Meeting transcript
Board of Finance Regular Meeting
June 28, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. We'll call this meeting to order. This is the town of Ann Arbor Board of Finance meeting for Wednesday, June 28. We'll call the meeting to order and recite the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, to the republic, the nation under God, indivisible. Thank you. Our first order of business is the public speak. We'll open it up for the public. Eric, I don't see any members of the public here unless Cheryl, you want to contribute.
Nope. I'm good. Just when we're ready for my presentation.
Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on to agenda item three, which is additions, deletions, or changes to the agenda. Does anybody want to propose any additions, changes, or deletions?
Yeah, Joanne? Yeah, I just want to ask, I didn't check email in the last hour. Did we get anything new?
I didn't see anything. I didn't get anything new. All right, no additions for me. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Look, the right page here again. Looking between too many screens. We'll go on to agenda item four, which is old business. The first item is 4A, review of budget to actual. The data was provided in the packet. It's quite extensive, pretty long. Does anybody have any questions on that? Mean, I guess I would start with a question. First of all, looks like we were in terms of our property tax revenue, we're just about where we expect to be, a couple $100,000 low, but I also noticed that we we have supplemental motor vehicle and it's significantly over at 138 ks and prior taxes at 156 ks but we're about 500 down on current year taxes. Is that normally an expected offset that we just don't budget for Eric, do you know or Cheryl?
Yes, I can explain that. So the report that you're currently looking at has revenue from the tax collector recorded through the end of May. Have not received her reports yet, so that's why your current, tax collection is down. I won't have those figures until she closes her books, this week and gives me those documents. That's part of the reconciling process. Okay. Basically June.
Yes, I mean, I don't know if she'll collect the full 498,000, but, you have not previously, your you haven't budgeted at all for supplemental. And Eric and I thought that there were some other items that we should make note. Now that we have the different accounting system, there's other things that I can report to you that you can use for budgeted decisions. So we've added that one, but I certainly can take it out if you so choose. There's no issues with that at all. It's pretty much whatever you you might like. Okay.
Mark, so that you know, in the past, what has happened is the town has assumed a 100% collection, but not accounted for supplemental motor vehicle. In most years, those two just about cancel each other out. It was a shorthand that was in place before I got here, and it is Cluedy. And we probably should, you know, instead of doing that, make an assumption that we're going to collect X percent of tax. Then we're going to collect X roughly on supplemental assessment. We haven't done that in the past. It does make more sense to do it. It's more, I don't want to say honest because we're not, you know, we're not fudging the numbers. It's more clarity. Delocating it where it will be.
Right. So Cheryl and I have discussed that going forward in the next budget process, we think that's a more accurate way to represent the data for you. But in truth, we never really know exactly what percentage we're going to collect, nor do we really know the supplemental because the supplemental, you know, at the time the budget comes out, those are things that are owned yet. So that's a pretty variable number.
Okay. Just, yeah, this is nice question. Mean, I'll address it. I think it's wise to do that. I mean, there's no real reason not to. It just makes more sense. It shows like we are addressing the details without getting too crazy about breaking things out.
Anybody have any other comments on that? Quick question. You already answered half my question by mentioning that the supplemental motor vehicle is variable. How variable, you know, say over a three or five year span is our collection percentage on, you know, house taxes? Is it pretty consistent we get 96%
or does it bounce a bit? I certainly can figure that out. I don't have that information for you right this very minute, but I certainly can go back and look at the prior audit reports. Now understand though your prior audit reports are going to have your supplemental included. So, but so it's going to skew your number a little bit. I do have the tax collector reports I think from '18 through 2023. I can see if I can attempt to calculate for you what the current collection rate normally is and I can send that to the board next week if you'd like.
I think it would be good to have it. I think it's more pertinent to the budget process than it is to. Right, I don't know if it's
right now. Right? Right. I mean, don't, I don't know if we need to, when we were acting on this next budget season is when we're going to need those numbers so that we can, if we're going to say, okay, instead of kind of having these two cancel and be a little fuzzy, we're gonna guesstimate them both. Then I think we want to see both items. You know, what's the last three years look like? And, you know, I get that the motor vehicle one's gonna bounce around. That makes total sense. The, I have a vague memory of commentary from past years from the tax collector that we do pretty well on collecting our full property taxes. I mean, not a 100%, but I think we get close pretty consistently. And so that seems to me something we can estimate pretty well. But I we need to see the numbers. But not like doesn't have to next week. It it needs to be for the next time we do this. I'll certainly work on that project.
Other comments or questions about that topic or other items related to the actual the budget?
Yeah I have a question. Kind of weird but I was wondering why the senior luncheon went up like 600%. I can answer that. So with the senior lunch, we budget an X amount of dollars for her to be able to use. Then she also collects funds from other people that are participating and has expenditures. So at the end of the year, I have to move her overage amount that she spent to her non major special revenue fund under senior lunches. She has monies there that from donations and things of that nature that goes specific to her own fund that offsets those extra dollars. We like to keep it all in one place so we know what she's spending. So when I send her a report, she knows how much she spent in lunches. Okay. But when you get when you get your next set of reports, that will no longer be there. It'll be transferred to her fund. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.
I actually do have one more question. On page eight, the final page where everything tallies, am I reading this wrong or do we have two columns that are kind of flip flopped? The budget versus actual, know, number over budget, percent of budget numbers at the bottom?
Yeah. There's an issue. When you look, yes. There, do you see where it says capital related right on the bottom? Yep. And you have transfers. The transfers for some reason doubled instead of being normal. So where we should have had 900,000 in transfers for some reason it's reporting $171,700,000. 1.7 where the issue is. And I am scheduled to be on the computer again tomorrow,
and I will ask you to see why that's showing that way. Okay. Good. No. I was just yeah. I mean, if you look at the the the very bottom line numbers, they're, pretty wacky. So thank you for the explanation.
Yes, yes. For some reason I'm not quite sure I would be fibbing you if I said I understood why I did it but I will find out.
That's page 10 in the packet, the page eight of the budget. Right page of the budget
numbers and it's just like the percent over the other thing oh I see okay I get it I get it I get it I see what happened. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So the number is way wacky, so the percentage is out of control. Right. It's basically throwing an error there, but yeah. Okay. Okay. Other questions, comments? None.
And I think the other areas, if you looked at the initial revenue from, you know, we're basically gonna get the state revenue stream. But our services, there's a fair bit of building, you know, so we're going to come pretty close in the building and land use fees in the last month as we go through. And, you know, we're also, where we're probably going to be short is on the clerk's fees. I think we did kind of overestimate based on because the majority of those fees are fees that come in based on real estate transactions. And I think we just the market has tanked Total sales have tanked more than we anticipated
when we set that budget. You'll notice the other thing is that the fees for the transfer station are really low. And it's just timing, right? Yeah, we expect to get the kind of the bolus of that in in the last three weeks of the month when everybody's scrambling to get their permits. So, I would expect that to be pretty close to an accurate number by July 1.
Okay, good. Thanks for that clarification. Anything else you want to point out on this budget, Eric, or in the budget to actual? No, unless you have questions.
No one else has questions? Okay. There's also the check register. Anybody have any questions on that? What's the next agenda item? Hearing none, we have the draft policy on financial reports. Eric, this has been kind of hanging out there. We talked about some ways deciding whether this needed to be implemented or whether it was going to kind of take care of itself. What's your take on this now?
So, think at some point the Board of Finance has to make a decision essentially how you want to proceed. Know, where we're kind of pointing to right now is the school reconciling completely separately from the town. So essentially the town reconciling annually its general ledger, the school reconciling completely separately,
and both of us supplying that information directly to the auditor who then has to put together the financial reconciling statements.
So, but the question is, is that something that you as a board of finance are comfortable with? You know, and I think Cheryl can probably talk you through the pluses and minuses. Then based on that, the secondary question is what information, because you guys are tasked with fiscal oversight of the entire town, you know. So what information do you want from the Board of Education for you to be comfortable that you're doing your job as the board of finance and providing overall oversight for the town? Those are really the underlying questions that kind of have to be answered in this,
if that makes sense. It does to me and I guess I would, I mean at the risk, right now we're talking about the Board of Edges doing their own reconciliation at the end of the year, It's almost what we have de facto right now, right, because we're not getting any kind of that reconciliation throughout the year. But I guess I would be interested in hearing Cheryl's take on that approach.
Well, I personally am not overly enthused with that approach. I would at the very least like to be able to get some type of report on a monthly basis that is telling the town and me how much has been spent in that month. I mean, we've got roughly, you know, dollars 3,000,000 or so that I am providing to to the school with no ideas whatsoever. I'm not saying I need to know what they've spent or what they've spent it on. They have a pot that they can spend it on as long as it the auditors say they haven't misused their funds, then that's perfectly okay. But I think that as the town treasurer and for the Board of Finance, I would at least like to say based on the reports that they provided, July they spent this, July to August they spent this.
So if we don't have something, the reports that I provide to you on a monthly basis are going to not be accurate because they're only going to report the town expenditures. There will be no school expenditures. The only thing that you will see on your budget to actual is the amount that was budgeted for the school. There will be no expenditures listed because I'm not receiving them. They're not providing any documents to me as the treasurer, even on a monthly basis to tell me what they've spent. I think at the very least we should at least get that. Even if it's just their budget to actual that has to be provided to the Board of Education for their normal meetings.
Joanne, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to. I'm glad to hear Cheryl's take on it too, because I thought I had heard her say something of this nature before And I just feel like all over our audit reports we do. I know we're cited for different things, but there's definitely some kind of citing and things that we have to do better with the reporting and the general ledger and the money and, you know, the budget overall with the board event. So instead of, you know, whatever was the first option of let them do their thing, let us do let the town do their thing, I'm in favor of more what Cheryl needs, not to micromanage or anything of that nature. I just know that most towns do. When I worked in the grant department in my school system, I had to report in every month to the town person, And it was a huge undertaking. It was a lot bigger than what we would have to do here, would think. So even just phone calls, emails, or whatever, whatever the accounting capacity needs to be, I'd like to see that happen just so that it's easier for our treasurer in our percentages each and every month, like she stated.
Other comments or questions for Cheryl? I agree that we need more than just an end of year accounting. I think that's insufficient. We would be derelict in our duties, frankly, if we didn't at least get some type of budget to actual number. Even if it's not completely up to date, it just gets us in the ballpark. We can have some level of confidence that things are going as planned, there's not some gross problem that we are overlooking. We can certainly negotiate with the Board of Ed as to timing and content and etc and Cheryl said it's not our purview to dictate how they spend it. So it really wouldn't even be something we would even bother asking any questions on. We would just want to make sure that it seems to make sense within the scheme of the budget.
And Mark, if I may add, I mean, we bought system, the software system that they use. I forget what it's called now. Edmunds. Right. Edmunds. That is more in tune with what school systems need. So knowing school software the way I do, these are not hard reports to run. I don't think running a monthly report is a big deal at all. I mean, so If they don't have them, then there's a bigger problem. Well, that's my take on it. It's like, it's just a cycle of things you have to do in your position. That's why I signed up to be on the Board of Finance to bring what I could to the table. And I do work in a school and things like that. I don't think it's a lot to ask. I don't know. Cheryl, am I wrong?
No, I don't feel you are wrong. Certainly feel at the very least we should at least get a monthly expenditure report that whether I made a journal entry and put it in to your, budget to actual or at the very least that the Board of Finance is presented with something on a monthly basis that says this is our cumulative total of expenditures. Uh-huh. Not saying that that's everything you've spent. They're going to make transfers. They have other, you know, bills out. They're going to have encumbered funds. They get to do some things that we don't do. At the very least, we should at least get a monthly report. You just got to give one to the Board of Education anyways, send a second one. Send another one. How hard is
I guess I'm a little bit naive here. So do we have the authority to request those reports? I mean, know they operate anonymously or autonomously, I should say, and they can spend the money however they want. But do we have the request that the Board of Finance, do we have the power to request that they supply that information on a monthly or quarterly basis? Or are they just totally a rogue outfit that can do whatever they want and say no? Well,
it's a fair question. I don't know that how well defined that is. I mean, we've requested attorneys' opinions on this type of thing before, the town's attorney has basically defaulted to the state laws that just indicate that the Board of Finance is the overall fiscal responsibility for the town, and there's some nuances there, etc, and by charter and by state law, don't think we can tell them exactly we make changes to their expenditures, we can't tell them how to spend the money. All we can do is appropriate the budget, vote on the budget, you know, or, you know, do go through our process. But we have an oversight responsibility for the town, and I think that this falls under there, and I don't think it's egregious. You know it's like Cheryl said, if they're doing this for the Board of Ed then there's really no reason that it couldn't be provided to us as well and I think it's just a simple review and frankly I don't want to go through a detail. All I want to do is like skim it, look at the bottom line, is there anything funky going on, everything look like it's okay, are they having any problems? You know we should be able to work in concert with the town or the Board of Ed on this between town and the Board of Ed to do this. I mean, to me it seems pretty straightforward. Yeah, it would, yeah.
Really feel that other towns do it with no problem. I wouldn't bring it forth. Yeah, I know Everything is such a big issue in this town. I don't mind saying it seems to be, but I I would think we'd want it, you know, or at other I don't pretend to go to every town meeting in other towns, but I think it's just something that happens. But, hopefully, you know, with the mending of the bridges and all the meetings that we're having, that it won't seem like it's a worry, it's just part of, like Cheryl says, Cheryl and I respect her opinion the most, and then I secondary work in a school system where I've had to do this, never thought twice about it, just ran my hundreds of reports, hundreds, you know, not one report.
So that's all. I don't think it's a lot to ask either. Rob, did you have a comment? Yeah, was just gonna chime in and say my gut is, you know, we've got a pretty good rapport with the board of Ed between board of Ed and board of finance, and we can explain in a non confrontational way. Why are you laughing there? Something
was, you know, that this was just something that was raised by, you know, our treasurer, and we need to this is something we wanna tighten up and not make it into a four alarm fire, but stay on it. And and see if we can get it to happen. And I don't think we're asking for anything to board event. I'm already kidding. So Yeah. This isn't again, it's not rocket science. Right? So I think we can ask for it. I think I hope that we'll, you know, get a receptive ear, and we can move forward on it. I don't think it has to be a fight, and I think everybody should bear in mind that we don't need to make it. And then I think it'll happen.
So you did get a letter, remember, about two months ago, three months ago, from the chair board of Ed basically saying no, they have no obligation to give you anything. And if you also remember not too long ago during the budget process, when you all asked the superintendent for reporting information on the grant, she stonewalled you also and said, no, she's not going to give you the information on the grant. So I don't share your confidence that they will give you the information. I would hope they would, but I don't, you know, they haven't shown any indication up to this point that they're willing to do that. To my mind, the question is, so let me be perfectly frank. I think from an accounting perspective, the easiest way is for them to maintain a separate checkbook and for us to simply make payments to them as long as they provide us the information that makes you comfortable that they're spending the money correctly. Problem is, is that if when we do it that way, and that is the way I think we should do it, you don't have a good way to
get them. They either voluntarily give you the information or they don't, and you don't have a lot of leverage because you can't withhold payment from them.
Well, there's FOIA, right? Mean, let's just be honest. I mean, there's no sense that any of us going down that road. It would be ridiculous, but that's the next step in my view. We reach an agreement with the board with some reasonable request. My guess is we'll be able to get it, get together and figure out a solution that everybody's comfortable with, and we don't go there. But if we have to go there, we have to go there.
You want me to talk to Jerry and Val? Because I could do that.
You know, and then and maybe they'll listen to him. Yeah. I mean, we we can we can it's probably worth worth having that conversation, Robert, if you want to take the task of kind of going on and working on it. We're not asking for a lot honestly. There should be stuff that's public documents just like our packets, public documents, frankly. They don't do that typically with their agendas.
And Mark, I want to feel like it's in the best I don't want to feel I appreciate that Rob wants to do that and good. You know, just like with you and I, I had requested that we get together as follow-up to some of those grants meetings. Hopefully, we can do that in the future just to, you know, get some of these things taken care of. And really, it should be open to whoever would want to be there too, just so that we're all hearing the same information. But I do appreciate that Rob, I know he has a good relationship there and he can present what we're trying to do. But really this all falls back, know, on the town reporting, doing what's best for the town. The four last years of the audit, you know, since I've been involved, I put in the email, the four last years of watching different things try to happen, the combination of, you know, buying a software, then that not working, then breaking apart again. Now we have Cheryl on board. Cheryl has come in and swooped in to save things and get us going in the right direction. So I just really want what's best for the town, and I want everyone involved to just be mature about it and understand that we are just asking so that the ship gets righted and we can sail on down the road in the right direction. That's my take on it, and I hope everyone would understand that's what we're trying to do. And when we get to the audit, we're That's, yeah, that's We're
going to be talking about this in a few minutes, and the reality is, once again, we have a material finding. This has been like three or four years in a row. That's what I mean, so And it wasn't necessarily all due to the school district early on, but we need to fix the problem, right? Any other comments or questions regarding that? Okay, well, guess we'll move on to the audit status review. Either So the Kate or Eric sent around the audit report. I don't know if any of you guys have had an opportunity to review it, but there was a material finding, material weakness in internal control. This is on page 10 of the documents on page 14 of the actual PDF. The efficiencies and the effectiveness of the Town's bank reconciliation process. The effect was that audit adjustments were required in order to prepare the town's financial statements according with the GAAP principles. Auditor's recommendation is timely
bank reconciliations are essential, Ensuring the integrity of the town's general ledger, monthly bank reconciliation should be fully reconciled in a timely manner and management should document a supervisory review and approval process over the completed bank's own reconciliations, which the bank did or with the management did agree with that. And then there was also a significant deficiency in internal control or financial reporting year end closing procedures having to do with the reconciliation also resulting in problems with the balance sheets and closing. The auditor's recommendation recommend the town expand upon its existing closing procedures to ensure that all significant material counts are reconciled periodically through the year and end. Financial statement findings. There's a significant deficiency internal control of financial reporting reconciliation of town and school districts general ledger, deficiencies in the effectiveness of the controls over the according school district activity within the town's general ledger. And I think that that was all of the deficiency findings. So I guess, Eric or Cheryl, do you want to comment on this? Do you have any
clarification questions or suggestions relative to this? Yes,
I've read them through. I had a conversation today with Mike, the auditor, on a couple of them, including the reconciliation process between the town and the school. Just to alleviate, which will be part of our corrective action plan that will be going to OPM. The bank accounts for the town, all bank accounts for the town are reconciled now on a monthly basis. Everything is reconciled. Tax collector account, main account, anything that has transactions that are running through them outside of just a normal interest. Occasionally, sometimes we get a quarterly interest on some of our older smaller funds, are reconciled on a monthly basis. May is already done. All that's in. Anything that needed to be done has been done, and as soon as June has been issued, June will be reconciled. So the waiting a year and a half, which is when I walked in, nothing had been reconciled pretty much ever for the for the most part. Everything's reconciled now and up to date. Christina, is doing a fabulous job in the finance office, She certainly has grasped some of the issues there. She has spent the last two weeks working on some payroll issues that we have with some compensation not being right. Some of the insurances aren't right, so she's taking that by the horn, is working on that. So, we will be making
some changes coming in July for people who are having correct withholdings for their insurance co pays. Murph's not right. There's there's things that needed to be done. She's doing a fabulous job. Bills are all being entered correctly and timely. If I need something, she's on it right away. I can't I can't tell you enough on how well I think she's fitting in to the town and how grateful I am that we were able to find her. I think she's going to be a wonderful addition to the finance office. She's a smart lady. I don't think we're paying her enough money, which may be something we'll have to talk about later, but she's doing a fabulous job. So the reconciliation process for the town books and records that I expect to go away when the twenty twenty two-twenty three audit has is is finished. The closing process for the end of the year. I'm hoping that that. Comment that management recommendation. Audit hit will go away, but it may not, and here's why. I sent over to Eric last night my suggested transfers and at 07:41 this morning I got an email saying, oops, another $1,900 bill came in. So the transfers that I gave you guys last night are already off. So going forward, in the twenty two, twenty three, twenty four year, I'm probably going to make a lot of people very unhappy as long as the board approves what I propose to do, but we have the capacity to give monthly statements to the department heads. So ultimately the department heads are responsible for their budget,
So, but they haven't previously been able to get valuable reports to keep them apprised on what they've spent. So we will be able to give them monthly reports and for the most part, really and truly, if somebody comes in with an invoice to be paid and that current line item that they want it to be paid from is already overspent, I'm not paying that bill. The bill's not going to get paid. Plain and simple. A) You didn't check your budget. B) You didn't keep charge. And C) You're going to have to go and ask somebody for the money. Meaning they're going to have to go to Eric and then we're going to have to go to the Board of Selectmen and then we're going to to come to the Board of Finance.
We can't just be having people spend money because they want to spend money whether they've gotten approvals or not. There's just no there's. It's like the Wild West. I it's just we need to get a better handle on what's being spent and when. Maybe during the year it's not so critical, but May and June worth finalizing numbers. I can't be providing documents to the Board of Finance for transfers and less than twelve hours later I get a request for another $1,900 Today's our day to make our transfers our main allotment of transfers. I'm not saying that you're not going to have some transfer requests in July and August as we're getting our final bills in,
but I personally would like to stop spending by the middle of June. Or at least unless it's an emergency spending item. If we need something absolutely we have to have it and you have the money or you don't have the money. Well, at least now I could go to the board and say, okay, we're going to need another $500 in this line or I'm going to need $1,000 in this line instead of coming to you on the twenty eighth and saying I need $92,000 So that's just one of the things that I'm hoping to put into place for 2324 that will alleviate us of having that internal control over year end close. That's what the auditors are talking about. We were paying bills last year until November. And not doing it that if
I'm the treasurer that's not going to happen. Bills are done to be paid by the beginning of August. I want to be able to wrap up our books and records, close everything out, and send it to the auditors, the town side, for audit, whether they get to it or not, is immaterial. I want our books and records to be off to the auditors to the best of my ability because now you guys are getting ready to go into budget season again and you don't even know what you've spent. Kind of helps that know what your last year anticipated fund balance may be while you're working on the next budget cycle.
Cheryl, thank you for this tough talk. It clearly, no, I love hearing this because this is what should be happening. So you're telling us behind the scenes of why there's been problems and and that's inexcusable like no town should be spending the money up to the end. Know I'm sorry I'm gonna do the tough talk too.
Really? So both senior transportation buses needed ramps fixed this week.
Would you deny something? Can I finish talking and then I if I could I had the floor for a moment? I'm sure like I didn't get to get my statement out. I thank you Eric. I feel like I a lot of times don't get to get the full but it is true that most of course there's going to be emergency things that happen and you know there's an approval process you know, things like that. So all I meant is like where I work at least, you know, most of the spending is done by May. You're like she said, it's great that Christina is doing a great job and they're finishing up the totals and you know, figuring out what might be left over or whatever. I mean, clearly we didn't have that in the past. We've had other people in the role of, you know, finance director, I guess, was the title. So it's just for me seeing someone come in and do the tough talk and kind of let us know how it should be is great. That's what we need. And then I'm hoping personally
that we have a figurehead or a manager over there that then oversees the whole thing. But again, I know I speak up to the but this is great to hear. But to hear that you spent all the time yesterday, and then there was more bills rolling in, that's hard. Again, I know there's emergency purchases. And then one statement I don't think I got a sheet of the transfers. Or are you saying they're in that line? Did we get a separate sheet of the budget? Yeah. It it came today. It was an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, when? I know I had requested it yesterday.
I sent it last night around 9PM when I had it.
Alright. I finished it at about eight in my email. I see it in the inbox. I was in my personal email all day checking, and I did not go to Outlook today. It's probably the one time it went my bad because I was checking all day, but thinking about it, I think I was in the personal one that usually gets included. Thank you. That's if you sent it, then it's my bad for not checking both. Yeah. I could display it when we talk about it if we need to. So thank you. Yeah, because I had requested it, but I guess I didn't go to outlook.
The the Excel that you all will see though, you'll see several tabs. So the first tab is the actual budget to actual document from QuickBooks that I worked on, and you'll see my notations. We need this. We need to move this. This can be used here. That can be used there. And then there's a second tab, which is my when when we get to that next line, we're not really there yet. The transfers. Yeah.
You'll be able to see, you know, my suggested transfers. As far as the reconciliation back to the audit reconciliation from the town and the school, my conversation with Mike was that if the school handles their own and they, as long as it's done and they provide the documents to the auditors that potentially that that finding should go away also hopefully for the twenty two-twenty three years since they've had their own account for the whole fiscal year. We'll have to wait and see when that particular report next year's report is issued. Alright. Eric, any comment on this? No.
Okay. We kind of incidentally, I guess we segued into the next item of the agenda. We started talking about the transfers. We're really still talking about the audit status review. We just kind of got off task a little bit here. Cheryl, any other comments on the audit status?
Nope, again, I've spoke to Mike. I signed my portion of the management. It went out to myself, to Eric, and the school to sign the management representation letter. I've signed my portion and sent it back over already. I've reviewed the audit report. We will have a little over 10% available and on designated fund balance. 10.432% I think I calculated would be our undesignated fund balance for the twenty one-twenty two year. Pretty average. Sometimes they like to keep it between ten-twelve if you can. Anything under eight the state sometimes looks unfavorably on.
The reports are over 15 as we were or whatever.
Correct. Yeah, I mean so 10% fund balance is is a standard fund balance that I've seen and other towns that I've provided services for. You're you're right on target for the most part for your undesignated fund balance. Everything else looked Okay and I signed off my portion of it. Okay, Eric, any comment on the audit? No. Any other questions from the board comments? Yep, Joanne?
You're muted, Joanne. Thank you. Yeah, was reaching for it. Just because it's on this, I do like those ideas, Cheryl. That's all. I appreciated Eric being willing to tell us why there was last minute things. That wasn't my point. Just like so I understand that last minute things are going to come up. But I like the going forward procedures like Cheryl said, with the department heads being responsible for their budget, knowing it, then you know, maybe and we talked about that maybe changing our budget season around a little bit with who's presenting budgets to us and in keeping with the audit and everything that way. Maybe I am I talking about the next topic now I'm getting myself confused, but she brought it up in this that I just like her procedure of everyone being responsible for their budgets going forward, maybe an approval process so that we're done spending at a certain time, except for emergency expenditures. That's coming from a town that was in an emergency situation since October of a fiscal year that starts in July. So we're well used to it. So they couldn't even buy parts for machinery and things of this nature. So that's all. Thank you. So nothing against Eric in general. I like that procedure. So
I think if there are no further questions or comments, then probably our next activity would be for somebody to make a motion that we accept the draft audit as is and vote on it there. Like to make that motion? Make the motion.
Okay, Louise, you make the I'll second it then. Rob,
you second? Okay, any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and move on. Thank you, guys. Next item is end of year budget transfers. So we did talk a little bit about these and the nature of them. What I can do, Eric, if you want to give me an ability to share my screen I can throw it up there just to make sure everybody has a chance to review it.
And if you like when when you do get it, I'll point out where we need to make an adjustment on my transfer request for the additional, ramps for the senior transportation bus. Okay, you guys see an Excel here?
Yes. So you'll see on the bottom, you've got your budget report for the transfers. That's a budget to actual and I made you all have it. I made notations, add this, take this, don't touch this. This has to go here. So as I was attempting to, figure out what needed to be done, I made my notations here. Then where it says the, requested transfers, I did them by department and where possible, I took the money from that specific deposit and rounded up to the nearest dollar or rounded down to the, you know, where we could be instead of having last year 27¢ and things of that nature. I'm just tend to be a round kind of person. We needed to take monies from other line items. When you go back to the, if you, if you were wondering where I got it from or why, the budget report for transfers, it kept a running total every time I took monies from one line from multiple things. I also had, you'll see the XS, that was my calculating office supplies to be allocated
to each department, because all of the office supplies got reported in one office supply line item and I needed to allocate it between. I tried to get a relative value of each person's budget and transfer it. When I could transfer it, I did. Otherwise, I brought it to zero. When you see right there where it says transfer to other departments, $3,388 yep, if you go over to the right. Yep, dollars 3,388 plus an additional $15.40 will be transferred to other departments. I had $8,511.78 available for transfer. Was trying to keep track to make sure that we didn't over transfer from one specific line to another, and then my have to come back and ask for more money for that line that I've already taken it from. So I've done that with all the way through. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see my yep, keep going. You should see these come to the senior center. Yep, you're coming there. Too far, go up a little bit, please. We're looking for the new senior one that I fixed. It should say added in today.
Yep. It's gonna be for where seniors are. I guess it's a little farther up. Sorry. I'd have to look for seniors seniors. Yeah, it's too far. Seniors is going to be right after public safety. So there's public works. Yep. Go down. Snow removal. Yep. Yep. Yep. Keep going. Ground care. Keep going. Fire commission. Yep. Close some more. Yep. Okay. So here's our seniors. Okay. It's not on yours because I did it afterwards. So you see where it says the, vehicle maintenance dial a ride. It's overspent by $9,825.71. That figure shows that it is overspent by $11,008.00 $3.73. So that is the amount of money that I need to transfer now,
from total on my spreadsheet, in order for us to have a to for it to balance. I have it on my potential one working one here, that I have, but this is the one that I sent you last night. So, you would have to change, the request. Yep. And then gets towards. Gotta go up a little. You're gonna see one for nine. There it is right there. So where that nine is, yes, you'd have to put the eleven. Yep. And Give me that number again, 11. 11 is.
We're we're losing your audio, Cheryl. You're I'm sorry. 11804.
Yep, and then I I balanced the rest with the salt. And that number is? Yep, I'm gonna get that for you right now. I can't get to my screen anymore because, it's all total, so just have to bear with me one minute while I add.
I should be able to figure it out right here. Probably. No, it's like 1,900,002 or something. Yeah. Yeah. $2,444.
$2,444. Yep. And when you go all the way then to the bottom, total transfer should add up. Yep. The total transfer down the bottom should add up to exactly that $98,290.50. Okay.
So most of this, you know, all it makes sense to me. I mean, obviously we don't know the specific details about why we're overspending. We could talk about it if people want to. I noticed that we are moving some monies out of contingency and specifically you have about 14,550 here out of contingency to cover the auditor actuary. The annual audit really is issue there.
Right. These are just suggestions. I mean we can take them anywhere you want, but I really thought that the contingency in my mind was the place to take an unanticipated expenditure from the auditors. But it can if you tell me you want it to come from someplace else, I certainly you know between Eric and I, I'm sure we can figure out where we can take it from.
I'm okay with contingency on that one. There's not any other logical place to take it. Eric, any comments or adds to this?
No, I mean, you know, the reality is if we're going to deliberately continue to budget as close to our actual expenses as possible, you know, within a given year, you're going to have probably a third of your lines over in any given year. You know, that's just Yeah, that's what happens. Quality of budgeting without any slack in individual, you know, especially given how far out we're making a budget, you know, and trying to predict expenses.
One of your unique items within your charter is that your it does not matter if the department is underspent. If one of your lines within that department is overspent, you have to do a transfer from someplace in your department to clear that line. It's kind of unique. I've never been out of town where we had to do specific line transfers.
Long as you're common just to be able to move it within the department.
Correct, we never had to. We didn't have. We didn't take if the depart as long as the department was not overspent, it did not matter that a line was overspent. And you also could it was a good budgeting tool for the next time period because if you consistently go over on that particular line, well then hopefully if you're able maybe to put in a little bit extra in the next budget cycle. Just, you know, but your charter says you cannot have a single line overspent. Doesn't matter even if you have money within your department. You're not overspent. So, I, you know, I don't know what it takes to change a charter or something. I do not know, and I would not profess to even suggest to do that, but that's one of the reasons you have all of these transfers is because the line is over, not necessarily the department.
The line is over. Yeah, and that's pretty clear from the way you set this up. Just a note for the board along those lines and follow-up from Eric's comment, an awful lot of these transfers are $300 or less. If we We don't want to unnecessarily throw a lot of money at different accounts but it's probably worth looking at it and rounding up if nothing else. Here we're doing a transfer anyway but we've got $20 you know, we've got to cover, you know, that kind of thing. We have to be judicious about it but you know it probably makes sense to if we're to avoid some of this transfer activity we may want to round up some of these numbers a little bit. Just worth looking at next budget cycle.
I appreciate the information, Cheryl, because I didn't know that about our charter, but I also like the idea of budgeting for a specific department and then filling it like if there is money left over in certain lines. And to Eric's comment about, you know, we budget so tight when we always have, but we can look at it in the future if certain things are going too high. But again, that's why we have a budget, why the department heads will be tasked hopefully next year with sticking to the budget for unless things are emergency or things you can't predict the cost. But a lot of these things that went over and and I apologize because I had been were spoiled because we get our emails. You know, we get information on our private email and then the town email, and this one that I was waiting for all day happened to be in the other one. So, but I I'm not opposed to any of these.
I I think it's a lot of work. I get that. It's too bad our charter means you have to make the change if it's even in the department, but it is what it is, and they're not much.
Right. But one of my concerns is like, I'll give you an example. In any given year, any member of the land use commission can go to training courses or seminars. So if you think about it, there's three land use commissions, you know, so you got a total of about 10 or 12 people between them, plus you got the administrative staff. So, there's a really wide variability depending on what is offered. And the question is, you can't budget for the worst case scenario where all of them end up going to training. Know, you have to pick some kind of intermediate value and you know, some years are going to be over and some years you're going to be under. And that's, to me, that's really the reason why the town put in, you know, the request for over expenditure for. Now, part of the issue, to be honest with you, is that up until fairly recently, we haven't had enough, you know, Cheryl hasn't really caught up and it's not her fault. We just haven't had a body in there, you know correctly allocating where the money is, so I haven't known necessarily what was over and what was under. Some I knew obviously like obviously I know senior transportation, I know we've been way over in vehicle maintenance. You know, we were anticipating that we would have had a new vehicle already when this budget was developed, we were assuming we had a twenty twenty two bus in our fleet and we got rid of our 2,002.
That never happened. That old sucker, that thing's at Albatross, and we've been hemorrhaging money in it. You know, so there's there's.
I don't know. Another reason for having the reports too. I mean, understand what you're saying. There wasn't a good system in place where you could know this stuff all the time. And and to what you said about the land use people, are you talking about town employees? There's that many that is that?
No. They're all they're all commission members like you. The only difference is they have a legal responsibility Okay. And,
you know, training per state law. Mhmm. So it's just a question of what and when.
Oh, well, then those are fluky things that we're never gonna know. So I understand. But that that's a small part of an overall big butt you know, budget. But now I under I just wasn't sure who you were referring to. I understand. Sure. Thank you.
Anybody have any other comments on the budget transfers or want to make a motion to approve the budget transfers as stated here?
I'll just say from my perspective, I'm fine with all the transfers and I'll be happy to make that motion. I was just going to say that if and when there's another Charter Review Commission, we should probably at least consider whether we want to try to get a change to the charter to make this a little less painful. Know, if
if we really are out of whack with other towns and it it does seem to to make not only make some work where it doesn't need to be, but also, I think more importantly, you know, I think Cheryl's point about budgeting, if you can clearly see that a line was over under expended, you know, without having to transfer money and, you know, fix it, it might actually help us. So just something to keep in mind food for thought for later. With that said, I'm happy to make the motion that we go ahead and approve these transfers.
Second, Bill seconds. Further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions?
None, the motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. I'll make sure that they're put into the system right away. Okay.
Thank you, Cheryl. Okay. We will move on to agenda item 5B. This is the KIRMA three year budget stabilization. There is an agreement in the packet. It is in pages nineteen twenty of your packet in the PDF file. Eric, we've talked about this before, so both the board members, I think we talked about this last meeting, be familiar with this. It looks like we've got it signed by Jeff this week and by the KIRMA.
Correct. I just put that in there for your information that we did sign the agreement with KIRMA. I sent it to the board, I don't know, a month or two ago for comment to both the Board of Finance and Board of Select. So.
Yeah, I think everybody thought it was a good idea.
And most years, Karma returns in the neighborhood of 5,000 a year back to the town because Kerma is basically a member owned insurance company. So, they return all the profits back to the member towns. So, so far it's been pretty good to deal with overall.
Looks like a mutual or even a self insurance really. Anybody
have any more comments or questions on that? Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move on to 5C, which is the review of the cost legislative summary. Cost is Connecticut is it Council of Small Towns or something, what is it? Correct. Of Small Towns. Council of Small Towns, yeah. So Eric's included the entire report here. I'm sure you've all read it in detail before the meeting. Eric, do you want to give us the highlights here? You said this has some implications for us.
Yeah, so I'm just going to talk about the kind of highlights. The budget, as most of you know, the governor pronounced that they had put tons more money into ECS and they have overall, but it doesn't add anything that we didn't anticipate into our budget. Because basically the ECS formula has the town of Andover losing money every year. So essentially the last couple of years, the small towns have all gotten together and said this is kind of BS and they've restored those cuts to the town. So the money they said they put into the funding and all the excess funding, we don't actually get any of that, but at least we're not losing funding. So, that part is good. The grants from the Mashapucket Pequots, that really hasn't changed much. Municipal revenue sharing. We may get a little bit more money in pilot, but we're in the kind of lowest category. So we're going to get like 33 of what they should give us instead of 30%. So we might get a little bit but it's not a lot.
It pilots the payment in lieu of taxes for state owned properties and stuff just for anybody new to the board or is not familiar with that term. State owns it we don't tax them but they give us some revenue for it.
The other thing that looks like it is good is they are upping the allotment to what's called LOCIC, which is local capital improvement program. And currently we have a application in first for, and the way it is basically they put money in every year to each town's fund, low SIP fund. And then the town can tap those funds for projects that meet certain criteria. We are anticipating tapping that sometime this summer for HVAC upgrades to the town hall. The good news of that is they're upping the overall program funding by about 50%. Currently, the town gets about $28,000 a year put into our account, then we just store it up until we have enough money in it to do a significant project. The last project we did with it was repaving the transfer station. In the project before that was the HVAC updates to the fire station. So, that's good. The next thing up is LOTSIP is level funded. We do have one, that's the transportation version of the local transportation capital improvement program. So, that's not changed. So, that's good from our perspective. We do have a project that we're hoping to be able to put into that program the next go around, which should be February of this coming year. Basically what happened is, are we requested from our legislators that they put a bond set aside for the town of Andover for a study grant and a design grant for doing the connecting trail from the Town Hall Municipal Campus down 316 to the rail trail. So that was funded. I don't know when we'll get the money because it's still got to go through the bond commission.
But presuming that gets through the bond commission, we should be able to accomplish that. That's something we put grants in for multiple times and didn't get it. In fact, I've been working on that since 2018. So we finally funded the study portion with the intention of, if we can get the study and the design done, funding the actual construction through the LOTZIP program. So, that's kind of where we're going with that. The STEEP, there is no STEEP grant round for this coming year. We do have a current STEEP grant that we have not spent because we haven't got the project far enough to spend it. But there will not be another STEEP allotment this year. There will be one in 2024. So, hopefully we'll have a grant to be able to take advantage of that. The trip grant program, we have a pending grant that was it made it through the first two rounds review. And it has not been accepted by DOT, but they just haven't announced any of the awardees yet. But that funding program, the governor doubled the funding for it, you know, for the next three years. So, that basically doubles our chances of getting it because there's a lot more funding to be giving out. So, that grant, if we got it would be about $1,100,000 and would cover a significant paving project on Hendi and then Skinner Hill Road. So, that's really good news for us. Those are the major things in the budget that affect us.
There is apparently something buried in the budget that transfers low SIP from like a bank account kept by the state to they may be just giving that money directly to the town and then making the town account for it. But there's no details of if that's going to happen and when that's going to happen. There's like 7,000 pages of budgets of bills that are passed. So it's going to be a long time and there's going to be some shockers in there that we're not going to know for quite a while until people discover them. So there's probably a bunch of things we don't know yet that will affect us, but that's all we know so far that will affect us.
Okay, good. Thank you. That's good news on that, right, to get that study done. Work there. Do people have any questions for Eric? I guess we'll move on to item 5D, is the vehicle purchase for senior transport. I've read your little blurb there, but you want to give us the upshot?
It's basically we it's ideally we wanted to use either source well or one of the state buying programs, we could not because. The Board of Selectmen had decided they wanted a Toyota vehicle and Toyota stopped all their government sales because they can sell every vehicle they have anyway, so there's no point in giving people a break. We did put out an RFP, we went to bid. We got three bids back. I asked the board of selectmen for a waiver on the requirement that the bids be sealed because all of the dealers uniformly refused to send us, say, you know, sealed bids and emailed the bids. They agreed to accept that. And the Board of Selectmen appointed them as the review committee, which is probably appropriate in this case. They picked the lowest cost estimate they have, which is around $31,000 And my understanding is that we expect
the vehicle sometime in mid July. We have a vehicle and a VIN number we did put deposited on the vehicle. So, that's that. That will hopefully relieve some of our issues with senior transportation. We're assuming that as of August 1, the oldest of the buses for senior transportation will be taken offline because it needs another 3 or $4,000 in maintenance before it will pass the inspection. So we can't reregister it because we can't pass the inspection. And I don't want to spend $4,000 to do it. We're assuming we're going to take that offline. So that will affect
the services we can provide, but we'll still have two handicapped accessible vehicles plus one non handicapped accessible vehicle. Hopefully we'll we'll make out reasonably well with that.
That's Rob, you had a question or comment? Oh, no. I was just gonna say I'm sorry. Lost in all of that. I know the border of Central Bank Toyota. What was the what did we end up getting exactly?
So Toyota RAV four. The RAV four EV? Base model high hybrid
Hybrid. Okay. Hybrid RAV four. Okay. Thanks. That's all. So was it okay. So it's a RAV four. It's just not through the program.
Because that's why they didn't do yeah. Yeah. So we just went to, like, three different dealers and
Yeah. What we did is we basically sent the RFP to all the Toyota dealers within a 50 mile radius of us essentially to here's the RFP, please respond, what do you have available, what can you get. So that's what we do.
Okay, questions for Eric on that? Okay, hearing none, guess you do have your little happy hand up there Rob.
Hit something by mistake sorry. Lower hand. Know me, I want
to do the opportunity to express yourself. This is where I clicked
on something I didn't understand what I was doing apparently. Okay, sorry about that.
Okay, so we'll go ahead and move on then to our next agenda item which is the approval of the meeting minutes. We have seven different sets of meeting minutes there to review and approve since we haven't done it for a long time, had a lot of special meetings for the budget. I guess I would say that we could probably just approve them all en masse unless somebody's got a concern about that. I just have a question Mark, if that's okay. Sure.
Eric, in the future, is it possible? I don't, I'm trying to read through all of them. Do they put the time the meetings end on all? I have to try to look at my other screen. I would just hope that, you know, I know we motion to I want to make sure I'm asking the right question real quick. Is that one of the requirements? We put what time the meeting ends. And then does the person that's submitting the minutes say who's doing it? Those are just my questions. Respectfully submitted by blah blah blah, you know, whoever. I knew Marina was doing them for a while. So
currently Marina is doing the minutes. If you look at the bottom of the minutes, she put a little blurb on the bottom
stating that she is the one that did the minutes. Yeah, that's just the question. Thank you. I didn't have a chance. I just wanted to make sure we had the ending time and then who submitted the minutes. If that's there, then that's great.
Yeah, the ending time should always be on there because there'll have to be a motion to adjourn. And usually that has a timestamp associated.
Yeah. Just taking a quick look. It looks like they all do that I've Thank you. Yeah. Small detail.
Sounds good. With regard to bulk approving, I mean, was just the it's the one and it was actually the town budget presentation I didn't make. So I'm fine with with that. I don't think it's actually required that I abstain because I wasn't at a given meeting, but just throwing it out there. I'm gonna have a minute.
I had one meeting that I wasn't at either, but I'm not posted bulk approval either. Yeah. It's a little
You know, just doing seven motions or whatever it is seems silly. Yeah. So, you know
So that being said, would somebody like the motion to accept the meeting minutes?
I'll make the motion to accept all the meeting minutes.
We'd make some motions. Bill, you're seconding? Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, then the motion is approved. Okay, we'll move on to item seven, which is the administrator's report. So Eric, you actually tacked on there is an administrator's report at the end. It's got a fair amount of information on there. Eric, you want to hit highlights or just
Yeah, I'll just hit highlights. We already talked about the stuff for the cost legislative summary. I already talked about the study funding from the legislature. So, we have two active RFPs right now. The first is for HVAC replacement at the fire department, and the second is for HVAC replacement at the town hall. Both of those closed June 2. Board of Selectmen did designate a review committee for both those bids. We are looking at both. Unfortunately, we only got one bid for the town hall. We got two bids for the fire station, which was pretty disappointing since, you know, I think nine contractors went to the bid walk around. But given how backed up everybody is, I'm not
Having the same problem at our plant, so, you know. Yeah, we are going back and going to ask
all of those companies why they didn't bid on it to try to get a better feeling. And we're going to work with the lowest responsible bidder for both of those. Because I think there's some of the things in the actual bid we want to modify. I mean, not that it wouldn't be acceptable, but I think we can do a little better. So, but that's underway. There is an RFP that closes for the fire truck that closes, I think, Monday. So, we're hoping we get a bunch of bids in for the fire truck, but, you know, you know, we'll have to wait and see how many we get. So, the Board of Selectmen designated the committee that developed the RFP, the truck selection committee, plus a Board of Selectmen member, plus a Board of Finance member. So probably what you as a board of finance should do is designate one person to sit on that committee when it needs to review the bids. Obviously, they can't force you to add somebody to the committee, but they've invited you to add somebody. So nobody from CIP
necessarily?
I guess they approve the process. I was about to ask if it has to if if CFP is kinda done because we already reviewed the idea.
Yes. Yes. Although I think it would be appropriate to designate Robert England since he was the CIP rep. But I don't know that he actually wants to do it, so you should ask him before you so do that.
Think we can both. We'll take the Water Finance hat off. We'll put the CIP hat on. You can wear a both. Just I'll send myself a memo on that. Do you know, Eric, do you have any sense for when they might meet? I don't. I don't.
Okay. Because, like, I'm happy to do it. It's just a question of logistically, you know, with kids and stuff like that. It depends on what day of the week is gonna be easier or harder for me. But I'm I'm happy to do it on behalf of the board. But I I will say this, though. Of all the members of the board of finance, I mean, I sit on CIP, I listen, I vote when it's called for, but it's not like I have any expertise here when it comes to trucks. So if anybody else wants to step up and it feels they have a better for it, I'm happy to step aside. But I'll do it if you guys want me to.
Neither did I. I mean, honestly, I struggled just reading through the whole damn RFP because it's like more than a 100 pages of technical details, You know which. I guess you need it, you know but but most of it's beyond me. The other thing that will affect the budget process at some point and will affect the mill rates is that there's a regulation change that's going to impact motor vehicles. They're going to an MSRP plus depreciation model for determining the value of a motor vehicle from what it is now, which is NADA published values. And part of that has been put in because NADA as a company got bought out by somebody else, and they have completely jacked up the cost to purchase the books. And at a state level, because it's the state that puts out the valuation tables for the vehicles, they were charging them like $130,000 for the list. So, the assessment organization provides that, you know, unhappy. Our assessor, John Chaconis, thinks it will be fairly cost neutral to the town of Andover, But it's too early to really know. The good news is the grand list will come out in October, you know that published data will be known. So prior to the budget, we'll know what that is, know how that's going to impact the mill rate.
Okay. I mean, sounds like it could be a significant change because, you know, straight line depreciation, I mean, some vehicles obviously hold their value a lot better than others, but maybe just in aggregate there ends up being you know not that much differential so. Right,
right, yes. Let's see, blah blah blah, we talked about the audit, I mean our intention is to file it on June 30 and get it out this week. Which would be good, because you know we definitely want to meet the July 1 deadline, because if you're more than six months late that throws you into the uber bad category. Public works, you guys probably all know because you've seen the check register, we had some really significant repairs on one of the trucks that our 2014 Peterbilt cracked the head and wrecked the injectors in the process. So that was a really expensive bill, but at least they caught it before they needed a whole new engine because that's about $90,000 We also blew the engine on our Steiner small tractor. So I suspect as soon as the budget year starts, we're going to be going to CIP and West to replace the Steiner small tractor. You know, we had to rent a blower to blow off our roads prior to the road work that we're doing. So, have a temporary fix and we've pawned off the mowing that we were doing to Andover landscaping. So, they're covering for us right now because we don't have a small mower. Our big roadside mower still works, but our small mower is done. They are doing work currently on the North side of town. There's quite a bit of shimming that's been done. We appear to be under budget on tonnage of asphalt for shimming, so that's good news. And we're crack sealing roads right now. Right after July 1, we should be starting chip sealing in town.
So, we should have the major portion of the roadwork done by mid to end of July. And then, works will be continuing on drainage work. We still have some stuff we need to address in terms of a long term contract with a debris management company. That is something that we're going to have to deal with if we ever have a really big storm event. We are looking at a couple of these contractors that have state bids for doing kind of catastrophic cleanup and
discussing what a contract would look like with them. What does that kind of thing cover, Eric? Just, you know, curious. I mean, you know, just massive trees down in the roads, buildings damaged and then
Yeah, so to put it in kind of perspective, a cat three hurricane that impacted Andover could be expected to take down roughly 60% of the tree canopy in the town of Vanderbilt. You know, so that translates to, you know, 20 to 30,000 trees potentially affecting town roadways. That's way more than any public works, you know, where utility crew could ever deal with. So there's a company called Ash Brit, which is a national organization that basically they're a collater. They have contracts with every, you know, debris clearing outfit in the country, and they mobilize resources similar to what the utility companies do. And then there's a second company that just does management for these big events. The reason you need that is because you got to get all your paperwork done for FEMA if you want to get the money to pay the first contractor that came in and did all the catastrophic stuff. So, you kind of have to have both of them in place. We're working on it. As far as the bridges go, the 70% design phase is supposed to be released next week for Bunker Hill Bridge. I don't have a firm date for completion of that. It's questionable whether there'll be a spring twenty twenty four start date for replacement of Bunker Hill Bridge, but I'm still hoping for that. Long Hill Bridge is farther back in the design phase. So, it's in the 30% design phase. So, it's a year, year and a half behind Bunker Hill.
Both of those are fully funded. So, in the long run, it won't have any impact to Andover taxpayers. We did submit an application to the state local bridge program for Lake Road at Basola, the creek that runs under Lake Road. That would be, that's a 50% reimbursement, you know, 50% match by the state. If we do get that grant, remember we have to go back to a town meeting to accept it because we put the grant in without a town meeting. They did put a lot more funding in that program this year also. So, we stand a pretty good chance of getting it because that culvert is pretty bad. That's going to be ballpark a $1,500,000 project, which the town is going to have to lay out about $750,000 But by next year, we would have probably close to 500,000 in the bridge and culvert fund. So, by the time it fully got full design, which is going to be a little probably a year, we would roughly have enough money to pay for it. So, it shouldn't be a big immediate hit on the budget or any big oops we've to come up with to do that. As most of you know, Planning and Zoning Commission approved
the special permit application for the proposed community slash senior center. That's good. Presuming nobody appeals around July 9, the mylars that will be filed and they can apply for a building permit. So, that's good. I got a bunch more work to do for the steep grant we already got to get the construction rolling for Center Street and the Senior Transportation Garage. I just frankly haven't really had time to work on it. We spent some of the final money from the connectivity grant that we had to add a handicap access to our walking track at the Veterans Memorial Field. So, it just got paved yesterday. And we're basically putting in three handicapped spots in that so that the track will be fully handicapped accessible. And that's it. There's a reasonable chance we'll have a town meeting at some point because we have a couple of boundary line adjustments that the town will likely have to make that affect town property. One is on the backside of the elementary school between the Hawes family and the town.
It's basically a discrepancy between a survey that was done a while ago and the current boundary survey that we have they don't. They don't agree it's not a big area. But it's big enough that you know it shifts the line in some areas, you know between five and ten feet, depending on where it is. And because of that, that has to go to a town meeting, because the town's attorney feels that that that requires an eight twenty four and a town meeting to approve. There's another one potentially coming up between the town and a resident that lives on Burnap Brook Road. Again, it's a property line between the town and a homeowner that's there have been a bunch of different deeds and a bunch of different stuff filed over the years. None of them are consistent. So it's been difficult to kind of piece that one out and figure out what the actual boundary is. The town is likely to acquire a piece of property along Burnett Brook as part of that, which would be good because it's a really, it's a super scenic spot on Burnout Brook. So that's pretty much it for my administrator's report, unless you have questions related to that for me.
I have a quick question. It's actually it's not so much directly related to your report, but I it was Longhill Fields. The fields is that by the way, is that Rapture's Memorial? Is that the same the same name? The the soccer fields down there? Yes. So yes.
Okay. So I was down there recently because my daughter was participating in a soccer camp down there. They were using the fields. And I just happened to notice I know in the past, we had outsourced care of the field to, like, Hebron Parks and Rec or somebody. Right? Correct. But we're still responsible for any of the, like, facilities or, for instance, there's a picnic table down there. It's just completely shot. Yep. Is that still us? Right?
That is still us. Okay. And yes, I I If I had known If we had a better handle on the budget a month ago, there were several picnic tables, actually three I would have purchased, but I didn't have the money in the rec Commission budget and I would have had to transfer money in to do it, so it just didn't happen.
Understood, it was just my main concern was the one that they were using. You know, it would actually part of the bench had broken off, it was very jagged. And Megan actually cut herself on it, but she lived. So fortunately for that. But it was just like it was it was getting to the point where it's kind of a hazard. So I just wanted to bring it up. That's all. No worries. Yeah, I concur.
That one's pretty crappy. We have another fairly crappy one along the walking trail along the river. And we actually made a spot for one, a picnic area off of Lake Road, you know, on a piece of open space town acquired, but we don't, we haven't really supplied the table for that. So, yeah. Okay.
Should we look at removing the one that's broken if it's a hazard or are we just going leave it there?
Kinda toughens the kids up, though. You know? No. I I was I was not aware that it was broken. I'll make a note of that and have public workers take a look. Is it something that they can just
It's the seat piece Okay. Facing the closest to the field. This is the one that's at the back by the porta potty. Yep. Okay. And left side, face closest to the field, the bench piece, the very leftward edge of it is like snapped off completely and it's got like jagged bits poking out like this. Got it. Okay. So Megan was like, I got cut today. I was like, how'd you get cut playing soccer? You know? And you know, she showed me the table. I was like, oh, okay. That's not great. I should talk to Eric. And I I just hadn't had a chance. Fair enough. Any other questions for Eric?
Mark, I have a question, but it's kind of related to some of the stuff Cheryl said earlier. Should I just wait till open discussion right now? Yeah, probably. It's going to be very quick. All right, I'll wait.
Okay, next item is eight, which is the liaison reports. Do we have any liaison reports? Rob, does it sound like there's anything from CIP? No. Okay,
anybody got anything else? Okay, we'll move on to board open discussion, then I'll give you the floor, Joanne. You had a comment or question? It
came back in my head when I was listening to some other things. If Cheryl still on the meeting, she had mentioned, you know, a few things needing to be cleaned up, understood with regards to employee benefits, maybe so I I was just going to ask her to. Was that meaning? There wasn't enough taken out of certain, I know there was a lot of corrections that needed to be made, she mentioned, and Christina's doing a great job. I really like Christina as well, but you know, she mentioned it during that time that they're doing a lot of cleanup. So I was just curious if there was a lot of those mistakes or you know. Well,
there's not that many employees that have availability or have made the election to take the town insurance. So, we have been finding that, here's an example, the HSA that, we on some employees that opt in, we transfer HSA amounts to them. Previously it was set up as compensation to them and then it was deducted from their paycheck and it was listed as compensation. So, all the other things, unemployment, Social Security, all of those items are being calculated based on the increase in compensation. Then their W2s are not correct because it reports in box 12 a W, which is an HSA contribution. But then right next to it, it says there's also non deductible contributions, which would be the employees. So, those aren't right, so I need to fix them going forward. None of your W-2s are reporting the requirement for the employer portion of the health insurance. What you pay supposed to be a code DD in box 12 of the W-two. That's not being done, so I need to make sure that's corrected. Those that do partake of the health insurance, and have a specific, contribution based on contracts and union contracts, We're finding that those aren't correct. So, we have some people that have underpaid. We have a couple people that have overpaid by a small amount. We will be fixing them for our first official payroll date of the twenty three-twenty four year will be July 19. That's our official pay date that starts the twenty three-twenty four year. We will have those things in place. I will be sending a memo over to Eric for his approval to be able to review it because I would like to give the employees a little notice
that they're going to see some changes in their net paychecks. Yeah,
you know that was my thought Cheryl, so I appreciate it that that was they were kind of going hand in hand. I wondered if the employees knew and then I know I had sent emails and I was very concerned in the back in the past, you know, about the MRF rates too with asking multiple times. And I know people have gotten back to be honest, so it's been noted. But when they get, you know, that compensation for not taking the insurance, the big amount that's added in, and and I know Marina had gotten back to me and say that it was rolled into their pay. And then the MRF amount that was, you know, taken out of the town's funds to pay the MRF amount for the retirement plan was based on adding that additional compensation too. So I knew there was a lot of things that probably needed cleaning up. I mean, it's not my business to micromanage, but when I've been in different meetings and had opinions on those couple things, I had asked those questions. So I hope that get taken care of. If it's if they take care of. I
experienced you on my email when I thought of it. I spent Christina and I last Monday spent about five hours at her computer together going through all of the payroll items, setting up new payroll payment codes that are going to be reported properly within the reports. They're being properly reported on the W2s. So we have started taking care of many of those. They will be certainly in place for the first payroll in July.
That's awesome. I mean, even in the past, Cheryl, there was people getting compensated too much and they had to pay back the town, so I can only imagine what's been uncovered. But no, thank you for answering the question. You're welcome. Okay.
Are there open board discussion issues or questions or comments? Linda?
Question. I know the budget passed, but didn't we have a line item for a new town planner? And I was wondering what was going on with that. You
know, how do we go about getting a town planner?
We do have a actually sitting on my desk on a sticky note to reach out to John. So, Planning and Zoning Commission did do an RFP for the plan of conservation and development. And what came out of that was a preference for a particular firm called Tai Chi. And one of the principles of Tai Chi agreed to work as a consulting town planner for the town of Andover. So, are going to sign a contract with him probably as soon after July 1 as I can get the thing together and get him in place. If for no other reason than I want him to manage the $100,000 grant project for the study in engineering for Route 360. So, we should hopefully have that in place fairly quickly. The Planning and Zoning Commission moved around with their schedule to accommodate him so he the the day he can devote to Andover and go to meetings lines up now with their their new schedule.
Thank you. Yep. What day would he be in the office, Eric? Oh.
I don't know. Oh, okay. I thought that's what you meant. No problem if it's not figured out. Yeah. No
worries. I think it's gonna be Monday, but don't quote me on that.
Mark, I have another question. Oh, go ahead, Rob. Oh, just real quick about me being the member who's going to be on that fire truck committee. Should I just wait to hear from somebody, Eric, or in terms of when they're going to get that together? Well, since I know you're going to be on it,
as soon as we get the bids back, we'll put out something to everybody that's going to be on that committee to figure out when a meeting time could be arranged to review. Okay, thanks.
Go ahead. Yep, just a quick question. I had put it in an email today, but it was kind of buried. The town financial statement, you know, it was well laid, you know, I read through it, but there was a, under the education budgets, There was something called capital. I wish I wrote it down. Capital outlay, I believe, or something. Maybe it was in the $50,000 range. I didn't know, you know, and it's in it's in the '20, you know, the year ending 2022. It I can, you know, I can refer back to my emails and then. Ask the question again, but it definitely was in the financial statement pages. Was
think that's going to have to be a question for the Board of Ed. I don't think Kate or Cheryl's going to have it. Oh, no. It was just in the statement that we were given the 88 page document that we were given to review and ask questions on. So that was only my question. It's nothing to do with the education budget, but it's just I feel like it's on page Oh, right under the education. Okay. Mean, that Okay. Is huge I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I I understand that we couldn't ask that. But, yeah. It was just I had never seen it in all of our prep before. A capital at capital s maybe capital asset out lie outlay. Capital outlay. Yes. $54,115.
What is that? I mean, is that something we've always I I'm probably gonna regret asking it because I should know the answer, but I didn't know what that was. Not gonna know at all.
I mean, it's a capital purchase of some sort, but I'll be honest, I don't know exactly what capital purchase that is. Because it was like a certain amount that was extended. That's fine. I can reissue
the little question. It just kind of where it fell. I was wondering if that was something different. No problem.
Yeah, and it's possible that is a Board of Ed, you know, expenditure because some of the things in their budget flow into their capital because I mean, they do make capital purchases. I mean, the HVAC and the ductless foot systems, those would probably be considered capital outlays because they hit the capital asset list. So, I don't know whether that's a town or a school expense. I just, I don't know. Yeah, I'd never seen it listed. No, thanks. It's there. It happened.
Okay. Other questions or comments? All right. I do have one. So we have an opportunity to have Mike from Mahoney Sable, the auditor, make a presentation to the Board of Finance over the audit. He's very limited in terms of the time frame, so Cheryl related a request wondering if we could have a meeting sometime during the week of July 17 to July 21, have a special meeting. So what I would propose is typically it's a value to have them come and do a presentation on the audit, at least I think it's generally a value. So what I would propose is that we schedule a special meeting that day or that week. Wednesday, if we follow our normal day, would be the nineteenth, and we would instead of just having a special meeting to just talk about the audit, what I would do is propose that we might add any additional agenda items that we would handle during the normal board meeting, which is scheduled for the following week, and then cancel that board meeting. So in effect, what we're doing, what I would proposing is to move the board meeting from the twenty sixth to the nineteenth.
I know not everybody necessarily is gonna make it. It may or may not fit in, but it does give us an opportunity to meet with the auditor. So I don't know if anybody has any input on that or concerns. That makes sense?
I wouldn't be able to make either date, so pick either one. Okay.
I'm in favor and I like the new date better anyway, so in my opinion, yeah. Okay,
well I'll plan scheduling that then and Cheryl I'll reply to your email and let you know and we'll plan for a special meeting on the nineteenth. I think you also said it to Jeff Enquire, so anybody wants to hear about it from the Board of Stockman can sit in on that meeting and we can just schedule it thusly.
Can we put the audit presentation first on the agenda? Absolutely, yeah, we will absolutely do that.
The other suggestion I would make would be to invite the Board of Education to that. Yeah. Good point. If if we're going to be auditing both entities separately, they should be, you know, they should be invited. I do have one question kind of for the board, and that is, we're about to start a new fiscal year. Now that we're funding the Board of Education in essentially a monthly allotment. So, I had requested of them was they send me an actual levy schedule similar to what Ram does, is say take a year look at your expenses, tell us when you need money and how much when you need what of your budget. They really have not been willing to provide that, You know, for whatever reason. What they've asked that we do is the same thing we did last year, which is basically give them their budget in 10 monthly allotments the first ten months of the fiscal year,
but I don't feel like that's a me decision I feel like that's a you a board of finance decision. You know, and you've got Cheryl to ask questions about. There's nothing that says when you have to give them the money, but it's really just a question of how you want that to be done.
Personally, I find that completely appropriate, you know, first allocation in July, is thirty to forty days before they've got to open the school, and then the ten months thereafter, to me that just makes sense. That's where their expenditures are going to lie.
They'll have a very large expenditure if they haven't already had it at the end of June, which is their balloon checks. Average is about, I don't know, 300,000 or so. So, you know, they're they will have a large if it hasn't already happened, it'll happen either happened this week or it should happen within the next week sometime, their final payroll for their teachers. That all happens in one time period.
I don't Carol, I would guess it already happened. I Well, they just have to budget for it. Right?
I mean, I think that teachers management month. You know? Expect that whether leave I I would think they'd already have their past their final paycheck. Well, and that's in last year's budget, isn't it? Cheryl, because it would end June 30.
Should be, but that doesn't mean anything is accrued payroll. Oh, understood. I'm just saying we're not. I mean, so why would we give money in July? Why would they not start getting their money in September? September to June is ten months, right?
Would We go more buying expensive than the payroll. I mean, the payroll is their biggest money. You know this is just this my view this is not the hill to die. If this is what they want I don't see any reason we can't provide that for them. It's not I don't see I don't see it as being unreasonable. Unless it has some kind of negative impact on our cash flow or something or does not we we we give a large payment to Ram every month also, so.
Just something I have to budget for. That's all. And just speaking from working in a school, I don't see a problem in it either, but I'm just thinking the balloon paycheck would have come out of the funds from the prior year. And then my only thought, yeah, it it I wanted to make sure it aligned with what Cheryl wants to do. And the only caveat I would have said is if if July was some big deal because we're ending things and beginning things, then I would have moved toward August. But you're right, most of the expenses will start, but I don't I don't have a problem with it either. It's just the funding for the balloon check should have come out of last fiscal year. I sure hope so. I mean, I hope that's the way we work, but. The project for the teachers in a fiscal year. That's all.
So am I assuming that the Board of Finance is okay with or wants to motion to do it as 10 equal payments and select which months you want to do. How do you want me to proceed with that?
Was it brought before us that we had to decide this today? I mean, I just feel like there's a lot of, I don't, whatever Cheryl thinks is better is my opinion. You know, to have things running smoothly going forward. And I, that's all.
Yeah, I mean, if we want clarity, let's just go ahead and I'll make the motion to agree that we'll make the school payments, fund them in equal amounts over ten months with the first payment starting in July.
And then they're going be finished before the end of the year, right? We're July, August, September, October, November, February, So that would help the report. Well, I'll stay out of this. I think it would help for year end. They're going have all the funding earlier.
Okay. Anybody want to second the motion? I'll second the motion. Bill seconds. Okay, further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye.
Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, passes. Very good. Okay, any other discussion or items to present to the board? Eric, quick question. Do we get the pay your taxes online thing fixed?
I don't think it's fixed as of today, but it actually doesn't matter because you can't pay your taxes online yet anyway because it would be in the wrong fiscal year. So, we don't even accept, open up and accept the tax payments until July 1.
Okay, not sure it said that. Right if there's nothing else we can go on with our agenda. The next item is correspondence. I don't think we have any correspondence that we haven't already discussed. Anybody have anything they need to present for the board there? I think all the emails were shared among everybody with the exception of the request to have the meeting with the auditor in July, which we just addressed. Hearing none, we'll move on to agenda item 11, which is public speak. It looks like we still do not have any other members of the public. So that brings us to item 12 which is adjournment. Anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I move to adjourn. Rob, thank you. Anybody want a second? I see Louise's hand up. Thank you.
Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, great. Looks like we're adjourned. So everybody, thank you very much. Be safe. Enjoy your first full month of summer here.