Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
February 2, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Budget workshop agenda for the town of Andorra Bordeslachmann dated February 2, 07:00. We're gonna call it to order, and we're gonna do the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. United America. States And for the republic to which it stands.
Under God. One nation. Indivisible liberty and justice for for all.
Okay. Since I skipped last meeting, public speak. Kathy, Mike, would you like to say anything? No. Diane Choquette. I'm good, thanks.
Joanne Ebert? Thank you. All right, let's get to it. Do we have any department presentations that we're going go through tonight? No. Eric, you have provided us information. I'm assuming that we can start. Actually, let's ask, let's pull. I feel bad. I didn't wait for Paula. Is Paula joining us?
Has a I'm prior actually going to have to hop off early as well. I've got something to take care of.
Well, that just means we cancel the rest of the meeting, right? No, I'm good till eight.
Jeff, can I make a suggestion if you wanted something to get a little progress? My suggestion would be first to deal with the general wage increases or not for town employees. Second would be specific recommendations about what you wanna do with the library director's increased hours. Third would be recommendations to the board of finance for the salaries for board of selectmen, town clerk and registrar's office, and then decisions about other staffing levels as a way to get something discreet accomplished.
Okay. Does anyone have we had a presentation from Carol Lee last week. Does anyone have a problem with Carol Lee's request? 6%?
Yeah, I'm asking you. Can we reiterate the request just to freshen us up with it? Eric, Eric, Eric. Yes, what's your question?
No, no, no. I'm looking for something you sent us.
If you allow me to screen share, I'll pull it up. Pull up her budget line item. You want to see the budget line item or you want see document with all the personnel costs?
We can see both of them. Let's do the whole thing at one time. Okay.
Okay. What you're looking at should be the for all the employees that have essentially variable costs. By variable I mean they're not linked they're not linked in right now by union contract in one form or another.
Do we want to set just one rate for everyone that is on this or do we want to go through them individually?
Anyone? I personally would rather do one rate as much as I'm sympathetic to the ask.
Another thing though is some of these positions have actually taken on additional responsibilities and so I don't know if you think a blanket number would be reasonable Adrian or should we do them based on change? Well, who would you split out? I'm for
to say for are you going say Carol Lee? What is she doing different than she was doing a year or two ago? And what justifies 6%?
Well, I think Carol's justification for the 6% is that the volume of things that she's now tasked with has increased and that her office is bringing in more revenue and so I think that's basically her justification. On the flip side of that, I would say that as things have been modernized, the level of things that she has to do on the other side of that have probably gone down. So if we're playing devil's advocate, that's the other side of it, right? So now a lot of the realtors can come in and access things electronically where they had to go digging through and maybe needed help with the books before. So they used to, now the copier is linked right together,
they've a whole system. Well, know that she's doing, they're doing transfer station stickers. Know that's Well,
I think gun permits got shifted from the selectman's office down to her office like that. A lot of that is kind of a little bit handled down her way now too. But again, it's an elected position, you know, She has a lot of autonomy. So again, I mean, I think that could go either way. I think my only concern, I mean, the only concern with doing that is if you throw an outlier like that in there, especially given that we're going into negotiations with the unions that we may end up with that getting thrown back at us in a discussion.
I just have a question about the transfer station stickers and this could be to Eric too. Is there anything would it be a bad idea to turn that over to the attendance staff? Or is that something that you want to keep in the town clerk's office?
So you would be requiring them to take money at the transfer station and then account for how transport it, how, where would it be secured? I think if you wanted to look at long term solutions, you look towards an online permitting solution to be able to accomplish that. Yeah, Bolton does that right Eric? And pick up your sticker at the transfer station. Well,
or just have it mailed to you. Bolton does that I think. But you give up what was the original board's concern, which is the concern about people's scamming because you've lost the physical act of putting something on a windshield.
That's valid or not. Could we somehow serialize those so they would have the license plate number on them when we we hand it with a Sharpie. So when they stick it on their windshield
No, but you could have the transfer station attendance. They get something in the mail saying they're a verified resident for that car they could then show their registration and an approval for how the attendant put the stickers on.
The system as it works right now Carol is checking that that car is registered in town. Yes. Correct.
For those of us that have to use the transfer station Jeff.
Adrian, I don't know if you noticed, but my sticker number is 10.
Wait, I didn't know we could get vanity sticker numbers. Yeah, we did, 10.
That's what happens when you get down there and you give your town the money quickly and early in the process. You get a low sticker number. I just know that that's
something that she mentioned the other last time she spoke with us.
I believe Carol's issue is that previously she had been bypassed for any, she never felt she was being treated fairly. That's the issue.
Would remind the board that all you do, unlike other officials, because she's an elected official, all you do is make a recommendation to the board of finance if you so choose.
Well, looking over these names, I mean, the biggest issues that we have to deal with is we have to deal with Eric, we have to deal with Amanda, and we have to deal with the librarian. The rest of them, Adrian can sit there and be correct that we can do 1.5. Listen, we have troubles. It's not like we're not in troubles. But then again, that does not line up with what has been negotiated and given to union employees. That is the other side of this. I believe you have a placeholder in there or you may have changed this. So you have a 2% raise in this one. You had a 1.5% raise in previous one that we've got.
So the first column in there represents the inflation rate, which is basically 1.15% today. So if you want to just zero out inflation, which is what you were talking about doing several meetings previously, That's what that line item was. And the other just represents standard increments. And the last column there is what people have actually asked for. So for comparison, that's what it looks like across the board, 1.15%, 2%, 2.53%.
Okay. So just let's think of it this way. Each percentage point that we go on the people that are subjected to these raises is $5,137 That's the total amount of money we're talking about.
Eric, I mean, do you Wally and Linda made the argument for their situation. Do you agree with it that they're putting in a lot of hours?
Yeah, and from my perspective, for all appearances sake, we more than likely the state is moving towards allowing full mail in registration for everybody
That's going fine. So can we just pick these off and move through them? I would make a motion then that we accept the registrar's requested salary increase.
I'll second that. Any further discussion? Anybody want to talk about their position? No. Before we do that, Eric, what is that number?
$6,000.06. Correct. It's an increase from just about 4,000. So they'd get a $2,000 bump. Pretty good bump. Well, is but
Do we have like a listing? How many do they tracking your hours? Like how much you're spending there? No, because they're not hourly.
So I'm sorry, Eric. Mean, cut you off. No, I mean, Wally did present to you at the last meeting basically what he felt they were spending in hours. Yeah. I don't remember what that was off the top of my head. It was
pretty ugly number. Thought it was twice as many hours.
Yeah, it is. I mean, he's worried that if they dump it on him, his argument was that if they dump everything they're saying they're going to dump even this isn't going to be enough. Right.
Are Carol's wages in line with other communities? She's been here twenty two years.
They're very much under other communities, but we're not on that yet. Let's get through this and we'll hit them one at a time. Is that okay, Scott?
I thought we just talked about the other two. No, we haven't
voted. Any other discussion on the registrars? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. So let's take the registrars off of our list. Let's just go in order, Eric? Okay. Oh, so in order would be town clerk.
No, now you're up next. Oh yeah, we skipped Carol. You're right, sorry. I was going down not backwards.
So when's the last time she did have an increase? We know. She
got a two and a half, she would have gotten a 2.5% increase last year with the regular, with all the non union employees?
She had a bunch of years where she just got like 1%. In the course of the twenty something years, her salary has gone up about 25% in twenty two years. In that time we went from dial up to internet with fiber optics.
The only thing I would tell you, Adrian, is I don't have a problem with Carol's request actually. I don't like to sit there and pay any more money than we need to. I'm not like that. But I would sit there and tell you that out of all of the people in the town offices, Carol is always there. Besides Eric, Carol is always Okay. You're in favor of this?
I have no problem discussing what is fair for Carol and her position. Okay. So what's fair? Well, what are we going to give everybody else? If you want to sit there and say, are we going to give them 1%, 2%? Let's just across the board because there's a lot What's of the current union contract? Oh, God. So, there's no one current union contract. What's the percentage between them? So,
the highest is Roberta at 4%. Wow. But that was because John Treponis agreed to not take a raise for the whole duration of the contract and allow Roberta to take a larger raise. Okay. At the low end, I think it's 2.5%.
Is there a middle one or is it just two point five and four? No, some employees are at 3% raise.
You mean the public works department? Yes. I mean, listen, we only have what, six, seven union employees? Correct.
I know you have the contract number up here, but you don't have the percentage up here. Let's sit there and say the public works is three, Roberta is four, and then what is the assistant treasurer? Assistant treasurer is three. What is the building department administrative person? Far as I know, she would be three also.
Basically Three across the board. Basically, we're at 3%. 3% The majority of employees percent. Who's at 2.5? I'm
trying to think. I thought we had one employee at 2.5.
I don't think it's fair that union employees get three and we give everybody else less Do
you want to stick with the three then for Carol?
Let's take care of everybody else and then You're let's talk about Carol and
probably right. They're probably are not. Probably all the union employees are at three other than Treponis, is at zero.
I would make a motion that all the employees with the exception of Carol Lee, Eric Anderson, and the library, library librarian, let's I would make a motion that we do 3% to match what our contractual obligations are to union employees. Good not Carol?
No let's talk about those after. Let's pick off as much as we can here. I second that, let's go.
Further discussion on a 3% raise for everyone it's going to total $15,000 Actually, it's not even 15.
Actually you're taking out some of those. It's going to be 15.
Well, to his calculation he's got up, it'd only be 10 if we did everybody. Less than 10, that includes Eric and Carol. Yeah, it'd be $9,009.23.
Well, it's a good thing you're not my accountant. Minus Carol and minus, Eric.
No, I'm just teasing. It's in the spreadsheet though, Jeff. Yeah, because every percent is basically 3,300
Yeah. 9,923 if we got everybody, but we're pulling out those other ones. Yeah.
Wow. I'm looking at a spreadsheet that has everybody on it. Eric's got it up on the screen. No, I see. Well, this is where he started with. This is his spreadsheet, not mine. You're talking, Eric, put your cursor and increase the size of this thing and put your item like where it is. Woah. That's too enhanced.
Yeah, that, Well, that would have worked. Just click on the box. Click on the cell and then drag it over. Just go click on that cell. That's the cell.
That's the cell. And that's everybody and does that include Eric or does that not include Eric? In this case that includes me. And Carol. And Carol
But that does not include what you just agreed to for the registrar. Doesn't matter. They're $4,000
and we understand that. Okay. $10,000 Right. Holla Jeff. All right. Has anybody got any further discussion on $10,000 No? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Carol Lee, let's discuss Carol's situation. So can you go up to Carol Lee and the town clerk? What is the number? Where's the increase?
Far right. So she currently makes 47,900. What she requested at a 6% salary would be 50,774. Okay.
And everybody has said that previously she has not gotten raises or 1% raises? Adrian, you had some knowledge on Yeah,
had laid it out and over the whole course of her career, her total increase is about 25% in twenty two years. Total.
Well, is not. So, what are we talking about? A $1,500 raise? No, sorry, a $3,000 raise? Yeah. Okay. Where is she at? Your spreadsheet goes by percentages. Do you have one that does 4%?
Doesn't sound right with that because if you wanted the 3%, it goes from 46.7906 to 49.343 with 3%. And then she's only asking for another $1,000 to get to 6%.
Eric, click on your Hang on. Formula Click on your proposed salary so we can see what the No, click on your proposed, on D. It's column K.
Click on K. I'm sure we're talking about the right number. Not requested, proposed. So what was your question?
Can you show us the formula? Just highlight the cell. Go over to your proposed one. Is We
We're on requested. We want to see proposed. The 3% number. Yep. Column K. Thank you. That's correct. This doesn't look right for some reason. That's because it's taken J3. It should be I3.
Hang on. That's why it's not showing up. Just not enough digits in that column. That number is correct. We're good.
Eric, the current salary is 47,009. Let's take that and minus that out. That's like 2,802 thousand $800 Have you eliminated the first selectman salary for this period? She can have my $2,500 she deserves it. Let's go. I'll make a motion that we give Carol the requested 6% raise. Second. Further discussion?
She's bringing more than that and transfer stick. Exactly. All
those in favor, aye. Aye. What are we doing with Selectman? What do you guys want to do?
I'm not opening up that can of worms. I said, I'm I'm running up last
requesting that the first Selectman salary be zero. That doesn't mean that it can't change in the future and somebody that comes in this position wants the $2,500 they can have it. I make a motion that we leave it at zero for this next upcoming year. Scott, second that motion. Second. Okay. Realize, and then Jeff brought it up last year, that there is additional work, but at this point in time, I don't do it for the money. You could always increase it back to a more reasonable number. All those in favor of zero? Aye. Thank you. All right. I don't do that for any other purpose, but I'm the first selectman. Selectman salaries, what would you like to do with that? You want to leave it where it was?
We had this discussion before amongst ourselves, and we decided we would probably leave it. Okay. So change that, Eric.
The proposed is 4,800, which is 1,200 per selectman. I'll have to go back and change it on the main spreadsheet because that was a blank at this point. That's fine. But I'll do that. All right.
Eric, did what I do last year did that work out okay? That didn't complicate anything did it? Give them something to do.
I would rather discuss with each of you individually, Eric, and come back to him next week, unless you guys really have a definitive reason that we have to get that one done today? No, that's fine. Do we want to,
just at the end of this, go on an executive session real quick? I don't think we can. We have to put it on the agenda? No.
You do not. You could go into executive session if you so chose. I'd rather wait till Paul is part of that conversation. And as I said, I've got to leave in about a half hour or so. Okay, that's true. We could do the library. The library. Amy, so the library is requesting additional four hours.
We're already giving her benefits and stuff like she was there. The small contingent that they're asking for is already,
we're already paying for it and benefits. It makes no sense to not get the hours. So they're looking for more money for the extra hours or they can't cover that in their existing budget?
Apparently not. Yeah, so there, I mean, in truth, the library budget not including salaries is in the mid 20s. It's a very small budget. Salary is the vast majority of their budget. So no, I don't think they could absorb that. It's either a decision we make or we don't make.
Just a quick question. Was that a line item significantly under spent this year because of COVID?
No, because basically Amy has been treated as a professional in the sense that she doesn't log hours.
Because she's just a straight salary and she's getting a weekly, she's getting a check. Correct. She's a straight salary. Understood, understood. And I think
question I would ask to go along with what Jeff asked is, did we have reduced hours for the rest of the employees? Because the library was closed.
Yeah, but they've been trying to accommodate in other ways by being open to deliver books to people and still take requests to do curbside and they've done a lot of workarounds.
So the answer to your question is it was somewhat reduced this year but not a lot.
And so over the course of the year, what are we talking about is for the increase on Amy?
So over a year, it's around $6,000 goes from 42,200 to basically 48,000. For four hours? Yeah, you're going from 26,000 to 30,000. What's her hourly rate?
I don't have it on this sheet. I'm sure I could figure it out pretty quick. Dollars 31.22.
Yeah, that's about right. So is she replacing anybody's hours or she's just adding to the library's hours that are worked? Honestly,
I think where the library So let me just back up and say, I went to the library board because the problem is that we have a personnel policy, but the library has never followed it for the director. In other words, she's always been treated basically as a full time employee in terms of benefits and in terms of vacation, all of that, yet she's never actually worked thirty hours. So the first question I asked is, is that realistic? And Amy's response is, well, I pretty much always work thirty hours. I've just never been able to get paid for thirty hours.
So Jeff's question is really the most pertinent one. Is she salaried or is she hourly? She's salaried basically.
Then she's working thirty hours a week right now. That's what her salary is predicated on and that's why she's given benefits.
Yeah, we're increasing her hourly rate, but she's a salary employee.
What do we do? Listen, I understand why you went after library for the personnel policy and what we were trying to do. I know the library does a lot of great work for the community, but I don't know. Do they really have 200 that they're going to use your services for? Because that's what we're talking about.
I think the argument was made that she's already putting them in anyways because she's salary. She was salaried already, So what's the point?
Yeah, I work fifty hours a week. Don't get paid any more than if I work forty or fifty.
Nobody's same time. I'm with Jeff Murray. Nobody's paying me anywhere for my eighty hours a day. It ain't happening. Scott walked away from the conversation.
Scott's like, I don't want them to look for my overdue library books.
We're just giving a raise. I mean, I don't believe the library is going to come back to us and tell us where the extra $200 are going to go.
What would their salary go up with a 3% versus what they're asking for? I mean if we're going to do 3% across the board what does that work out for her? Amy O 3% works out to 43,479. So $1,200 or whatever.
I mean I think if we're giving everybody else the increase that would be the prudent thing to do if she's a salaried employee.
Well, yeah. I mean, I guess it depends how you define salaried employees. She gets paid for twenty six hours a week at whatever her rate is. But since we've never required her to log hours,
that's what it is. Besides you, Eric, do we I guess I'm just trying to go through employees. Mean, Carol is essentially a I honestly, all the union employees, the way the contracts have been written in the past are all salaried They're not hourly employees. The way contracts are written they're all salaried. Well, that's not really true because they get overtime.
So not exempt salary employees? Because if you're exempt salary employee, you don't get covered overtime. If you're non exempt, you get overtime. Correct.
Whereas the library is an exempt salary position. But she can't She doesn't get paid overtime. If she was working thirty hours a week, she's not getting paid overtime over twenty six. So it's an exempt position. The library does not pay overtime.
They would get overtime if she worked more than No, she probably wouldn't.
All right. How about we do this? We give her a 3% raise, reduce her hourly rate and give her thirty hours a week.
I'll second that. I made that. Is that a That's a motion, sure.
So, let me get this straight. You're going to just say, bottom line is you're gonna give her, she's gonna earn 3% more than she does now. But you want to just reduce her hourly wage to reflect that she's working thirty hours.
Just so we're clear, think you're asking for a labor board case. All right, then Eric, can you go to
a labor attorney and ask the question as to how to handle this and come back to us?
I mean, I think if you wanted and you wanted to say, how do we do this legally? We do what I had asked the board to do you guys last year, which is sign a standalone professional contract, you know, with Amy, like I have, you know, which lays out everything and if both parties sign it, then it's kosher. When you could do it Do have that drafted for us? I could have it drafted for you. I haven't yet.
Then let's bring it up in our next budget meeting, get it in place and let's do it. Because to me, it makes no sense to just give her four hours.
Especially if she's never logged her hours before. If you've logged her hours and it's a salary plus overtime position. If you're not logging your hours, it's kind of an ad hoc position where you're expected to be there so many hours.
Okay. So does that take care of all of the positions other than Amy and Eric and Amanda? We have to discuss Amanda also outside of this. Okay. Are we discussing Amanda or no?
Well, let's discuss Amanda. Amanda, how much do you wanna make? I'm only kidding, don't answer that.
All right, I'll ask. Amanda, how much do you wanna make? I'm gonna see her face. Yeah, Amanda, you have to be on this call. I
gotta get the You gotta get this spreadsheet out of here now. I gotta see Amanda. I'm here. She's still smiling, which is good. Amanda, how many hours do you work?
It depends on the week. I'm supposed to work nineteen hours a week. Honestly, I do go over every week. And then it depends on the week due to board meetings. So I I try to honestly balance every week and yeah. But you love your job?
I do. Alright. That's not a fair that's not a fair ask though. Amanda. I do love the job. Amanda, how many hours are you working over a week currently? How many hours do you need to do the job?
Right now I think I'm at an average of like twenty two to twenty three hours a week. Yeah. Okay. And Eric, what did you request for Amanda?
Back up a second. Amanda, are you paid separately for the board meetings or is that coming out of your 19?
That's a good question. I believe it is supposed to come out of my 19 because I am one person technically doing two different jobs I suppose depending how you look at it.
So you're not getting, but it's hard. Don't we have a clerk budget? We do but I'm still one person.
So it's paid out of the Are you getting money out of the clerk budget? Right. Are you?
Yes, she's getting paid out of the clerk budget and getting paid separately as my administrative assistant.
So you're doing nineteen hours under administrative assistant and then you're doing additional hours under clerking budget? Basically, yes. And you actually make more money when you're clerking as long as the meetings don't go too long? Yeah, technically.
Well, it's not technically it is or it isn't. Could you get what 65 for the first hour? No, it's actually 100 for the first hour and 20 for each additional hour. Okay. So then technically you make more money clerking? Technically. Okay.
So you're getting an additional three or so, four hours clerking a week?
Depends on the week. Some weeks there's no meetings. Some there there's usually just two meetings a month for me now as except for right now because of the workshops. Okay.
So on the weeks that I have board meetings, I try to work less hours as the admin assistant, but that doesn't always work out.
I don't understand. So why are you working less hours as an admin assistant if you're paid out of a different budget?
Because technically I'm really not supposed to be going over twenty hours of employment per week with Amanda. Because then she's, we're required to We have
to pay benefits when we do that or we're At 20. Right.
And so Amanda, we can get this out of the way. We offered you benefits, is it you only or is it you and your your spouse? What would it be?
Well, I know if it's if I do get bumped up up to twenty six hours, it would only be offered to myself regardless. So yeah, I mean, will say this. I feel like it would benefit the town if I had more hours as the admin assistant. I mainly do communication tasks, which I love, but I feel like there's other things that I could be helpful with to take some things off of Eric's plate and others plates as well. And what are those things? Yeah, I'd like to hear that. I would love.
Well, I guess depends what Eric would want to throw on on my plate.
Are you saying you have a stamp on your desk that has his name on it? You're doing paperwork for him now?
Just slightly I would say. Feel like I'm Eric's assistant but I'm mostly everyone's assistant not just his to be honest. Okay.
Okay. So if we did this twenty six hours, Eric, what is the salary cost and what are the benefit costs?
So the salary cost is roughly $8,000 The total cost is a change from around $22,000 a year total cost to somewhere around $47,000 a year total cost. And that's just for her health insurance?
That's health insurance plus MRF. So remember at twenty hours, enroll people in MRF also.
I just want to be clear I would want the change to be made because I'm needed not just because I want the change or I may want the change. I want it to be because it's necessary. Eric, is it necessary? It would make my life easier, No, listen, that was an unfair question.
No, it's not an unfair question because listen, if we're gonna do that, let's talk about this. If playing devil's advocate, we just hired somebody in public works that's gonna take a little bit of weight off your shoulders, Eric.
Correct. What's that? I agree with you, Adrian. I think, I think Jay's gonna take a ton of
responsibilities off Eric. Amanda can start kicking some of that stuff she's been doing back to Eric now that he has more free free time.
Isn't that what we're trying to do is run a better operation?
Is there a position in the town hall where we could use her skills that we're lacking or something that she could pick up? Well, that's a loaded question.
Oh, no, I'm just, is there, can we combine a position and allow Amanda
to do that? I'm just asking a question. Amanda, do you have a finance degree? Need a finance person. So if you look at the budget,
one of the things I am suggesting, which I personally have heartburn with, but I think we almost have to is we never did hire a municipal agent because frankly we haven't been in a position where we could use an agent because the reality is most senior programming can't happen right now. So, I mean, one of the things I anticipated with this budget is basically keeping the primary responsibility for that with Roberta and not hiring a standalone municipal agent. And that is roughly a $12,000 savings by doing that. I would think that Amanda would end up with some of the load for doing that, although the primary would stay with Roberta.
So primary contact is still Roberta and Amanda will be what picking up some of the communication lift and paperwork?
I would suspect we work out some kind of sharing agreement to do that.
Amanda, you're sort of blank faced over there. You agree How with much is Roberta being paid for that work?
I'd have to look it up exactly. It's actually probably going to depend on because the agreement was a rider on top of the union contract. I think she was making, I want to say it's $3,400 a year right now, but the union contract is up for negotiation. So it would end up being negotiated.
Is there something we can put together for the next meeting just to put together like a presentation because of like I just don't want to do this just because I mean, like Amanda. I'd love to have you stay, but we need to, for the taxpayers in town, we need to make sure that there's a need and she's fulfilling additional needs instead of just throwing her extra hours. Are you suggesting firing her? Mean, you're saying not stay? No, I'm not saying like, I'm just saying if she found a full time position somewhere else and ended up leaving our employment.
Maybe what we can ask Eric to do is, Eric, not only give us the logic behind it so when we do vote on it, we're understanding, but also find if there's other dollars in other departments that can be directed to Amanda. If you need to take the $3,400 from Roberta and give it to Amanda, then at least that's 3,500 because the number that you're asking that is being discussed is over $25,000 Yep, it's a huge ask. Good question.
I think we need to clarify a little bit. This cannot be a conversation about Amanda. It has to be a conversation about Amanda's position and whether or not those hours are required as much as I adore you, Amanda, you may move on. If this is something we're doing, we're supposed to be doing it because Eric needs more time with her or the town is gonna utilize her in some other way and needs that. It can't be about whether Amanda needs benefits. It can't be about any of that. It has to be about the position.
And that was the point I was making. Need to make, there needs to be a need. Need to satisfy a need.
Amanda you know that's not a slide against you. No, that's
actually exactly what I was trying to say before is I would want it to happen if my position was I was needed more. And I will say that I am interested in helping with senior social services, and I would like to work with Roberta. If that opportunity comes, that would be wonderful for the town. Appreciate you being open to other opportunities.
But it all needs to be clarified. Yep. Finalized and all the numbers. So you need to know where the money's coming from.
What's, you know, as, you know, Jeff has asked, can you just maybe boil this down a little bit more for us at the next meeting?
Sure. I'm not clear what exactly you want though. What is it that you're asking?
You're going to give us a job description in essence. Description. What the position needs to do and what other functions and other departments that position can assist with that either are getting done by someone else and they're being paid for it or not getting done. Then we can sit there and make the determination as to, okay, those are appropriate and this is where the money is going come from.
Also, I think we need to know how those are getting broken down. And then are we also in a situation where is Amanda still going to be clerking the way she's clerking now or is that encompassing? That needs to be part of that conversation.
And the money savings that you had from the municipal agent could be used to pay Amanda. Again, this is not about Amanda though. Yeah. Well, to pay for the new
To pay for the position, Scott. Pay for the position. Thank you. Scott, I'm not trying to put you on task. Just You knew what I meant, Adrian. I know, but the public needs to know. I don't want this to be misconstrued.
That's why we're clarifying it all. Thank you. Amanda, personally, I love you. I don't care what anyone else thinks, Amanda.
Jeff, they're recording this. Your wife's going That's find fine.
Wife can watch it on phone. No, we don't have cable. We can't watch public.
I'm going send her the YouTube link. Oh, yeah. That's fine.
Okay. Adrian, what is your timeline? Couple A couple minutes here. Okay. What else do we want to discuss in the six minutes we have Adrian with us?
So I know Adrian had some feelings regarding the supplemental insurance for cybercrime. So I think that's one other decision. It might not be a bad idea to make tonight so that everybody knows Kerma has provided fairly minimal, but some cyber insurance for towns as part of their comprehensive package. They've eliminated that because they had a little over $2,000,000 in claims this year across the municipalities in Connecticut. They've they've done a bunch of research and come up with standalone policies for towns if towns choose to adopt it. The minimum cost for this town is about $10,300 somewhere in there for basic cyber policy. So the first question is, do we wanna pursue a policy or do we want to roll the dice? You know, and where do we want to go with it? Because that is a fairly large cost implication of the town.
Eric, has any actions been taken like training the employees on phishing scams and how to identify phishing emails?
Yes, we signed up for a online training program that all the employees are required to complete called security mentor, which basically every month there's a lesson employees have to complete on some security topic relating to town hall employees.
Do they get a test email once in a while to see if they can identify? I was just gonna ask that.
No, we don't. We've talked about it with South Windsor but that's not part of that program.
I would just like to see how many employees would fall for it if we did send one out Because if we send one out, there's definitely some gaps in training that we need to look at. I personally get one about once a week.
Listen, my take on this was the biggest thing you worry about, I personally worry about is financial transactions. So anytime we're doing a financial transaction that involves a wire transfer, any of that stuff, there should be a secondary verification required like whether it's a PIN number or something so that if somebody hacks, they can't just access our bank accounts and start wiring stuff. Beyond that, I don't personally think that the $10,000 is a good use of resources. That's my own take on it insurance wise, but I'm open to listen to other people here.
Has there been other towns that have been experiencing this and have they Oh god, everybody's experiencing this Scott, everybody. No, other
towns? Yeah, Hartford got hacked, Windham got hacked. I mean, everybody's getting hacked. Those bigger towns though have a lot more online access issues than we do in general, but everybody's at risk. Mean, candidly everybody's at risk, but again, if you do simple things like second level verifications for any transfers, things like that, and those are things we need to be talking to our banks about.
We already do that. Eric already does that. No, no, no. Eric, I'm asking because I'm pretty sure that you have to verify any transaction. The transaction that we had that went out, did you have to verify that? Yes. Yes. You verified that because it seemed like a logical transaction as to what they were doing. Yeah, but that transaction should have thrown red flags. That transaction,
okay, wait a second. That transaction should have thrown red flags to the treasurer.
Right. So let's talk that through and I'll tell you what actually happens. So we have any ACH requires the person who sets it up cannot automatically approve all ACHs get approved by me. Now, what we have done is that what I do is I look at in the vast majority of ACHs that come through here, almost all of them are for either our MRF payments, our health benefit payments, or our payments to Ram High School. And those are on a fixed schedule. They're all So
I have, I look at the budget and make sure the money's there. I look at the, whether it's on an expected schedule or it matches up with an invoice. And that's what I check. But honestly, I don't go back through and look at the routing number and look at the transaction details in that. I probably should.
What we should have and the bank should have given you is a checklist verification that says something like, has anything changed in this transaction from a previous transaction? Like if the account number is changing any of that stuff are red flags. And that's not necessarily your fault. I mean, that's a fault of the bank really should have had that in place. Well,
so I agree with you. And the one thing I've done is I put in a policy that says anytime there is a change in an ACH, so it's not an ACH going to the same account we always send to. We have to verbally call the company and verify
that the information is correct. And you're calling them at the standard phone number not the one they send you in the email. Correct.
Mean, and that's what it comes down to. It's just common sense. Don't click on a link you don't recognize, don't click on a link in an email ever. It's not that hard.
Anytime your phone rings and it goes beep, you hang up, right? Those are common sense things. No, I mess with them. You mess with them? Do you listen to them? Do you just sit there and ask them what? I
keep on the line as long as I can. It's fun.
I do too. When they tell me I can get a free, a zero interest visa, say, great, how do I get it? Oh, you gotta give me your visa account. I'm like, no, I thought you were giving me one. Then they get mad.
It's fun. I put them on speakerphone when I'm driving, why not? That's fun. Gives you something to do.
What's your take on this, Jeff? You're on the financial side. Your I
would never spend $10,000 Listen, insurance is, you're just mad you don't have it when you get hit. But $10,000 is way too much of a policy premium for me for what I believe we deal with in the community. Because what systems are we running in our town that are going to be compromised, that are going to kill us? We don't have a financial system.
Well, take on this is the same as yours. We're backing everything up anyways. Our biggest risk is someone accessing our account and transferring, which if we have two level verification, it shouldn't be an issue.
I wouldn't be opposed to any more of some phishing email training just to see if the employees fall for it. If they do, retrain them.
Honestly, I'd rather spend $1,000 on a company to come in and do once we're out of COVID, to come in and do a session every year, remind employees, show them what phishing links look like, all of that stuff. But then they send them emails to their account to see if they click the link. They send Kind of like you do sales call training, that type of thing.
They send fake emails to the accounts to see if they click on the link. And if they're not taking it seriously, then it's time we make the employees take it seriously. Just click on nothing. Click on nothing exactly.
Okay what I would say is that statewide other than workers comp cyber crimes are some of the biggest payouts right now in the insurance industry. And if you think about it between 169 towns, there's been over $2,000,000 worth of claims this year. So,
you know So let's do the math on that. There's $2,000,000 worth of claims and 169 and they're asking us for what kind of premium? They're asking for 10 and it's only 11. Yeah, it's only 11. I
mean, listen, I know they think it's going go up, but that's a lot of money. So that's coverage.
Okay. Okay. If it's a risk you're willing to take, then it's a risk we're willing to take. It
definitely is a risk that I would be willing to take, but I would ask you what systems could be compromised? I mean, our email is external.
Hey, I'm sorry, I gotta hop off. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so can I make a suggestion? Sure.
That Diane Choket is on. Yeah. And that is what she did for a living. If you wanna ask advice about that, she's probably a far better source of that than I am. You know, in terms of what the risks are today. Diane, are you still on? Yes, I am. Okay, what do you think?
The whole crux of the thing is really training your employees. That's where for a town our size, it's training the employees because that's where it's going to happen. Somebody's going to inadvertently get taken with a phishing scam or an email or something and that's what's gonna happen. I don't think any, you know, as long as we're backing up everything and we don't keep people's personal credit card stuff or anything in our systems, then we're going to be okay as far as the risk goes. The risk is the people.
Okay. Eric, we accept no credit card transactions that are not through the tax collector's office which is an outside service.
Correct. Correct. Okay. I mean the true danger is the fact that we have about 4,000,000 in the bank. And what happens if, you know, somebody does something fraudulent? Know? Well,
since there's limited access to that, what are there? Three people in the town hall that have access to it? Right now, two.
Let's just tell them exactly who to go after. To me is, Diane is right, train the people. We have dual signatures on all checks. Isn't that accurate? Yes, correct. There's
not even a limit like a $200 check that you could sign. No, a check for a dollar requires
two signatures. Two signatures. Train the employees, send out the test emails, and see what the heck happens, and let's see what we can do.
I mean, I'll just make a comment. Training the employees is the hardest part. When I worked for the large bank, I mean, we failed a lot when we trained our employees and sent out the test emails. People clicked on crap all the time. I mean, so it was constant training. Do know what I mean? So it's got to be a culturally, it has to be a heightened awareness from the people. Once you get that buy in, then you get to a safer level.
All right. South Windsor or Eric, does South Windsor give you any advice or any anything that we can do to put up some additional barriers and some fences around our email system?
I can certainly ask that question. I think we've spent a lot of money and a lot of effort trying to physically secure. Because I mean, if you think about where do you end up with big cyber claims? You end up when somebody packs your system and has control of all your data and you can't recover your data unless you pay them a shitload of money. So that's one possibility. And that's one of the most common and that's one of the most expensive for a lot of towns because most towns aren't paying hundreds of thousands of dollars because they fraudulently paid somebody a couple $100,000. Most of those tend to be smaller amounts similar to what we have. Where they get nailed is when they got to spend a lot of money to reconstitute their system and bring in somebody to rebuild their system.
That's one of the bigger costs. Far we're,
again, a lot of that boils down to employee behavior because as long as employees aren't putting any of their personal devices behind the secured networks, you know, you're probably okay with the firewalls we have. But all it takes is one person who knows the town's secure, you know, wi fi password from connecting something onto the network that shouldn't be on it and you have a potential security risk. So I mean, I don't think there's any way you can make it 100% secure. You you can have redundant backup, you know, so you can probably reconstitute your servers and your systems. It's not going to be, you know, you're going to spend a bunch of money doing it, you know. So I think we're, I guess what I would say is we are a hell of a lot less vulnerable than we were a year ago or a year and a half ago, but nothing's in, I mean, look at what's going on right now with the Department of Defense. I mean, pretty much most of the major state agencies are dealing with the effects effects of a huge security breach, you know, and they got resources we can't even touch. So, I mean, to think that it can't happen to us, I think is a bad risk. The I question
don't necessarily know that we're saying that it can't happen. Odds are one thing and then there's a $10,000 price tag on an insurance policy.
Yep, right. And that's kind of the crux of it is, are we better self insuring and rolling the dice and hoping we don't get banged?
If you sit there and you think about it, and maybe this is something for another meeting, just how long would it take us to restore? If we sat there and said, We got compromised today and they impacted our server, forget the hard costs, what would it take for us to get our data back? Maybe a server fried or a server is locked up, but what would it take to get our data back? Really, what are the data points? I sit there and I'm wondering, what do we have? We have individual files, The assessor's office and the tax collector's office are outsourced to an outside entity, the computer systems.
I don't know that that's necessarily the case. We are not paying for the cloud based version of Vision. Okay. That's internal on our server.
Okay. Vision Vision is just data. That is the information about the individual properties. Do we back that data up? Those are all things that we should sit there and get analysis of and say, one of these meetings, have a conversation about our computers and about our data and how it's backed up and how quickly it could be restored and what would happen if something even happened to the servers. Right. Yep.
I sit there and I think the biggest problem would be the financial system, but we're in the process of building a financial system. We don't even have it. We're using an antiquated system that is I don't I mean, we have enough trouble getting into that software. I'm sure a hacker would have a hell of a time trying to get into that server or that system. So, anyway Yep. That's another
comment. Sounds like the answer at least at this point is we're not going to pursue an independent policy. Am I correct in that assumption? Unless
we want to vote on it, would tell you no.
We want to look at a package for fishing training, like email, like a I was just looking at a few companies online whenever get some prices for that and talk about that next meeting.
I mean, if if yeah, if I'm all for, I'll get with South Windsor and see what else we can do in terms of training setups for employees.
I'm all for prevention and dealing with it after the fact. If we can prevent it in the first place, I think that's our best route is like Diane said.
Barry, can you take that spreadsheet down? I don't think we need that anymore. Oh, sure.
Okay. Sorry, I dual screen so I'm used to seeing all your faces anyway, smiling Absolutely.
Okay. Is there anything else the three of us would like to do without the other two members? Is there anything, Eric, you want us to go over? After looking at the budget, are there any other components that we should ask Eric about now and have him get information on? Any other sections of the budget?
Honestly, if you take out employee salary and benefit and capital, there's not a lot else in the budget that's variable.
I mean, the biggest thing we have, we have to talk about, and maybe we do this next week, and Eric, prepare for this, is all of the capital requirements that we're looking at because those are the biggest numbers. Correct. We have to look at that and then make determinations as to what we send to the Board of Finance. Then we should talk, would guess, Jeff, next week more about the Board of Education and
those numbers because have meeting tomorrow night, so I was going to get on that meeting and see what the discussion was.
Okay. One thing that I would like to know, Eric, because our numbers are, they include the pre K numbers, can you find out if Marlborough and Hebron have numbers for under, like what they have for under pre K, for a three year old, four year old, and five year olds that are not in kindergarten. I would like to know what they're including in their numbers. Because Jeff, if you take your numbers the way you did it and subtract out that class, I would like to know if the other towns are
including them. Well, can tell you for a fact, our town, they're included. No, I know they're included. Yeah, they're included. And when you look at our budget, the grants that are in there and the tuition are not part of our overall budget request. But they're included in the numbers for the state reporting. So if you take out those 30 preschool students, that number jumps from 22,000, 23,000 up to almost to 28,500. So
that's what I'm concerned about. Well, I would sit there and say, if that's the case, let's sit there and say, what was the number that you used? Which for report? You
took out 50. How many children did you take out of room? Oh, 30. There's 30 preschoolers currently. 30 preschoolers.
I just went with a general number of 150 because there is some out placements too as well. Well, those 30, if I understood it correctly,
they're asking for 70,000 for those 30. They're looking for benefits for the teachers in the Paris.
Benefits. The rest of that is supposed to be covered by grants and tuition.
Yeah. My contention is the whole thing should be contention. That should be a breakeven preschool. Tuition should be based on a breakeven point in registration. I
would like to sit there and see a little bit more analysis because I went to the RAM. I was searching to sit there and see what Hebron was doing and what they had. I got to the RAM preschool program that's run by and their numbers were Identical to ours. Yeah, or lower. It might have been lower. Their
tuition was $600 as well. That's true because it's only a ten month program. That is something that the numbers, I mean, the one thing that I would tell you from the information that I sent you, if you look at Marlborough's number, that is unbelievable.
Yeah, and if you took Marlborough's numbers and you apply them to Andover, we're paying a million dollars more to educate our children than Marlborough. Million. A million dollars more.
I just don't know if the I don't like that state number because I will tell you, Jeff, after we went and we went to the meeting at RAM, what was it, last year? Yep. Well, we went to sit there and determine, and Eric was there, and we went and listened to the state education department talk about Townsend. We were not subjected to, oh, I forgot what the term was, but Minimum budgetary requirement. The NDR requirement.
When five years ago we didn't have preschool and we had two seventy five children just in kindergarten through sixth grade, now in that same group. So every time I hear the comparison between old years, I'm like going, we're It's fuzzy math, Jeff, it's fuzzy math. It's math, yeah. And then I hate the state system because of the numbers that they put up there don't It never logically
works for me. Right, and the other thing that's tough to compare with the state numbers is there's a couple different formulas there they use. One, they're not all up numbers. They include some categories but not others. And it does make it tough to compare. In the past what I've done is I basically looked through each town's budget and picked out what they identified for their elementary school budget to use as apples to apples comparisons and then just compare just the direct ask. So not including any grants because we're presuming we don't see that in either system to try to get a fair comparison. But it's actually pretty difficult to get a reasonable apples to apples comparison. But there's no question that smaller school systems are more expensive. And we are an expensive school, but that's in part driven by the fact that that's really driven by class size. I mean, all you have to do is you have to look at the metric of average class size for a town and compare that to total student cost. And it's basically a one to one match. And that's really what defines the cost because it's your cost of teachers. Regardless of how you dice it and whether you agree with the budget or not, that's the driver.
And I agree 100% with your assessment. But when Marlboro is doing it and it costs us 25% more, that's a big number. It's a large number to swallow.
Well, even if you sat there and you took the number and you said There's a $5,000 difference between Hebron's per pupil costs that were provided and ours, and even if you sat there and you said $2,500 and you took a reduction of $2,500 what are you talking about? It's 150. Half $1,000,000.
Yeah, it's significant. Significant. I don't know if you realize that, Jeff, but what Valerie sent us today, if you look at the costs and you take out the two regional districts at the top, we're number eight out of 169 towns as far as school costs for elementary school. We're number eight, which is pretty expensive. We're right up there.
Well, as our last conversation was, all I cared about is I wanted to know what Hebron and Marlboro were because that's where our children are going. Listen, this comes down to a very What Eric said is very true. You have to be willing to make cuts to get I mean, Marlboro must have had certain things going on on their board because they made decisions that were in the best interests of the entire community. Whereas right now we have kids in small classes and it's great for those kids and it's great for those parents, but financially it's costly.
Yeah. Another thing I want to bring up is I talked to one the ex teachers on the Andover board today, and we were discussing class sizes and salary. He mentioned that South Windsor and Manchester, they pay significantly more per teacher. And I said, how much is significant? It's like 4,000 or $5,000 more. But their class sizes are on average 23 to 28. So we've got teachers for 4,000 or 5,000 we're paying 4,000 or $5,000 less, but they only have maybe twelve, fifteen kids in the classroom as opposed to teaching in classes double that size.
Well, Jeff, you would know this more than anybody else. How many new teachers do we have in that school?
It's very top heavy as far as older teachers, teachers that have been tenured for a while, and they're up on the top of the pay scale. That's contributing to some of the issue.
Okay. Well, we'll have to sit there and research that a little bit more. Eric, what I would ask you just, if you could, is find out, do Marlboro and Hebron include any below pre K students in their calculations, in their numbers? I think Marlboro only does half a day when I was looking into it. But I want to know if they're in their four forty nine calculation. I mean, because I know they're in our 191. So if we're going to go with the calculation, Jeff, the way that you put it out there, we have to understand if
other towns are including or not including. When I spoke to Valerie, that's how they do report them. My guess is they are in there.
Well, look at Hebron. Does Hebron even have it because they have the program?
I think they're half day as well, too. Last time I checked, had a half day preschool as well. So they're not working off the grant and have the full day program, I believe. I think it's through I
may be wrong, but I was But it would be those parents are paying for that service, though. Correct. Correct.
And then checked like I said, I checked around I reached out to Robin Green and a couple other I think I reached out to Mother Goose in South Windsor and a couple other day care providers at the Ministry School. And it was anywhere from $10.50 dollars to $1,200 a month. And they charge by the week instead of the month because there's a lot of weeks where we have a lot of months where we have five weeks in a month. So sometimes we're charging by the month and we're getting five weeks of preschool for four weeks of tuition. So that was one recommendation I made to Valerie as well and to adjust the tuition upwards. I didn't see anywhere in those grants, I read them fully that there was no requirement to set the tuition at a certain rate. It's just that the formulas are based, they just have a proof, the tuition is based on a percentage of your income.
All this information that you got Jeff was off of a state site,
correct? Yeah, you can go to actually I think AES has got the links to the grants and you can actually go online and read the grants. So every bit of information
that is put in here has to be the same information from school to school. So if there is or isn't, no Jeff, you're not saying I believe that they all According to Valerie, they all report the same,
and that's what she told me today. Then just ask that I want the question answered. Does Marlboro or does Hebron have student classifications the way we're doing it? That's all I'd be after because-
Any way you crunch these numbers, Jeff, they all look bad. Well, look worse.
They go from bad to worse. They go from bad to worse. I mean, now with the way that the metrics and the way that Valerie even laid them out for us, our per pupil spend is 21,211 and Hebron's spend is $16,020 and Marlborough's spend is $14,898 per pupil. That's a 5,000, what did I do? $5,191 per pupil additional spend between us and the closest town that we have to go to RAM with, that's Hebron, dollars 5,191 per pupil. Times 150, kids is $750,000
And I think that's why Bolton looked at our spending a little over a year ago and said, hey, we'd be more than happy to absorb you. Well, I'm sure they would.
I'm sure that's But what we have to do is we have to make our point to the Board of Education and to the Board of Finance that, Listen, we can do it. We want to keep our school. We want to keep it in our community. We just need to have a rational discussion as to what can be cut and what can't be cut and what class sizes can happen and what class sizes can happen. That has to be a discussion the Board of Education has to happen. The only thing we can do honestly is go back and say, We don't believe your spend should be over X. If this board agrees to it, then we send it to the Board of Finance and we let the Board of Finance go through it. If the Board of Education doesn't choose to do it, then we go to the polls and vote. That's all this is. It's not being mean. There's a number out there for me that they should spend.
Yeah, and I agree with your point. Think it's more it's called rightsizing. We need to right size that school for the amount of students that we have. Getting back to Eric's point about the Bolton when Bolton was talking to us about regionalizing with them, I mean, we came away from that first. I think it was one of our first meetings we did as a board. We got together and we were talking about we put together that committee to try to look at some cost savings. And that committee, I believe, is still together. And it's been two years. And I still haven't seen anything come from that committee regarding trying to get some savings in the school by Shared services. Yeah, by sharing services. I believe that the Board of Ed Chair was heading that up. And I haven't heard anything. So I don't know if they ever took that seriously. But here we are in the eleventh hour looking at this and
no recommendations have come in two years.
Eric, at least for my own benefit, if you can get that information from the talents, just ask them the numbers of students and what grades they all pertain in. Hebron is saying they have six sixty four students in their elementary school system, just get the classes that they're related to. We can then compare it to what Andover's groupings are, and as Scott said, it'll go from bad to worse, depending upon what those numbers show us. But then it just comes down to us as a group committing to go back to the Board of Education and ask them to do the spend. I mean, listen, we asked them to do a larger spend than they did last year. They came back with a partial number. Now they're coming with an 8.35% increase. It's not a small number for a Huge lot number. Again.
So the other thing I would and you know, I sent something to both you and Mark Brinker about it, but you know, I think the town needs to address the RAM issue also, or make a decision not to one or the other, either tackle it or don't, that's gonna be, that's obviously the biggest single expense we have in our budget is RAM.
The only thing about that Eric is I'm not as concerned about that because if you look at their first two's cost they're down around 17,000. Right.
So I mean No, they're not actually. Well, that's what they're reporting out and that's what I sent you today.
They were at some point in the past, they were at that.
Well, 2018, 2019 year which is the last reportable year to the state, they reported 17,000.
Right. So how many kids are there in RAM? Just under 1,200, their budget's $32,000,000 all up. Do the math, that's not $17,000
Yeah, but some of that's taken up with grant money too. That may be their budget but there might be some grants in there.
So what they ask for in taxation is about 30,000,000. So do the same thing, 30,000,000 divided by 1,200. That's not $17,000 either. It's 26,000.
Correct. So what I'm saying is that Ram is spending an awful lot of money per student, right or wrong that they are.
And I'm saying do the same thing with Andorf. You do the math with the 150 students that we are paying for, it's up around 28,000. I think we should tackle AES first.
Well, we have to sit there and do them both at the same time. Eric is not wrong. Eric, you're right. Eric, I
can be right or wrong. Mean, I'm just me. I'm just providing you data. What you choose to do with it is your own.
Correct. So maybe what we also do is we ask Ram for their per student calculation, just like I asked Valerie. Why don't we ask them for and I didn't ask Valerie for the twenty eighteen-twenty nineteen number. I asked her for her per student calculation on her current budget. I appreciate what Valerie did. I thanked her for the information, but I don't like the state website. I don't like how it's done. I would rather get the information. Okay, this is my budget. This is what I'm spending. These are the students that I project to be in the school. This is the number. It should be really easy. We should ask Graham to do it on their current budget, what their spend is. I will go back to Valerie and I'll ask her to do it on her current budget.
I can get you that number pretty easily because I crunched that already.
Just have to dig it back. Send it on to the board of selectmen so we can all see it. Okay. All right. Okay. Is there anything else that we need to do tonight? I think we've offended enough people tonight. Have we offended you, Eric? Not tonight. Plenty of other nights, but not tonight. Everybody equally. Equally. We try our best. We're little offensive group. Have yet to have our meeting about you, Eric.
Yes. So we're going to go to public speak right now. So Diane Choquette, would you like to participate in public speak at the end of our meeting? No, I'm good. Thanks. All right. Joanne Ebert?
Hi, guys. Yeah, I'm definitely going to say a couple of things because I have some info on some things that were spoken about tonight. You were talking about the library person. I think it is a good thing too that you can move ahead with like an MOU memo of understanding. Again, I know I just take an interest. So if I have a little facts, just wanted to say we do that a lot with our contracts. If there's someone that doesn't kind of fit the bill you were going back and forth with adding salary or you know all the figures you can do with Emma with that person for the twenty six hours she's kind of on a separate and continue to receive the benefits which is different than your personnel policies and then moving on to just I just want to say for the record too because she's here I know that I popped popped in about amanda and I've said a couple things about the position
you know and I've asked a couple questions because I realize when you change a position like that it's going to be different than you know she seems great she's always been great with me and I wish her nothing but the best. So I was kind of listening to her input. One thing I did want to say because we have it in our town is that her board clerk responsibilities are totally different than her town job. It's my understanding, and I think you can get back up, that she can do the nineteen hours as an administrative assistant, get all of that money and then you know look good for her good girl she gets a $100 a meeting or whatever and then additional money she does not need to be offered benefits on that I mean make your make your decisions that you're going to decide. I realize it's a big choice and a lot to take in, but I think those things are different. And Adrian was getting to that point. I think he was really, you know, bringing it up and I thought he was getting there. Like she can do her nineteen hours, that's her town job. Her board clerk, because it's totally different, it is the same because we have a lot of people that do clerking in our town as well. I just wanted to say that and the ram issue I agree with you that you have to tackle it but I was like one of only a few people that went to those meetings last year and tried to speak up that's that's going to be so hard I hope it needs to be done as well with everything you're doing but again
I really don't think they listen and then they come out with their big capital plan even in a pandemic year. And lastly, and thank you for listening. Just every time you vote in your raise and everything that those are whatever you're going to do, that's your job, but it does increase the benefits and all of that that they all receive. Luckily, the town of Andover folks are getting some good benefits, so it does go into their retirement and that. I think that's it. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll make a motion to adjourn. I'll second. All All those in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Last thing, we all are coming to a meeting. Is the next meeting next Wednesday or next Tuesday? Next Monday.