk, you're saying is a union position, Eric? It's union position. So I can speak to that. Yes.
Town clerk is an elected position and that does not fall under my auspices at all. I have no control over elected officials. The assistant town clerk is a union position. The Board of Selectmen made the decision after the last time we had to hire another assistant town clerk that the pay scale was way low for the expectations of the position. And they also recognize that we've gone through five assistant town clerks in about five years. And we were not getting a good pool of candidates. So, they made a decision to increase the salary for that position to $20 an hour from it was basically around $16 an hour. So that was a Board of Selectmen decision
and instruction made, which we then relayed to the union. So they can actually do that for the union, they can actually go higher than the union negotiated rate?
That's what my question would be. I thought there was a union rate like when I dealt with unions, everybody was paid the same and you had the same increases every year because so that's my question Eric.
That's always a tricky one. There's no question. So what you do is you simply tell the union that you want a memorandum of understanding with the union regarding a particular position. But I will tell you the union will never block you from increasing the compensation to one of their members.
Well, in here, there's nobody comparable, right? So there's the one person that does this. So as long as you're treating that person solely and not biasing one person or one position versus another, I can see where they would be completely happy about that.
Eric, there an MOU in this case? And again, I personally don't mind saying I agree with that position was so low. Having been involved in seeing all the contracts, that position was substantially low. If that's all. And I wasn't, you know, I was just sharing information that I've uncovered. Yeah, so they would do an MOU with that just to finalize my thought, Mark, just with this whole group in general. I mean, it is interesting that everything it's unfortunate that we didn't get a response because it is important. You know, the initial request went out, Eric said in December or January, You know, so it came back in with the couple lines that were written there. Yeah.
And I thought it would be good to have a summary of why, that's all, and then move the discussion forward. I think we need to have before we make a decision and just for the record I'm also in agreement with that salary rate. Mean you know we're paying unskilled labor that in my operations and my day job just because that's the going rate. And here you have somebody who's working part time and certainly has to have some
significant And the person covers the office of the town clerk a lot in her absence too, so she has to take on all the responsibility, him or her, whoever it is. So it was low. Other
questions or comments on that before we move on? Bill? I had a question. So first of all, apologize for my ignorance. What is an MOU? Go ahead, Herb.
It stands for a memorandum of understanding. Basically, anytime midstream or changing a union contract, you are like anytime you do something that affects the working conditions of a union employee, you have to negotiate with the union over the impact of those changes. In this case, we don't actually have a written MOU from the union. We did inform the union we were doing it and asked them if they had any questions. And they were interested in, you know, what are they going to bargain for? They're already getting, you know, an increase in salary, so they have nothing to bargain for. We also had to put in a memorandum of understanding when we hired our new finance associate. I did formally request the union put in it, you know, I gave them a draft MOU and asked them to bargain over that because we are changing the hours of the position relative to what Marina was working, which was the last MOU that we had in effect for that position. But I have not heard back from the union yet. But I mean, we're we've sent them a request. So we're in a sense bargaining in good faith for that position,
if that makes sense. Yeah, we've had to do that a couple of times when hours changed or days changed or, you know, extended
overtime that kind of thing. Yep, Bill. So my second question was, and I don't know if this is the proper form, I'm just throwing it out there. Anybody can see this budget will other union members say, wait a minute, like this is awful large increase. Aren't we entitled to a bigger increase? I'm just wondering, is that a danger here when you do something like this? I'm not debating the salary. I'm not debating. I'm just saying, is it visible to other union people that could say, well, that's a big increase for this person. What are you doing for the rest of your union members? I'm just wondering if that's maybe Eric, you could speak to that. Like, how does that work?
Yeah, it's always an issue and all of these documents are FOIA able. So, for instance, the union has a copy of all the union contracts we have with the other unions. They get a copy of the annual budget, so they know exactly what we budget for personnel. So, they know the information and it is a concern. There's no question. You know, but the reality is that position was a revolving door. And I mean, we were getting people poached from that position. I mean, our last good one before the one we have now got poached by the town of Coventry and got paid $6 an hour more than we were paying them for the same job.
I don't have an issue with the amount. I'm just my issue was whether or other union employees are gonna take issue with that person getting that size raised. I think I understand.
Eric, was there a reason there wasn't an MOU so that everybody because you said you reached out, but you don't have an official MOU. Is it just
because they weren't particularly interested. It wasn't something it was only a positive to their employees, so they weren't gonna bother going through an MOU with us.
Okay. Makes sense. Because we're giving them more than they're asking for. Right. But it protects both sides, though. That's the MO under you know, memo of understanding takes both signatures. So it's the town signing one and then the union signing one.
Right. I would have been happy to sign an MOU with them. I I requested, but I can't make them just to sign one. Sorry. Okay. So they generate it. It's it's different where I work. We sometimes generate them. Okay.
And I know the contract's still that's the contract that's not settled yet either. So gotcha. Okay. Okay.
Anything else on those? Yeah. Just really quick. When we do get hopefully get some information from the town clerk on the salary increase request, I'd like to see some sort of breakdown between the election duty issue and the other town salaries comparability issue. How much is each? And then we can discuss from there. That's all.
Hopefully, we'll get some good input from Carol or her presentation or the opportunity to ask her questions so we can act reasonably on that one.
Hey, Mark, and this is just procedure. It would probably make sense just to bring it up here and then it can happen in following years. Probably things like this when they're requested and it's such a big jump would be great to talk about having backup provided to us. Because I know I did mention that to you, and I wanna be fully transparent. I think maybe and I don't know how the request goes out with from Eric, but, if there's anything substantial in a request, would be great to have the backup there at the time, and then we wouldn't have to ask for it. Yep. Just a thought for the future. Yep.
Yep, I'd love it if department heads actually gave me supporting documentation for most of their budgets and I didn't have to draw it out.
Yeah, and as Eric said, doesn't really work for him so he's got limited pull but I think we just make that clear that you know if there's anything unusual in that budget that needs to be clear, you know, the variance. Anything else on that? Okay, we'll move down. The next one we had was this question about the contract software maintenance. Eric, you had TBD, no pricing yet. I was just curious when we are going to have it have pricing and there's no increase built in there. So should there be or do we expect to have something before we go final on this? It's not a big, big number. I mean, but you've got budgeted increases every year for that past three years and we don't have one here. Right.
So I did ask the town clerk to get me updated pricing because they should have had that by now. Unfortunately, she's off today and tomorrow, but I should have that by the next meeting because that covers the two main which covers it's primarily the cost of QDS and then the cost of vision appraisal because that office requires a subscription to both of those programs. So it should just be the combined cost of those two. So I should be able to get you a hard number for that, because we should know that by now. Okay. So maybe next meeting, we'll plug that in? Yep. Okay.
All right. Nobody has any other questions? I guess we'll move on to the next one we had here. Training on the question, are we using this? I'm not sure what that is for, it was for the assessor's training. I I think there may not have been expenses on here, but this has been climbing.
Yeah, the cost for the so this is just a question of whether she's actually going to use it From. So, and this is kind of stupid it says training but it's not training. It's the certifications for the assessor, not the assessor. Basically, Roberta has started the process of getting certified as an assessor, but she's only about halfway through her coursework. She had indicated that she was interested in considering. Some of the coursework hasn't been offered for a couple of years because of COVID. But
I didn't, you know, that budget came from her, not from me. Okay, I mean, it's not a huge amount, but I think that there hasn't been expenditures against the budget previously. Maybe that's why we got flagged.
It's been a couple of years since she's gone, taken any of the training courses, but I know some of that hasn't existed during COVID. COVID. Yeah. I think that's what, why I was asking the question. So, yeah. And you'll see also under, books and subscriptions, There's a lot of uncertainty in that because it looks like for at least one more year, we're going to have to continue to purchase the NADA books because the legislature as of this year was supposed to switch over the valuation method for all cars. But it looks like it's going to get delayed implementation will get delayed for at least a year, which means we do have to I was hoping we could eliminate that and wouldn't be required to buy the books because it's kind of stupidly expensive for what you get.
K. Alright. Going down further on the registrars I assume this mileage number is just an estimated amount. That's not contractual or anything like that is it? No, that's not contractual. Yeah just the IRS rate. Yep. Okay, so we had another one here. You had a membership under the registrars and that was zeroed out and looks like you had a note. Do we know why this was eliminated? It's not full sentence there, but I think it's just a typo.
Right. I mean, so I reached out to them and he basically said, well, we really don't have to pay for that. So, you know, we kind of took it out of the budget. So that's why it's out.
Okay. Anybody has any other questions on these specific topics, they want more detail from Eric, just let me know.
Right. So elections, I asked Wally and Linda, I told them that you as a board would probably want to hear from them directly on that. And that's another one of those things I've been keeping an eye on the legislative or rulemaking process for this. Because as you, as most of you know, the, the state passed a constitutional amendment which allows for early voting. But now they have to actually make the sausage and figure out when and how many days and how many people have to be there and how long it is it on the weekends. So, there's a lot of unknowns. The good news for us is that it looks like it's only going to affect the big election. You know, it's not going to affect like the smaller referendums and stuff like that. So, it's not as big a hit to the budget as if it required those, all those extra days for each election. But we really don't know what the impact of that is yet, because there's, you know, it's, they've been talking about everything from three extra days of voting to sixteen extra days of voting. So, if it's sixteen extra days of voting and we're required to have four people there for twelve hours a day,
that's a much bigger salary hit than if it's two hours, you know, and it's ten hours a day. So, we just frankly don't know. And that also affects the registrars because they're requiring, they will be requiring same day registration along with voting. So, is going to impact both the town clerk and her duties as well as the registrar. But how badly? Again, we just do not know yet because they haven't made that particular sausage.
Okay. So that that I was just a little concerned that the increase we posted there, it's only about $1,500 is adequate to cover the changes that we may need to be legally obligated to take.
Yeah, I mean, again, there's always some padding in those budgets anyway, because you don't know how many referendums we're going to need to pass budgets and things like that. So, I mean, there's no question that the worst case scenario, you know, if you get stuck with 16, you know, more than two weeks of early voting, and you've got to have full manning at the, at registration, then, you know, we're going to exceed that budget. But I don't feel like you can necessarily plan for worst case scenario, because I think it's going to come out somewhere more more moderate, but I don't know. That's just my fair enough. There is a there is a possibility
that the state will, one of the things cost and some of the small towns have advocated for, is that if they're going to be on the more extreme end of the spectrum, because nobody will be able to have budgeted for it properly, that the state for the first year will assume, you know, a greater share of the costs for the elections. So again, you know, I don't think that's a bad number, but,
you know, it's uncertain. I mean, it's not a make or break number. Right. And I agree with you it doesn't make sense to budget for worst case scenario so maybe we're good. I think that question needed to be asked and Anybody have any other comments on that or questions? Okay, moving down to the next one. This is Row 119. Had a 58% increase in the wages for the Inland Wetlands Commission. That's what IWC is, right? Yeah, that's actually a typo.
It's not carrying over the right column from the other worksheet. His the increase in the IWWC wages is 3%, not 58%. Ah, okay.
And I don't know why because I looked on my spreadsheet and it's correct. So I don't know why it carries over like that on the one you showed.
Oh, I wonder if, Brinker made a copy and paste error because they just happen to notice the numbers exactly the same here. Yeah. I wonder if I just inadvertently dragged it up. Okay maybe you're not interested then. Okay. Okay.
I'll verify the one that emailed and make sure that that's corrected. So that number gets transferred from the building department. Yeah.
So just check which you may have changed that page and just been off one on the the redirect. That's my guess. Yeah.
So it should be this. It should be Correct. D6, yep, okay. It's not right now. Bingo, thank you. Yep. Okay, next one was this town planner position. So Joanne had asked a question about, know, just to clarify the expected hours per week and just for the rest of the board, anyone who hasn't really been following, there was in the last board of selecting the meeting, there was a pretty good presentation. Done by names escaping me right now somebody who's active as town planner for us before he's now a full time town planner and other miss ality and he made a pretty strong case for why it makes sense to have a part time town planner serving the town of Andover. Unfortunately, that meeting I'm not sure the recording is even available that portion because it got hacked and we had some nastiness going on so it was unpleasant there. So even if you went back to review it I'm not sure if it's available or not but there was a pretty pretty solid case I thought made for the benefit of a town planner for the town of Andover. So this would be a part time thing I guess. Eric, what do you what do you anything to add to that?
Yeah, so what the town is proposing, so to back up a little bit, in about a year and a half, two years, the town has to update its plan of conservation and development. That's a state requirement. So we have been putting money aside every year for that. We're supposed to have been right since the last budget, but for some reason there's a lot less money in that fund than there should be. That's a side that I'm working with Cheryl to try to understand why. But anyway, we went out to RFP earlier this year for a consultant to do our RFP or to do the plan of conservation and development since, you know, we know it's due and usually tend try to start that thing eighteen months to two years before it's actually due,
because it's a fairly long lag time to develop that document. So we got two bids back. We interviewed both. We were, everybody who was at the interviews was, you know, in agreement with hiring a firm called Tai Chi. And subsequent to that, we had the Tai Chi, the proposal was pretty expensive. It was around $72,000 which was problematic since we only had about $25,000 in the fund to pay for it. But at the same time, we had a conversation with the principal about, because one of the things we did with the last plan of conservation and development is we had a guy named Bill Warner do it. And then the following year, we hired Bill again on a contract basis for about a year to implement stages of the plan of conservation development. So what we've essentially reached a conclusion with Tai Chi is that they we will hire them as our town planner, and they will do the plan of conservation and development just as the one of their primary tasks for the first couple of years as the planner. The cost difference between hiring them for two years as the town planner and what they would have charged us just to do the plan of conservation and development is I think around $20,000 more. So we decided that was probably
financially a better bet since we knew we wanted, we really wanted to push for a town planner anyway. So the goal is basically to hire Tai Chi. Their service is basically $48,000 a year for each of the member towns that hire them. We get the services of their principal planner one full day a week, plus a little extra. They do the plan of conservation and development as part of their job, and they provide other services to the town. Now, the reason this budget says $36,000 and I just said 48 is because what the town is going to do is the town is going to take around $12,000 a year from the existing POCD implementation fund and use it to decrease the cost of the town planner. And then at the same time, the town is going to decrease the legal and professional staff services line item for the planning and zoning commission, because some of that slack is going to be taken up by the town planner, which will save about $5,000 a year. And then we will not put money into the POCD implementation fund because we will be doing that with the town planner. So, when you take all those things together, the net impact to the budget is around $26,000 a year to the town to hire a town planner, at least for the first couple of years. And then once the POCD is done, then the town can make a decision. Is this worth to continue, you know, at his full rate? Or do we go to like, instead of a fifth of a planner, do we go down to half that?
So that that's kind of where the Board of Selectmen was going with that. It's it's kind of convoluted because there's a lot of different parts to that.
Okay. And it should show show on this line is 36,000? Correct. And we have the offsets baked in the other lines?
Correct. Okay. And if you do want to review the meeting where it was discussed, we did edit the tape to get out some of the to eliminate the portions where we got hacked. So most of the presentation by Bill Warner is available. If you want other commentary, I could probably send you all what Bill Warner Bill Warner's report to the town he worked in for last year, his summary of last year's efforts. And I could probably send you a similar document from the individual we're actually considering hiring. If you guys want to see more supporting documentation for that. Any other questions for Eric on that?
Just a question on what you just I did listen to the presentation and like Mark I was, you know, I went into it thinking one thing and he was pretty impressive the way he laid it out. How it takes years to come together, but you just said at the end, Eric, you have an individual that you have in mind. Is that what you just said?
Yeah, I mean, we've already gone to done an RFP for planning services. Gotcha. So I think the because we we did that and we clearly had a planning service that we preferred, I think it's within our policy down planner, as opposed to going back out to bid, but that that would, you know, we would do that. That's what the Planning and Zoning Commission wants to do anyway. And
just a follow-up, I know we're not having a huge discussion tonight. That was one of the data points why I wanted to know, you know, about how much tax income or however you want taxation is generated by like having more, you know, a little bit more of a commercial base, you know, and I know a town planner is instrumental in all of those kind of things, and you know, I'll leave it at that. So I kind of was in my head too, like deciding and thinking, well, how much does that bring in yearly to take some of the burden off? You know, having a planner that works on things like that. I know there's a contingent in town that's very big on the planner, and I'm not here to say yes or no. But,
yeah, that was my point financially, how much even just one business brings into a town. Thank you.
In most towns, the town planner is the primary grant writer for the town. If you looked through Bill's presentation, you would have seen in the last four years, you know, something like $9,000,000 in grant money brought into the town of East Tatham for various projects. And East Tatham's about twice the size of Andover. I am not a bad grant writer, but I have an awful lot of other responsibilities on my time. It would be wonderful to have somebody to share the load of grant writing with.
That was another key point and I was gonna ask it, you brought it up, this would help alleviate you from that because you've been doing that.
Right, and the the guy we're actually hiring, potentially hiring John, when I had that discussion with him, he said that on average, he had been netting for towns somewhere between four and six times his annual salary in grant funding. So, you know, the reality is the ability to have somebody that can, you know, there's a lot of money out there. If you have somebody that's capable of really going after it and chasing it in, and that's a large part of what a town planner would do. I personally advocated for the Board of Selectmen, you know, from many times over the last ten years that they needed to hire a town planner, and that they were kind of screwing themselves by not doing it. But what really sold the deal was actually bringing Bill Warner in, you know, to talk to the board of selectmen directly and explain like what a planner actually does and and what you get out of the deal. Billions of dollars, potentially.
Yeah. He spoke well. I mean, it was a good presentation until you know? But I yeah. I just wanted to add that too. Thanks.
Sure. Okay. All right. Well, nothing else on that, well, I mean, I think that one is I would urge the Board of Finance members if you haven't seen that or you have questions or real concerns about that expense, as we mentioned, was a fairly convincing argument. Came in maybe skeptical also as Joanne mentioned and certainly he made a pretty powerful argument for him.
So it sounds like the position more than pays for itself. With the right person. Yeah. With the right person running grants. Mean, like a full time headcount. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.
It's not gonna be instantaneous because for the first couple of years, his primary focus has to be producing the BOCD. But, you know, in frankly, the town desperately needs to be working on its affordable housing and a few other things which are really in the wheelhouse of a town planner. So this is something we definitely need, you know, in my opinion.
All right. Well, if anybody has anything else. Other question I had here was computer tech support. We just had a small increase built in there. It didn't seem to reflect the increases we've had year to year, Eric.
Yes. Is there a number on there? That number is off slightly. I finally got through and, you know, we've kind of agreed on a COLA for this year. That number should be 11,461. So it's not an awful lot, but it it should be a little higher than that. Okay. So we have we have a final
number. Yep. Very good. Thank you. Okay, going down to the electricity, just 21% increase. Is that just based kind of on the supply rate increases that we're getting statewide?
So that is part of it. We are insulated to some extent because we use Constellation not ever sourced directly for our supplier. But that also factors in the fact that we are intending to increase the reliance on electricity for heat as we switch the town hall over to ductless split systems, which should occur this year, which should decrease fuel oil consumption and correspondingly increase electrical consumption. So that's a portion of that.
Okay. So that is the explanation for the next line item? Correct. It's a 31% decrease in fuel oil. Which I guess since it was a decrease, I didn't call it out, but it would have been unusual otherwise since it's fuel oil. Right. Well, it's probably not going down that much. So okay, that explains it. No, and actually our cost is going up. Those departments that you other places you've got a budgeted an increase. Correct. Let's see what else we have here. Furnace maintenance, you've got $1,000 this is under the tile garage. So really two questions, we budgeting this separately for a reason? Why wouldn't we just put it under building maintenance or something? We really need another line item in this budget specifically for that and or was it just not budgeted for previously?
Well, it got taken out of the budget last year. And honestly, part of the reason why I like to keep that in because I to me one of the ways, know, because the cost of furnace replacement is a big ticket item. And I kind of like being able to monitor your maintenance costs separately, just so it doesn't get swallowed up in the whole building maintenance budget. But I'm not hard fast on it. You know, if you don't wanna see it, you can roll it back into the rest of the building maintenance budget. I just kinda like to see it separately.
All right. I think that's a good explanation. I don't have a problem with that. I was really just wanting to hear if there was a rationale for it because I think we tried to trim some of the extraneous line items out of this budget a couple of years ago and that was benefit I think. You had me in monitoring maintenance costs, I'm okay with that. I like that idea, but if anybody else has any concerns about it, can certainly discuss. It's not a big number, just again trying to keep it as clear and simple as possible. Capital Region Council of Governments, you've got no data yet. Again, I guess you you really don't have a history. Are you gonna get a number for this one? I mean, you really haven't budgeted for an increase.
No, I mean, at this point, I know cost isn't going up and I haven't seen it on paper, but I've heard that CCM is not going up. I don't know Prague yet. The Prague budget Prague has not approved a budget and they're probably not going to for a while. But looking at their, the only kind of big ticket item that the crowd did was they are moving next year to a new much bigger facility, but they got, they got grant offset to pay for that. So I'm actually not anticipating any big changes in any of those line items, which is why I didn't account for it.
Okay, fair enough. It's not it's not a big number. Just I want to make sure we're not overlooking anything in the final.
Right. And likewise, I do not yet have a budget from the probate court. You know, tend not to give you a budget very early. Oh, yeah. Again, it's not, you know, it might be off by a couple $100 one way or the other, but it's not going to be a big number. Yeah, you're not really seeing much year to year increases there. So we didn't. Correct.
Public works overtime salary you got a 39% increase on this line just wondering what the basis for that is.
Yeah we've been actually ramping up pretty consistently the amount of OT and there's kind of three buckets that over time comes out of or is used for. One is emergency storm response. The second is normal work stuff that can be done more efficiently if you finish things in a single day, which sometimes don't work out to an even eight hour day. Like if you're mobilizing equipment and you got to bring the stuff back, it's a hell of a lot more efficient to just stay there, you know, and budget a couple extra, you know, three hours of overtime and keep the guys there till it's done, move the stuff once. So, that's part of it. The other part is we are talking about using, so we are going back and forth with our chip seal contractor about ways to save money on chip seal. One of them is for us to provide more of the flagging in the road guard service, either with our own guys or with. We also use a couple other town residents that are not public works employees, but that have gone through the certified flagger. But because they're union employees, once it hits 02:30, you cannot dismiss union employees if you're running non union people as flaggers on jobs. So you got to be able to transition to your union employees
for the late hours. So, that's part of it. I think it's overall more of a cost savings doing it that way than it is doing all of the essentially subbing out all the flagging, know, doing it the other way, which is make the contractor responsible for all the flagging. So that's really the difference in cost there.
Okay. I mean, again, not a huge number, but all these things are adding up and if it's a variance, we talk about it. Absolutely.
You know, this one's up diesel. I just I didn't flag it because it's diesel. Costs are higher, right?
There's kind of two things that go into it. One, the contract that we signed for diesel is an increase versus last year, pretty significant. We are locked in for the year already, but we're locked in quite a bit higher than last year. And the second factor is we ended the last budget season with completely essentially out of money and completely dry tanks. And we're probably going to end this season the same way. So, that starts to build a little bit back. So, hopefully we're not ending the season with completely dry diesel tanks anymore. Because the tank we have holds about $6,000 or 6,000 gallons. And to put it in perspective, last year at the end of the year, we went over our allotment, you know, we put in like $500 500 gallons just to get us into the new fiscal year and the new contract. So that's what that is for.
Supplies, you got a pretty big bump there. I don't know if that's a, you know, fifteen second explanation.
To be perfectly honest with you, that's a Jake question, not an Eric question. I can't answer that off the top of my head, but I can get you an answer. Yeah, mean it got weird because we were budgeted 15,000
thousand dollars dropped down to a budget of $3,000 up to $15,005 and now we're at 18,500 so it's just not clear to me what that was really driving that.
That that. Yeah that that's kind of a weird one that took place when so the that took place with the. The changeover in budget from Phoenix to edmunds They were accounting for supplies in different spots. I don't think the budget really decreased down to 3,000 for a year. Just got allocated different. Where they were allocating money. Yeah. Okay.
But I would also say that, you know, public works is facing some really stiff cost increases, both in, you know, parts for vehicles and maintenance. There's a lot of things in that department that are significantly
more expensive than than they have been. Yeah, parts and services absolutely are, you know, they're driving up most of the parts, Okay. On this one salt, just wondering, know, you had a note here, large salt cost per ton increase I think that's mostly been in effect this year, so you know we did bump it up quite a bit, not a ton. No pun intended there last time and then a little bit here we 're feeling okay about that number.
Yeah, I mean what we've this year obviously we're going to be in good shape and we're going to be able to put about 400. It looks like we'll probably put 400 to 500 tons in the salt shed to start off next year, which will help. The second thing we've been doing, has saved us a fair bit of money is instead of in years past, we used all treated salt. And we've gone to buying straight salt and treated salt. And we use non treated or straight salt early in the year or when it's likely to be warmer. And that stuff's a lot cheaper. It's like a $10 a ton cheaper, $12 a ton cheaper than treated salt. So, we've offset some of the increase in cost
by just being smarter about what salt we buy.
What's the difference, Eric? What is treated salt? What is that?
So straight salt is just rock salt, sodium chloride, big pellets. Treated salt means they add magnesium, liquid magnesium chloride to it. So, the advantage of that is it's effective at a much lower temperature. You know, regular rock salt, you know, when it gets below around 10 degrees is fairly useless and the treated salt, you know, works to below zero, not super effectively, but it still works. So that's the difference. It also does a lot more damage to vehicles. Straight salt's bad, treated salt is really bad. So anytime we can use straight salt instead of treated salt, you know.
I didn't realize that. Okay. Moving on down, we had ground care mowing. Think we had a question about what is
being covered by that. Yeah, so this is a kind of catchall category. So the things that go under the mowing slash ground care budget are one, the maintenance of our athletic field. So that covers the cost of mowing pesticide and fertilizer application by Hebron Parks and Recs. It also covers any repairs to the sprinkler system on that field. And it also pays for a contract with LNC Park Consulting. They're the company that monitors the athletic field and gives us the work plan for proper maintenance of the athletic field. It's a specialized enough thing that, you know, I go down there and he gives me this report and says there's crabgrass here and there's this there and I go down and I just see a bunch of grass. But if you're going to keep an athletic field in really good condition with the number of hours of usage that we're putting on the field actually takes quite a bit of planning and testing. So that's what that is. It's also a little bit of a cushion in case we need to do repairs and debris removal after flood events, because remember that park is subject to flooding. That budget also covers maintaining the Veterans Monument Park. We have a contract with Randazzo Design and Consulting for both fertilization and pesticide and antigravutal stuff we use at the monument area. And also the commission and repair of the sprinkler system at the monument park. And then the last thing is that covers the mowing of a whole bunch of town properties. You know, the town hall is covered. The outer areas, not the field itself, but the perimeter around the field in the back areas
at the Veterans Monument. It covers mowing of the rail trail, the area along where it goes along Route 6 and it's visible. That's done by end over landscaping. So we've got about six or seven areas in town that are mowed by Andover Landscaping, because they just have the stuff to do it a lot faster than public works. So we farm that out and that's the last thing that falls under the mowing and brown care. So does that answer your question? Yes.
Okay. Got a question here on the old cemetery maintenance. There's some question here we should add in the grant info variable funding.
Yeah, so we've been struggling with this. So what that is, is that is the cemetery that's on Sider Mill Road. We apply for every year a grant to cover maintenance of repair of old cemeteries. Believe it or not, there's a specific grant program for that specific thing. So, we budget $2,000 a year from our own money and we get money from the state, but we don't know what we're getting and when and how much we get is highly variable. So, we were planning on putting it into the revenue portion of the budget. But then the question becomes, how do we show it? Because a lot of years we show that budget line item is wildly expended because, you know, we spend 5 or $6,000 on old cemetery maintenance, but that's because we got $4,000 in grant, you know, to add to what we had in that line item. So,
that's one of my questions for Cheryl, is how we should be showing this accurately on the budget. Got it. Because I don't know.
Street lighting had a big increase and the note just says 45% increase year last year to next year. Is this supply increase or what structure? Yeah. Unfortunately,
because the the street lights get paid directly to Eversource, we can't use Constellation Energy as our supplier for those. So, we're stuck with that whole price increase for supply. Now, what that is going to happen in six months, is that going to come back down? It very well may be, but I don't know at this point. I can go on is the existing Eversource contracts. Yeah, I mean it's not a make or break number,
again trying to understand it. Sure. We have a line for the Fire Department Commission budget that's again probably something that somebody from the Fire Commission should review with us when they come to ask us for a million dollar piece of apparatus.
Yeah, I mean if you want, I got their written explanation they gave to me. They only explained where they were asking for more money. They asked for an increase in their, so, their budget here is only one line item, but they have their own budget. So, their electricity costs are projecting to increase $2,500 Their propane cost, they're estimating is going to be up about $1,000 increase in roughly 1,000 in diesel. They don't use a ton of diesel, but that is going up significantly in a per gallon cost. Their radio repair costs have increased roughly $1,000, and they've budgeted for, hard to tell that number. I'm assuming it's not actually 300,000. So, it may be $300 due to an increase in software costs for maintaining the National Fire Incident Reporting System. So that was their explanation for their increase, of $4,000 in their budget. Okay.
So you may feel like we, you you said something that the Fire Commission when they come to talk about the apparatus should be able to talk more if people have questions, right?
Yeah, you could probably if you wanted them to do that I'm sure they could go over that too, that shouldn't be a problem.
All right, so we'll move down to the next one which is the vehicle purchase of a RAV4 Hybrid. So Joanne had asked the questions about the four to five purchases from the current year funds versus next year funds, mean we've got it in your proposed, you explained why. Is this replacing one of the vans?
I can't remember the story behind this. Okay. So I'll give you the cliff notes version. So the town applied for and received a grant to replace the 12 or to purchase another 12 passenger van with the intention of getting rid of a 20 passenger van, is which old and unreliable. So we were we got the grant, but the manufacturer, the chassis manufacturer hasn't actually produced the chassis in two years. So, we were supposed to get the vehicle last year. We did not get it. Then we were supposed to get the vehicle this year. The state is still saying we're getting the vehicle. But when I talk to the chassis manufacturer, the people who actually build it, they say no
because Ford hasn't actually given them any frames and engines to work with. So, there's a disconnect there. But as far as I can tell, we are not getting. The problem we have is that we've made an agreement with the elementary school to supply them with a handicapped accessible vehicle so they can transport one of their kids who requires that to and from school. It's stupidly expensive to have either DATCO or EASTCON provide that service. So economically, it's a lot smarter for the town if we provide it ourselves. But the problem is, is that now we're really down to we have two reliable vehicles and one unreliable vehicle. And what we really need to do is we need to get a small non handicapped accessible vehicle to provide medical transport because that is bulk of the trips that senior transportation
make are the dial a ride services for seniors who don't, who are unable to drive. So, a small vehicle is the most economic way we can do it. And it allows us to continue providing services to the school and hopefully also at the same time, stop using the big bus, which actually I have on my desk a repair bill for, you know, $2,900 for that thing. Because, you know, it's got a bunch of seals, on the engine that are that are leaking. So it's at the end of its lifespan. If we had gotten the vehicle that we got the grant for and the state and the federal government say we're getting, we wouldn't need it. But without it, we're short one vehicle, which is what we're proposing.
I think we need to get a little I'm not sure if we wanna we have a line item for a to account for this one or what we do. We just need to make it clear what, you know, where this is going in the- in the budget from an accounting perspective.
Yeah, well, what- what I said was that as soon as it looks like it's actually going to get through the Board of Finance, I'll have Cheryl assigned it a number, but I didn't want to go ahead and, you know, put that into QuickBooks and put that into the financial system until we were sure we were actually going to consider buying. So
it's a pretty significant purchase. Anybody on the Board of Finance have any questions or input regarding that one? Based on what you said, it sounds like it probably makes sense.
I was just gonna say the same thing on my phone. It makes sense. It seems to make sense.
To put it in perspective, I'm not including that vehicle, the school was paying more than $300 a day to transport one child. Wow. Know,
to their back. I can see that. So multiply that by one hundred and eighty days, you know, you're approaching the cost of that vehicle right there versus paying a driver, you know, $18 an hour, using a vehicle that you own. So
Got it. Okay. Well, if we have nothing else, I guess we can we can move on. This is more housekeeping than anything else, but on this line item, youth services, we have 5%, but then you had a note here, assume 3%, no budget so far, but we do have a budget now, right? Yeah, I forgot.
I just never updated that. So that's my error. That is the actual number that they're posed. And the board of selectmen has voted to cast their ballot for the budget. So they've authorized me to cast that, but ballot. But remember, the second ballot cast by the the town is cast by the board of finance rep Yeah. Who is Linda Fish. But you guys still have to actually motion to authorize her to do that if you accept that budget.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks for clearing that discrepancy up. So this had come from Louise. She'd asked about the first selectman salary. So I think what happened here is the first selectman requested that their salary get removed from the budget. And you're proposing we add that back in here, Eric, right, or they are? So I proposed we add that back in.
Both several of the selectmen, including Mr. McGuire, have elected not to take a salary. But since we're about to go to elections, given the workload on a first selectman, and that that position has traditionally come with some stipend, I ask that they put that back in the budget because we don't know who will be the next first select.
My question was, because it was budgeted for 4,800 last year and it wasn't taken, was that money placed somewhere else? It, so
in years past, we had a line item for selectman salary and we had a separate line item for first selectman salary. And the first selectman typically got, you know, two or three times what a regular selectmen received. What they what the board of selectmen chose to do was to say all selectmen will draw the same salary. So they just bumped up the salary line item that covered the other four selectmen and said that will now cover all five select.
But did they did all of them decline the salary? No. So, some took it and some didn't.
So, the there was no salary built into the budget this year for the first selectman of the remaining board of selectman members. I think only one this year elected not to take a salary.
Okay. Alright. It would just roll back into the general fund if we're not expended.
Okay. Correct. Or in some cases, the select men have designated their salary to another group within the town. Like Adrian has donated his salary to the the senior luncheon program for instance. Which he can do if he so chooses. Okay.
Moving down further, I think I answered this question myself, but I asked the question whether the Board of Finance clerk wages are still needed, but I think even though we don't have a clerk on the call, have them actually transcribing the minutes from the meeting and so you probably need to account for their time that way. Is that correct, Eric?
Yeah, so what we've done is we've based the cost for a meeting on doing the transcribing. And to be honest, whoever does it has to listen to the whole meeting. So whether they're on the meeting or whether they're listening to it later, it's the same amount of time either way.
Yeah. Alright. Okay. So the next one was I know we've gone round and round on this for a couple of budget cycles. Whether we need a legal budget for legal activities for the Board of Finance, and we haven't used it. Generally use the town town's attorney. That is O'Brien who's on retainer when and if we've needed any kind of legal opinion or legal services. I know I was an advocate for leaving this in just because, but not sure that that really makes any sense. I'm neutral on whether we change this or not, but I think your point is the same, Eric, that it really probably is not needed there. Is that what you're saying? Well, unless you feel like
there are going to be times and places where you want to use legal services other than the town's attorney. So like, if you feel like in some cases you want a specialized opinion, you know, that's how we would fund it because we don't really have enough money in our regular, our regular legal line item covers the town attorney, and then a little bit of money for the, our labor attorney. And then, so we don't, we used to keep a much bigger attorney pool of money, but we don't anymore. So, if you think, you know, the town attorney can answer all your questions, then you probably don't need it. If you think at some point you might want specialized legal advice, you know, you'd need some way to pay for it. We don't take it
if we take this out and there's a possibility that we do need legal services, like you just explained, is there another line item that we can pull from if needed?
I mean, contingency, you know, they're not, there's no other legal pool that you could just borrow money from. It would have to be allocated from somewhere else. You'd have to just run it as an overage and account for it at the end of the year.
It doesn't seem like a lot of money to fret over to me. It's like $2,500. If we need it, it's there. If we don't, it goes into general fund. $2,500. It doesn't seem like a
could be my opinion, but Yeah, I think that's where we kind of landed after discussions previously and we don't have to decide tonight, but it's there and decide we can reduce it. Any other questions, comments there?
My only thought would be we keep it there for now until we get into deeper discussions and know that it's something that we can. You know, my thought is tonight we're going over everything once, you know, and then we'll probably get into some nitty gritty in some of our upcoming meetings. That's just my thought.
Yeah. Yeah. Think I think we'll probably not make a lot of changes tonight or any changes, and then we can come back and really hit them all at one time. Absolutely. Yep.
Going down a little bit in the conferences for the Conservation Commission. There's a question about how many people is this proposed conference budget for it's gone up quite a bit.
Yeah, I didn't. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I know they requested that specific amount, but I don't know exactly what conferences they were planning on attending. But you could chew up that money pretty easily going to some of the, Yukon's, you know, you know, the it would be easy to chew up that kind of money if the conservation commissions were actually going to trainings and conferences.
Yeah. Let's put it that way. Yeah. It's not a huge amount, but okay. Louise, did you wanna dig further into that or ask them to explain that? Well, I was kinda curious if
only one person goes and reports back or do a couple people go? That my concern. Because I know what when I was going through conferences, that's what they generally did. One person went and they reported and it was less costly and still effective.
Honestly, I don't know. It's not a question I can answer, unfortunately. Okay.
Yeah, if you want to pursue, we can go directly to the commission. Okay.
Eric, you had a comment here. This Board of Assessment appeal salaries. You said salaries out of line with responsibilities, eliminating, receive no budget, I guess. So,
all right. So this is probably not really my call. It shouldn't be because this is an elected board. But personally, I think given the responsibilities of BAA, asking for both money for clerk, as well as salary. There's an awful lot of other boards and commissions that work a lot harder than BAA and not really any of them get a salary. So that's just one that's always struck me as being odd. You know, but I don't have any hard, fast feelings about it either way.
Well, it's a good point. I hadn't thought about it in that way. Food for thought for the board, I think, when we go back in here. Do have any other questions or comments on that?
Well, Eric's comment seems to make sense too. We're working tonight to all hours. We don't get paid for this.
So anyways. Brian was like, wait a minute. Don't get paid for this. You didn't tell me. I quit.
Okay. So you're moving some stuff into the building department for the zoning agent.
Yeah. It just, it didn't make a lot of, yeah. That that's just housekeeping.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Maybe are we gonna make that change? Yeah. We are.
So you and you're gonna work on that one in the next file then? Yeah.
I will. I actually didn't realize I hadn't moved it yet, so that's on me.
Okay. Alright. Here's a couple things going down the Recreation Commission. There's, let's see, oh this community garden one got added. I think I just added the note that was in the Board of Selectmen meeting. They just added some, they had added a line item at their court request of the Recreation Commission for the community garden to help them build some planters, etc. But I didn't know what this rationale for this new employee is part time scheduler?
So that was a Board of Selectmen idea that they were concerned that the town was running an awful lot of rec programs and wasn't necessarily doing a good job of. Necessarily managing them and or scheduling them and or publicizing them. And they felt that by adding a part time, you know, adding somebody and paying somebody to actually be in charge of that, they would get a better product. That's, I don't have a lot of details on that. That was just something the board of selectmen decided to do. I'm not opposed, you know, of it anyway. I mean, you might want to ask, I don't know. I, I mean, it's, it's almost like it's a rec commission function.
Well. But it's true that in most towns that would be, you know, there would be somebody in charge of parks
and rec. But who would this person report to and who's defining the job and who's Mark Mark. Yeah,
you don't mind, I did listen to that meeting, and I could sum it up in a nutshell of what they I think the the wreck it was Jeff Murray, the selectman. He brought it up that he feels like the town doesn't, you know, maybe doesn't have the go to person that you can just call for information for sports or rec programs. And you know, for school age kids and all of such items. They they thought of the idea of bringing on a very small position for now with with keeping in mind the big picture eventually with the community center And whenever that gets built or whatever happens, you know, having to have a person, you know, that might work in that. But you know, and then they'll have their vision. This is a small person that would, know, just work. They definitely set up a time parameter because I'm all into this. They said, I thought it was like ten hours per week,
dollars 16 per hour. They, you know, because Adrian said, well, we have to start somewhere, we have to present it, we have to have a budget. So it was very small just to kind of take the burden off, you know, if calls came into the town hall just to have a person designated to do this. And I thought they said they'd report to Eric. But then Eric did they did talk about how there is a commission in town that kind of has been doing that, but that's all volunteer people right now. So this would take, you know, the pressure off of that. That was the plug. Okay. Sounds a little ill defined to me.
Yeah. I'm I'm a little confused. I mean, if the person is only gonna be there for ten hours during the week, and the call comes on the time that they're not there, is there gonna be like a dedicated phone line that goes to that person and you have to wait to get an answer?
That's the expectation. I'm sure they would have an email service, you know, and they could work out the particulars, but they wanted to have someone, you know, because now I think they just have volunteers. I remember when I moved to town with my three kids heavily involved in sports, you know, I had to rely on whatever information I could piece together. So I think that's it. Mean, ten hour, you know, it's a small town, Louise. I think that's why they wanted to start small.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't disagree with the function and principle. It just seems like that the administration and scope of the job maybe are not quite as well defined as they would need to be.
I do agree that communication is really needed because I know the library does many programs and a lot more people show up to those particular programs. So they're doing something right. Don't know. Yeah. I'll mention that to Kathy.
Think it'll be one of those. Oh, that's nice. I think that it'll be one of those line items that people discuss, you know, they're gonna talk about the town planner, they're gonna talk about the need for more individuals, you know, they might debate, maybe there's someone already at the town hall, I don't know. That was just their plug of adding these positions. Yep.
Okay. All right. Well, I think that takes us down to all of the questions that we had in advance. Is there anything else that anybody on the board would like to address to Eric while we're reviewing these details? We need to get this cleaned up, we need to do some housekeeping on the spreadsheet, we need to plug in some of the final numbers that we've gotten or will get over the next week. Obviously we need to address the AES which is the big a big chunk RAM is is what it is kind of at this point.
I had one question I didn't see on here. Yeah, go ahead. What does building IWC mean?
Oh, Inland Wetlands Commission. Ah, okay. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, you had put that in there and I think I mentioned it while we're kind of going through the thing but not explicitly.
Yeah. The increase is warranted? I see there was an increase in it. Well, think that was the one where 58%.
I think I had the mistake or there was a mistake in the formula. Oh, okay. So yeah. Alright. Was that the one?
Correct. Yeah. That's only a 2.9% increase, not a Yeah. We're not changing the hours. We're not changing anything on that position. Okay.
Yeah. So that's an error on the spreadsheet, which will get corrected for the next release. So
Mark, that was my question because I'm new to this. I've been trying to take notes on my own copy of the spreadsheet, but probably you're doing it. So we'll all work off. You'll send us a new one next week, You'll fix this one whatever changes and we're all working out the same one all the time.
Yeah, that would be my hope. Know, Eric, don't know if you guys are gonna do some changes to the draft that you have, which is probably the draft we should be working from because we haven't really changed any numbers here.
Well, I I have not changed anything since since I gave you the budget.
So if you wanna send me your copy because that has your notes in it. Yes. That's what thinking. That draft and make changes from there. Yeah. I can do that. I wanna verify that some of these values are correct, but you and I can figure that out and just make sure it's accurate before we send it back out to the board. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
All right, so we've gotten a good overview line by line. We obviously have some things we have to talk about. We've got the AES budget next week. We've got a couple of things that I think the board's gonna need to discuss. The town planner issue, we have $35,000 for the vehicle which although now that I hear about it I you know and I understand the need the rationale for that. So I think we have quite a bit to do and of course then the big elephant is going to be the fire apparatus. We're going have to talk about that a little bit. Does anybody have any other general questions on the budget? I think we will knock these specifics off now, move on, and then dig into the details probably in the next meeting.
That's all I was going to follow-up with Mark is just confirm that we were getting an updated spreadsheet could really take a look at it. And then yeah, move forward from that. The only thing that I wanted to mention to all of you just because I have your ear and we heard it tonight at the ram. We had, you know, we'll have AES next week and that's a whole different thing. That's our town. But the Ram budget as presented. I I mean, I hope what stuck. We're not going to change it. We're never going to change it. It's a wonderful school and we're, you know, we're lucky that our children would go there. I had three. It's a huge budget is all I'm gonna say. I've said that in, you know, I did some cost comparisons today, but it's not worth mentioning, but I would feel remiss if I didn't bring it up. It's it's it's just huge compared to other towns that are similar and what they do. But again, that it is what it is, and we're lucky that it's going down. You know, our levy for it is going down next year.
Yeah, that's it. Well, again, I think the thing that keep in mind is the spreadsheet that Mr. McNamara shared with us that shows the average cost per student and he created it to all those other towns, those other regions. And it seems like we were pretty well in the lower end.
It's very selectable information. I give a PowerPoint in a whole, but it's not worth it. I mean, they definitely present it the way that it looks favorable.
I I think it really all depends on what you select as comparable towns, and that's a subjective thing. Oh, of course. You know, I recognized I recognized my district that I attended on that Yeah.
Did I I went to District 9? Okay. They were either at the top or second on that list, and I was entirely unsurprised. I got a buddy who chews my ear off about his property taxes every time I see him. So but it all depends on how you do the comparison. What's a comparable town to Andover? Is it population? Is it median income? Whatever. And so that's probably why you can get different analyses.
Yeah. Oh, right. And it's it's I've I've gone to so many meetings and said so many things and brought out particulars, but I just since we had that presentation tonight, I just wanted to say one little thing. I've, you know, But it's it's it's a nice school. We're lucky that our students can go there and our children can go there, but it's it's a big budget. Yeah. Yeah. Well So Yep. Eric?
So I'm just going through my deliverables for the next meeting are for 03:29. You want the fire department to present the request for the fire truck, which means we'll have to get that information to you, hopefully by Friday of this week. I'm hoping that they can produce that. And you asked the town clerk directly for her information, so that's on them. AES is going to present next week. I have a bunch of housekeeping stuff to do in the budget, and then we need to put in the updated information from the AES, or not the AES, the RAM budget. Are there other things that, other than what we've discussed tonight, that you want to see in the budget?
I'm just gonna add, we did discuss it tonight, and it's minor, but the sign thing, getting the right number for the requested sign from the CIP meeting.
Right. I I poked That's that was the FDA to produce the minutes. I just haven't seen yet. And I didn't write down what number they actually agreed to because I don't know the minutes. Yeah. It was a it was, you know, around or under 5,000, but we need the exact number so that's all. Just wanted to make sure that was still on there somewhere. Yeah, it's a good one. Thanks, Rob. I
don't have anything else, Eric, that lines up with I think what I got. Okay. Okay, so I think we can go ahead and move on with our agenda we still got some things to cover. The next major agenda item is six old business we already talked about the finance and audit status hiring of the new finance associate. I don't know if you wanna clarify that at all.
Yep. We hired her. She's working. So come by and introduce, yourself. Her name is Christina. She's really nice and, you know, hopefully will do a really good job for us. Okay, great. Thank you.
Very impressive in her interviews and she had all the great qualifications. I think she'll do a wonderful job for the town. I think she's highly qualified, but it'll take time.
Good. Sounds like it's going well so far. All right. The next one we had on our modified agenda was to review and approve the budget. We did see a little bit of that last time. I will I guess I can share my screen and we can take a look at that. Make this a little clearer. So I think this is the proposed budget. The other file we had actually had the breakout year over year. I don't know if anybody had any questions. I remember being satisfied by it the last time we talked about it. Yeah, we had asked a few questions and she had actually I think I distributed those to you. She had answered those. We still have Linda on the call. Linda's probably tied in more with this than most of us are. You're muted now. Formula for the breakout based on the enrollment percentages and here is the year over year variation. This number right here was the $97,000 two was the Andover contract amount which is our budget line item. Anybody have any questions or comments?
Can I just mention that they have, I'm not sure whether they have hired or they're going to hire another full time therapist? I don't remember if you heard that.
I don't know. Think in her explanation, Trustee explained that they had hired more therapists and that that was one of the reasons for their insurance cost increase was the additional people and more services provided. Does anybody want to make a motion to approve? Is the budget line item.
I'll go ahead and make the motion to approve the budget as presented to us.
I'll second my motion. Oh, okay. Sorry, was that a second from you, Rob?
It was a tie, but yeah, I'll take it. I didn't hear. I didn't hear the answer. I heard Bill was in there too, but. Okay,
any discussion? Hearing none, we'll call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Any abstentions? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you very much. All
right, moving on with our agenda. The next item is new business. So item 7A is April 19 budget meeting. We have a conflict with the Board of Ed meeting. Eric, know that you probably had added this one. My own thought is we move it a day earlier to the eighteenth. That Tuesday?
That's a Tuesday. I know that's not all best for everybody but
yeah. So just as a point of information, last meeting I informed you guys that I was going to be on vacation on from the nineteenth to the twenty fifth. And then you've scheduled the budget meeting for the nineteenth, which broke my heart, but that's okay. So just so if we do have it on the nineteenth, I'm gonna be on the road, so I'm not gonna be there. I would be there on the eighteenth if you chose that date.
And is this this is the is this just a regular budget budget meeting, or is this the this is the budget presentation meeting?
This is the public hearing. Public hearing, yeah. Is the hearing and we have some new people too on this. The historical experience has been that there generally is not a lot of conversation, input, or contention. We generally hear from a few of the public. Sometimes it's gotten a little little interesting but it's it's typically not a long meeting and we generally do not take action it's really more of an opportunity to present the budget and some kind of basis, but mostly to get just to give it's like an extended public speak session, if you will.
Is there any opportunity to do it Thursday or does that not work.
Or is that big a It was a CIP meeting that day, Economic Development Commission meeting. I may have heard that we pronounce it with them, but it's not a I couldn't.
Generally speaking, you know Thursday is better than Tuesday for me. It's not that I cannot do a Tuesday in that I just I'll have my kids and so I'll have to banish them for a bit to do the meeting. Also, since it's not a meeting where we're gonna take a ton of action, I maybe it's not a big deal if I don't make that one. But generally speaking, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the the days that I can do best. So just keep that in mind, but I am totally fine if you guys pick Tuesday. That's that's okay. I'll either try to make it or you can do it without me. No big deal. No. I mean, I'm okay with the twentieth Thursday. I was
kind of concerned. I guess that doesn't really have an issue. There
are some time constraints, but that twentieth shouldn't run us into anything. Right, Eric? Well, CIP, but then again, we lose Eric. So like you gain me and lose Eric. We do it the twentieth.
Clark, so had we definitely decided on the nineteenth, so there's no way to have it the next Wednesday, that's too late you're thinking?
The next Wednesday is our regular meeting and the problem with pushing it off anymore is once we have the hearing, we need to make a final decision on the budget. Right, right, right. And then it needs to be submitted. The town budget meeting is tentatively scheduled for May 2. So
we start to run into some issues with timing and adoption of the budget. I know with Eric had sent a copy of the charter and I knew it said that the budget meeting had to be I think within the first ten days of the month. Right. And then any time to produce mailers to So send that becomes a timing issue. I'm
okay, I believe with any of those days, the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever we're deciding.
Okay. Yep. I may or may not be there on that Tuesday, but we'll see.
Eric, you're okay not being there. I mean, think that by then we'll have we'll know this. You'll be okay. You'll be you're not worried about the budget because you'll be on vacations.
Right. You'll, you, you'll know everything I know. So really it's just questions for the public. And the only question is, do you guys feel like you'll have enough knowledge of the budget that you can answer any public questions? That's the only the only reason you would need me there is to answer public. Add the detail. Yeah. That might come up. Yeah. Would Monday the seventeenth work?
That's probably the same issue for Ram. That's worse for me because I don't I won't get home on a Monday night until 06:45 picking a kid up from gymnastics and running her home from Hebron. So it's literally get home and then try to feed them dinner. So I'm I'm definitely not making a Monday meeting. Yeah. Tuesday, I could make. I mean, I I could be there at least for a bit of it or, you know, I just may have to occasionally wander off and deal with a child.
There's a really good chance on the Monday on the seventeenth, I would be presenting to planning and zoning, for the community center. So if that's occurring which
Yeah, I'm gonna propose the twentieth and we just stick with Thursday. Just sounded like it worked out pretty well with everybody. I'll make a motion to change public hearing and the budget to the Thursday the twentieth if anybody wants to second that. I'll second it. Okay, thanks Bill. Any discussion further? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? There are none, no abstentions. Okay, so we'll move it to the twentieth. Thanks everybody. All right. Overage reports. So Eric you had several overage items in the packet. I was a little confused by one of them because it looked like it was a duplicate but it had different part number or different different part numbers. Sorry that's work creeping in different account numbers associated with them.
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I reviewed them real quick the other day, but these all come from Jay. These are just budget overages in public works and various different accounts. Public works as a whole is well within their budget, but there are some things in building maintenance where, you know, they're over. They went over, as some of you know, they built the new locker room because they never really had any place to store their gear there. And we had to do a bunch of electrical work at the end to make that happen. So, they did the construction, but we did have to bring the electrician in to put lights and switches and stuff like that in. So, that's one of them. Well, that one's a duplicate,
actually. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. There's a duplicate. There was one duplicate. Yeah. And
then the second one was related to snow removal. You know, again, they're going over in a couple of supply lines related to the D, the DPW snow removal budget, but there's plenty of room in the snow removal budget to transfer money in from SALT and also from the overtime budget. So the department is not nowhere near over, but there are a couple line items within it that are over.
You've got a fire extinguisher that had to be replaced. I'm probably going too far ahead. But
Yeah. So and I know there were some little I mean, so that was the one of the high wear items on plow trucks is the salt spreaders are kind of in the middle of the truck. So the truck, the bed tips back so you can dump stuff out the back. And then it also has another arm that tips to the side so that you don't have to drive down the road with the bed up when you're spreading salt. So, and then in the bottom of the bed, there's a an open chain, like a, it's like a conveyor belt for moving salt to where the spreader is. And those are very high wear items. They get rusted out pretty quickly. So that's the majority of that is replacement for the auger chains, which is why that's so high. In the operating budget, there, we have a specific line item for fire extinguisher inspections. We had to replace a whole bunch of fire extinguishers this this year. That went over pretty considerably over what we had budgeted. That shouldn't be an ongoing expense. We just had a lot of fire extinguishers that came up for their, that reached the end of their service life this year. You know, and that's just what we pay with, we use company called Shipman's come in and do the annual inspections. And while this is on public works budget, this covers everything. This is fire extinguishers in the library and the town hall, in public works and all our vehicles and senior transportation, etcetera, etcetera. So that's what that is. It's just all a it's all accounted for in public works budgets. And the last one is illegible because I wrote it.
But in, we don't really have a line for our social services budget overall is really small. We do have a $250 line item for food and clothing, but we are having to pay for the relocation of somebody that was thrown out of a rental unit by the health department for living in unsanitary conditions. Now, again, this is money that we will get back eventually from the property owner, but the town is on the hook for this and we don't really have any place to. So for lack of a better spot, I decided to take it from the social services budget because that's the closest thing we have of the food and clothing line, and we're gonna end up way over that budget. I don't know how far over, but quite a bit over. So what's the additional amount requested because that's not legible? The rest I can kind of make out. $1,250.
1,250. You need to add a dot zero zero there a little bit. Okay, got it. Yep.
Okay. Anybody have any further questions for Eric on these budget transfers?
And again, these are, as you remember, because we can't transfer money until the last quarter, The policy from the board of finance is that anytime there's a line item that's over, there's an approval process. These are all under 2,000 overages. So they're just signed by me as a town administrator, and the information is provided to you as a board and provided to the board of selectmen. You don't have to approve anything, but I have to let you know that I have authorized those. And I think that's it.
Yeah. So no action needs to be taken on any of these because they're all less than $5,000 Correct. Okay. If nobody else has any other questions for Eric on that, we will move on to our next agenda item, which we do not have the meeting minutes. We'll move on to liaison reports. Do we have any reports from other committees?
I mean, we kind of did see CAP already, so nothing to add to that.
Nothing to add? Okay. I guess we have nothing else then. Item 10 is open board discussion. Does anybody have anything else they want to bring before the board? Okay, hearing none, I guess we'll move on to item 11, which is public speak. I don't see any members of the public. Eric, can you just confirm that?
I do not believe so. The only non board member is myself and CBC.
Okay. So I guess move on to item 12 which is adjournment. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I'll make the motion to adjourn. Okay Louise, thank you. Anybody want a second? Second.
No, too late. I saw Brian raise his hand. Did you spread your nose there, Brian? That was me. Yeah, I'm just trying to get him to participate. Get him in there. This is an easy one. All right. All right, Brian seconds. Any discussion? Okay, we'll vote. All those in favor of the Chairman say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any nay, any abstentions? Sorry. Late. Been a long day. All right, motion passes. Thank you everybody. I think it's good progress. We really got to get into the nitty gritty and probably in the next meeting.