Meeting transcript
BOF Regular Meeting
May 24, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Call this meeting. Okay, thank you. We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is the founder of Andover Board of Finance meeting, regular meeting of Wednesday, 05/24/2023. We'll go ahead and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay,
thank you. So we have quite a lot on our agenda today. It may not take as long, may not be as difficult as it looks, but we'll try to get through this. The first order of business is public speak. Eric, I don't see anybody in from the community other than the community voice channel. That is correct. Okay.
Move on to item three, which is additions, deletions or changes to the agenda. Eric, we talked a little bit about some fund changes and I see that the way that the agenda is written up is recommendations for fund elimination, but I think we can talk about general fund status at that agenda without having to change it. Mean, does anybody disagree with that?
Joanne? Once you're done with that topic, I just have a question. Okay,
yeah. So does anybody have any additions, changes or deletions to the agenda? Should we add? Approving the minutes.
Well, problem. Yeah, I was. I almost responded to your email and I didn't. It's kind of busy week, but the minutes aren't here. And so I don't know if they got their posted online if everybody got a chance to see them, but they're not attached to this. Don't have to be but.
No, we need to see them. Till next time soon. That's my question, Mark. I know you said we have a lot on our agenda. Did we get any I mean, did the packet did we get any late items today? I checked email all day just because I don't feel like we have a lot of backup for all of this stuff, but I mean we can get to the agenda items, but. Yeah, I think I think a lot of it may just be some preliminary discussion, but we can, you know, we can certainly. But so has there been pre meetings with you and Eric and then we're going to find out tonight.
No, not really, I mean well there are couple things came up regarding well yes, yes and no, we did have a talk about. Doing some things Eric will talk a little bit about it, we we had a kind of an informal discussion. Jeff McGuire myself Eric but opportunities to do a little better with our cash management and that's what the stiff funny fund money market account is. That was preliminary we tossed around some ideas and you know not to jump ahead, but there was also some discussion about funds. I guess setting up a fund for school improvement that would be under the town's control. This could be a capital fund this came out of some informal discussions actually you know Rob had with the superintendent at a at a you know Community event, so it was very informal was never we you know were going to try to talk about this informally and I didn't really get out to the board about it, but I think it's it's not that complicated and we can certainly talk about it here. But I, you know, so how far we end up taking that? Don't know. It wasn't it sounded like anybody has any solid proposals or anything, I think it's really up to us kind of discuss some of the options,
and talk about what some of the implications are.
I don't mind having a discussion. And since we're adding, it just we have these meetings once a month, and then we're gonna be asked to make decisions or have opinions. So I've, you know, I put it in an email too, and I respectfully asked to just have some of the information a little ahead. I'm just that type of person that I like to just look at it a little bit, and then I don't mind listening to what the informal talks are. Thank you for filling me in on what it is because I was trying to piece together what we had and maybe how it came to be with just what we had. So, you know, I like to just put a lot of time into it or be prepared. If we hear about it tonight, that's fine. And then we can move it on and keep going. Yeah, I mean, my view, it's all new business, so you know,
any any discussions of, you know, really are just thoughts people had to add, you know, hey, maybe we ought to consider this. Just put it on the agenda, so. Right. But I feel like I moved to ask this question here because I don't even know that.
So it'd be like we have a few new topics and we're gonna be at that's fine. I mean, maybe it's procedure and maybe people operate differently and I think I'm with the flow, but this is my chance to ask. That's all.
Fair enough and agree with you about, you know, getting these things out as soon as possible. It's helpful for everybody
and Yeah, I put aside time to get ready for these meetings. No. Thank you. Actually,
Valerie also talked to me about the same issues. She did. And she she started talking about it and I said, you know, it would be best to just present it at one of the meetings. That way everybody will hear it all at once.
Right. I mean, I said something similar at one point to her, but I basically she was really just kind of brainstorming and seeing if, you know, there was any interest on on the board for to to seriously discuss this. And if the answer is yes, then I think she'd be more than happy to to present something. But I think we were it was so preliminary and so knew that it wasn't the sort of thing that we could come tonight and and put a package in front of you and and a proposal. So the the idea was let's chat about it. And then maybe next meeting, we could have a more serious discussion. I I mean, I said to her, I said, like, there's no way we're gonna turn this around for Wednesday. You know? I mean, we were talking on what was it? Sunday, Luis?
So First Thursday. Yeah. No. The Friday. Sunday. Here. Okay. Yeah. So
Yeah. But some fair points, you know, so okay. So nobody has any additions or changes or deletions? Okay we'll go on to old business which is review of budget to actual. So Eric there was some data provided. So there is no budget to actual. Tech register and stuff. The
reason is the, I was delaying putting out the packet because I was hoping to get that out of the treasurer fully updated for the board, but that didn't happen. I'm hoping she has indicated that she should be able to have a fully updated version as of next Wednesday. So that's the target we're shooting for. A week from today? As soon as I get that, I will provide that to both you and the board. I mean, can give you a copy of what it was three days ago, but there's no payroll data in it and there's a bunch of other things missing. It's just not, you know, I mean, you can review it, but it's rolling. So, so look, I apologize. It's, it's not ready for you guys in time.
I did include the check registers, you could see what's being spent by the town. And I put it back to basically when we started doing QuickBooks. So, you had that whole thing to review if you have specific questions about expenses, you know, we can probably chat, You know about any of those and I also included in the packet so you understand on a gross level where we are financially the balances for all the accounts and what those accounts are. And I can share with you updated as of today that if you want to see what all the, you know, what all the checking accounts that the town has and the treasurer and I spent a bunch of time today figuring out what ones
we can eliminate. So the basic idea is that in the past, treasurers have, whenever they started a new fund, essentially just opened up a new checking account and put the money for that fund in that checking account. And it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to track 25 or 26 different checking accounts. It makes a lot more sense to have cash and just keep track of what you actually have in each of those funds. In fact, the data we have on the funds is a lot more accurate. Like, if you looked at some of these funds, for instance, you would see in, you know, in some of them,
the amount doesn't correspond, like for instance, the fire engine fund, it shows $54,000 that's not the whole balance of the fire engine fund. Because at some point in time, withdrew the money from the general fund never credited that's credited against that specific fund. So, the totals we have in the fund balances are right, but the amounts in the individual checking accounts are wrong. And part of it is it's just, it's not a very efficient way to keep track of that. So one of the things we have been talking seriously about doing is essentially closing the vast majority
of our checking accounts, and just dealing with pooled cash, and break it out within the budget, and just have all that money sitting in the general fund, instead of all these individual checking accounts. There will be a few that need to be kept, like the tax collector needs either one or two of her own checking accounts because all the money, her tax revenue gets swept into a specific account, and then gets swept from there in the general fund. There are some regulatory reasons why the town clerk should maintain a separate checking account. And we probably ought to have one standalone checking account for everything that's under the Norton Commission. And the reason why we're going through and trying to do this now is because it, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, is a decision on the town's part to start using what's called the STIP account. And the reason is we're sitting there, if you look, we've got $5,400,000 in bank. And last month, we had a total of like $240 in interest. That's pretty crazy. You know, we should be
by using a stiff account, which is a state of Connecticut run short term investment fund, that's basically backed by the state of Connecticut. Right now, we are in about 5% interest on them. And considering what our balances are, you know, that nets the town, you know, 130 something thousand dollars a year, which is well worth pursuing, in my book. So, so that's why I gave you the list of the checks. In fact, if you can I share my screen for a sec? Do you have a problem with me?
Mark, you're muted. I just said no. Go ahead. Show you share the screen. Rob, you look like you had a question. I had a couple, but I think I'm gonna let Eric finish. I thought he was wrapping up, but he's got some more to say. So I'm just gonna come in So
I I just wanted to bring this up to show you what the the treasurer and I have been working on. And basically yellow at when we're done, yellow are the only checking accounts that are going to remain. The ones that are in gray are going to be eliminated completely. And the ones in orange are all going to be combined into one Norton account. Alright. So each of those scholarships has their own mission statement and gift of deed. So we can't just make one scholarship. So they'll stay individual scholarships. But what we're proposing is just to use pooled cash, set up one checking account, transfer the majority of that money into the STIF account so it's actually earning interest in doing what those funds are designed to do, which is accrue interest to be used for scholarships and funds. That's it in terms of that part, unless anybody has questions on that for
My questions are as follows. Number one, does our auditor have an opinion on this? Have we talked to them about it? Is there any issue there? And the other is the stiff account. What are the, if any, restrictions on that? Is there a minimum, a maximum? Can you have multiple?
Okay. So I'll take those in order. Number one, the auditor is very frustrated with how many checking accounts we have, so he's very much in favor of us collapsing this because there really isn't any reason to maintain. Can
I just stopping right there? Because that's really my main question. Working in account why I until tonight I didn't know each fund had its own checking account. So I I figured we had these funds because we don't get in a lot of info on the funds, you know, balances and lines and different things like that. I know we had multiple checking accounts, but. Do you know why they were set up like this in the first place?
Well, let's just say all the county or Yeah. We're set up under my tenure. Under my tenure, we have less checking accounts than we had when I started, but we still have way too many. Think in past, treasurers have found it easy to just put everything in its own fund. That way they didn't have to worry about it. And it also meant that because most of those funds have absolutely nothing happening on them, they didn't have to think about them from month to month. They were just set in the back and they didn't have to worry. But it just, it doesn't make sense.
Sorry for interrupt. Just one more. So, you know, thank you for sharing that part and then I'll zip it, you know, for a minute and just listen. But I mean, agree. I guess all the time that I've been on the board, I thought we had the general fund, then these were just accounting lines. Know, we didn't So surprised to hear that. I would be more I mean, I wanna hear more, and obviously, I'm gonna try to sink it all in tonight, but I'm in agreement. I can't imagine having all those checking accounts and reconciling and, you know, everything when that way, I think it would be easier for tracking too or running reports that we could get when we asked for, like, the amounts. That's all. Thank you.
I agree. It's something that I have been trying to accomplish for a while, four years maybe, three years. I just never really had a treasurer that had the wherewithal to actually do it and figure out how we could go through and eliminate all these accounts and put everything, you know, essentially in the general fund just assigned correctly. You know, but now we do. Yes.
That 5%, does that change quarterly? How is that determined? Changes daily.
Oh, so it's like a money market. It's got to be pegged That's to
exactly what it is. It's a short term money market account that's run by the state of run and managed by the state of Connecticut.
There's some explanatory stuff further in the packet, you know, so we're kinda jumping the gun, but I think it's fine to have the discussion here as part of the explanation. But
Yeah. And we we also have a bunch of little legacy accounts that really should be closed. And we've closed a lot of our legacy accounts, but there's a bunch that still need closing. And so the the ones right now that I think we can close relatively easy. There's a little transfer station fund. It does not have much money in it. It was for the last renovations at the transfer station. So that fund can be and that was fund was set up because the work done to modernize the transfer station occurred over multiple years. So that fund can go away. The Times Farm Bridge Fund, that was a really large capital fund that funded the rebuilding of the Times Farm Bridge. But in that project is not fully closed out, but there are no further expenses that we should be seeing from there. So, that point, I don't see any reason why that fund can't be closed at this point. It's maybe slightly risky because the Times Farm Bridge project isn't fully accepted by the state. But since that runs seven to ten years after the work is completed, way the state runs, you know, we certainly I don't think we're going to incur any more expenses. So, three years ago, the Board of Finance put in the budget message for the town. Among the consolidations, remember there was a year where we had anticipated putting 700 some odd thousand dollars back in the general fund or reallocating
to the budget. A part of that was the library fund, But the money never got moved. And, you know, the last two treasurers kind of refused to move it. That fund was established to build a new library. And the board already agreed, your board agreed in motion years ago to reallocate that to the general fund. The money just never got moved. So I think that's something we should do at some point.
So you've got that assigned to the, you're suggesting moving to the Bridge and Culvert Fund and not the general fund? Well, so we can talk about that and we can have a little discussion
about that. I was a little shocked today when I got back the initial engineering estimates for two of the pending culvert projects. And we can talk about that separately because that's something I want to make you guys aware of. And, you know, I've only had the information for like twelve or thirteen hours. So, so I'm still reacting and trying to figure out how to deal with it myself. The other thing in there is there when the pedestrian bridge over, over Route 316 was put in place, there was a fund established to do that. But obviously that bridge has been in place for more than ten years. And the town has not spent that money in, you know, more than ten years. So, there's no reason for that fund to remain open. My suggestion would be to run that money back to the general fund. But, you know, we can talk about that. You guys can, you know, put it wherever you want.
Are we allowed, can you send us a copy of this before we start moving everything around and making decisions and Yeah. Or is this something we're gonna decide in the next five minutes?
No. I I'm not asking for any decision tonight, nor do I think it would be appropriate. The treasurers agreed to basically give you a synopsis of this and provide the motions for you if you so chose to eliminate the funds. And where it gets a little tricky is that like eliminating bank accounts, that's kind of your realm. Eliminating funds, believe it or not, is kind of the board of selectmen. So we're trying to go through and figure out what motions have to be made by each board to accomplish this. And we haven't gotten there yet. We were working on it today, but we're nowhere near. I'm just telling you that this is coming. I'm not telling you that it's here now. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That is all I wanted. Rob?
I just wanted to circle back to my question number two about the TIF account. I I I was reading the write up on the TIF account in packet, and I just wanted to clarify for my own verification. What if any restrictions are on that account in terms of how much is in it? How many of them we can have open at any one time? Like, can we have two? Or do we just have to have one? How does it work? Yeah, so annoying fact number one,
a town can only have one stiff account. Everything goes in one main account and then has to be accounted for. We can move the money in and out daily. You know, and we can set up automatic thresholds for how we move money. Some of the state grants like ECS funding, which is our biggest single grant, can be put into the STIP account directly. We can tell the state to just dump the money into the STIP account instead of our bank account moving it ourselves. So we can move the money in and out pretty quickly when we want. There's no minimum. I think it takes like a $50 check to start the STIF account. We can certainly put every dime, you know, there's towns that have, you know, dollars 75,000,000 in their STIP account. The state has over a billion dollars in its STIP account.
So, there's no upper limit on this. It is backed by the state of Connecticut. So, you know, is it, at least according to the state and the auditor, the likelihood of losing your principal is extremely small. And considering that if you look at our checking accounts, you know, main municipal checking account has $349,000 in it. And technically only $250,000 of that is actually insured by FDIC. FDIC, right. So I'm not sure it's less safe than what we're doing now.
Especially in today's banking climate. Right. I mean, we have a good bank. Of course we do. You know,
and the return is a factor of 50 higher than what we're getting now.
So functionally, what we would do in theory here is we put the bulk of our money into a TIF account, but those funds that we need to keep in separate accounts, those will be in the kind of accounts we we have now earning BUPKIS. Right? Because we can only have the one TIF account. So the idea would be to consolidate it down as much as we reasonably can. And then if we have to have five other accounts, whatever the number is, then those would be kind of remain as they are today.
Right. But inherently, if you took like this was a question I had for the treasurer, like, how would this practically happen? Let's say you have a standalone fund right now, the Irene Mooney fund that has $11,864.75 as of this week. There's no reason why you couldn't put all of that balance in the STIF account. And then allocate the portion of the interest to the principal assigned to that account. It's a little more difficult, but it's not a hard thing to do. You can essentially set that up to occur automatically. So, you know, you're not going in every single month and calculating, well, okay, you know, on a daily basis, it was 5.1% today and 4.9%, you know, last week, therefore it's X. You know, process can be automated. So there's no reason almost everything there, other than things which have some kind of statutory restriction on doing it, can't all go in the STIP account. Like for instance, one of the ones that we probably couldn't do would be our 2% non lapsing account because we don't control that. That is technically,
you know, controlled by the school. Therefore, we can't just arbitrarily dump that money into the STIF account. Now, maybe they want to pull it in the STIF account, it would make sense to do it, but that's not ours to do. And same thing with the library grant, but the majority of things can go in the STIF account.
But if BOE agreed, you know, to put it in there with everything else, as long as we track it, then we could do it, but they can't open their own,
the school. No. I I actually that's something I would have to see whether I don't believe when I looked at it, it looked like a municipality could only have one stiff.
But it also said there were 400 some accounts that were there or investments there, and there's only 169 towns in Connecticut. So there's some maybe they're all state funds. I don't know. Right. I think that's the case, but I'm not positive. And
I think there were there are other entities that were allowed to have some nonprofits, I think, were allowed to use that also.
So that would be an interesting thing to run down before, you know Sure. Before we ask the board of ed for their call on this. Because if they can open their own, maybe that would be more comfortable or what have you. So well, thanks, Eric. That that really that answers my questions for now. Thank you. Right.
Technically, this is in a future agenda item but we can certainly take any other questions since we're in the middle of this now if anybody has any.
What I would like the authorization to do from the board, if you're willing, is to set up the STIP account because that doesn't happen overnight, but to start the paperwork. And then, you know, we're happy to not you know, transfer the money into the step account. But I would like to go and start setting the account up. So it's there for the town used the Let's
handle that under the proper in the agenda order since we're still under the old business here. Okay, so we don't have budget to actual. We talked about check register. I don't know how useful that is because it actually doesn't show what accounts or what things are used for. I see a thousand dollars for handover pizza. Wonder if you guys just had a nice Friday lunch or something. No, so but I get it. Hopefully that's that's all being managed there.
If you have specific questions about it I can probably answer a lot of your questions about what the actual expenses are.
I don't personally want to take time on that but trust that you guys are doing what you needed to do on there. Anybody else has questions, you can certainly
Sarah, yeah, just earlier you said you and I get you didn't want to run a report that wasn't up to date or whatever, so we'll have that next week. So you're you're saying you have one that might be up to date from last month, but just the payroll and different things were not, you know, entered or whatever? Well,
I would not say I have one up to date. I would say some aspects of it are fully up to date, but some things are not.
Yeah. And it's more than one month. So yes, and I don't think like I just want to say for future if I ever send an email requesting it I'm fine with wherever it is, you know as long as we have something to look at month to month. It seems like that should be in our hopefully in our packet. I get that you know there's new new staff there and you know things aren't quite up to date. So you know whatever we I would have been okay with not exactly up to date and just where we could ask questions off of that. Because sometimes those are the things that we see that might be, like, you know, overexpanded, and then we could ask questions on those things. That's all. But I'll look at it when it comes in. Thanks.
Well, I guess if have nothing else specifically about that, then We did include the draft review of the policy on financial reports. Eric, at one time you'd suggested maybe we would end up having some changes to this and then I think you shot, I don't know if you sent draft that you had sent to me a few days ago was any different than what we had originally or no?
So the draft I gave you a couple days ago was That was what it would look like if the town and the school recombined their accounts per the discussion you Okay. The first electman had. Now it's I think it's probably too preliminary to say that's the direction we're going to go. It's not my call anyway, it's ultimately it's a two board's call, how that gets handled. But if that occurred, that policy change would accomplish what you need.
Okay, so obviously, well, we are, yeah, well that's a separate discussion but I haven't looked at it yet just in that time but I'll send that out to the board. Don't know, I'll send it out to the board just for reference, but it probably sounds like that may not be a path that people want to go down to. Think you said, well, we'll talk about it. It's probably part of our discussion later.
Can I just ask, so you have a draft that you sent to Mark that had a few notes on it, is that what we're saying? So we'll take a look at that, And then or now we're I'm just trying to understand where this is at because we didn't get it. So we're gonna we're gonna have a discussion at the next meeting?
So let's back up and say a second and say, I gave the Board of finance a policy now three months ago or so. Very rare, right, yeah. Right.
So, but what happened was, you know, the, the question becomes, you know, the, the town treasurer, you know, was struggling to get information from the school system that she felt she needed to do the town books comprehensively. So, question became, know, so that was one discussion. You know, we were also discussing what we've just talked about, which is the need to condense the town's accounts, because it's really getting away in a way of our accounting, number one. And number two, you know, part of the reason the bank is arguing, you know, we shouldn't be getting any, you know, 0.1% interest is okay, is how many money accounts we have for basically a single entity. So, I wanted to solve both those problems. One possible solution is to go back to what we've done up until this year is just have one single general fund and run, you know, so the school writes checks against general fund and the town writes checks against the general fund. You know, there's advantages and disadvantages to that. And the auditor is actually suggesting that we don't do that and we keep what we have now, which is a split checking account. The school maintains their checking account, we maintain ours, they reconcile their books, the town reconciles our books. And the auditor said he would give the town a written set of recommendations that I can present to you to how that could be done with the proper accounting in place so that you as a board have the fiscal control to understand what's actually happening. So, but the policy would be different depending on which way we're going. So really what happens has to happen is before a policy is decided on, a method of control has to be decided.
We probably shouldn't even have this on our agenda yet because now we may change everything and have to do Yeah,
and that is why I sent it to Mark and the first selectman for review, but did not forward it to the whole commission because I thought it was not a done deal that that was the approach we're going to take. So if that is the approach we're going to take, that would be the policy that would accomplish that. If we're going to end up doing something different, you know, the policy will have to change somewhat to accommodate that.
Eric, can I just say when I spoke to the Treasurer, I thought she was in favor, you know, not recently, but I'm pretty sure she was in favor of she wished both the Board of Ed and the town? You know, they did things the old way, you know, out of the general fund because I think and she is a wealth of knowledge and she listed a bunch of reasons why at the time and I think it had to do when she was discussing again. Know we're premature on that and you all will take care of whatever you want to decide, but I I remember her being very much in favor, but you're saying the auditor's not in favor. The auditor favors having two separate. Probably So her to deal with, you know, this side and then this. Yeah. Right. Not deal with. I just mean reconciling,
you know, purchase orders. They do things differently. When you work in a school, everything is drawn on a purchase order, encumbered on a purchase order. You can see it right there. And I, you know, so I get that.
Okay. Right. So after the treasurer and the auditor spent a bunch of time on Monday, because the auditors were back in gathering data this Monday, our Mike Dean, who's our, you know, kind of chief auditor, and they had a discussion and came to the conclusion that Mike's original idea of keeping the checking account separate is probably the way to go. So I asked the auditor to write that up so it can be presented to both boards.
Did say why? I mean because then like you said we're having our discussion and I'll remember it since we're but did he say why it's the way to go?
In a nutshell, know, I don't mean to make it, you know. Yeah, so the real question and what the treasurer was most concerned about is that, you know, so number one, you got a series of competing state laws which says who's responsible for what. Because a treasurer is technically responsible for everything and all funds, including the school, she was stuck with not figuring out how they could, she could provide the data to the Board of Finance to essentially maintain accountability. And what the auditor has said basically is that, look, number one, you're giving them the money. So, they can't spend what you don't put in their account. So, your first hard physical control is you only give them their budgeted amount. So they can't exceed it anyway because their checking account will be, you know, will be dry. So he said that's the first thing. He said secondly, in a lot of towns, is a completely separate reconciliation. Now,
scourals coming from smaller towns and smaller towns mostly do combine reconciliations. But bigger towns reconcile independently. So what Mike has basically said is there's nothing wrong with reconciling independently. The only thing you have to do then is you have to have some kind of an agreement that they have to provide the reconciliation monthly to the treasurer and to the board of finance. And if they do that, then, you know, you have two controls. One, you have a reconciliation process in place. Two, you have the same essentially split authority to pay for things because every check still needs two signers and you still have the approver separate from the person who actually physically produces the checks. So, you essentially have the same checks and balances just shifted to the board of ed. But as long as they provide that information to the Board of Finance and to the treasurer, now what remains to be seen is whether they will provide that information to the treasurer. But I suspect if you present them the alternative of this is how we would like to do it, this provides you the independence you want, and oh, by the way, the alternative
is, you know, we just stopped funding your checking account and we make you right out of our checking account. That's probably, you know, that seems like a compromise that would get us out of the flat out fight between the town and the school right now? At least not Maybe.
Yeah, I I understand. Thank you for and that's that's a lot of information. I appreciate it. I I just feel like and I don't know if I wish it's such a small overall budget, know, and they they get a certain amount approved, so there's no really there can't be any extras going anywhere. It just so would we have to then pay to auditor? You know what I mean? They'd have to be audited separate and all of you know, those kind of things. I hope this isn't just to keep peace. You know, I just I hope that we could all work together and just, you know, it's not that big of a budget. So I maybe the problem's bigger than I'm seeing, but, I mean, I just remember with talking with Cheryl, she thought there were so many steps that would be so much easier and easier to track and follow if just the treasurer controlled it since we're such a small town. That's all. I mean, I'll listen to whatever comes down. Thank you, Eric.
Yeah, and I actually see the other thing you're not maybe not thinking about is if you do that, because we run two completely different software systems between us and the school, that means the town or the school does all this stuff in Edmonds, writes their checks in Edmonds, and then secondarily, what the town treasurer does is take every single one of those checks and has to enter them back into QuickBooks and has to enter all their payroll into QuickBooks and has to enter all their benefits information into QuickBooks. So one, you've got double data entry for everything. And two, you have two sets of, you know, inputs. So you've doubled your opportunity to input something incorrectly. And that is part of what we've had in the past is when we tried to combine the towns and schools reconciliation, you know, there were all these little journal entries when we took one thing into another, and we were constantly coming up with the wrong number because, you know, we couldn't get 500 line items in there correctly.
Now, we have probably more competent staff right now than we've had in the past. You know, and the other thing I think is that the auditor feels pretty confident that the financial person that the school board hired is plenty competent to produce accurate reconciliations. So at that point, I don't personally see the
No, thank you for bringing up the dual data entry. You know, we're not on the same system anymore, which, yeah. No, that's a huge fact. I get that. That alone is a huge fact. I hope that helps. And there are different people in those positions now. Yep, thank you, Eric. Again, that's, I understand it.
So it sounds like to me that in terms of the policy, then it behooves us to kind of wait until we determine what we're going do going forward with the funds or with the checking accounts before we really take action on any policy which would not make sense if we change direction. That would be my take on it. At
some point that's got to get resolved and probably this month I think because were going to do something like combine all the checking accounts it's a pretty radical change and you know we need to get everybody on board pretty quick. Does anybody have any other questions or comments about the policy?
I have a quick question. Just out of curiosity, is the town treasurer considered what they call a fiduciary where they're supposed to try to get the best money for what they have and the funds or not? Because if they were, they haven't been doing it.
I don't think she's been in the position to give us advice for how to invest the money necessarily because in a way that a financial advisor would. Know her main role and Eric correct me or jump in or any of you, but her main role is just going to clean up the books and get things in order rather, and I think this is just part of that process, but I don't think that, at least with Cheryl now, it has been any kind of priority to establish best methods of investing. Mean, think all of us, know, we've we talked this has come up in the past about how we really how is there a way we can earn more money and interest and just never really got addressed, I think, because our financial process frankly was in such disarray. And I think we're getting closer to a solid solid path here and so now it kind of makes time to start looking, you know, I think it makes sense for me personally, start looking at this hard.
Right and and to be fair, Cheryl was the one that pointed out that this was an option because the town has very limited options with municipal money on where it can invest. And I was unaware that this was even a possibility or an option. And she was the one that said, hey, you're kind of crazy leaving this in your checking account. You got all this money sitting there. You're making $200 a month in interest. That's nuts. Here's what we can do about it. That's
part of the reason why we're doing what we're doing. Surprising that the CCM or something doesn't flag this for people and maybe they have in some of their communications or seminars but you know at least we know about it now I guess. Other questions or comments? Well I guess hearing none let's move on to agenda item five which is new business. This is our first item is 5A which is the motion to set the mill rate for the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four fiscal year. Anybody have any discussion on this or just we can go ahead and set them to the mill rate also.
Alright. I just have one comment I want to make on this. Okay. Is that and I am all in favor of setting the mill rate now. Am I know. Agree. Thanks. As a board
that the state has not passed a budget, they're not going to pass a budget probably for another ten days or so. And, you know, we're counting, you know, dollars 2,200,000 in state funding, which isn't guaranteed until they pass a budget. Do I think we're going to get what we're budgeting for? Yes. But am I sure? No. So that's all I want to say.
Can we come back with a special meeting and say oops you were just kidding? Preset it if or the state was just kidding, I guess.
I mean, the only other option is we kick it. But quick question. Do we didn't we have to fix something, Mark? Something very minor that that's already been sorted out and we know what the mill rate should be? There was like, we had to move some money from contingency because the budget that got passed at town meeting was missing some small amount. Yeah, there was $500
I it was like 400 something I remember. Yeah, the
way it was set up, it just didn't get captured in the subtotal. So the reality is that the town passed a budget with a certain line item of 9,000,009 that's the test of the policy $12,469,060 Yeah.
And the only thing that's a little bit of a discrepancy is that that was listed as a line item but it's not actually reflected in that budget. So what my suggestion was that we if we want to fund that line item for the amount then we probably would just make a budget transfer from the contingency or general fund and we should And therefore the mill rate isn't affected right. Mill rate won't be affected because the town voted on a top line budget and the mill rate was based on that top line budget so it really doesn't change anything.
Right so the question just becomes whether we do this now or if we wait for the state okay.
Correct, correct, yeah I think so and just for the record that by any formula error was in the budget file since know I probably when I went to the Board of Selectmen I don't know if it got something got goofed up there or whatever in the process but none of us caught it and that's another lesson learned. We'll go through all the formulas next year, make sure that they total up properly. Again didn't really change anything in any material way it's just that you know it did list that one line item for that one that I can't remember what it on top of head but it's it didn't really change in dollar value.
Bill, is there a date that we had to sell the bill rate by? Do we have a cutoff date?
You don't technically well, technically you would have till about June 10 without delaying. More
of a logistics thing, right, Eric? Mean, we need to get it to the top, they need to mail out tax bills and
Right, the objective obviously is to have tax bills in hand by every resident before July 1. Because, you know, they're due basically July 1, although technically.
I'd be in favor of setting the mill rate based on what we did. We had a lot of discussions about the ECS funding and everything, and, you know, I think we were lucky to get everything. Everything went through the first time over. So do you just make a motion to set what we have?
So I think that the motion would be to set the mill rate at 3,131.29. Yeah, which is what was approved at the referendum. So
what would be the process if Eric scenario played out where we didn't get the funding that we expected to get from the state to just have another meeting and reset the rate again? Or how does that work?
It's a good question. I don't know that the Charter really trusts us how we would do that if we can change it, but I don't know why we wouldn't be able to. It doesn't really prohibit it. I don't know of any reason to do that.
Yeah, I I don't know the answer to that. I would assume once you've set the mill rate, you know, that is the mill rate.
So what would happen if we fell short is what I'm saying. If you have a mill rate of X, we don't get the funding we expect from the state, you're gonna fall short somehow, right? You're gonna
And bill Is the supplemental, you'd have to do a supplemental. The budget or you do a supplemental appropriation.
Yeah. The supplemental. Yeah. We'd have to do something. But, Bill, we have long discussions where we're really fairly confident that it's gonna go through, not to, you know, go you know? Or we wouldn't have, you know, decided on this and added it back into the budget. I think it was a $60,000 difference or something. You know? So it's it's not the 2,000,000 to whatever Eric said. I think it's a $60,000 difference that we'd be looking at. Either
That was for the educational cost sharing. Bet, know, yeah. Oh, right, right. Yeah, but it's just a state process, you know. It's been voted out of committee, so it's gone to this legislature in general so. Michael From political standpoint, you know we're not a divided state, you know you've got a governor of the same party as the majority in the legislature, the chances are that this is going to go through without a whole lot of issues so that was kind of the basis on which we decided to proceed with some of that. I think Joanne is correct that there's probably not much risk to going ahead and setting the mill rate and yeah, I mean hopefully they won't do something crazy like reduce the amount coming to the towns, but at this point they'd have a lot of unhappy citizens on their hand because there's a whole lot of other towns in the same pickle we are.
In schools and towns in general, not ours luckily, but you know they're facing a lot of cuts from the grant funded things that happened during COVID and And increased cost through inflation. So this would just, you know, be another thing that would really set everybody. So hopefully, you know, that's another I don't think the state would wanna do that. You know, it would be hard too. So Yeah. It it's definitely a different feel this budget cycle too.
You know, I remember many years ago where it was really touch and go. Everything was on the table. We were looking at potentially losing significant funding, you know, something happened. But this time around, it's likely it's different. I I was convinced that you guys know I was a little skeptical of proceeding, and you guys convinced me it was it was okay. And I've come around on this. I agree. I think we can proceed, and we're probably alright. It's, know, ideally in my perfect world, we don't do it until we're sure, but we're pretty sure. So,
That's basically my type. Rob, you're an insurance. You deal with probabilities all the time. Come on.
I'm a claims guy. I don't deal. I'm not an actuary. Fair
enough. And let's be honest, there is more than $60,000 in uncertainty in the total amount of revenue the town will collect anyway because you never know how many people are going to pay their taxes. So, you know, I mean, we've been, we've been lucky with that. So, the towns can adjust that kind of dollar value, you know, especially if you know it early enough, you know, you can figure out how to trim that overall if you have to. So I think you're safe setting the mill rate if you so chose. I just, I figured it was my duty to remind you that it's not actually set in stone
at this point. Right. So what's the figure again? 32 what? 31. 31.29. 31.9.
Yeah. If if people are good with it, I'll make the motion. Yes.
Right. Do I make the motion? Do I nod it? Is that a second? I'll make the motion. I second it. Move.
Right. Any discussion, further discussion? All All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you everybody. It's an important accomplishment, although it seems pretty straightforward. Milestone. Okay, very good. Done. We'll move on to agenda item 5B, which is recommendations for fund elimination. Erica has already talked a little bit about this. Do we want to talk about this anymore? One thing that did come up and I gave Eric a call just having reviewed the agenda and if you're kind of Robin and obviously Louise you'd also talk to Val a little bit about the idea for the school any any extra money left over at the end of the year and being returned to the town for potential application to a school specific fund. And as I understand it, and you guys talked about I didn't, but you know her point, and I think it's a valid one, is that right now there's no real incentive for the school district to try to, you know, save money at the end of the year. Fact, there's disincentive because they're concerned if the Board of Finance doesn't allow them to roll at 2% into their. School Improvement Fund or the rather non lapsing fund is that you know, they'll never get it back. We'll just take it for town purposes.
What the concept was that if we set up an investment fund for the school and it could be a school capital fund, which talking to Eric, I think both, you know, he is of the opinion that we should have a school capital fund anyway, and I to me I agree with that. That if we were to do something like that and like set wouldn't necessarily be a policy, but certainly might be a process that where if the school ends up the school year and they have X thousands of dollars left over that that money would instead of rolling directly to town, we would we would kind of make it a practice to roll it into the school capital improvement fund, and that would be one mechanism of funding
that fund, you know, starting that fund or seeding that fund without, you know, we didn't account for it anywhere in the budget process, but we could establish that fund or the Board of Selectmen could establish the fund, guess. If I understand you, Eric, that would be the process, and then we could vote to move some of those funds that came back from the school into that school improvement fund, and it gives the way gives O'Town a way to start a capital fund for the school without impacting the budget negatively otherwise. If I understood it properly, that was kind of the concept and also that was just a discussion I had briefly with Eric
right before the meeting. So Right. So I would just add that, you know, my discussion with Val, her concept of it was, you know, look, everything that would happen here would be subject to board of finance approval. I'm not asking for some sort of thing where I can just go do my own thing. You know, the Board of Eds and asking for that. We're looking at she was in particular concerned. Her her primary concern at the moment is the school parking lots, which are deteriorating. And she's, you know, looking at that in the near future and is kind of worrying about it and thinking, well, if we have a situation where we have some some money left over, can we put it in a capital fund subject to Board of Finance approval? It makes a lot more sense to do that than to say, okay, you know, it's gonna roll into the general fund. What do we do? Maybe in the past, there have been years where I know they've felt pressure to pre buy supplies or something like that to get the money that was allocated in their budget spent rather than have it taken from them. And so maybe we can short circuit that and kind of have a win win where we're actually responsibly budgeting for future capital costs the way that we do for any other number of funds. It's always struck me as a little odd there wasn't a school capital fund. So this all made a lot of sense to me. And the only questions I had had to do with what's the proper way of going about it. But I like the idea, and I know that they have capital needs. So that
was the gist of the conversation I had with Bassett. I'll bring it up to let me talk to Mark. And then my first inclination was, me talk to Mark. Let's see what he thinks. And, know, am I missing something? Is there a charter issue of any kind? You know, that kind of thing. And that's how it started. So, you know, be interested to hear other people's thoughts, and how we might make this work, but I think it's a good idea.
The first thought I had was, first of all, I think it's an excellent idea. I had a long conversation with Valerie as well when I first came on the board of finance and she kind of walked me through things just that you just talked about Rob. So I'm fully aware of the need and a 100% support. My thought or my question is, Eric, we talked earlier about funds that are out there, library fund or this bridge fund or that fund that we're looking at, taking it, putting it somewhere else. With the town have the ability to say, Oh, you know what? Just kidding. We're gonna take that fund that we've been building for the last ten years and we're gonna do something else with it. We're gonna get rid of If this was established, is there a way to guarantee
that that money stays in that school capital fund and it can never be reallocated somewhere else and taken away. That would be my main concern because I would not want that to happen if we make a school capital fund. I think it should stay in that capital fund and never have a chance to be in.
Reallocated somewhere else the way we're looking at these funds right now. Eric, I don't think that that would be any kind of an encumbered fund, I mean, there really wouldn't keep anything. There wouldn't be anything keeping the board of finance in a future year from moving some of that money out of that fund.
I think we have pretty broad purview like Bella, say we have a fund that we set up ten years ago for a specific purpose and it's over now and there's the money left in it, we have the ability to move that money around. And I think this would be under our purview too, I guess basically the school would have to trust us. I think that's how it works. I have to trust it. So I, you know, I don't think I think that's how it would be. I don't know if there was a process that where we can reassure them more that we wouldn't do that. I certainly wouldn't want to do that. But I think generally speaking, if we have money and say the multi use building funds, for instance, we complete the building, we furnish the building, and there's money left over. We get to decide what to do with it. Yeah. We could put it into the school capital fund if we chose.
I get that. I'm just saying, I would hate to see money set aside that people believe and the school board believes is gonna be put into a capital fund for the school. And they would say, just kidding. I just don't think that. And
I wouldn't want to do that either. And I think if we did, people would call us out. I mean, I think there would be a recussion for that if we did it in the same way that if we today bizarrely voted to zero out the multiuse building fund or something after we'd said that we were gonna use money in there to furnish the building. Mhmm. I think people would object and reasonably so. So I don't know if there's a mechanism to literally prevent ourselves from doing a thing like that. But I think I completely agree with you conceptually. The idea here is we're earmarking this for a specific purpose, and it should be used for that purpose.
I think it's a great idea. I think, you know, them coming up with it and maybe precluding them from feeling like every year, because working at a school, I know how the budgets work and how everyone wants, you know, they want their money to go to the school, rightly so. So there's a need, like I've, since I've been on the board, I've been telling you guys like in May and June, we've got to buy, buy, buy. I would rather have them feel secure, not overspend on things they really don't need, and then start establishing a fund from the budget that was budgeted for the school, put it in a fund. I walked the building too. I really thought that some areas could be improved. Some of the floors are coming up. Maybe they weren't used for years. You know there's things that need to be replaced. I I was surprised for all the money that we do give this school, which is what the what the town wants, what the town believes in. You know, I've listened and all of that. So I think there are some improvement capital improvements that need to be done eventually. So what a great way. What a great idea to start a fund. And, yeah, I'd be in favor of making sure it stays for the school too. Just like if something was started for the senior citizens, I'd be the first one fighting for make sure that everything's funded for them first. So, yeah, thank you for bringing it to our attention. I know that she has said
they lack that capital funding or, you know They've returned that more than once, yeah. Go
ahead, Eric. So I guess I have two comments. The first is that the one way you ensure that nobody can take the money away from the school board would be just to put the money in the 2% non lapsing account. So, because that is a mechanism whereby towns can fund a fund for the school. On the other hand, I think it makes sense. I'm a big believer in having capital plans for everything you have, establishing funding levels, and then reevaluating those every couple of years to see whether they're still realistic and socking away money for big purchases so that you don't have any shocks. And we can talk about shocks that
might be coming, in a separate conversation. So, but, so I think that's perfectly appropriate. The other thing is that the charter pretty clearly establishes that the capital improvement planning committee will have a member of the Board of Education that is part of CIP. So that's enshrined in our rules. And that was enshrined in our rules because I think everybody assumed that capital projects would go through CIP for everybody. Now, so if you established it as a capital fund, then the review would stay with the same process for everybody else, which is going through CIP, which the school may like or may not like. I don't know. I mean, that just depends. So, think that's a perfectly valid way to do it. I think if you're going to do it,
not to be a jerk, but you should request that the Board of Education provide you with a capital plan because technically by state law they're supposed to be supplying a capital plan anyway. And if the carrot is supply us a capital plan
here's a fund that we can fund your capital projects out of, then I think that makes things more transparent, number one. Then Just to throw it out there, I mean, I want to start this with baby steps too. I like the idea. I know we have a lot of things we're adding fund wise to the budget for next year or different things. So I don't wanna see, like, a huge another amount, you know, coming forward that they're gonna add to our operating budget. Well, not operating, but, you know, like, a capital budget like the town does. So if we could start this with baby steps the way they're suggesting and then every school system does kind of this will tie into how Mark wants to see kind of budgets presented as well. Like in our district, when they present the budget, they have their list, like you said, of the capital items they're hoping for. You know, the needs, the wants, the wishes, kind of like what RAM does if anyone's studied their budget too. So you will get a listing of what eventually is going to be funded. But yeah, I mean we're just starting this so I don't want to make it huge before we just get it started, make sure everyone's on the same page, and that's my thought. Yeah, I think we can always establish the fund with
however much we roll out and everyone comes back from the school, and it's not going to be an enormous amount, but Eric's point still stands that before we were to, say, put some type of additional funding mechanism in the budget for next year, we would want to see a capital plan that made sense, that supported that level of funding, so we certainly have that option going forward. I think we can get the best of both worlds potentially there.
And the other thing I think is that it has the chance, you know, of making things, you know, kind of more transparent. And by that, I mean, it's not that the school's not making capital purchases, they are. It just, they're making them essentially through either grants or their operating budgets. Like, I mean, they just added another $25,000 worth of ductless split systems to the school for a couple of the classrooms. I mean, there are no capital line for that. And at the town level, that would be a capital expense. We recognize that as a capital expense, but there they run everything through the operating account. So, this I think would make their process in a sense more transparent because they would do what they're doing already, but they would just have it separated into operating expenses and capital expenses.
I like it. And I just don't want it to be I would like to see the town and the board of ed come together. So I don't want to by me being trans, I don't want this to be another segment. That's why I said if we do baby steps of try of the divide. You know? I'd like to be the board that tries to bring it together rather than, you know, that that's my purpose because you know that people will jump on it with more spending and question them, and I'm trying to, you know, not have that happen.
I think we can do this in a collaborative way, in a way and as Eric says, in a way that actually could help us understand better what, for instance, their capital needs are. You know, I don't think there's any I have seen no reason why we wouldn't ask them for a capital plan. That makes total sense. That's good.
Other questions or comments? So, Erica, if the Board of Selectmen is the governing board that establishes the funds, then it sounds like probably the motion to be made here, if any, would be that the Board of Finance make a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen to establish a school capital fund account that could potentially be used or funded with the money returned from the school at the end of the year, because we can't do it on our own if I remember that. And you said something about earlier what the attorney's opinion was.
Send you the copy. Let me pull his opinion up and read through it. Yeah, I didn't
see that in the charter, so I wasn't really sure where that's coming from.
Like, we can change things than existing funds, but they have to establish it in the first place. That's is it also true then that they would have to if we wanted to get rid of a fund, that has to be something they do too? Like, if we zero a fund out and say, okay, we don't need this fund anymore, does BOS have to bless that? Is that the way it works?
So if you want, I've got his legal opinion up. Share it with you and you can read it. That way it'll be more obvious what because I think he did a relatively good job of explaining it. So, let me do that. What's kind of ironic is two of the funds we're discussing here are funds, you know, we were trying to do, you know, almost four years ago, and never actually transferred the money.
So can you Can we scroll down? Yeah. Scroll down because I think the relevant language is probably down. Keep keep going. It's probably not The new event is finally began the board action. Well The upshot. Sorry. Looks like the one that starts with the upshot. Oh,
there it is. Yeah. Board of Select with the executive authority of the town or general stats and blah blah blah. Resolution of the Board of Select, abolished previous appropriated fund balance Transfers. May pursuant to Charter, remove the law, abolish the funds and transfer the contents to a new capital project fund called the Building Maintenance Fund.
Scroll down, please. Thank you. So this is talking about getting rid of funds. But Yeah. Consolidate. Really talk about setting up a new one. But it would stand to reason? I'm trying to remember it in the past how a lot of these funds have just been around forever. I can't remember the process for setting a new one up. Apologies everyone, I'm supposed to know these things.
Well, it's a the charter is not, I don't think, a 100% clear on this, but, know, he's weaving in the general statutes.
I think, probably the safest thing would be if the Board of Finance made a motion recommended to the Board of Selectmen to establish the fund, I'm sure they would agree with you, and establish the fund. And if both boards have made a motion to that effect,
I don't think Quite kind of moot. Right. Yeah. Right. The only issue here is if they disagree with us. Right? Right. And I don't have a sense. I don't know. I mean, you guys said you talked to Jeff Maguire a little bit maybe, but or that was about the other issue. I haven't talked to any of the board of selectmen about this yet.
Yeah. There's really nothing in the charter that I can see a section four zero three, but anyway so alright. So I think Eric makes a good point that probably the way to do this is to just, you know, vote in favor of the creation of a school capital improvement fund and request that the Board of Selectmen likewise consider and approve such a fund. And if nobody has any, I'm gonna go ahead and make that motion. I usually don't make the motion as chair, but I'll go ahead and make the motion just as stated that we recommend or we approve the creation of a school capital improvement fund or called school capital improvement fund and recommend that the Board of Selectmen likewise approve such fund. Second. Can
I make one suggestion if you're going to do it? I definitely agree that you probably should do it. You recommend that they transfer the money from the Andover Elementary School expansion fund into that fund. I was going to originally suggest you put it in the 2% non lapsing account, but if you want a way to put a quick small amount of money into it, that puts 85 or $8,700 on that account right from the beginning.
Okay, so I'll withdraw my motion and then restate it. So, a motion that Mark,
before you should do we also put in the language that we want a capital improvement plan as part of the motion? Does that need to be there or no? I would just communicate that to the Board of Ed separately
and you know not. Let's not muddy the waters too much here on this would would be my preference for this motion. So I'll restate the motion as follows so the Board of Finance approves the creation of a school capital improvement fund and recommends that the Board of Selectmen likewise approve the creation of such fund and transfer the remaining balance from the expansion fund expansion fund expansion
fund thank you to the newly created school capital improvement fund.
And I will re second that. Okay, thank you. Further discussion?
I'm sorry. Still feel a little mute to this. Do we have to include the language in that fund that states how the money would come, you know, from the board select from the board of ads leftover monies, and that's what would that's what would fund the capital improvement fund. Does that have to be in there anywhere or is that not necessary?
I don't think it has to be in there just, you know, I mean, we we certainly could state that for the record. I think we have by nature of this public meeting and the minutes thereof, but you know we again there's not really any necessarily enforcement that kind of we certainly stated our intent to fund that at least in part with the monies left over at the end of the school year budget that the school transfers from the school to the town. Joanne? No, does Brian want to go?
Brian, did you have a question? I'm sorry, was coughing.
Is by naming it a school capital improvement fund versus the first version of a school improvement fund. I mean, obviously, we want it for capital funds, and we understand that's probably where the needs are gonna be. But would naming it a school improvement fund give them a little more leeway to how it could be expended? So there already is a school improvement fund, right? Well, we're but
you know I think the money that they call that lapsing I think they call it a school improvement fund.
A thought you know to leave it a little bit more open I mean clearly, they want to get some capital items done eventually, and that was the plan as our discussion rolled along here. But just a thought. Mean It was very much presented to me as capital projects. Oh. Yeah. I think I think that they're they're probably
gonna stick to capital projects because most of the incidental stuff, maybe school improvement could be painting the walls, you know, if that's $6,000, they're probably just gonna fund it out of their general fund. They're not gonna mess around. Something like that. Val's worried about tens of thousands of dollars for parking lots and stuff like that. Oh, understood.
You know? Or So I I think this was really aimed at capital, and I think naming it capital personally, I think it makes sense. I also don't think that the name of the fund is ultimately a 100% dispositive. Like, if we saw a need just because it's called the capital fund, you know, it doesn't mean that we can't fudge something. But I I honestly think that that was the intent as it was described to me. Luis, if you you got a different story, but this is what I got, that is very much aimed at capital projects they see coming down the pike to set aside for just like we set aside for a fire truck or something like that. So I think it's fine. I think it's named appropriately. That's a good point. Do have flexibility probably Rob for just listening.
Because it's a capital fund, do they have to have like a separate CIP for the school like the town does?
Well, no, they're really good. Part of what Eric was trying to make earlier is really any capital expenditures are supposed to go through CIP regardless of its town or school. Oh, okay. Operate Yeah. But it really is part of the same process. Right. There are a few things like that that aren't quite as clear and some of the things haven't been followed, for example, technically they're supposed to every time they move something from one. Fund to another they're supposed to advise the board of finance, you know just like hurt us so well, we have proven for the town, but they're supposed to advise us so
Right. So I mean, think that the pattern and practice would be that we would impress upon them that in conjunction with putting the other capital plan, just like the other town departments do. But, you know, let's let's funnel that through CIP like everybody else does. And then we kind of bring them into line with everything else, which actually makes a lot of sense. It's just a good practice.
Would be that their benefit long term for the school district's benefit.
And we get into this situation where there's not some giant surprise. Hey, they told us five years ago they needed X and nobody feels blindsided. Mean, a lot of good reasons here.
I would state that I am wholly in favor of them establishing or a capital fund being established because that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I would love to see their budget presented that way with operating expenses and capital expense.
RAM does it that way, right? It's even separate from the referendum level.
Further comments or questions for the board? Okay. Agree. I'll call for a vote. Are you good, Bill? I guess I'm I'm still
with like like if you have this capital fund, maybe for everyone's sake in the town that if the wording was in there that they understand that it's being funded by the leftover money from their budget, just lets everybody know that's where the money is coming from. I'm not sure if that's important or but just seems in my mind, people wonder where's the money coming from that funds this capital fund is coming from leftover funds from the board of education. That's what's funding it. Now everybody knows where the money is coming from and the board of Ed knows that's where the money's going and that's also to be funded. But if this is my first year doing this stuff, I'm just being stupid. And
that's we're I just wonder if if restricting it to leftover monies at the end of the year is actually we want it to be board of Ed money, but if they if we did have a capital project coming up and it was major, and we had a capital fund set up and a and a proper capital improvement plan You could put money in looked at it. You know, they might wanna come out with a budget that, you know, when they do their original
budget for the year, puts money in. Yeah. They come up with a capital improvement plan. Frankly, we may want to just add a line and add 50,000 to the school capital improvement plan, you know, over and above whatever leftover is in there. We know Bill makes a fair point that you know we could we could state that outright. I mean, again, think we kind of haven't stated our intent. It just isn't in the in the motion,
And I agree with Bill though for the town. That was the point I was trying to make was we're starting this fund with that money that's left over with baby steps. But, of course, I think it's a good idea to have there there probably will be a line item said, so we're gonna expect to see, you know, if we do establish for this for them, they're gonna put their wishes out there. So it is gonna raise that budget.
Know, I mean, it is a good idea, but that's Well, it's gonna break that budget out at the very least. Right, Joanne? Like, I mean, if you say you have a just just as an example, you have 4,000,000 school budget this year or whatever. Right. And into that is baked some stuff that's really technically capital. Right? And in a future world, maybe what it comes down the pike for budget season is a $3,900,000 budget and a $100,000 into our capital fund, please. Would say 4,000,000. I want to see Rob
counted better. Yes. I I would hope that's what we do. We would take some of the stuff out of the operating that they could yeah. So Right.
Again, I'm willing to start it. Like and Yeah. I think And and to and to Bill's point, you know, he's saying he wants if you if you specify that it's leftover money, does that then interfere with that ultimate goal? So that's the only reason that's the only reason, Bill, that I'm quibbling with your your question is that I don't wanna actually box box it in like that necessarily because I I'm not sure that's really actually where we wanna go. Although that's absolutely how this is going to start.
Right. I guess I'm just trying to make it sure that the board of Ed feels comfortable that when they don't spend x amount of money that it will go into that capital fund for their improvements. We could add other money to it if we so voted or wanted to. I just want people to feel comfortable that that money is gonna go into that fund and we could put other money into that fund as needed. But I just thought it might make people feel comfortable that
leftover money is in fact going back Well, we have to approve it either way. Okay. Alright.
Again, I may be way off here. It's my first year doing this. No. I mean, it's just it's a common sense thing I think at part, and I think there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know if it's necessarily, we can restate the motion to add that. Don't have a problem with that.
It's up to you guys. Don't know if it's needed. I'm just asking. I'm comfortable though.
It's a good question, and I think it was good that we did have such an open discussion about it. So hopefully the minutes will reflect that that's how we're you know, whoever does the minutes this time maybe does a good job on that. What we intend and we want it to be all for the school and leftover money from the this year's budget. You know? Just really, Eric, if maybe the person that does the minutes can really make that I mean, that's one way. And then, like like Mark said, we've had this meeting. We've all voiced our opinion, so I don't see it changing.
It's on the record, so to speak. Yeah. Right. Oh, good. Okay.
I guess unless we have any other questions or concerns, I'll go ahead and call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, Hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you. Okay, so we'll continue with our discussion of fund elimination, which is really where this came from. Eric, do you have any other discussions about fund elimination or have we kind of covered out what we're gonna do? Want us to approve the TIFs starting the TIF thing, right Eric? That's that's the next agenda item. Oh, sorry, my fault. Yeah, no, as far as elimination of existing accounts,
that's as far as I want to go. I want the treasurer to prepare a set of formal motions for you before we go too far down that road. Okay. Anybody have any questions for Eric on that?
Eric, just repeating if I could and whoever else, could we get what you had up on the screen sent to us so I can see the existing amounts? It's hard to read it there. Just and then that will prepare me for when we have the formal. Yes. Thank you. Because we can see the maybe everybody else. My screen is tiny, so I can't read it. No. Even that. I don't remember it all. Know? I should have maybe taken a picture, but Yeah. It'd be helpful to have it. Thank Okay,
so if we have no further discussion on that, we'll move on to agenda item 5C, which is the stiff fund money market account. We already had a pretty extensive discussion with this in Eric's financial overview, so what he has asked us for is at least grant him the approval to set up such account and then we'll determine later exactly how it would be implemented. Am I understanding that correctly, Eric?
Yes. So the motion would be to authorize town treasurer to establish a town short term investment fund, STIP account, through the state of Connecticut. I love it. I so move. Okay. Are you
seconding, though? Yes. This has bugged me literally the entire time I've been on this board that we've been getting like point 1% interest on our money. It's driven nuts ever since I've been on this board. And I I literally just like everybody else, I had no idea this stiff thing existed.
No. I Yeah. Mean It wasn't surprising. We weren't getting much for that. It just seemed right, but it was egregiously bad. You know, getting up higher. It's it's just all good. Let's do it. All good. Let's do it. Any further discussion? Okay, we'll call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, we will move on to the next agenda item, which is 5D, audit delay. Not a good one to hear.
Always something. So the the meat of the audit is done. You know, what we're picking at are little things that have come up during the audit. So, we've gone back and forth. Remember we got kind of beat up last year. Well, I got beat up by the auditor last year over the capital asset inventory. So I came back with the policy based on his initial comments, you know, the Board of Finance eventually passed that. We put that in place. We're probably gonna, I'm probably gonna recommend some modifications to the board of finance based on his comments. So compared to our policy, there were a couple of things that he really doesn't think we should be capitalizing. So, they are things that are groups of items that are collectively expensive, but individually not expensive. And the example I would give is turnout gear for the fire department. So, collectively, the fire department probably has a $100,000 worth of turnout gear, maybe more. However, they add a little bit each year, and they're not necessarily buying complete sets. If they need a bunch of boots, they need a bunch of boots. If they need jackets, they buy the jackets. If the helmets are the problem, they replace. So, over a ten year period, they cycle through and replace everything because NFPA says it has a maximum life expectancy of ten years.
But depending on use patterns and how much smoke damage and whatnot, some of it gets replaced much sooner. So, the auditors essentially said is that the reason you have a capital asset inventory list is so you're ensuring you're depreciating things properly and accounting for your expenses due to capital. But if you're spending roughly the same amount on this every year, it doesn't make sense to actually capitalize it because you have the same amount of depreciation year after year, and you don't have an asset that slowly decreasing in value, you essentially have the same asset just with different parts. There's a couple things like that that they pointed out. We spent a couple hours going over our asset inventory list. They're a lot happier with it this year than they were last year, but we still have a few things to tweak. The auditor, Sam, this afternoon late sent me a revised list, which I have to fully review and bless before it goes. So we've been spending a little time going over that. The other thing that has been a holdup, and you know, there's plenty of blame to go around on, you know, on the town side of this. And that is that we are supposed to do an actuarial analysis of our liability due to health care, you know, in retirement every year. So they, unfortunately, the only contact they had was Sherry Holmes. They had given Sherry the information in the ball, but she honestly just didn't do anything with it. So when it came time to provide that information, the auditor asked for it. We went to Hooker and Holcomb and said, where is it? And they're like, Hey, we asked you for this information back in September,
we got nothing. So, so about a month ago, the auditor said, Hey, you got to provide this. We provided our half. The school has been delayed in providing their half. They're hoping to get theirs in in another couple weeks. So, I'm not happy that it's taken them that long. But on the other hand, you know, if they'd had it in October or September when Hooker and Holcomb first asked for it, you know, a two month delay would have been, you know, no big deal. So, the bottom line is we will get the bloody audit done and signed by July 1. But it's going to be a lot closer than I would like. And that's basically the last remaining hang up we have other than the auditor flagged some for some additional information relative to a steep grant. And it's one of these things that might require a restatement because the town was awarded a steep grant in 2020,
but the money wasn't actually spent in '20. It was spent in the current budget year in 2023 when we actually got the money, but we got the award letter in the previous year. So, we're trying to figure out which year this money actually gets credited to. And because it wasn't credited in the previous audit, even though we had the award letter, we may have to restate for that. So I'm just letting you be aware of that. It's not something that's Well, it's material in the sense that it is for in excess of $100,000 but it's just a question of which fiscal year it gets credited for. And they're still trying to figure out which year is appropriate. So that's kind of where we are in the audit status. You know, we're in the black. It's not a question of whether, you know, whether that is. And then the auditor and the treasurer have agreed that they're going to do a, so as you know, last year, there was a discrepancy of quite a bit of money, like $80,000 between the, you know, essentially the bank statements and the audit result. Nobody thinks it's fraudulent. It just, they kept going back. Think it actually applies to years earlier than that, you know, but neither of them have really been able to figure out exactly what it is. So the intention is in this audit essentially to just do a correcting entry and write it off so we start this year, you know, even essentially. So that's where we're leaning towards. I haven't gotten the official, you know, draft audit yet. I've seen most of the draft audit though. So, that's kind of where we are at this point.
I would have preferred to be a lot farther along than we are, but we're not. You know, and our goal is to keep working towards getting it down. So we're either audited on time or, you know, we're producing the thing in January so we'd have the details prior to budget season. Because it's it's very difficult going into the budget season, when you don't really know what your official unexpended fund balance is. So that's kind of where we're at on that.
Doesn't sound insurmountable. Hopefully, you guys can get that done in the rest you know, in time you have left. Right?
Beyond time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I mean, the real question for me is can the Board of Finance get the information to Hooker and Holcomb? And can Hooker and Holcomb turn around the actuarial analysis in time? You know, and the good news is that that is just basically a standalone thing in the audit. So, the audit can be completely done other than that, and that just be plugged in, you know, the day it's received and submitted. So, I'm hoping like how we get the thing in by July 1, because I really don't want to go past July 1 without an audit on the books. That's where we're at.
Lost my on mute there, control. Any other questions for Eric on the audit delay? Okay, the next agenda item is 5E, which is a recommendation for transfer of funds from the RT program to senior transportation.
Okay, so we've been talking about that for a while and the Board of Finance made a decision that this would probably be doable to fund the small vehicle for senior transportation out of funds from this year's budget. So we had one thing that broke really well for the town. And actually, I feel like I take a lot of credit for that because I lobbied very hard and I got both Capital Regional Council governments as well as FOST, which is the Council of Small Towns to back me on pushing for reforms for the Resident State Trooper Program. And both of the suggestions I made, well, two of the three suggestions I made made it all the way through. And so for the first year in, you know, the last ten or fifteen, we actually have the bill for the resident state trooper for the year already.
And we've already paid it. As most of you remember, usually we get the thing in August for the previous fiscal year. And they don't tell us until the very end what the cost is going to be. Some of you can recall about five years ago, the budget for the Resident State Trooper was like $40,000 underfunded. And it's been as much as $50,000 overfunded. So, the second part of that, which was also very good is I argued with the state that because they use the resident state troopers for a lot of things that don't directly benefit the town. It's not fair to make the town pay the whole nut for his costs. And they have in fact incorporated that also. You looked at the bill this year, you would say the town got billed for 85% of the cost of the resident state trooper and the indirect costs for the first
for any town which had two resident state troopers or less. So that's a big deal. You know, that 15% alone saves the town more than $20,000 a year. And so, the good news is that we have almost $50,000 more in that account than we need, and we paid the bill. So I would encourage you to make two motions. The first would be to authorize the town treasurer to establish a new line in the current budget, and it would be $4.40 nine-one 140 three-seven 100 entitled senior transportation vehicle. That would be the first motion. And then the second motion would be to transfer $45,000
from the resident state troopers line item to that 449153700 to fund the acquisition of a vehicle for senior transportation. That would be my recommendation.
And and this is that EV you were guys gonna buy. Right?
It's not gonna be an EV. Hybrid. Would be Oh, it's a hybrid. Yep.
To Congratulations remind you on Sorry. The goal for them was to for the vehicle was to eliminate the use of the large bus for these small short run low passenger count trips that was taking one person to the doctor that kind of having use it for the school purposes right so right right
by the way that that resident state trooper thing that you got through fantastic What's funny about that is that's how it used to be. You turn back time. I love it. I know. It used to be we got billed 85%, and then they took it away five, ten years ago now. So well done, sir. Nice work.
So would anybody care to make their first motion relative to creating that account that Eric stated? I'll make the motion to what he said. With that number. Yeah, no one's gonna remember that number.
I'm clear Eric will restate it for us. Restate it, thank you. So we can acknowledge. The motion to authorize the town treasurer to establish new line item in the current budget, 449Dash143Dash700 senior transportation vehicle. And that nomenclature number came from the treasurer.
I have a question before we make the second motion. The amount, I know you want us to transfer 45,000 in, what was the amount that we, that the Board of Selectmen had wanted you to stay within? I thought it weren't we looking at 30? Or It's definitely less than that. Are
you still planning to stay within the budget that they talked about, and then we'll just keep this in there for expenses that go with? Yeah, I just wondered why you understand there's more money left.
To be perfectly honest, part of my rationale for that is the fact that we had a big repair to the big bus. So we've blown the budget for maintenance for senior transportation by at least 5,000. And probably more like 7,000 because it's still parking lot leaking oil. So I know back into the void today. So I'm guessing that we're going to spend the rest of that money just shoring up paying for existing repairs.
Okay. That's why I picked that number. Perfect. We're just staying with the budget that they had want you know for the clock. Good
question Joanne. Yeah I did Joanne I remembered 35 that was what I had in my head. So that makes sense Eric. Yep. I didn't know that it happened to the bus.
Okay. Further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I don't think anybody seconded it. Nobody seconded it. I thought you had Oh yeah, Bill, I thought you Okay. Said
But I don't think it was heard because Joanne done it. I
might have commented that we might have got lost in the mix. I think we had a second from Bill. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? No, motion passes. Thank you.
I'm happy to make the second motion that we have been transferred $45,000 from the existing. Oh, sorry. What fund was it again? Resident State Trooper. Resident State Trooper Fund into the newly created senior transportation fund.
Yeah. It's not a fund but but an account or budget. Right. There's a budget line item. Like, correct. Sorry. It's getting late. Yeah. It's the
it's with when we're talking about funds, probably pays to be a little careful with our language here. Fair. Fair. Details.
Okay. So you wanna restate that to Yes. I I therefore, I propose that we move 45,000 I moved that we move $45,000 from the resident state trooper line item to the newly created senior transportation line item or vehicle line item rather, exactly what how Eric had described it before. Second.
Second. Any additional discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, good. Hearing none, thank you. We'll go ahead and move along here. That is the end of new business. We'll move on to Item six, which is Administrator's Report. Eric, is where you give us the bad news, I think. Away from what you said earlier. One
of the things, as you all know, we've been stuffing money not stuffing, we've been putting money in capital funds for bridge and culvert replacement. So, we, you know, my intention this year was to try to put, get two bridges or two smaller ones accepted into the state local bridge grant program. So, for the record, I looked it up historically in the last ten years, they've offered the program six times. So, on average, about every other year, they do a state local bridge program submission. There are two bridges I want to put in that. The first is Hutchinson Road, which is a failed culvert. And the second one is the one on Lake Road by Basola. Those are basically the two worst culverts that we have. They're both in failing status. They're both well under the quality level at which they qualify
for the funding. The problem is that they're both going to be expensive projects today. And the cost basis in the last three years has more than doubled for work of this type between two and three times. And I was frankly pretty shocked when I got the numbers from our engineers. But, you know, he basically sat down with me and said, okay, look, these are the last five similar culvert projects we've done.
These are the cost estimate. These are the actual construction costs when we send this out to bid. So, I'm pretty sure their numbers are right. And, you know, I've kind of fact checked him because I've got a friend of mine who's an engineer that was a consultant to the DOT in both the state and federal local bridge program. You know, and I asked a lot of hard questions to him, like, why are the costs going up so much? And there's kind of three things. The first is culverts have gotten bigger lately, and they've gotten bigger because the requirement by the Army Corps of Engineers for how wide a bridge or culvert is relative to the natural width of the stream, the factor for that has gone up. So now everybody needs wider culverts than you needed two years ago legally to get permitted. So that's one factor. The second factor is the general cost of permitting, you know, has gone through the roof. We said it's not uncommon on these projects to budget between 1 and $300,000 just for the costs of obtaining the permits for these projects, which is also crazy. But he also said, you know, typically we're spending, you know, we've got almost one thousand hours of labor in on, you know, by the time we're through permitting these things, which again is nuts, but I think that reflects true costs. So, the question we have to ask ourselves is do we submit for two bridges or do we submit for one? Because the reality is there's no way we would have the money to do both if we did get them both.
And so, one of the bridges, the estimate is about $1,400,000 and the other one is about $1,900,000 The more expensive one being Lake Road at Basola. You know, which is, it's a staggering number, you know, especially when we were estimating these things at $600,000 a few years ago. But I don't know that. I think those numbers are real. They're just unpalatable. So, my suggestion at this point, you know, is that we can't do them both. If we got them both, we'd have to turn one of them down anyway. So, our best bet is to put the one that has the most impact on the populace, which is the one on Lake Road, because it affects the most people. I mean, the reality is the other culvert really feeds exactly two houses. And trying to get this town to agree to spend $750,000 for their contribution to something that affects exactly two households, I think we can guess that's going to be pretty difficult. It's a failing culvert and we do have to do something about it.
I've, you know, we've kind of taken a hard look at what our other options are. And I think before we commit any kind of money to that, we have to see whether the state will grant us another curb cut. Because the road used to go out to Route 6 in that direction, and having a bridge out would have been no big deal because you could have accessed it in the other direction. So, I think we're going to explore from an engineering perspective, are there any other solutions to this that accomplishes allowing access to those homeowners? Because frankly, if it came right down to it, there's only one house that doesn't have its own independent access other than that road. And it would be a hell of a lot cheaper for You could just buy it out. Buy it out than to replace that Bridge.
My suggestion is that we apply only for Lake Road at Osola, even though that's not, if you asked me two days ago, that was absolutely not the plan we were working on. I put that same question to Board of Selectmen, but since you all are going to have to be the ones that stand up there if we have a town meeting, if we get the grant and have a town meeting and are then asking for the money because, you know, we do, because it's a grant that requires a town match, it wouldn't require a town meeting to accept it if we get it. So what are your thoughts on that? This is the 1,900,000
and the amount to the town was is half of that? Half of that. Yep.
1,800,000. Think they estimated 920. Now I think we can get that number down a little bit, but we're not getting it down hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking somewhere between three quarters of a million and $1,000,000. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So of which when this budget next budget goes into effect, we'll have about $330,000 So one of the options to soften the blow, which is why I put it on my sheet, would be to consider transferring the money in from the other bridge that we know is just waiting final state approval. We're not going to have to spend any more money. That would be about $105,000 And potentially consider transferring in the money from the library fund since we agreed to get rid of that years ago, we just never did it. Which would then get us down to an amount that we could probably sell to the public.
That gets you almost halfway there, right, basically. If it's a $900,000 issue and you can get to $4.50 ish, then you get $4.50 short.
Right. Yeah. Yeesh. Those are kind of my thoughts on it, but, I mean, I really wanted to discuss that with the Board of Finance before I pull the trigger and actually submit the grant. The problem is, and I don't like giving this to you at the last minute, and I get your unhappiness with that. Johann's like, there's a holiday coming and You're muted. You're muted. The thirtieth to hit submit because that's the last day and I only got this thing last night. So, You know so that's kind of where we're at. You know, and maybe we don't get the grant anyway and and it's all a moot point but, but I wanted to have that discussion with you all before I hit submit on one or both of these. And I mean, once we get the grant, is it
it's probably considered poor form for us to not go ahead? Like, if we say, well, thanks for the grant, but actually we're not gonna do it. Is that bad? It would also be nonsensical. I mean, we really need Yeah. We need to get I agree. But I'm just saying, like, if if somehow the town turned you know, we couldn't get public support or something, you know, is that person bad stead with the state for other grants?
I don't know. I actually have a call into the project administrator for that. I couldn't get ahold of him this afternoon, but that is a question. So part of them, so I have two other questions that I don't know the answer to. And the first is that, does it, because at the end of the day, I want to do the culvert on Lake Road far more than I want to do the culvert on Hutchinson. So, does it will it decrease our chances of getting the Lake Road one to submit two for the town at the same time? That's the first question. I honestly don't know the answer to that, nor does the town engineer. And the second thing is that if we apply for both of them, are we more likely to get the one on Hutchinson?
Because that's actually failing more. That has a lower overall rating than the one on Lake Road. They're still both failing. It's just a question of how bad they're failing. You know, which is why we've already got, you know, the one on Hutchinson, that road already blocked down to a one lane road. So, because I would hate to apply for both of them, only get Hutchinson, you know, when that's not the one we really want to do the most. I'm personally leaning on just applying for the other one, and holding this one back and seeing what happens, but
I don't feel like this is a decision I want to make on my own and I'm more than happy to solicit bins on that. I'll just say I'm 100% behind your strategy. I think it makes no sense to apply for the one for Hutchinson, Just go for Lake Road because the reality is that it would be a very, very tough sell to fund additional amount for the Hutchinson Road thing. Lake Road, got a better shot at. Certainly there's a fair amount of traffic through there and access to the lake.
I don't want to prolongs me too much longer, but it the other option you were discussing for Hutchinson, which is to to link it into Route 6 again at the end because I was looking at it on Google Maps. I know I Yeah. Same here. I know I know what road that is now. Yep. And, yeah, it comes within, like, a hair's breadth of reaching Route 6. Yeah. If we did get approval to do that, what's do you have any sense where the expense of doing that would be? No. But I can tell you that
Order of magnitude less, I'm sure. Like 35 feet from Route 6. Oh, it's right there. I know. I completely agree. I
mean, they're at different grades, so it's not that a lot of fill wouldn't have to be done. You would have to reconfigure for a T intersection and do a bunch of things. It's not a simple process. Right. But it's land that's wholly owned by the town and the state. And it's also where the road intersection is. You do have really good sight lines. So that's in your favor. What's not in your favor is you're between an intersection of
Denver Plaza. 6, Number 1, and then Aspinall Drive on the other side. That's right. It's going to be a little tight there. You're going to have as you're coming in from one side and then you have the other two coming in from the other side, it's kind of bang, bang, bang.
Right. So, it's not something that would be necessarily easy to get the DOT to agree to.
Yeah. Suboptimal. But this isn't I'm sorry. I I shouldn't I really shouldn't go down this rabbit hole. I agree with everybody else that you're right and that we should go for the one that has is gonna give us the bang for the buck and, you know, serve the most residents.
Anybody feel differently? Eric, you want a motion from us or just that everybody nod their head and say go for it?
As long as I know kind of where you want to go with it, that's certainly enough for me. I mean, I'm the guy that has to sign it anyway.
And why there's a deadline? Like you said, you just found out that just awesome. Yeah, sorry. We found out the cost. Right. From the end of the day. Right. And then the deadline to submit for the grant is when?
It's thirtieth. Deadline is the thirtieth. Okay. Same days. Our engineer has the same problem everybody else has is that the firm represents towns. So, collectively between the towns they cover, there's around 15 or 16 bridges they're submitting for the program and over one. And because they have to come out and resurvey because the last engineer I had surveyed it, it was more than two years ago and that's out of the state Thank of you. Yeah. I didn't wanna. Yeah. I'm unhappy it took this long to get it. I I was pretty stressed out when I read it, you know, last night. I was reading it Yeah. Personally, but that's life. Yikes. So
Any more good news? Like, Do we need a motion? Or
No. He I think he's good with us kinda nodding and smiling. I just needed I'm not smiling. I needed to talk it through with you so you guys aren't shocked if I tell you that we're gonna hold the public meeting, you know, in two months to ask for, you know, approval for something from the public. Because if we do get the grant, it would take a public motion. It would take a public meeting to accept.
So I just wanna Sort make of, it's, it's frustrating and disappointing because, you know, and I know you feel the same way, Eric. It's just like, we just passed this nice, easy budget and everybody was happy and, and we're come back to them and be like, oh, by the way,
the budget actually isn't that good. But the good news is we're moving forward on some things that are gonna have to get done in Yeah. I mean And getting some state money to do it. It's not wrong. It has to be done. You're absolutely right. It's just it's unfortunate.
But I mean, what's scaring me, and and I'll be fully honest with this, is that we've got a lot of culverts that need replacing, you know, and it's one of my real frustrations and it's beyond the scope of this meeting, but at some point we'll talk about because we have the steep funding. You know, so I went for a meeting two days ago with the finance people from the steep program regarding the parking garage for senior transportation. And it's really expensive to get state funding because they just put so many bloody requirements on everything that you do that I often wonder whether it's cheaper to the town, just do stuff, you know, or to actually grant fund when you take into account all the extra hurdles that the state, you know, imposes that,
you know, that really annoys me. Is that applicable to a culvert? Could we do the culvert in a way that doesn't comport with the Army Corps of Virginia's recommendations if we're not getting grant money?
There's a lot of things we could leave out if it was a town only road. Okay.
You know, we could ignore a lot of the guardrail and the safety rules of it. We could make the culvert narrower and we could make it one lane. So, you know, that's a question we've been talking, you know, I've been talking with a lot about the engineers. At what point is it cheaper not to go for any funding and just to suck it up? You know, and if we ended up doing Hutchinson, that's one where it might not cost us any more to do it ourselves than to have the state pay for half, but have to do a lot more to get it. You still have the same, you still have to get through the Army Corps of Engineers approval. It still requires approval from DEP Fisheries and DEP Water Quality, which are two completely separate agencies with different permitting requirements. So a lot of the regulatory stuff is the same, but there's a lot of things you can leave out if it's not a state project.
Okay, good to know.
Can I just ask to wrap this part up? Is what is the additional funding dollar amount that, like, you all were saying the bad news and going to town? Sorry. I missed the figure that you're
So, the one on the solar is going to be somewhere. I mean, the estimates are not to exceed number, but it's around, you know, 1,850,000. Okay. Of which the town owns would own half the cost. So, think realistically, the town's portion of that would probably be about $850,000
I just wanted to read. Yep, that's what I thought I heard.
Yeah, and we could probably slap together 4 or $4.50 I in
remember that part. Yeah. Yeah, I came in on that. I had to just step out for one quick second. I get it. It's been a long meeting. Yeah. Yeah.
So but, yeah, in terms of what we'd going to the town and saying for a supplemental request or what have you, it's looking like, you know, $4,500,000.
You know, I'm just ball I'm really ballparking that and fuzzy math. Well, but remember, we're not gonna build it in this budget year anyway. Right? Because, I mean, we we have plenty of money in there to fund our half of the engineering and design costs. So these damn things take a couple years to get through early. Thank you for that. We have a couple more years to build the money. Yeah. Me too. Have to do is we have to go to a budget meeting Okay. To accept the grant, and that's when we gotta tell them what it costs. Because within we're sort of committing, even though we aren't putting it in it's not in this budget. It's not in this fiscal year.
We're committing to it in the same way that we were kinda talking about committing to a lease on the truck or whatever. We're warning the town. We're getting there. Say so. Gotcha. And then in the 2024, 2025 budget maybe.
We're setting aside years. Yeah. Tighter. Right. With everything. With yep. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Brutal, but not immediate. Okay. Right. Right. We can still be happy about this year. Okay. Anything else, Eric?
That's it. I think that's enough. No more bad news. No more bad news. We saved the worst for last, you know? Let's
go to sleep tonight thinking about the good news about the state trooper costs. There we go. Alright. Yeah. That is nice. Okay. Well, we'll move on to agenda item seven, which is liaison reports. Do we have anything from CIP or anything? No CIP. No CIP meeting.
Anybody else have anything? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on to item eight, board open discussion. Any further general discussion or
I have a question. Yeah. I'd like to know what the results were of those questions on the referendum about the town and the school budgets being too high or too low. Yeah. Good question. I haven't heard that either. They I saw it. Yeah. I'll go there. I'm
trying to think whether I took a picture of it. Both of them came in
saying they were too high, but it was close, I think. I I mean, but the budget passed,
you know, by a good margin, right? Didn't we say, like, two to one kind of thing? It was about two to one. And as always, when this comes up, I always point out that whatever the difference difference is between the total number of votes and then the number of votes for or against those questions is probably a it's fine because that's exactly how I do it. I didn't answer that question. I was like, it's good. So I was like, yeah. It's not low. Neither too high nor too low. So if you have a thousand votes total on the budget and you get 500 answers, yay or nay, you know, too high too low, then you may have 500 okays roughly. So but I don't know why don't they ask if it's okay, though? I don't understand what you've always said. Oh, Bill, this this comes up every time. Only two options. Problem. We can only do two or something. It's nonsensical. Drives me nuts. But there's always there is an answer to this, and we just can't do it apparently. I didn't ask it. But if it passed,
you know, by the margin that it did, it seems like most people thought it was okay. But it but definitely the answer that was posted or different I think Brian put it in an email. He had the figures, and then Carol had sent out the you know, each one was slightly too high, maybe 20 votes more than too low. You know, it wasn't like huge. I hate those questions. I know.
It's a persistent frustration of mine, Bill, that we don't have yes, no, fine. Yeah. You know, or I'm too high, too low, too, and and okay. Yeah, they really don't provide it. Think I think, you know, we think we had agreement a couple of years ago and we were having such difficulty with the budget to try to kind of gauge the temperature about really was was a lot of the no votes geared towards the town or the school to find out what the differential was. Was really the original, if I remember correctly, was the original input of putting those questions on was to try to understand if people voted down, are they voting it down primarily because of the school budget or is it the town budget or what to kind of give us some guidance as to what we needed to do in the next budget cycle if we had to come back to town maybe. So I agree that other than that, it's very flawed, minimal information, but
was the impetus for coming. It was more than no information, but it's got that pitfall and there was some bizarre reason, Charter or something or other, that We could only put two options. Yes or no. Wait. I think it's yeah. Think it's the way that those things there's some technical reason for the with the boating. Could have even been the machine or something. Right? I I forget, but it was really irritating. And, it's a consistent gripe and whatever. It is what it is, unfortunately. So what you Do we Go
ahead. I was gonna say what you could consider at some point, because this has come up many times over many years, putting together what you think, what and how you think it should be done and requesting the town attorney prepare ordinance to that effect. Now, think since it's already on the books as an ordinance, you couldn't get away with the board of selectmen just saying it's a minor ordinance, which they can pass themselves. But the next time you schedule the town meeting for something, you could put that on there, and you could change the questions that you ask and try to ask them in such a way that you get the information that you want. So it would be possible, but because it's an existing ordinance, it has to go through a town meeting to change. Okay. Alright.
Can we just eliminate it next time? Is it really option. The existing town ordinance. Oh, so you have to have it there. I mean, we're supposed to ask that every time we go to referendum. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm done. Yeah. I don't want Any do other questions or open discussion? Linda?
Just two simple things. Can we put the approval of the minutes in our next meeting? Because I think the last one we approved was January. I did go on the town website. February to February, yeah. And I did read them all within the last couple of days.
And truthfully, they're not supposed to be posted before they're approved, but we've talked about that too. No Linda, good question. Louise brought it up earlier too or someone brought it up that they were looking for minutes. I think you have to have them posted
within like forty eight hour week or something. Oh good, alright I thought they had to be approved. Yeah, I mean they're not approved until they're approved. That's another silly thing. There's a legal requirement to have them posted for public information. Good request, just as a reminder, Linda.
The other one is, I don't know, I was going back over all my old minutes, all our old meetings trying to find the minutes in something else today. There was one about the sexual harassment certificate, and I don't know if everybody's remembered to turn something into the town. I had one from work and I turned my in. So, that's just a reminder too, housekeeping, whoops. Is somebody tracking that?
Don't have My admin assistant's supposed to be tracking that. So, for the record, what happened was the state of Connecticut, in their infinite wisdom last year, the general assembly made a change to the definition of employee to add all members of all boards and commissions under the definition of employee. And that means you have to comply with everything related to an employee. You don't get paid, but you got to do sexual harassment training. And oh, by the way, if you happen to be going to a meeting and injuring injured yourself, you're eligible for workers' comp because you are a town employee if you're doing a town function. I have crumpled toddler.
I gotta fly to remote if I fall out of my chair and break my elbow.
The women. I you told me I have to do sexual harassment training for the town? I know. Were told that. Was something that came out like November or something. Yeah.
There was an email I no memory. Through work, and they said I printed it out at work, they will accept that if you do something through work. You don't have to do the two hour one that the town gives you if you've done it elsewhere. Oh, God. I don't remember the last time we did. We do so many trainings at work. I don't even remember. That's all at. Have to do a I lot of don't even know. Well, I went back and found mine.
Linda, so you're saying we got an email saying that we had to comply with that? I don't remember that. We got that back quite a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. Remember that. Yeah. Wow. Good thing that my email was I'll look back. Thank you for bringing that. I had no idea.
So if I don't if I can't come up with a thing from work, I gotta do what, Eric?
So if you just email my admin assistant, Kate, she'll resend you the link. There's a couple online versions. You know, the state at least dropped the restriction that it had to be in person. Not remember seeing that. Oh, at least Yeah. Know. It's crazy. I I missed it too, but that's fine. I'm No. We're just fine. Because I do I'm sure it's my fault. Every year. It's like Okay. It's very easy. I did it in
maybe a half hour. I I believe you. Yeah. They usually are easy, but for normal people anyway.
Are we almost done? Sorry, my head. I'm a little under the weather. Add that to the list,
I guess. Bloody hell. Okay. Yeah. She well, you know, She sent back a thing back in January asking for the boards to send a list of email addresses, which I think I did. And then she followed up with some training email. Don't know.
You know, and then part of the problem here is that once I did it, you didn't have it. I mean, I'm terrible about remembering to check my actual, I tend to use my personal address and I, you know what, I bet you went to my town address and I didn't see it. I usually send back. That's probably my fault. Who knows? Probably my fault. I'll double check.
All right. Okay, any other discussion in general? Okay, we'll move on to agenda item nine, which is correspondence. I didn't have any correspondence from anybody. Anybody else received correspondence? All right.
One is public speak. It looks like we do not have any members of the public in attendance. Eric, is that what you see? That's correct.
Okay, so the next agenda item would be adjournment. Anybody wants to make a motion to adjourn. Louine, is you making the motion? I'll make that motion. Bill, saw you raise your hand. Do you second? I second. All right. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Are you opposing or claiming carpal tunnel? I'm
working on my work club claim here. Have to document this, you know.
Any abstentions? Hearing none. Motion passes. Good night. Thank you everybody. Have a good weekend. Have a good Memorial Day.