Meeting transcript
Board of Finance
January 24, 2024 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
We got a lot on the schedule. Let's go ahead and I will call this meeting to order. This is the 01/24/2024 Board of Finance meeting for the town of Andover. Let's recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic, which stands one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So we have a pretty busy agenda today. There's a lot in the packet. I don't know if you guys have had a chance to look through it, but we will try to get through as much as possible. Like I said, I have a of a hard stop around 08:30. I'll need to go. So assuming we're still going, I'll hand it over to Joanne and let her continue the meeting. So that being said, let's go ahead and get started. Number two on the agenda is public speak. Do you have any members of the public who would like to speak? It looks like we have Shannon with us.
Good evening, guys. I'm not a board member, but I'm just here to deal with the Board of Ed, Board of Finance policies. So no public speak. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. Okay. We'll move on to item three, which is changes or additions to the agenda. Are there any changes, additions to the agenda proposed?
I don't think so. I just had one. You know, thank you for bringing up that you. Are you away, Mark? Is that No, no. I'm just a minute. No. You don't. Lighting is not great here. I don't know why the video is kind of dumb, so. Oh, okay. I appreciate. We'll just stay on task and maybe we'll just, you know, we didn't have a meeting last month and I don't have any additions. Like you said, it's full, but we'll try to just. You know, stay on task and get going on it and we can hopefully accomplish that.
And while hearing no changes or additions, we'll move on to item four, which is old business. The first is review of the policy for AES capital expenditures. Just as a reminder in the November meeting, I think it was November meeting, we've discussed this at length, had some concerns about some of the limitations that were in the language. I know, Rob, you were gonna try to maybe get together with Shannon. You guys are gonna maybe try to see if you could kinda work something out. I don't you know, there's no particular pressing need to to do this right away, but we do wanna try to get it resolved. So I don't know. Did you guys get any place
in terms of
Right. I mean, mean, I mentioned to you briefly, you know, the outcome of our last meeting was, you know, kind of a bit of a showstopper. I think we may Shannon and I have not sat down at length to try and come up with a compromise because I think the distance between where we were in terms of what she and I had drafted and what the board of yet had passed. And then what we talked about at our last meeting is enough of a gulf that I'm not sure it's resolvable. And I'm, you know, I kind of I admit, you know, the new year hit and I got behind on a whole slew of things. But the long story short is that I'm not sure how to square this circle. And I invited I asked Janet to come tonight to provide her perspective and the Board of Ed, you know, well, her perspective at the very least, but as a member of the Board of Ed as well so that we could talk through this some more. I don't think we're gonna get to a resolution tonight or or, you know, in the immediate future. I think we're going to have to keep talking about this.
Just, you know, when we we went through last meeting, there were I remember taking notes and there were like four core issues that were raised. One of which I think was fairly straightforwardly dealt with could be easily fixed, which was the some of the boilerplate language that was in our draft needed to be changed, and that's fine. But there were several other things that I think we have a real problem with getting to yes on. So I would I would say at this point, it might be useful to have Shannon give her thoughts and then. You know, kind of go from there. Okay.
I guess that being said, yeah, definitely turn it over to Shannon. Okay thanks.
Unfortunately somewhat agree with Robert having watched your November meeting and read through the minutes. I guess I assumed that with the Board of Ed having passed it and with the language that exists in the Charter and what's provide a board by Connecticut law, what we passed was what we thought was doable with regard to all of the confines from other statutes and regulations. And the real intent, as far as my representation, as far as what I believe the Board of Ed was trying to do, was to provide for us to have a capital account much in the nature of the 2% non lapsing account, which basically says, hey, we know we're going to have capital expenditures that come up. And instead of having to provide for them in our budget, which is already difficult to pass, it would be great when we have emergencies come up for capital expenditures if we had an account that exists much in the nature of our non lapsing account, which basically says we have to ask your permission to use whatever's already been allocated to the Board of Education in our budget and is left over at the end of our year to put any money into said account. So that's what we provided for. Then with regard to what we were calling capital and I get what Robert was referring to with regard to the boilerplate language, I looked at a bunch of different definitions of capital account, excuse me, what should be deemed as capital and put that into the language of the policy that then was passed by the Board of Education. So I guess what would be helpful for me is just to hear from the Board of Finance whomever wants to represent from that perspective
what the issues were that you were particularly concerned about. Obviously it didn't concern me or the Board of Education in that we passed it. It'd So be helpful to know what were really the sticking points. Again, our having gone through the charter and the law to try to get up to something that matched the language that the 2% non lapsing account is through and also then to provide for CIP consideration which under the Charter were not under the CIB's purview. So that's where I'll leave it for now if that's okay.
Sure. Yeah, I guess I'll leave it to the Board of Finance. I mean, and it's been obviously three months now or close to it. Two months. A little more than that. I think that there wasn't a whole lot of concern. I'll say what I remember and kind of what where I think our main concerns were. I don't know that the there was concern about the definition of capital expenditures and things like that. That's fluid. Know there there may be some certain things that you know you could argue the different amounts to go in there. The $25,000 which I think was defined in there, this high, frankly, because you could have a $12,000 purchase of a vehicle or a piece of equipment that is certainly capital cause it's gonna have a long term life. So I think from my concern, I think that was, from my perspective, that was one of the things I had a little concerned. But I think that the other main concern was that one of the points in there was that the Board of Finance may only transfer funds or authorize the expenditure of funds from the AES Capital Funds with the approval of the Board of Education. For me personally, that just makes no sense because it's the Board of Finance's purview to make changes to the accounts. These are the town's accounts. Capital fund, I think, is a great idea. I think most of us, it'll be my personal view, I think most of us agree with that. But
basically that last item there takes away the fiscal authority of the Board of Finance. And I think that was, at least for me, that was really kind of the stopper there. I couldn't agree to that one because I don't think it's appropriate in such an agreement. Does anybody else on the board wanna comment?
Hi, Willmark. Yeah, I appreciate Shannon coming to our meeting tonight, joining us and giving kind of a rundown. It has been a couple months. Like you said, we kind of went into it in-depth at that meeting. And I do appreciate that she is putting in the legal side of things and following the Charter because I am not as familiar, you know, so getting her opinions on that and following what we're supposed to do. You know, just the overall thing with this, you know, I keep going back to it's a good idea to start something, you know, and it was, I think it was all brought up in the essence of just having a capital fund,
know, improvement fund, whatever we're calling it. I don't have anything in front of me right now for AES. You know, clearly we wanted to follow just the procedures for projects and things like that of that nature, so we needed that protection. And I know it's going to take a huge amount of trust on both sides. We've all talked about the history, so those are my opinions and I thought that with this I do Shannon did say something tonight that did you know I totally understand the mistrust and everything. So she is saying like if they were funneling money that was already budget approved for their budget and then they may have to have all kinds of permission from other people. I can understand that you know that kind of sunk in tonight listening to her perspective of that, but I think we have said too that if there is a good project that needs to be done, that there's no way that people are going to want to stand in the way of that. And I know that's a major trust issue, but you know, say the Board of Ed, you know, instead of doing a spending frenzy is my whole angle, and then they, you know, to use their allotted budget, and then they decide to funnel it in this account that we approved. And I know it's only my personal, but I think we're really trying to get good relationships going from both sides that I can't see a scenario where if there was a proven need that it would ever be refused.
But again, I know there's so many other things that come into it. I don't wanna go on and on. We have a busy night, but that's the part that I can't get past is like we're trying to do something good. Can't we all just get along? One of those things. Can't we just try this before we put all these stopping blocks on it? I know there's legalese and all that, but that's my opinion. Anybody else have a comment? May I? Yep. So
with respect to the Board of Finance's sort of powers and limiting them, Mark, I think this is where you and I have a bit of a disagreement, and I'll flesh out why I think what I think. One of the things that I tried to do in this policy is pull the board of NA into using the CIP process. They are specifically carved out of that annual charter. And one of my asks was, okay, I get that. Will you voluntarily agree to it anyway? So it is also true that the Board of Finance has the power very clearly delegated to us that we can move fund money around. Totally agree with that. That is that is our power. However, in the interest of compromise, the idea here is we could voluntarily say that in this one particular instance that we won't use that without agreement from Board of Ed. And so to me, it cuts both ways.
Right? Each board is ceding something. That was my take. That's why I agreed to the draft that Shannon and I produced. Agree or disagree, that was the thought behind it. Okay? Now to what Joanne was just talking about, the trust issue. I think one of the big issues that we have from our last meeting, and Eric spoke to this quite a bit during that meeting, was the involvement or not of the board of selectman. In any given project of this nature. This has already been a bit of problem between the board of selectman and the board of Ed. Most famously with respect to the parking lot. Regardless of how you think that all went down, it didn't go well. Right? My hope was to try to come to an agreement that would allow us to do things in a better way, that we get buy in from everyone and allow us to do projects in a more cooperative way. Right? However, from I believe and and I I don't want to speak out of certain because I'm a member of the Board of Finance and not the Board of Ed, but my take,
my understanding is that from the Board of Ed perspective, if the idea here is we set this policy up and the Board of Selectmen can just nix anything, even so, it's a problem for them. So when we talked last meeting about what would happen in a in a specific scenario where you have a project the board of Ed wants to do, that the board of finance might be okay with, but the board of selectman has problems with. If they can just stop it, then I don't know that this policy is gonna go through. And you are left with the current set of incentives for the board of Ed that we've all talked about before, which is they have money left over. That's either return you know, they have a 2% in all nasty, but anything above that, they gotta return to town, and they have an incentive then to spend it. And we're all trying to all of us, including the board of ed, are like, that's a bad incentive. We we we need to try to do something better. Well, that, I think, is the biggest problem we have here is the idea that they could come to us and say we wanna do x.
The board of finance might be okay with it. CIP might be okay with it. But if the board of selectmen isn't, it's not gonna happen in spite of the policy we draft. That one, I think, is really where we run aground. And it's not, I don't actually know how to solve that issue. So that's my take. That's kind of my overarching thought on where we are. I don't know how to fix it, but I will say that just with respect to again with respect to each board's prerogatives board of ed, board of finance, board of selectmen, if we are trying to do a compromise deal to make things better and get to a place, get to yes, if you will, right, then I think each board has to be willing to consider the possibility that even if the charter specifically says x, as it does for the board of education with regard to CIP, they're literally carved out of it. It's very black letter. It's right there in the charter. If we are saying to them, hey give us something, go through CIP, which I think is good, I think it will be a good thing, I'd like to have everything run through CIP, right, Then we have to be similarly willing to make a compromise. That's it. Think I've actually said it like twice now, so I'm going stop. Yeah.
All right. Thanks, Rob. I mean, I will say something out front that I think I should make clear, at least in my view, what the situation is. So the money that would be in this capital account is the town's money. It's reserved for the use of the school district for capital projects, but it's not part of the school budget. Okay? So from my view, it's the town money, therefore it goes through the town's purchasing policy. It makes sense that we would go through the CIP. Of course, anything the board of ed chooses to do, their purchasing policy is gonna be separate, blah, blah, blah. And they don't have a capital account, you know, they probably should under the school, you know, or either, since they don't, we can easier to create one down to the town. But I think that the the reality is this is the town's funds. You know, it's under the control of the town for better or worse.
And that's my problem with, you know, ceding control over the town's money. I think it's inappropriate for the Board of Finance to do so. I'm gonna interrupt you if that's okay. That's where the rubber meets the road. And
I thoroughly disagree with you that it's the town's money. That's the problem. What you have in both the non lapsing account and the account that we're proposing, which I think you just said you believe should exist is we've had money that the town has voted to budget to the Board of Education. We then have money that the Board of Education says we didn't need that money for whatever reason. Budgets are always estimates. And then we go back to the Board of Finance and say we'd like to put this amount into a non lapsing account. That account cannot be touched by the town. As far as I understand that. Not this account though. That's not this account though, Shannon. Understand that. Understand that. And so when we're trying to formulate this, it's kind of this. It's the same thing as far as I'm concerned. And that is, you've got money that has been allocated to the Board of Education for its use. And just like Robert just said, if in fact, you want to encourage us to blow through our entire budget. That's the way to do it by saying
the only way you can do this is X, Y, Z. And you've got to go back through the Board of Finance and through the Board of Selectmen and through CIP. I understand we have to jump through hoops. We have to follow the charter and whatnot. The problem is, is that it is no longer town money, so to speak, once it's been deemed to be under the auspices of the control of the Board of Education. That's the problem. The problem is seeing it as town money versus Board of Education money. And I'm really tired of hearing that it's all town property and it's all town money. That's not the case. We have a town budget and we have a Board of Education budget and we have a RAM budget, which once they've been allocated and voted on by the town are those entities' budgets, so to speak, for lack of a better term. So it no longer is town money. The only way in which it goes back to being town money is if we don't use it, and therefore have to return it. And there's an amount in excess of what we're asking to put in our 2% non lapsing account that the Board of Finance doesn't agree with. So the whole thing here just and then I'll stop and because I will reiterate or repeat myself as well is I believe that setting up a capital account should be along the same auspices as setting up a 2% non lapsing account except that this would exist for capital expenditures and as Robert already said the compromise is we go through a CIP. So that's where the rubber meets the road with this whole thing, which is, is it town money?
If it's in a town account, it no longer is available for the Board of Education capital uses because it could be used, as Eric has said on a number of occasions, he can go into any town account when there's an emergency and use that for the town's use. And we're not saying that we wouldn't agree to that in the case of an emergency. I won't say that on behalf of the Board of Education. But I'm just saying it either is an account that's there for the use of the Board of Education for emergency or so to speak capital expenditures that we didn't budget for or it's not. Just like our non lapsing account is there for our use, we had to use it because we had a totally unexpected outsourced student that we had to end up paying about $100,000 for. Totally unexpected. If somebody moves into town, we need that money for unexpected things. That's all I'll say. And I think that's where that's where
we're not going to have an agreement. And if that's the case, then then that'll be the situation. Just have to use up our budget then we'll put what we can in our 2% non lapsing account. But I think what we heard at our three board meeting, and this was from the education law expert is with capital expenditures we all need to be working together because if we're creating a capital asset for the town it's something that we all should agree on. If it's been given over to the Board of Education and it's much like we respect the expertise, so to speak, of the Board of Finance. We need to be respected along the lines of the Board of Education is going to make a decision that this is something that we believe needs to be put aside for capital expenditure
situation in the future and into our capital account. We make that decision in our belief that we're doing what we need to do pursuant to the mission that's given to the Board of Education much like the Board of Finance has its marching orders, so to speak. Okay, sorry. I won't go on any further.
Mark, I just wanted to say one thing. The only thing that I disagree, I mean, the money that was going to be in the capital account will be some of the carryover, like Shannon said, but and so then we were also going to possibly add money through the budget process, you know, a little bit on its own, like we fund for trees or we fund for here, so it's not already going to the whole total of the money won't all be money that has been, you know, left over. That's just an incentive and a place to put it. This is also a give in my opinion, you know, if we're going back and forth. The account we're talking about, we would have, you know, put picked an amount to just fund or something each year depending on what's going on. That's all I wanted to say. So it's kind of a combo of money. So not all money Yeah, I think voted on by the town.
Think account, it sounds like, Joanne. I'm sorry to interrupt you. That's not what the policy is referring to.
Well, that's what we were envisioning, I think. I think that's the difference. Yeah. I that's the actually am gonna say I I I actually see this point. If we were to have a situation where BOE said we have $50,000 left over this year that we wanna put in the account. And then the town through our budgeting process, us, we say, we're going to put 50,000 more in, because now we have a 100,000. Right? Now it's not just BOE money. So like, I get that. And I'm not quite sure how to deal with it because these are both fair concern. Like Yeah. If we do put separate money in there, there's not leftover BOE funding. Yeah. Now it it it makes more sense to me that we would ask for more control of it. That's fair. Don't know if it makes sense. Maybe we should maybe the answer is we don't do that. I don't know. But that that one that one actually stymied me. When we talked about that the last meeting, I was like, I'm not quite sure how to handle that. So fair enough. Rob, Yeah, can you
only because I've even heard at the last board of select or at the budget meeting, it was brought. I mean, for as much as we're saying negative to the board of selectmen or whatever or the fear is there, not negative, sorry, wrong choice of words. I understand the big fear. Again, I'm more positive about this. I heard them advocating for, you know, they were just discussed their first budget meeting. They were discussing all kinds of things. And this account came up that it's a possibility that more funding could go in there. They talked about different things. Eric was very good about addressing some of the needs that he saw were going to happen at the school. So, you know, I just want to bring aside
that I want to bring about that. And I know I think we're probably not going to make a decision tonight, so we're going to all air our things and then probably go back and think about it. But I'm glad we're able to get this, you know, out there, that a lot of people were positive about the account on the Board of Selectmen, Eric, you know, all the needs that were coming about in the town and even putting a chunk of money in it. So I think we have to, you know, just consider that. I understand the fear side of the board event. You know, maybe they'd have 20,000 left over and then we
said baby steps. So now with all this problem, I'm really going to want to baby step it and then just see and kind of prove to everybody that's a good account and that the intentions are all good with it. That's it. Thank you. I really appreciate your explaining
it the way you did Mark and Joanne because it sounds like we're talking about two different accounts or at least two different accounts in the way that I had understood them. Right. I thought that what Robert and I were addressing was a joint BoE BoF policy to address money that we would have directed on our behalf that had already been allocated to the BOE into what's like the non lapsing account that would then be a capital account. What you're talking about is a totally different animal, which we deal with on CIP all time, that now the town has taken into, for example, putting money aside as we did for the construction of the community center, putting money aside for the future investment in fire trucks, where we can't come up with a million dollars immediately to fund a fire truck. Those are town accounts that are budgeted to those savings, so to speak, over time that are included in the town budget. If you're talking about creating kind of a separate thing that we do with the RAM budget, when we pass the RAM budget, we pass both regular account and a capital account for the RAM budget, that's a different animal. And then we've got the different animal of if we're talking about creating, so to speak, a savings account for capital expenditures
for the school or the Board of Education over time, that's in a completely different animal. So, I think we need to be clear what we're doing. And we've already taken a lot of your time. And I know you've got a very full schedule. So maybe I will certainly stick around to hear more comments or if you want to send comments, via Robert and Robert and I go back to this and see what we can hammer out. But you've got a hard stop at 08:30, Mark. I heard that, and I know you've got a very full calendar, so I don't want to take too much more time. But I also don't want to cut off anybody. I'm sorry.
No, Shannon, I want to just go back to Mark. Mark, that is the way I understood it, and that's probably the way you envisioned it as well. Like you just said, that's
yeah. Yeah, think we yeah, I think we have two different things. We were thinking of something larger than just something to capture anything in excess of the 2% type thing. We were thinking bigger in a lot of the ways, but we have to talk about a mechanism to get there. Then so there's potentially two different things. We may have to rethink this thing.
Eric, you wanted to add something? I'll just agree that when I was part of drafting what Shannon and I came up with, I wasn't thinking of that initially. Once we got to our November meeting, we start talking about this stuff. Honestly, I hadn't considered that part of it. Now that we have talked about it, like, I I completely see it. But at the time when we were drafting it, it wasn't something I was thinking. Was thinking about this is a very narrow thing. And then we talked about some more and we kinda broadened it. And that has implications. Yeah. It does. But I'm just saying, you know, so that in my defense, I wasn't thinking along those lines when she and I just sort of sat down at my counter here and hammered this out. We weren't we weren't thinking along those lines. That's why you get the board. Okay. Now now I'm not saying that what we talked about in November is a bad idea. I'm just saying that changes the parameters
and it makes it more a little bit more complicated. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna propose that we we table this. I think we all know we have we have differing understandings of of this issue. So Eric, I know you wanted to add something, you'll keep it brief and to the point and germane.
Sure. A few things. One, I proposed to the Board of Selectmen in the initial budget to put $100,000 this year into the AES Capital Improvement Fund. The reality is they have a couple pretty significant capital needs. 100,000 is actually probably too little for this year, but it's going be a tough budget year. I don't think I would get boards to agree to more than that. I think this should this does come down to trust trust goes both ways. The Board of Eds not been too good about any sort of financial reporting to anybody and that's come to roost and I don't think that's germane to this topic but. But that is problematic, the reality is, you know the board of ED cannot do major capital projects without the approval of the Board of Selectmen. And there's and without a charter change, I don't really believe
the Board of Education has a mechanism other than the 2% non lapsing account for their own capital fund. The town does. Because the town has a mechanism for doing it, we should use that mechanism. Second, the town pretty regularly when it gets to the end of the fiscal year and has excess money left in various town accounts puts that money in its capital funds that it was not able to fully fund through the budget mechanism. We do that almost every year. What we're proposing for the school is no different than that. You get to the end of the year, you haven't spent all your budget, you put that money, you get the choice. You either put that money, recommend it goes into the 2% non lapsing account,
or you recommend it goes into the capital account. And additionally, the town funds on an annual basis the AESR Energy
Saver lights. You know capital funds and that's how I see this working. That's it. Yeah, mean, I think that's kind of how we saw it. Again, I think I would ask that we table it. We clearly had differential understandings. I think there's a shot that we can, you know, now that we're a little more clear on that, or that's given a little clarity, maybe we can take that back. If Rob and Shannon are willing to give it a go or maybe go back to even the Board of Ed and kind of explain what we're envisioning, There may be some alternative mechanisms, but I think that it's important that we have this understanding and that wasn't there. You know, that would explain a lot of the discomfort over the way that language of it and then the mechanism of the agreement was written. Again, don't want to cut off debate or discussion. Does anybody else on the board have anything they want to add?
Is there any way that money that goes into the capital account could kind of be designated in two ways? This may be stupid. I don't know. But like the town puts $100,000 in there the way Eric did. And the school, the Board of Ed says, we got $30,000 left over that we want to put a capital improvement. Is there any way to say that this money is for capital improvements for the school? But if there was an emergency, we could use it. But this money that was put in that was left over from last year's budget is specifically protected somehow. I think that would give us everybody what they really want. It's
probably something for Eric and the treasurer and other people to kind of talk about separately. I'm not sure what the mechanism is. I hate to tie our hands too much about it. I'll say what I said back in November. I mean, if we were reckless in reallocating funds that were intended for the school, you know, we should be voted out, you know, because if the town votes to put in a $100,000 for school improvement and we take it because we wanna, you know, don't know, new furniture the, yeah, build a bridge or whatever, then they should take us to task for it. But I don't wanna subsume the authority in terms of the charters. That was my concern. And again, the
same old thing I ran into this with work is where's the incentive not just to blow your budget and spend every last penny. We do that every year at the end of the year. Oh, we watch your pennies on. End of the year comes and say, hey Bill, could you spend a $100,000 if we gave it to you right now for your training department? I'm like, now in November? No, I can't. But so the incentive was there was no incentive. You just spend it all year long. Whereas, you know, it just seems like we're taking the incentive away from the Board of Ed to judiciously spend their money and be able to give somebody back to the capital improvement fund. Leave it there. Yeah.
I mean, this is this is the issue. Bill, I thought along the same lines it could be segregated somehow. I hadn't really fully thought out my feelings on that and my thoughts on that. But, you know, this is the issue with the scope of the account. If we're putting money in from both the BOE and the town budget, it gets it complicates it. Right? And the board of Ed was absolutely, as Shannon explained, absolutely thinking that wasn't a thing. They were thinking it was solely gonna be leftover BOE money. So alright. I think this is gonna make I will absolutely talk about it with Shannon some more, and we should probably move on Yeah. To other agenda items at this point. I think we've kind of clarified where we are. And at this point, let's let's get going.
I think they're going to be pleased, though. I think this was a shock to Shannon, I would think. But anyways, let's move on. Well, let's We'll have
to let everybody sink in and kind of reach an understanding about it. Thank you very much for your time and for allowing me to be here, and I'm also supposed to be at a board of ed budget workshop. So Okay. Good luck. Get out of your board of finance meeting. But if there are any more concerns or questions, certainly email me or Robert can get back in touch with me and we'll work towards getting something to you for next meeting. Thanks very much. Thank you, Sharon. Okay.
Well, if everybody's okay with that, let's move on to the next agenda item, which is the review of the budget to actual. It's in the packet. The details are there. Eric, I see our revenue is down quite a bit. Do we have any major concerns?
No. I mean, we always get stuff in late, so I'm not particularly concerned about it. Yeah. Okay. You know, we're probably not gonna pick up.
Yeah. Well, the one thing I think we said we expected to come in a little light on was some of the building permit fees and things, that things are just not happening this year as much as they had been and we had budgeted, correct?
Well, actually, looked at the stuff from the building department. The building department looks like overall it will come in on budget. There's always a big lag right now, and there will be a big increase in the spring. You also see that with transfer station. You know, and it's weird because all the stickers we're going to sell are for the next fiscal year, but when they said sell them before July 1, they fit on this year's budget. We expect to get that in late in the year. Yeah. Clerk fees are the unknown. Clerk fees do look like they're a little light, but they're not a lot light. They're like a few thousand light. So, don't have any significant concerns. And we have gotten our tax collector is working a little harder than the previous tax collector. So, it looks like we're going to be fairly up on previous tax revenue. In fact, we just got somebody that paid off $40,000 worth of back taxes a week or two ago, which is a nice chunk. So overall, I think we're gonna be
okay. Okay, good. We have one big bright spot and that's the investment interest is just blowing the budget out of the park. We've got over $50,000 accrued compared to a budget of $3,000 so that's pretty impressive. That's all, I think, due to Eric and Cheryl putting that in the stiff fund, right? Yep. That's exactly it.
The money's now going into a short term investment fund account run by the state of Connecticut. Nice.
Know, love that stiff account. I wanted that so bad. I, I dreamt of something like that, and then turns out years and years went by where we could have used it. We didn't. Oh,
it's so frustrating. Yeah. But I'm so happy we're doing it now. We'll take it when we have it. Yep. Yeah. Yep. I was Any other, areas of concern, Eric?
Brian, you had something? Yeah. Sorry. This is awkward, but I have to run out real quick. I I'm gonna join Sorry. Sorry. Join on my phone. Is that okay? Have to pick up my daughter. Yep. No problem. Okay. Thank you. See you soon.
So no, I don't have any real big issues. I mean, there's a bunch of little things that have come up like we really and I will do, I will put that in this year's budget, so we anticipate it. But the state raised the minimum wage as January 1. Because they said they were going to index it on cola and even though it only went up on July 1 six months later, you know, they bumped it up three and a half percent. You know, there's a bunch of little things we didn't account for that we're going to take somewhat of a hit for. But overall, we're in decent shape on the budget and on revenue overall. The one kind of unexpected thing we did is we did get $10,000 from the Secretary of State's office for the extra hours it's going to take to run early voting. And one of the things that was kind of weird and unfortunate with that is that that money we just got, and they basically said that they're going to give us that money on a calendar year, which makes no sense, because it's now going to cross fiscal years. So, what a number of towns are doing to compensate with that is just setting up a permanent fund. If the Board of Finance is okay with that, I think that would be my approach to dealing with that is instead of just putting that money, you know, set up a permanent fund for that. Because the Secretary of State's office has said she's envisioning funding that every year and just putting that money into we have that reserve to cover the personnel
time costs for early voting. So in terms of the recent budget stuff, that's really what I have. I mean, I'll answer any questions you've got.
One other thing I noticed, we have almost zero expenditures for snow removal. Is that just a lag thing or do we really literally do no snow removal through December?
No, through December we did basically zero. I mean, very recently, we've, we've blown through, we went from, you know, the public works supervisor freaked out because we've got a contract. Basically, we had a lot of salt left over last year, but we still reserved, we still essentially agreed to buy X amount. And it's like, I don't even know what we're going to do with it if we really have to buy another 400 tons. Because basically you're, you put in how many tons you think you're going to buy, you're legally obligated to buy at least half. So that's how the system works. He's like, I don't know what we're going to do with another 500 tons. Since then, we've blown through an awful lot of salt. So we will replenish and we will spend a good chunk of that money. Public works has been out plowing a lot, so we will, you know, that will catch up in the next, certainly in the next month. Okay.
There's weekends involved too, I think, right, Eric? So overtime and all that stuff, so I'm sure there's going to be money there.
Oh yeah, well, we'll we'll that's going to end up a lot of that will end up getting spent. Yeah.
Other questions, any comments or questions for Eric? Okay, hearing none. Mean, go on to the check register as well. Don't know if anybody has any questions on that. I
have a question and I just Marina and I don't know which page I had printed something out. Marina is still working with you Eric. I saw one check on page two at the end quite a big amount is that is she just employed doing the minutes or is she been doing something else in the accounting office?
No, that's minutes and you know we she got way behind on submitting her requisitions. She does been for Select and Board of Finance, board of assessment appeals, planning and zoning, inland wetlands, and maybe somebody else too. Know, just to make sure, yeah, no problem. Pay her a fair bit of money to do minutes, but it's for an awful lot of boards and commissions, and she's fairly. Okay, thank you. Yep.
Other questions for Eric? Hearing none, I guess we will move on to item five in our agenda, which is new business. Again, this is the nominations and election of the board chair and vice chair. I can't remember. Sometime back in the summer we had, or maybe in September, we had agreed to a policy of having the elections on a routine basis, generally in the meeting following the general election, or two meetings following the general election to give the new board members the opportunity to elect the chair and vice chair. So here we are. So, that being said, I guess we can take nominations for chair and vice chair. Everyone puts who's next? Who's lining up to do this? You got your hand As
I told you, Mark, earlier today, you know, I am happy to have you be the chair. I, for reasons that are my own, don't feel up to it. So I'm happy to dominate you and stick with it. You know, I think it works, and it's working well. So why change it? Don't it ain't broke. Don't fix it. I would I would second that.
I'd like to ask Mark how how he feels about it. Well,
as I told Rob, I would be happy to turn over the reins if somebody were chomping at the bit and and willing to I I'm willing to continue, I guess, I would say. You know, it was nice to have that break when Diane took it over for a while, but it takes a little bit of pressure off. And I guess I should say for the record too, I think everyone kind of understands this, but the chair and the vice chair, these positions really in many ways have no more power than any of the other board members. We get one vote like everyone else. What you do have the opportunity or responsibility occasionally to do is you sometimes participate in other discussions. Eric will sometimes call me and say, Hey, what do you think about this? Do you think the board will have a problem? Should I put this on agenda? And you will sometimes have such responsibilities. But unlike the board of First Selectmen, we have the First Selectmen and the Board of Selectmen. The First Selectmen's got some additional responsibilities and powers that the rest of the Board does not. That doesn't really the case with the Chair and the Vice Chair. Really, the job is to keep the business of the Board of Finance moving along. Even with the agenda, know, any member could propose something go on the agenda that,
you know, we don't necessarily have on there. I don't always emphasize that, but if you guys ever had something you wanted to add it to the agenda, you just have to contact the chair and request that it get put on. And of course, there's always the mechanism to the changes and additions to the agenda in the meeting itself. So that's really, I think what the role of the chair and the vice chair is, is to keep the business of the Board of Finance moving along, observe the rules, maintain order in the meetings. So that's really what it's all about. There's organizational stuff behind that, but It's a little bit more commitment for sure, but it's not huge necessarily. Just being you
do a good job. I'm in favor of you as well. I mean, I think you outlined it really well. I would add that people that do, you know, you just have to, you know, follow along with what's going on in the town. It's nice to bring that aspect to the meetings, you know, kind of like be aware of what's going on. That's all I see as far as the difference of being in one of those roles, having the time, having the time to commit to kind of being in the know of things. That's my other thing and you certainly do a good job of running meetings and all of that and I'm definitely in favor as well. If you are we gonna vote Anybody at this
have any other nominations for chair? Think Liz is waving her hands. Hearing none, I guess we'll go ahead and take a vote. So Rob has nominated that I retain the chair position for the Board of Finance. All in favor, aye. Aye.
I'll abstain, actually. I'm not raising my hand. Any opposed? Are you opposed, Louise, or are you just low enough? I know. You do a great job, Mark. Just wanna make sure we're clear on vice chair. Is it Joanne? Joanne. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Rob. No. I thought so. I was
just making sure I wasn't making that up. Fine. Yeah. I'm just teasing. All right. And we have one abstention, which is me. And so that motion passes. Thank you very much for your trust. And I guess, trusting you of the responsibility. So that motion passes and we'll move on to Vice Chair. Again, basically the same duties. Their job is to step in. Sometimes I'll include JoAnna and if something comes up, I'll forward it to her or we'll just let her know kind of what's going on. As it would for all of you, if it's something germane to the business of the board, if it's imminent, sometimes just we'll bounce things back and forth in terms of the agenda or what the next steps are. I'll let her know about what happened with Kelly and all that stuff. That's kind of what that role entails. And then clearly, the chair is unavailable, then the vice chair has the responsibility of running the meetings, etcetera.
And I don't think we even had a vice chair up until a few years ago. So I think it's a good position to have, to have somebody step in, especially somebody who's super willing to spend the time that Joanne has and attending the town meetings, following up, which I haven't always had the time to do. So it's good to know.
So I nominate Joanne as long as she still would like to as vice chair. Louise,
I'd be interested in it. Yeah. I would second that. I'll second that. Oh.
I got Bill first. Bill got it. Also known as not Kathleen. So Yes. Not Kathleen nominates her second.
Okay. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay.
Did you vote, Joanne? Am I supposed to Sorry, I didn't pick up that part. You can vote for yourself. I vote for myself, yes. Okay. Wasn't
sure. I didn't see. Yeah, I didn't. Yeah. Okay. This motion passes. Thank you. Okay. And, appreciate your willingness to serve. Yeah. Happy to. Okay.
So that being said, move on to item 5B, which is under new business, which is the vacant position on the Board of Finance. As I reviewed with you, I'd sent all of you the email. Kelly Wood had decided she had some changes in just her personal commitments. Decided she really couldn't do justice to serving on the Board of Finance and felt it would be better if we found somebody else who had more time available for it. I appreciate her input there. You're probably aware, if you haven't seen, I did mention in my email, but we've had announcements go off in the River East Bulletin. It's also on the town's website.
I think it might have been on the Facebook page too. Heard on that. Correct. Okay. Did it go out there? Okay. Yep. So I don't think there's really much to say about it at this point. To my knowledge, we have not received any applications. Joanne, did you hear back from Carol by any chance? I did, and she said that she hadn't received anything yet. Okay. Okay. So she must have. I yeah, she must not have replied at all, so I thought maybe she's replied directly to you, so I hadn't seen anything from her. Okay. If somebody's interested, do they who do they get in touch with? How do they submit their name?
They should submit a letter of interest to the they can send it into the town hall to the town clerk or to my attention. Really just send it to the town hall. I think it says in the River East is under the attention chair of the Board of Finance. Okay. And she'll collect them there. She's done that in the past and then you know we'll. I think we asked her to do until February 9. Mhmm.
I mean, if anybody here knows anyone that would be a good candidate, by all means, pressure.
Yeah. Well, one one obvious pool would be the people who ran in November that weren't elected. There were a couple. So I'm not sure. I can't I don't remember who they were, but that would certainly be you know, if anybody knows those candidates, it would definitely be the the obvious people to talk to. Mhmm.
I'll double check on that a little bit because I know if you know, we had we did like you said, we had some candidates. And I know we had we have had people in the past where we've had vacancies, throw their hat in the ring, and then it didn't work out. Mhmm. Like, when we put Bill on the board, we had another candidate, but then she I know she's a very busy college professor. So Yeah. You know? Her her schedule probably doesn't allow for it. I talked to her. I remember at the this summer this past summer or fall rather at the school, and I don't think it's probably viable, but we should just all anybody who knows anybody, it's always hard to fill these positions. So anybody you can think of.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. Alright. Well, yeah, please do let them know and we'll try to get some good candidates in there. If nobody has anything else on that, let's move on to Item 5C, which is the schedule for budget workshops and the budget hearings. Just as a reminder, I think by charter, we have to have the budget hearing no later than six days before the end of the fiscal year. So that means that that would have to happen sometime in April. We usually target about the middle of April. Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, but sometimes you've put out like a proposed budget schedule and I don't think we have seen one.
Okay, let me pull that up. I thought I had sent that to you. It's not in the packet, I don't think. Yeah, it's not in the packet. Me share my screen and I'll grab it so you can all look at it.
So while Eric's pulling that up, the other thing I'll mention that what we did last year and I thought worked pretty well is that we had budget workshops basically scheduled every week from mid March until mid April. And then the last budget workshop was basically the budget hearing. We didn't actually hold all those meetings, I don't think. Not everybody attended everyone because it was a lot, but that was one to review. Sorry. It says board of finance there. Maybe I didn't go far back enough in my email, but Is this the one I
think you're hopefully looking at the screen which shows the schedule?
That's a 2223 budget. Around 2324. Oops. Well, maybe you just had a date wrong there. Looks like you just didn't change '20 '24 on here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that's because it because everything else looks like it's yeah. So you got a few. Yeah. Okay. I think I just gave you the wrong. I gave you an earlier draft, but the dates are basically right.
You will get the budget from the board of selectmen. They have six budget workshops scheduled between last Monday and March 1, with the intention that you have the budget in your hands on March 1.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we got it unless I missed it, but okay. But yeah, so this basically conforms to the normal schedule that we follow every year. And then April '26, finance board public budget hearing. Last possible day, yeah. So we don't want to do that. You're proposing April '26 that week. Yep. That makes sense. We typically do that on a Well, I guess we do that on a Wednesday, right? I mean, that's the reason we have to do it any other day. We would just do that. That's our normal Board of Finance meeting schedule would be April 24. May '7.
I'm trying to open up my calendar just to see.
Eric, the town budget meeting, May '7, what's with the first, second, or '7? He trying to avoid Friday and Monday?
Yeah, because of the oddity that says it's the second following Tuesday. Right.
And I don't, I don't think you want to do it on a Friday anyway, Mm-mm.
Because you're just, you're just not gonna get good attendance on a Friday. Right. Yep. Right. Okay.
So you want to schedule April 24 for the public hearing?
Yeah, I would say April 24 of the public hearing would be my proposal, and that's the normal Board of Finance meeting. And then I don't know. So May 1 is a Wednesday, May 2 is a Thursday, and May 7 is a Tuesday. What does the board feel about scheduling that? I'm frankly okay with any of those dates.
I'm sorry. Sorry, what were the other two dates besides the Tuesday, the seventh? Yeah.
So Eric's proposed dates for the town budget meeting would be May 1, which is second, or May 7? What days are those? May 1 is first is Wednesday. Yeah. '2 the second is Thursday, and the seventh is Tuesday, the following Tuesday.
So for me, I would I would say that the first or the second are totally fine. The seventh is less good for me. I'm not saying I couldn't do it, but that's a week. That's a day I have the kids. Actually, no. Actually, flat out, I can't do it on the seventh because Seventh. Yeah. Soccer practice. I just I can't. Yep.
May 1 works well for me, but that's just Yeah. I I think it would I like the Wednesday just because we have our normal Wednesday meeting.
That's we know that the board of finance is typically available. What do you guys think? That would work for me May 1. Yep.
I'm good, My question is, will documents be ready? Is that enough time? And we always have enough time preparing. Yeah, right? There's not an issue with that being prepared with that first date.
Yeah, it's about a week. So I think we should have a pretty close to final budget for our town meeting or for the budget hearing. And then we have the town meeting the following week.
Because at the public hearing is when they can make suggestions. We hear all the information. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, hopefully, we're By then, we have paired we've done our okay. I'm just processing our Yeah. Mean, that's that's the end. That's you know, we've gone through our workshops. With the first two. Yep. Whatever. I I'm good with any of the dates, really. But Okay.
So my suggestion would be that if you do it on the if you do public hearing on the twenty fourth and budget meeting on the first, that works. I would just as a standby schedule a meeting on the twenty fifth, if you absolutely needed it. Like normally after the budget public hearing, you don't really get a whole lot of response, and then you just send the budget on. But if there's something you want to really discuss and act on, you'd have to do it fast because we still have to publish, you know, it has to go in the paper and a bunch of stuff has to happen. And seven days is okay, but it's tight. So you would have to do it on Thursday if we were gonna do Okay.
Yep. Okay. So that sounds, yeah. So that makes sense. So what I would propose that we set for meetings then based on what I'm hearing is We expect to have the budget from the Board of Selectmen on March 1, Eric, correct? Correct.
So what I would propose is we give ourselves a week or so to digest that. Yes. And they've often been late. Hopefully they won't be, but they've often been late. But let's propose that we have budget workshop meetings on the thirteenth and the twentieth. Yep. April 3, April 10, and April 17. I like that.
March 13, March Yep. Okay. The twenty seventh is the normal budget board of finance meeting. Yep. April 3 budget workshop, April 10 budget workshop, April 17 budget workshop. And then budget hearing at the Board of Finance regular meeting on Before. April 24.
I apologize. I'm trying to plug this all into my phone, and I've lost the plot a little bit. The thirteenth We'll send it around. Twentieth. Yeah. I mean, I don't We'll send an email. We're we're Okay. Fair enough. Right. Thirteenth,
twentieth, the third, tenth, seventeenth. Third, tenth, seventeenth. Okay. Got it. And then the And then the meeting and then the budget The hearing will be at our meeting on the twenty fourth. The twenty fourth. And then final workshop, Eric proposes on Thursday, the twenty fifth, if with luck, if we're good, we won't need, we can cancel it. Yep. May 1 will be the town budget meeting. Got it. Almost set. Sounds good.
Okay. And then, of course, everything's gonna sail through. I have the referendum. It'll pass on the first round. Did last year. Right?
Yeah. You take care. Right? I'm unfortunately, I'm traveling a bit for work in in in by mid June, so that's gonna be a Yeah. So if all goes well, it'll be fine. I'll be ready for that break. If everything went smoothly, that would give us a referendum on May 14. Yep. Okay.
Okay. So it's the first second Tuesday following the meeting, right? Correct. Okay. Good. Any further comments or input there? No. Good with that. Okay.
We'll move on to the next item, which is the, discussion on the state and local bridge program.
Eric. I'm gonna bark bow out at this point. Everybody.
Okay. Thanks, Louise. Enjoy your vacation. Thanks for joining. I appreciate it. I know you didn't intend to, but Yeah. Take care. Lot going on. So Okay. Bye bye. Enjoy the rest of your holiday. You too. Okay.
I wanna run something by you actually before I go back to the Board of Selectmen with it, because I think they will agree to it. But my question is whether you will. So, the purchasing policy kind of gives an out, not an out, but An exception.
Exception the requirement for an RFP for professional services under a whole series of circumstances. We've actually already done an RFP for professional services, which is what we use to hire Nathan Jacobson as the town's engineer. We, we went after and hired that firm specifically for their expertise and their success in getting things through the state local bridge program. Full stop. I mean, at the end of the day, that's the reason why we selected them. And then we signed a contract with them that said, you know, based on what had been kind of the standard rates and charges for getting bridges and bridge applications through all the regulatory hurdles once they were accepted into the state local bridge program. One of the problems we faced is over the last six years, the average cost of doing a culvertsmall bridge program that fits under the state local bridge program has gone up by a factor of four. And some of that is materials and labor. But one of the biggest single factors of that is the regulatory environment has changed and the requirements for the Army Corps of Engineers have changed and the requirements for DEEP has changed. So the cost of doing these bridge projects has gone through the roof. We initially put a cap on our agreement with Nathan Jacobson saying, a hard cap saying, if it's going to be over, you know, 75,000, we will go out to a separate RFP. And we put that there because we couldn't envision it would actually cost us more than that for the engineering.
But the reality is the engineering for every one of these projects is going to be more than that now. Three years ago, it would not have been, but it is. So, what I want to do is not go to RFP, because we've already gone to RFP and hired them as the firm to do these jobs. And we've also successfully gotten federal funding or state funding. So they've submitted an application on our behalf that has been accepted, and only about 30% of them made the cut. So, it was a good application. It was done well, and we got the state funding. And I want to just proceed with Nathan Jacobson and just not go to an additional RFP.
But I wanted to sound you out first as a board before I go back to the Board of Selectmen, since both you and the Board of Selectmen agreed to the original contract with Nathan Jacobson. So that's what I'm asking. What are your thoughts on it? Because it is a lot of money, and this is the public trust we're talking about. But on the other hand, you know, we went through an RFP process, we interviewed a whole bunch of engineering firms, and we picked them to do bridge projects for us. So I really want to stay with them instead of then going back out to RFP for the the job itself. And I did put their proposed, I put the award letter in, and then I also put in their proposed cost schedule for it, which is pretty expensive. But when you look at it, it's also a whole lot less than when you use the state estimate for what you should be paying. It's definitely less than that. So, but it is about $128,000 cost that we would be incurring for this, of which half the town would be paid because it will be half funded by the state. Thoughts.
I'm personally okay with it and kind of makes me feel a little angsty, but I think that it would be in the town's best interest to proceed thusly.
Eric, what is the timeframe and cost of going out to RFP? Like how long does it take to vet out these type of things, review them? You know, and if any cost involved, any idea?
You know, I would say soup to nuts to write it and to put out an RFP, you know, and to select the committee and to review again and to make a decision and re interview whatever engineering firms you want to hold in the run. I'd say that's a three to four month process start to finish. So, it's not quick, but it's not the end of the world. I mean, honestly, one of my biggest concerns with this is that I'm not necessarily sure. I was trying to think about who I would get to even pull in for a panel to help, because this is a very specialized design thing like with the federal local bridge program. When we go to hire an inspector, for instance,
the state will provide us an engineer to sit on a review panel and give technical advice on who you hire. But there's no equivalent in the local. And ordinarily, I would use our town engineer to review these proposals, but I can't do that since I'm sure they're going to be one of the applicants for it. You know, so I'm actually a little questioning how I'm even going to pull off the RFP. But if I have to, I will. I mean, I have enough engineering buddies. I think I could probably line a few of them up to do the evaluations.
I think I feel like Mark, I think I'm okay with it. I'm a little apprehensive because it's a big jump in money and people look at us to be stewards of that money. Given everything you said, and that they were already approved once for the project, I can see there's a good case to use them since they were already approved, vetted and approved.
Right. I mean My my thought is And they've been successful. Right. And my only thought is that, you know, at the end of the day, we go through a three more four month process and it's not any cheaper. What have we done? Like, how does that help us? It's frustrating to see cost balloon like that, but there's no get out of jail free card here. Right? So, yeah, I mean, I'm inclined to defer to you on this, Eric. If you think this is the right call, I think I'd be okay with it too.
I just have a I heard the whole thing. I'm sorry I had to step away. I was listening and I understand the difference. Just the only thing I couldn't hear from just slightly off. Much more is it Eric? I just missed that amount. So we have
I mean I see the letter I reviewed it and I I heard your whole I just didn't know how much bigger.
Yeah. So the cap in the contract 75 was up to $75,000 I didn't have to ask anything of anybody when it went beyond $75,000 We were envisioning it, you know, having to go out to contract. And this is this total. Like 50 ks, right? Yeah, it's about 50 ks over. It would not exceed 128,000. So, it's little over 50 ks. Big jump.
Yep. So I agree with what all of you have said too. Just given the circumstances you've already gone through at once. You know, that's it. I mean.
So just out of curiosity, Eric, sorry, are we pulling? Are we gonna need to pull money from contingency or something here? Or are you going to be able to do this within a within a budget?
No, so we can get them started on the engineering anytime we want, because we we have a bridge and culvert fund, and we have way more in the bridge and culvert fund than the engineering costs will be. So that's not a problem. Right. But it'll be a road. Yeah. We are going to have to add more money this year and next year to the Bridge and Culvert Fund to afford this because this is, you know, and I think the costs will go down, you know, because it seems like the companies are starting to figure out the new regulatory hurdles. So, seems like the bridge costs have kind of peaked and they're coming down a little bit, but not a lot. So, this project, we have funded up the original design proposal was about 1,800,000, 1,850,000, of which the state has agreed to fund up to $950,000 towards. So, but I mean, I would hope we can actually do the project for about 1.5, which is around 7, which sounds like a crazy number to me for what we're doing, to be honest. Was that double what we thought originally?
Like $7.50 a culvert? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is. You know, so what? Yeah. Yeah. It's absurd for what you're getting, to be honest. Absurd. But I also don't know of any other options. Right.
So when we come to budgeting, budget season, you know, instead of looking at the Bridge and Culver Fund saying we need to put 2 or 300,000 in, we're gonna be looking at like, you know, maybe we should put 500,000 in, something like that?
Well, not per year, but so I I have to look back at my notes. We've got to come up with about $350,000 more in the fund than we have now to get that one done. But what's scary to me is this is just the first one. Yep.
Right. Yep. You know? Which is why I came up with that seemingly crazy number. Yeah. Is that we're not looking at this one bridge. We're looking Right. At
I think it's gonna come to priorities, right? I like you guys have acknowledged, I go to a lot of meetings and there's a lot of things out there that are, you know, plus we know about the and I know I'm getting off task, but just all the other things that were brought to the table for us last year that we added that we know are going to add to the budget. We yeah, so it's like Eric said, it's going to be a year by year basis. Maybe just remind me just so I make sure I understand
We had I remember having a meeting last year where we talked about how we had two culvert project big two really things we really needed to do. And you were like, oh, man, the costs are really going up. We need to focus on one of them. This is the one, right? And then we have the other still
coming. Yeah. So we're actually, you know, so to Sorry. Summarize, we have three culverts right now that are failed that the engineer has rated essentially in the failed state. The good news is generally these things fail slowly. And they don't necessarily fail catastrophically. Although you can see some evidence, if you look at what's, if you read the paper, you can see plenty of examples in Eastern Kinetic of catastrophic culvert failures, which lead to emergency repairs. You know, Scotland just dropped $300,000 on two emergency bridges because they lost two culverts and had to get roads open. And then paid the wrong vendor, but that's a different problem. So, yeah, we're going to need to fund them. The problem is, is that it's so expensive that it's only worth it if you can get, you know, you got to rely on state money to pay for part of the project. So, got to go after the state local bridge funding. In this time around, about a third of the applications were accepted. We put in one application and we got it. So we were pretty lucky. And that's a fiftyfifty grant. That's a fiftyfifty grant. Yeah.
Yeah. And the federal stuff, that's usually eightytwenty, right? The federal stuff is usually eightytwenty.
We were able to do some kind of gymnastics and cover the last 20% for both of our big bridge replacements. So, both Bunker Hill and Long Hill are fully funded. Those are basically both 4,000,000, you know, low $4,000,000 projects each. But those will require no taxpayer money in the end. We do have to pay the contractors and then get reimbursed by the state and federal government. So at some point before next fall, we're going to have to talk as a board about setting up a swing account with whoever we're using as a bank. Because there are going to be, you know, we have about a half $1,000,000 in our fund to pay for those expenses and then get reimbursed. But there's a couple of big items like when they order, when the precast sections that get delivered, you know, where we could have a one month outlay of, you know, 800,000 or so. So we're going to need some swing for that. But it's temporary. We'll talk about that. But that's a different discussion.
Right. Okay. I'm so sorry. I got you off topic there. I apologize.
Yeah, so keep into that because I know Mark doesn't have a whole lot of time either. So I just want to say the decision we were making was if we approved right you going to the Board of Selectmen with this thing for the engineer. Sorry if I'm taking over Mark, but that's just my question for him. Nope, I guess basically it. Anybody have any concerns or?
We don't necessarily need to vote at this point. You're gonna bring it back to us, right? Is that the case, Eric? Or do you want us to go ahead and motion? No. If you guys would make a motion, that'd be great.
Okay. That way I don't have to come back to the board. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Alright. So I'll move that we approve Eric to go to the board selecting with this as stated that we agree to a variance here, you know, given the circumstances that we're okay with this quote as much as it sucks. That is the the the least worst situation that we'll put that right in the motion, by the way, as much as this sucks. We'll just put that right there. Sorry. But, yeah, that's my motion that we approve what Eric's requesting, and he goes to board select with that. And if they agree, then we've already kind of preapproved it. Mhmm.
Anybody want a second? I'll second. Okay. Bill, any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Brian, did you vote? Yeah, I said aye.
See it. Didn't come across. Just wanna make sure we got it for the record. Any opposed? All right. Any abstentions? Hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you very much. Okay. And I think what I'm going to do is I will hand that over to Joanne. If you would, Joanne, just continue. So this will take us to new business item 5E, which is the request for HVAC for the fire department and town hall. We're ready Thank you, everybody. This will still leave you with a quorum, so you should be good. All right. Take care, guys. Bye bye. Bye, Mark. Have a good one. Thanks, Mark.
All right. I think that, I know I heard about this the other night at the board of Selectmen meeting, but I think Eric is probably going to let us know about some things coming up or some changes. And I guess the only question I have, Eric, for you is were these I guess you'll go into it, but I don't know if these were previously approved jobs that are already budgeted for or you're looking to add to what was budgeted for and do additional work Okay. You don't mind leading the discussion on this. Mean, I listened in. No, absolutely not. So, we've gone through the normal CIP
approval process and gone out to RFP for separately for HVAC improvements of the fire department because their PTAC units were failing and their central AC was failed. As well as improvements to the town hall because we've had a whole series of problems with the town hall HVAC systems. So, we went through the process, we went to RFP, We selected a con the board of selectmen, selected a panel to review. We selected, we brought in the contractor we thought was best in our best interest for same contractor for both projects. We requested a whole series of changes to the design for both aesthetics and to get higher performance equipment. And we also requested a change from his original design because we wanted the state trooper's office to have its own separate dedicated unit. Because that room has the server in it, it's also often in cooling mode when everything else in the town hall is in heating mode. So, you can't have one ductless split serving two heads if one is heating and one is cooling. So, it did increase the costs of both of them to get exactly what we wanted, but the costs are still reasonable. So, the board of selectmen, you know, took the recommendation of the committee and approved both of those projects. So, that's all fully compliant with our purchasing policy. There aren't any issues with that whatsoever. I don't think you as a board actually even need to agree to that, but I wouldn't mind you being on the record agreeing to
those, to hiring Corbett to do both of those projects. They're complicated in that we're using Corbett to do the HVAC. We're using Lenco to do the electrical. One, he gave us a better quote for the costs related to the HVAC install than Corbett's in house electrician. You know, and Corbett said right up front that if you want to use your own electrician, that's very happy to work with them. We're electing to do that. We also subbed out separately the installation of the gas lines in the building in the town hall because that's actually really complicated. Just because it's an old building, it's got a lot of junk in it, And we have to also update the electrical at the same time. So, that part's relatively simple. That was under the threshold at which we needed RFP or anything like that. We also, I did not go to RFP on it, but I did solicit
three quotes for the propane tank installation. Those are all around 15,000 for the tank installation. Some of their numbers include also running the gas line, some don't. So, they're not quite apples to apples or apples to oranges comparisons. But all of the bidders were, you know, very similar. So, we have the money for the tank installation. We've also quoted out a couple different ways, the trenching and putting the line sets in the ground to get it from the tank pad to the buildings it needs to go to. We looked at three options. In the end, what we're going to do is public works is going to install the pads themselves are going to do the excavation and build the surface. And we're going to use the concrete contractor that we've used before this guy, Butch Eldridge, who's in the past proven to be the lowest cost vendor for that. And again,
we've looked at a bunch of different combinations of contractors to do it, but that seems to be the cheapest because they're, you know, while we'll have public works labor involved, we're basically just paying for materials. So, that will be fairly expensive to put all that piping in, because we are looking at thousands of feet of piping. Because we're running a lot of different conduits, then it's fairly complex.
Are Can I just interrupt one? And I have all the backup here. I printed it because I just I need to be visual that way. So, you're going over these things with us because obviously the cost. So I'm trying to reach. Obviously this isn't my area of expertise, although I work with buildings and grounds and things like that. So I appreciate input or questions later when you're done from everyone else. These projects like you said, are we? Because I feel like it came up the other night that obviously these are more expensive than you planned on, or am I wrong with that? Are some of these are already budgeted for? We're not worried about that? We're
So, we're going to most of the money for these projects will come from our state low SIP account. So, we have this money is money that's budgeted either. You know, we said last year we were going to use low SIP funds to fund most of this work. Okay. That plan still holds.
Okay, thank you. I see that too over on the side. All right, go ahead. Yeah, but it's still money that's under your,
you know, your control. Of the things we were accounting for, I honestly didn't realize how much conduit we needed and what the costs of that are. Part of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to only dig once. And while we have the ground open for the community center, I want to put everything in the ground now. Okay. So, I don't have to finish the community center and immediately dig it back up and put the next thing in.
So. Trying to be proactive to get this work done at the best time because of all the construction and building that's going on. Plus the
town halls. Dig it all back up again. There's a large deal twice. Yeah. Right.
The big, one of the big chunks of this is all the electric, all the conduit for future electric work, electrical work is going in. And that is really based on the fact that we've known for a long time, we need to replace the generator at public works, because it's not big enough to run or not public works at the fire station. Because that generator currently covers the fire station in a portion of the town hall. Does not run the elevators, does not run the community It only runs some emergency circuits on the town hall. Like for instance, this room has no lights when we're on backup generator. My computer works for about the first twenty four hours till our server goes down because our server is not on emergency power. So we have some issues with that. The problem we ran into is a chicken and egg thing. I originally wanted to do the electrical upgrades first and then worry about the HVAC.
The problem is we can't do the electrical room, electrical work because our utility room is not code compliant. And it can't be made code compliant until I do the hvc because they put the oil, the piping to the oil tank directly over the electrical panel, which is a code violation. I remember this.
So I'm faced with the fact that I have to pull permits and I have to do both projects at the same time, or I can't do either project. So, where I need the approval of the Board of Finance, and I'll be very upfront with you on this. So we meet the purchasing policy for the tank. Stuff for the conduit stuff because that is just a straight materials cost you know we're we're doing the Labor in house with our own crew. And the HVAC projects, because those have gone through the normal F, you know, RFP process. Right. What has not is the electrical work. And the reason it hasn't is the electrical work in the fire department is very simple. It's a newer building built in the 90s, wired well, and it's easy to run the work to meet the new HVAC work. So, issues there. The town hall is not simple because we're essentially changing four or five things at once. We have to change the main meter socket on the building because they now require meter disconnects. And we have to change the wiring to the meter because the wiring is so corroded
that the electricians like, I'm not wired into this, you got to change that. Soon as we change that we got to change the meter. We have to change the old main service panel in the building because it's FPE stab lock panel. Don't take them anymore.
Those haven't been legal since the 80s. Because they're a fire hazard. They burn houses down.
Yeah. So we know we have we've known for a while we have to get rid of that. So basically, it's going to be a fairly complete changeover of the electrical system of the building, you know, and it's complex because we're also putting in the a 400 amp transfer switch so that we can run the new generator when we get it, because it doesn't do it doesn't. It's going to add 10 or $15,000 to the cost if we try to do just the intermediate step and then have to go back and put in a big automatic transfer switch. So, the goal is to do everything at once because that's the most cost effective way to do it.
But I really don't want to go to RFP for that. And the reason is simple, that's Rick's been dealing with our electrical stuff on this building for a lot of years, and he understands it. And there's probably been eight or ten days of planning to get to this point. I mean, I've sat down and met with them at least 10 times and gone over various options about how to even do this.
Are we convinced? Because I did hear it the other night as well, so I appreciate you going, you know, so that all the board members can hear. Are you and you were speaking to this that this particular company is very familiar with the town hall doesn't have you and it would involve a lot of your time too to write up the RFP to ask for everything that you would need right with this to solicit other bids from companies. I'm not pretending to understand it, I understand at a surface level you know all the work and the time commitment of you yourself and everybody else that's involved in it. The only thing I have two questions. When this electrical work is being done, does the town hall get shut down for a while? I don't know how you said it's rewiring.
Will that involve? No, put side by side and switch over.
Good. I mean, I know Mike would know that, know, or different. Yeah, Okay and then number two is. Are we confident Eric? You know that because it will be a big expense in redoing it that or at anybody that can answer this that. It will be done the right way. I mean, obviously, don't know exactly what I'm saying. You're saying it's extensive, it's rewiring the whole building. We're confident that this will be the end, right? You're gonna change the panel, do all the things you have to do, rewire, get rid of the corroded. So this is the end all fix for all of the problems to finally get it where you want it to be. Because the other night they had a couple temporary things they were talking about. Well, finally came to this. Right, and I said right. I listen, I might not know it all, but I, you know, yeah.
If they were unwilling to, you know, if they wanted to go to RFP in the interest of time, I would do, we would do it. Piecemeal, I think, right? We would do it piecemeal, and we would do the minimum we needed to do to start the HVAC work, you know, and put in a sub panel, but it would require a lot of rework later. And I already talked about it with Rick, although he doesn't like that solution, he was willing to do that. But it would be it would be more expensive to do it partially now, you know, because anytime you got to do something and then tear out what you just did. Right. And do it, we would be able to reuse More money, Yeah. So,
I want to just for thank you for I want to open it up to the board and people that understand this kind of work more like Bill and Rob and Brian if he does and whoever would like to ask questions about that. I mean, did hear the whole thing.
Or I'll defer to Bill because he seems like he knows he's talking about. I'm a claims handler. Don't know.
Come on. I'm going let the industry and everything he just said makes perfect sense. Okay. One thing, Joanne, I would never say is they're not rewiring the building. They're putting in a new panel. They're putting in a new meter socket. They're putting in a new transfer switch. All the wiring through the building. Okay, safe. You can never say this is the end all be all. So I wouldn't want to trap anybody to think in that. But it does make the most sense whenever you bring a contractor in to do everything once, not to have them leave and come back again. It's like, if I have a tree cut down my front yard, costs $3,000 just to get the guy here. And I say, add that tree, it's $300 Add that tree, another $300 You don't want to have a contractor going back and forth. Right. So I agree 100%. We should just do it while the guy's there and get it done.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I have no expertise to add here, but it all makes sense to me. Yeah. You know, just in the interest of always when you can package things together like that and get it all done, it's almost always going to be more efficient, more cost effective. And it's funny you mentioned the tree work. I literally did a deal with my neighbors ten years ago, fifteen years ago now, where we had them come out and do trees for both of us at the same time. We saved a bunch of money. Make sense. Mobilizing once and not twice.
So yes. Eric, what is the time frame if you get the okay from all the boards that you have to? What are you looking at as a time frame? Well, you're actually the last board I need permission for, because the Board of Select has already said yes. I
would notify both of the major contractors tomorrow that we're going to go ahead with it. I know there's about, it's a four to five week delay in ordering the HVAC parts. And I know some of the electrical stuff, like the 400 amp transfer switch we can get. It's a question about whether we can get a new meter main right now. That may be a while. So, there's still, but we can do almost all of the project, certainly within the next four months. That that's really the goal. You get the major portion done in four months. Mhmm.
Yeah. So I have a question then to bring this to a close then, as I I think we are reaching a consensus here. The motion you specifically need from us would be to approve what specifically. The electrical work again? Just walk me through it. Traditional electrical work without RFP.
So, So, what the Board of Selectmen said at their meeting, and actually Jeff Murray was the one who brought it up, was that, you know, as far as he's concerned, having a stab lock panel and municipal building in his mind constitutes an emergency. Because they are a fire hazard. I did listen to this whole thing. I do somewhat get that. And, you know, the reality is we are sitting in a town hall, a public building that has a bunch of code violations in it that really need to get correct. So, the Board of Selectmen bought off it on the basis that it really kind of is an emergency. And, you know, on that basis, they're comfortable with not going to RFP. And if you look in the purchasing policy under 3.2, that is one of the exceptions to going to RFP
and not publicly bidding something is if you, if you agree that it is a public emergency. So, essentially what I would say is that I would ask the Board of Finance to agree to waive the provision for an RFP for the electrical work outlined in the packet.
That's That's what I would what I was looking for because you sold me on the rest of it. Yeah. So I will, in fact, make that motion. I will move that the Board of Finance approve Eric to proceed with the electrical work provided in the packet and waive the purchasing policy provisions that will require an RFP for that work. I'll second that.
Okay, so Rob has made the motion. Bill has seconded it. And is there any further discussion on this situation? Alright, seeing no further discussion or go ahead Brian, did you? I thought I heard. Okay. Okay, I'd like to go ahead and and call this one to vote then all in favor of this motion say aye. Aye.
Brian's an eye. Sorry, you're kind of breaking up. It was that an eye? Sorry,
yes, that's an eye. Thank you. There you are loud and everything. So this motion passes. Two, three, four. Oh, is there any anyone opposed? I don't think there's anyone left. I see Linda over there. Yeah. So the motion passes. We're all set with that, Eric. Linda's happily retired, I believe. I know. I know. I was wondering if she was gonna come back, if she was gonna, you know, Linda
I don't know I might be calling you. Oh you're still muted but yeah I see yeah.
We miss you. Eric so we're all set with that right you have everything you need on that.
Yes. I don't think you technically need to approve either the propane install or the HVAC because those already went to RFP and those conform to policy. If you would like to vote for them, that's great, and I'd be happy to. If you don't, that's fine. I think we're fine. Listen, I'm, yeah. Let's keep moving.
Yeah, doing good. I guess we are now at the point of number six item agenda six approval of the meeting. And I don't think they were included in the packet.
I didn't see. I don't I don't have. I scrolled through it. So much stuff and then my eyes glazed over. I I
think it was it was a mistake, I think, Eric. I think it was an an old agenda was attached at the end. So I'm gonna You know what? She screwed up and put the agenda in instead of minutes. And no worries. Bad admin assistant. Bad. So let's let's push that.
Push it to the next meeting. We'll wait for that. And then we'll move on down to item seven, the administrator's report, if Eric has anything to fill us in on.
I don't have anything really big. You know, the budget's coming together pretty well. I've gotten all the budgets back from the departments. I've sent the original budget to the Board of Selectmen. We had a long meeting on Monday, kind of talking about priorities and things they wanted to fund, things they didn't want to fund. So, and then Tuesday, I gave them the full blown copy of the budget. And kind of the reason why we've done this in years past, because it's not. I mean, ultimately, the budget is your responsibility for the Board of Finance, but the Board of Select men's role has kind of two roles
by charter, they determine the salary and benefits for employees, other than elected officials. You know, elected officials is is your responsibility and then they get a say in what are the. Kind of the the the overview of the budget like what are the priorities, what are what are the projects we want to accomplish and how do we want to fund them so that's really the next five or six weeks is going through that with the Board of Selectmen. And then it comes to you and you guys do the nuts and bolts of the budget and, you know, offer a gut check on what could actually get through a public meeting and what you're willing to fund and what you weren't.
Like we said earlier, I mean, we had so many things come up to us during the year, so it's going to be interesting to see how it all falls together, you know, with the purchase of the trucks or whatever is going to be funded, I mean, and we'll take that as it comes. We'll have plenty of time to go back and forth on that. No, I appreciate it. I do want to make a comment to you that it was such a nice. I was able to attend the veterans ceremony. Know that's really important near and dear to me. Both my parents served in, you know, the army at different times. So yeah, it was a great job. Good turnout. Nice. I mean I had to leave towards the end, but I stayed for the photos and everything so good job you know that's that was a nice thing that the town did.
Yeah I take no credit for that personally that was largely Susan Kamarota our veterans affairs or one of our two veterans affairs coordinators. She and John Body worked on that kind of tirelessly.
They did a fabulous That was great. It was really nice.
It was really nice to see the community supported it. We had 160 seats set up in the auditorium. Right. And we had people standing.
Yeah. Yeah. That's as Good good as turnout. It So, we all set to move on to our liaison reports at this point?
Yep, unless you have specific questions for me as the administrator.
Sorry, I should have asked that. Yeah, does anyone have any questions that they want to pose to Eric at this point? Alright, we're gonna move on to the liaison liaison reports. I know that I don't know if Rob I know you're one of the liaisons.
You? Right. CIP was cancelled this month. We didn't have anything, so I don't have anything to report there.
And I think that's all we have, right? Brian, are you a liaison for the recreation
committee or is that not? I I can be, but, there's nothing to report. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. No problem.
All right, moving on to number nine, board open discussion. I wanna throw it out there if anyone has anything that they wanna bring up. I the one thing I will bring up is I know that we talked about and we'll get into this when we start the you know now that we're back together and we get going, but hopefully we'll have when we get to the budget season. If there's you know, we'll wait and see. The only thing I want to put out there because I know Eric likes feedback and stuff. We'll we'll get a little more organized with if there are going to be some asks or whatever that I know they go to the Board of Selectmen first and it's a long way. We have a whole another month to go. But if there are specific things like last year we had certain raises to consider or different things to be a little more. You know, organized with that this season so that it'll flow better and not be getting things like at the last minute or whatever. And we get that that has to happen, but I think I'm more towards. Yeah, just having people appear to us and kind of concentrating on that and then moving on. That's my one thing. Warning
us basically there are things like we we just heard tonight about our bridge projects. You know, we we know that that's a thing and that we're now aware of that. You kind of mold that, right? You can kind of let that sit and think about it right is that that kind of what you're saying Joanne like to bring it up I think have it. Fire truck thing that came at the end but I think even Linda was nice enough to remind us all that in the past when there was a something that maybe was a big
ask you know rather than just the percentage I'm just throwing it out there I'll formulate it better but we were gonna market even said we'll have people appear to us to just present what it is you know something like that hey maybe we won't even have any and you know we got all the surprises last year but somehow I got you wish I know there you go I'm thinking it into existence all right moving on to I'm kind of going fast. Know, but correspondence we don't have any that I'm aware of. Know, we look through the packet. Public.
Sorry. I do have one thing I want to go over briefly.
You may or may not hear about. Oh, sorry. No, we'll be fine with that, Eric. I just want to warn you guys that I might have to move locations again. I'm hoping to get through if I, you know, but so if you suddenly see me go blank, it's only to move my computer to another spot and I'll be fine. So go ahead.
Okay. So we had a little snafu. So as I probably said to you before, we're struggling with M and T Bank, who's our municipal bank. We're not alone. All the towns are, you know, really frustrated with M and T. So we are actively looking for a new bank to switch to. I mean, what I've heard through the grapevine, and I don't know whether this is true, that they're kind of trying to get rid of most of their municipal clients. And, you know, whether they're really as incompetent as they appear to be, or whether they aren't deliberately trying to shuffle us along by just providing us bad service. It's been horrendous. And they called the treasurer the other day and told them that our fund was overexpanded and that there was $170,000 payment due, which set off a little internal panic with us
because, you know, like ultimately I'm the only person that can improve $170,000 payment, and I did not. So, you know, our first thought was, you know, we have some sort of fraud issue we have to deal with. It was nothing like that. It was actually, we have what's called a sweep account that always maintains $600,000 in it. So stuff from the tax collector's office, all the state revenues get dumped, come into the sweep account, and then automatically get swept out into the main account. And then we also pay bills out of that account. It's like a working account, like if you had a checking and savings with the two linked. Well, there are little link between our sweep and our regular account broke, basically. So it was an internal banking control issue, but you know, it's one of those things where they really kind of panicked us a little bit, you know, because it was $170,000 you know, payment that none of us knew anything about. And then they just kind of sloughed it off and never even really gave us a full explanation. Oh, don't worry about it. Just an internal, you know, routing thing. The end of the apology would have been nice. You know, you're calling us and telling us, you know, we've overdrawn our bank account and, you know, and we've got $170,000
payment to something and you're going to just slough it off. So both the treasurer and I are quite pissed about that. And they've still refused. We always had brinks pick up because there are times of the year when we get a fair bit of cash into the tax collector's office, and we all always had brinks pick up the money. And they just basically stopped paying brinks bill. You know, and about four months after that, Brink's cut us off. And we didn't know because the bills never came to us. And then Brink's billed us directly, you know, and we're like, we don't have an account with you. The bank has an account. And they've just never bothered to pay the brinks account. And it's just, there's a ton of little things like that that are just, you know, really crazy. And I think they're probably unhappy with us now because instead of sitting, you know, 3,000,000,
which they're paying us no interest on, we put our money in the stiff account. So the bottom line is, I suspect in the next six months, we're going to change banks and go for a bank with a little better service than them. We had a sit down meeting with JCSB, which is Jewish City Savings Bank, because they're actively recruiting municipal accounts. The problem with that is they're not exactly in our area. And we're still trying to work out a Brink's pickup equivalent because we're not driving to a city savings bank to drop stuff. Now, checks are easy to deal with because we can just, they will give us an actual check processing machine, and we just run it through the machine and it goes to them electronically.
That's interesting, Eric. I don't mean to cut you. I mean, so bottom line is maybe you're looking into that. You and Cheryl report to us, you know, as it's going on. Don't. I don't have any further questions at this time but I appreciate you letting us know and keeping us in the loop and it makes sense. Mean not getting an apology when you do you're right when you're at work and that's a huge stress you know and worry and maybe causing extra work for everyone so no thank you for keeping us in the loop with that. Was there anything else or are we good? No I'm good. Thank you for that Eric and then so I'm going to skip 10. We're all set there. Number 11 would be public speak. Linda, I don't know if you would like to say anything to the board. Yeah, just a couple of little things.
Eric said it earlier that I still think of me as we, but the Board of Finance is responsible for the budgets, I mean, the salaries of elected people. So I think it's important to have Carol Lee come and present a budget every year, just out of respect and to know what she's doing. And
also, I was cleaning off my desk and I do have a copy of the ballot, so I know who ran. Oh, I'll take the chance. So if you want me to read it.
Yeah, there was two additional names, Linda, if you have them. There was John Traskowski.
Apparently, he moved out of town. Oh, he moved out. Oh, that's good excuse. I already checked on this. And Jake Hemans?
Yeah. We're working on him, but the other guy moved out of town. So Is he coming? Is coming? I was already texting with Shannon on this because we're both on DTC, and those are Democratic candidates. So when I first thought was, okay. We had candidates who didn't win. Let's go back to them. And I can tell you one of the two is a no go because they just moved to East Hampton. And the other two TBD. We're working on it. Yeah.
Linda, I know you have more points, so I just wanted to know. Well, I appreciate that's kind of I know that we went through a lot with Carol last year, so I put not a lot, but we had you know back and forth. We did a lot of research. It was a big you know thing. I know we got resolution with her you know, but that's exactly what I was talking about. If we had some kind of point of contention or even point of not contention, but just point of interest where we need the information we want to hear from the person to lead, you know, to make their case to us. So that kind of thing, Rob, when you were asking me. Yeah, but if she's, if you're responsible for her salary,
then I think it's important that at least she come to the Board of Finance. Right. Whether you have a question about it or anything, I just think it's an important
courtesy to her. Oh, of course, of course, you know, and we learned from that last year and then they made a nice, you know, the way they staggered the salary. It was great. Know, the years of experience are important. I think it goes to the Board of Selectmen first to establish things and then we'll get that spreadsheet and if we have any questions or if it's, know, but you're right and we'll take that into consideration because you were saying that you used to hear from the people that were elected maybe or whatever. Well, we used to hear from everybody. From everyone. It was fun. I mean, had the beautification
committee, the rec department, everybody, you know, the little people, the big people, the fire chief.
I really felt like I knew what was going on in town. Well, I and I know and I don't expect everybody and I know everybody can't do this or at different stages of life than I am. Know, I couldn't have when I was raising my family and going to basketball games and whatever, but that's why I kind of go to those meetings too to hear what's going on. So I start the process. But thank you Linda no good points and give it some thought Linda you know there's an open seat here but let us know so anyways thank you again just when she thought she was out I know she's just conveniently here. I can't help but you know. I'm still gonna haunt you even if I am out.
Aw, that's good. Well, we miss you. Of course. Emeritus.
It's an Emeritus position. We really have to think of it that way. There you go, right? She can be.
But anyways, I don't know about everybody else, but I think it's been a full meeting. It's good to get back to it. I don't know if I'm ready to adjourn. I don't know if someone wants to make the motion to adjourn. I'll make the motions. I will second that motion. There you go. Bill made the motion. Rob seconded. Vote. Aye.
Good. Well, night everybody. Good to see you and then best of Thanks for taking over, Joanne. Good job. And we'll see you next My my first time there, but.