Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
May 25, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
All right. Thank you, everybody. I'm going to call this meeting to order. This is the Town of Anderra Board of Finance meeting, regular scheduled meeting, Wednesday, 05/25/2022. We'll go ahead and start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, the first order of business on the agenda is the public speak. It doesn't look like we have anybody from the public on. So, if we concur, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item three, which is additions and deletions of the agenda items. Does anybody have any proposed additions or deletions?
Yep, Joanne? Not anything major, but do we need to discuss, I didn't see on here, I knew we were going to talk about, redoing one of the minutes maybe, And I think we didn't approve, like, the the minutes of the twentieth because it was short. That's they're posted, so I don't know what that means whether we approve them or not. They're they're on the website. So it's something we can circle back to.
No, I think that's a good point. If we didn't approve it and frankly I'd forgotten about that. If we didn't approve the meeting then that was for April 20, I believe so, yep.
Then I think that we should add that as an agenda item probably under 9C, which is just to add on to the approval of meeting minutes. Do you want to make a motion to that effect? Sure. Okay, so Joanne
is go ahead. I thought you were talking to me. I make the motion that we discuss the April 20 meeting minutes to see if they've been completed or updated. Okay. Any second? I'll second. Okay.
Think I heard Diane first. Diane seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll take a vote. All those in favor, I say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. We'll go ahead and add that as agenda item C, which is the believe it's Wednesday, April 20 meeting minutes. Okay, thank you. Any other additions or deletions of agenda items? Okay, we'll move on to item four, which is the town administrator's report. Eric, you have the floor. You're muted, Eric.
I should have that by now. I'm just going to go over a couple things that are pertinent to the Board of Finance. The assessor's office, the Board of Selectmen made a decision at their last meeting to purchase an additional server license and use a local copy of that as opposed to a cloud based service. That cost has increased. It'll basically be a $5,700 bill to buy the server license, but that's a kind of a Microsoft, I don't want to say stupidity, but racket. Because they price them by the number of cores of the server. So because we have a 16 core server, it's considerably more expensive and they only sell them in two packs. So you can't get an individual license. But the good news is there have been a few other things where we would have probably installed an extra quote unquote server on the server if we had the ability.
So, you know, it is what it is. The intention from the Board of Selectmen is to take that money from the Reval Fund because it's for the assessor's office. And that basically what it is, is it allows them to continue using Vision appraisal. Vision allowed us to use their cloud based version while we were going through the appraisal process because it's faster and easier for them to make changes when they control the location of the software and the data. But now that that's up, they either want us to pay, you know, dollars 2,500, dollars 2,700 a year or install it locally. So, you know, it's basically a, you know, a two year payoff to install it locally, and it gives us one additional server license for future expansion. We're getting ready to get in a really busy point for issuing transfer station stickers, so I would imagine that we're going to probably issue $10,000 or $12,000 worth of transfer station stickers in the next month. So that's going to be ongoing. I also sent a notice to all boards, commissions and employees that they have until June 3 to make any significant purchases that they need out of their budget. And if not, if they think they're not going to be able to do that by that timeframe, then they need to let me know so that we can hopefully get the bills back sooner and not carry that on as far as we did last year, because that was kind of annoying. We were still chasing down stuff in September of last year. Building department, point and pay is up and running. So that's been working fairly seamlessly
because it allows us to take payment for building department stuff. And we've successfully transitioned the wetlands and the wetlands agency and most of the stuff for the zoning department over to permit link, So we're able to do pretty much everything online, which allows us two things. One, a lot better accountability, and two, it just goes a lot faster for the customer. And because the customer pays all the fees for the use of Permit Link and pays the fees for the financial processing if they choose to do that, it's basically cost neutral to the town. The other thing that's one of the things that's been a little unfortunate the town's engineer. Brandon handfield has basically decided to drop all his municipal clients, Frankly, he had been trying to hire one or two people to staff up his office and he just can't hire enough people. He's basically said he's not going to do any more municipal work, puts us in a little bit of a bind. We put out an RFQ for engineering services, and we should have that back to look at sometime by mid June. Unfortunately, that's a little bit of a delay because Brandon was supposed to be giving me a
completed RFP for culvert design for one of our culverts. So there's a little bit of a delay in that. We also have an RFP out for reclamation and repaving of a portion of Long Hill Road and Shawty Mill Road. The RFP went out last week, maybe Thursday. And we have a pre bid meeting tomorrow for that. I'm nervous about that because when originally got the steep grant to do that was almost two years ago at this point and I'm concerned that the cost basis for doing the work has increased. You know, compared to when we we bid it out since we're only getting it's not like we can go back to steep and get more money.
We just at this point have to wait and see what the bids are and then figure out how to proceed from there. So, that's in the works. Also, the pavement shimming on the North side of town will be starting next week. That was delayed from midweek this week to Monday of next week. They're just late finishing up another previous job. The next thing up, we're about to order more fuel for public works, the big public works tank. We're only going to order about seven fifty gallons because I think that will run us through to the end of the year Because we have basically used, we have three gallons left of our $11,500 allotment that we're getting at $1.78 and the rest we're going to be paying market rate for. So I'm trying to absolutely minimize our fuel usage. And then we're also trying to figure out which of the groups, because public works uses fuel, fire department uses fuel, the school uses fuel, and senior transportation uses fuel. So we got to kind of see and divvy up the responsibility for that fairly, you know, for the costs. Transfer station, we are going to switch vendors for our textile recycling to a company called CMRK. It's not going to be a big cost difference. It should net us around an extra $500 a year
in recycling money back to the town. So not a ton, but it's better than nothing. We also put ourselves on both the state bid list and also the croc bid list. State bid list for untreated salt or CRUD bid list for treated salt. So we don't know what the bids are, but basically what happens is everybody who wants to be part of the bid process has to agree and sign ahead of time that they want to be part in that so they know how much they're contracting. And it's these are variable bids, you have to give them a minimum number of tons you're going to use. And then you can usually order two to three times that up to two to three times that. So we're doing the same thing that we did last year to save money. We're allowing ourselves to buy both treated salt and untreated salt. So we'll use the untreated stuff earlier in the year when it's warmer and save the treated salt for when it's colder. You know, and we've got more icing conditions.
It's just a lower freezing temperature salt just as got added as to lower the temperature?
Yeah, basically what it is is it's, you know, most of it is sodium chloride, that's regular rock salt, and then they add magnesium chloride to it, which has a much lower,
bigger freezing point depression. Yeah, so it's a mix, okay. Magnesium chloride, okay. Yeah,
Bunker Hill Bridge, that's still slated for spring of twenty twenty four, which is good because even with this budget, we're not going have enough money to pay for it. So, it would be this budget plus some of that last budget. You know, we have the steep grant to pay for part of the reclamation and repaving roadwork. But, know, until we get the bids back, we're not going to know how much that's covered. I mean, far, most of the bids that have come back, there's not a big jump in labor costs from last year to this year, but there is a big jump in materials cost. And asphalt tracks with petroleum, so going to be somewhat difficult. The connectivity grant project, the contractors about 80% done with the work he needs to do. We're hoping that one of their subs will be in and doing the fence that will run along Center Street and find the parking lot. After that they have to put down, they have to pave the final pavement course on that and then put up signage, install some benches and some other stuff. The contractor is still waiting them to finish fabricating the railing, the final railing for the library.
But that should be hopefully everything will be complete in the next three weeks or so pending any, you know, supplier delays, which these days are, know, it's it's just hard to hard to account for. I'm still trying to figure out how to implement so the Board of Selectmen asked me to look into what it would cost to have panic buttons installed in the town wall. I've ruled out all the easy ways of doing it because our existing alarm system in the building's not compatible with that, so we can't just run it through our fire alarm panel. And we can't go directly to the police barracks because they don't allow automatic notifications, and we can't go to Tollen dispatch. To do it, we would have to use a commercial alarm service. I'm still trying to figure out what that's going to be. I don't know whether the Board of Selectmen's going want to actually do it or not. I just don't know.
Some of you know, I know Joanne went to the presentation for the affordable housing grant. If you haven't, it's probably worth reviewing video for that, because I think that is ultimately going to be one of the issues that the town's going to need to wrap their heads around. If for no other reason than the state continues to come out with more regulations, And I think at some point, if we're not proactive with it, the state's going to force us to do something
about it. Is that posted on the YouTube channel or
so it could be there. You know, okay, I'm pretty sure it is on the YouTube channel. Haven't looked recently but you mentioned it was positive. Joy talked about it. Okay, thanks. It's really eye opening to something that I thought wasn't even going to be an issue, and I learned so much, and he has a lot of data there so it is good. Okay, good. Thanks. Yep.
And let's see, that's pretty much all I want to talk about unless you guys have specific questions to me related to stuff other than finance, which obviously we'll cover a bit. Anybody have any questions for Eric?
A real quick one, small one. Eric, with the town engineer situation, do we, in addition to the delay, would you anticipate, you know, rates being higher or would you think that's not the issue?
I, you know, We have tried in the past to stick to very small firms because their hourly rate tends to be better. There's no question if I look at the firms that are bidding, at least a couple of them are going to be definitely more expensive hourly than what we've been paying now. On the other hand, one of the advantages to a bigger firm is that several of the ones that I think we're going to get bids for do a lot of bridge design and culvert design work. So we stand the potential of being able to do a lot of that kind of in house with our town engineer,
as opposed to putting out have the town engineer. You know just supervise and then put out a secondary rfp for that those individual projects so pluses and minuses, but my suspicion is it's going to get more expensive. In truth, we haven't come close to spending our whole town engineering budget. And part of that is just frankly, you know, they're so busy getting them to do the work for us has been the rate limiting step, having the funds to do it. So I think we'll be okay. But, you know, we'll have to see what what the, know, RFQ comes back and what proposals we get. Okay, thanks for that. Yep. Other questions for Eric?
I have one. Eric, why are we looking into panic buttons for the town hall? Because several employees feel unsafe working here. Oh, is that anything to do with yesterday?
No, several employees have been complaining about that for years. I just, I personally haven't considered it a high enough priority to spend money, but the Board of Selectmen have asked me to figure it out and at least get prices for it. So I am doing that. I don't know whether they will choose to execute that. You know, I can say that if you look at it statistically, the numbers of workplace violent events that occur in town halls are fairly minimal. But it's not zero, know, and we definitely have employees working here alone, you know, on a not super infrequent basis.
Right. Are the cameras at all? There are cameras. Okay. All right. Okay, thanks. Joanne, do you have a question?
I was just going to add, I wonder with the, we happen to have one at our school and there's a button under one of the main office secretary's desks. Once in a while it gets tripped off by mistake. I just wonder for the town hall with being the fire department being right there and maybe I I just wonder how quick they could be summoned even with a panic button. You know? So I wonder if it's and, I mean, it's worth looking into, like you said. I just know that we don't have a police force, right, in town. And are you thinking it would be tripped off I heard the things you said I just wonder because I work alone a lot too and it is scary if you turn around and then someone's just there or something or someone gained entry to the building so you have to kind of give that calm demeanor that oh I'm fine but I could go lock myself in the closet if I need to so I yeah staff training too for something like that would be helpful maybe
Yeah, potentially. Mean, I'm like I said, it's not something that and maybe it's a fault on me because I've kind of ignored the request for a couple of years. But since they've made it to the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Selectmen has asked me to do it. You know, mean, I just look at it statistically and I say the likelihood of it happening. I mean, statistically speaking, there's more chance of the building catching on fire, you know, and somebody being killed that way than getting killed in an actual violent encounter. But I understand that that some people are very nervous about working alone and being in the building. You know, there's there's peace of mind and having some sort of backup system. So, that's where I'm at.
Additional questions for Eric? Okay. Hearing none, let's move on to agenda item five, which is the finance department report, town budget summary. Are we going to go through these, Eric or Marina? Sure. Marina you want to lead this one. Me just pull it up here.
So it is easier to look at the Excel sheet I sent earlier or through the packet.
I don't think we had the packet. Have you ever get a packet? Yeah, I thought Amanda sent it. I mean, I'm not sure. Yours more up to date, Marina. Maybe. Oh, okay. Fine by me.
You want me to let you share your screen? Sharing available.
It's telling me my Internet connection is unstable. I don't know why. We
haven't had one of those in a while. I do remember that happening occasionally, though. I I don't recall it ever actually be making for a huge problem, though. It's not even opening. Okay.
If you want, I can share. Do you wanna share the Excel version? April expenses Excel. Okay. Can you all see that? Yep. Okay. Of course, no one might open. Do
you want me to allow you to share yours and you drive it then?
Okay. This one doesn't have department percent use totals on it. So I thought Marina's had it on there.
If you want that, then hang on. We can go back to the version share. My problem is always I've got too many windows open at one time. That the one you want from the report? Oh, no. That doesn't have the totals either.
Oh, that one doesn't match the one that Marina sent out. Marina, I'll let you share. How about that? Okay.
Yeah, it does. No, it probably does. Okay. Let me know if you can see it. I can see it. Yep. We can see it.
Okay. Is there any outstanding questions that anyone wants to look at or any numbers? I don't know.
Diane, if you had anything you wanted to look at. I just have a general question. Noticed in some of the current expanded columns there were some negative numbers. Is that just representative of some? I know you guys were doing some corrections and moving things around. Is that just a
function of? Yeah, was gonna look at this one specifically from the example. So the contracted software maintenance. So that was, remember back we had the issue with the service, the tax collectors, it's a big refund of stuff that was overpaid. So that went back into that line.
All right. So those big negative numbers are just all the corrections that you guys made. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if there's any more, but I knew that one would stick out. So I was gonna look at it. I have just one other question. Line two forty four, COVID expenses. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Four COVID expenses. Okay. That's always been there, right?
Yeah. So that we, I made that account. I think Eric and I did it back. I want to say the end of twenty twenty when we had gotten some money in COVID, you know, if we had any bills to come out of it. So this $12.00 6, I believe was our share that we paid to a COVID vaccine clinic to,
but it's a negative number. So why would we have a positive number if we paid out? There was no money in that. Nothing put in that account. So if I paid out of it, it would just be negative. Okay.
So I think I can answer that Diane, and that is that we had originally that money ended up getting out of the ARP grant. Yeah, we transferred it after it got started. We transferred it out of that because it was supposed to have been taken out of that grant by the Board of Selectmen. So, we had a request from the health department to backfill them through the ARP grant for a certain amount per town, which was their excess costs for putting on the vaccine clinics. Basically, they had to pay back the town of Mansfield for money that Mansfield loaned them to make the, you know, to do the program. So the Board of Selectmen agreed. It was originally taken out of this line, had been carried over from the previous year. Then when we realized it was taken from there incorrectly, we backed that money back out, which is why there was a zero budget.
Yep. So we paid for this $1,200 with the ARP grant because I I remember that that's where they wanted the money to come. And this is just the correction because you took it out of here in error? Correct. Okay.
Alright. Well, in error. Just met at the time we got this bill. So I said, we'll pay it from here and then correct it when the ARP one was set up.
But it's not an expense we're gonna have on our expense. We paid it out of the ARP funds. Right. Correct. Right. Okay. So alright. And then there's a question line 262 a little bit farther down transfer station permits what is that? Are those refunds?
So, no. Transfer station permits are costs that we expend. So we pay You know the state for permits for the transfer station. And we had a little thing where we. Yes, So, I'm pretty sure those are just straight transfer station permit fees paid to the same. Just
gotta go for next fiscal year for it. That line is where we'll pay it for. But we never had a budgeted, an adopted budget for that one?
Eric, was this the one? I think we were taking it from a different account and we agreed to create a separate account for that permit. Going
back a bunch of years, Barbara was just taking that from like calling fees or one of the other transportation line items. And when we realized that we realized we were paying this annual fee and we didn't have a line item. We created one for it. And then charged against it this year. So at least it shows up as what it was for. Just trying to separate it out. Okay. I
understand that. So then my next question is, because we created this new account, did we include, did we budget for this in the new budget? Because I can't remember.
I think you did, Eric. I think we, you added whatever one. So we created.
I just wanna make sure if we create another account, we have it. Guys, me to pull up the spreadsheet and have a look at it?
Budget. I'll see if I can the spreadsheet I had up last night at the meeting, I'll see if I pull that back up and have a look at it.
I just wanna make sure we covered that so we don't have another account with no adaptive money.
The same with the Mid New Rock fees, a couple down line $2.69. We are taking that, Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, also from tipping fees. So for those
Yeah, but we have a budgeted amount, so we're Correct. Managing Those are my only two questions. Okay. And I made sure to take the grants out this time.
Great. Thank you. So I found a line on the spreadsheet under the recycling tab 1Dash100DashO7DashO703Dash807 permits. And the approved request was for $970, so a little lower than the $11.52.
But at least we have a number in there. That's great. Yeah. The the invoice I just got for next fiscal year was 800 even.
So Oh, okay. Because that and actually, interestingly enough, apparently that that's what we spent in 2020 and 2021 was $800. Yep. So I don't know what happened in 2021, but it seems to be 800 is normal based on the spreadsheet.
Let's let's take a look at it and see whether I mean, it's also possible we took one of the mid near rock payments. So you found that. Yeah. That's That would be my guess. So let's review that one tomorrow.
Yeah. But the core question is, was it budgeted? And the answer is yes. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Rob. No problem. Other questions for Marina on this? Okay. Thanks, Marina. What else do we want to look at here? Think there's a is there a revenue?
Yep. Revenue would be our next item on the Okay.
I don't know if I have it in a file. It might just be on here.
So I know Sherry was working on updating the interest on taxes because we had an issue with the file that we share between us and the tax collector's office. Eileen had all the information she put in, but when Sherry tried to open it from our office, all the information was gone. So David was able to get that back for her. And I believe Sherry's up through March or April. I wanna say she's got posted in here.
So when are we gonna get the rest posted? In all of April. Yep. Are we through April or is this?
Let me see. Oh, do mean the date on the report?
She printed this Monday. So so, yeah, it was for 04/01 through 04:30, so for the whole month. So we have all the revenue booked on this report that we've received through April 30.
Yeah, I'm not sure if the taxes she did up through April, but I know
she did or revenue we get from the state I posted as well. So are you saying there could be some revenue items that haven't been posted on this yet? Potentially, the April taxes, I would just have to double check with her because it's only 418,000 left to collect. So it looks like most of it Most of it, yeah. Posted. Yeah. April is the collection month. So, yeah, that was a big month of, yeah, this was the current revenue, the 1.5. $4.18 should be the stragglers, the people who are paying late. Yeah, that's me. All right, let's see.
And Eric said we'll start getting more transfer station permit fees. We got the last chunk of the ECS, so now I posted that. Let's see. Not sure if there's anything. What about this municipal
revenue sharing, you know, we're in the whole $17,000 Does that come in later in the year or are we not getting any more money? Was this the one, I think you had talked about it before Diane and Eric said we're no longer, is this one we're no longer getting? Yeah. I don't think we're getting that. Yeah. I haven't budgeted for it last year. So we budgeted something we didn't get. We got one payment that 3,179
and that was it. That's all I've seen come through for it. Right.
But that's not crazy uncommon with the state to tell us they're going to get get something and then us not actually get it. I mean, we tend to get the big ones, the ECS, but some of the smaller funds like there's one that's, you know 3 to $5,000 a year that's supposed to be spent on something related to to. Roadwork. The municipal grants and aid one I mean, it's not every year that we get that. You know, and when we do get it, it's fairly late in the year. We are still expecting a bunch of payments for the senior transportation. For some reason, they seem to be holding on and wanting to pay all three quarters at once.
So, we should be getting somewhere around $9,000 back from that from the state. We've got another 3 to 4,000 that should be coming in for the neglected cemeteries grant that was put in for.
But I submitted the paperwork for the affordable housing grant also.
Right. Yeah, no idea when we'll actually get that money from the state has So been
that's good. Billing department too, starting, like Eric said, we're starting to get the money from Point and Pay electronically.
I'll be posting that as we get more of that in.
In the next couple months are when we get a lot of our revenue in from the building department. So I would expect to see, you know, 20 to 30, an extra 20 to $30,000 Believe it or not, by the end of the year, normal trends.
In addition to what you're showing now? Yeah, because this is what a lot of lot of things start to hit. You know, most major construction projects, you know, are being permitted right now for for some summer construction season.
I did a couple weeks ago, so that'll hit that also the end of the month when I post them. You had a question?
Yeah, I think one of the questions I had, I was surprised in that affordability housing thing. I think last year maybe there was only three new homes built in town, which makes sense. I mean, I know there's not a lot of available land. So the building department fees must come from a lot of renovations or additions or house improvements and things. Is that okay? Yeah, correct. I
know, you know, my hobby when I go in and and look at the stuff in the assessor's office, I'll ask, oh, how many houses? She didn't really know how many were built, you know, per year on an average, but he did dig up that information. Okay, thank you.
Yeah, there's not a lot of new construction of the town. Right. As of around 2008, when we had the big housing slump, the town of Andover had about 35 or so building lots that were ready to go, but pretty much all of them have been built on at this point. And I don't I can't recall when the last time we actually had a subdivision application in the town, but it's been three to four years since we've even had a subdivision application Okay, thanks.
Additional questions from Marina on the revenue report? K. Do we have anything on town aid road spending?
Check register or let's see what else is in here. That's about it.
So, Marina, can you pull up the because the town aid road should be on the one excel spreadsheet you sent to the board today. I only have the two expenditure ones.
Okay. If the board wants to review those, I can pull those up and share my screen if you want to review those.
I'm okay without it. We can review it if anybody wants to see them.
It gives the summary of the whole year, Eric. Is that what it is? Kind of just like a breakdown?
Yes. So the board had asked a couple of months ago for a list essentially of all the funds, kind of the permanent funds and what the expenditures out of them were. So we provided that to the board in one big Excel spreadsheet that's broken down by fund. So you should have had that today. And it's the same one we gave the Board of Selectmen earlier this month. Late,
did we get it late today? Which is fine. I mean, I can't sent it Eric sent it out out. In an email like just before lunchtime today, I think. Yeah, might be in here I'm looking. Question on this report. Eric, are you going to put the community center fund on here.
On which on that spreadsheet? Yeah, because it's not on here. But we're we're not actually spending anything out of it so far. So well, we've spent we've paid for the engineers Right?
Not out of the air. Well, yes, out of the. Yeah.
Yes. You're right. We should have expenses against that fund now. Which one did you say Diane?
The community center fund. We should have the site design engineer fees coming out of that.
Yeah. Is that the is are they the MPN? Is that who they are?
Yes. See, there's two. Yeah. And NPM, I think. Okay.
Let me just take a quick look. Yeah, we don't have that one on that list. So Marina, can you make a note to just add that one to that list?
Mhmm. Yeah. I think I started a tab for it in Excel. We I was just waiting to add to it.
Oh, is this correct, Eric? I'm looking at the road improvement fund tab. And the last transaction on there is from November 2021.
Yeah. That's probably correct Because we haven't done anything because we're not paying for the culverts out of that in our next big. So Abby's contracting will be in as of next week. So, we'll be starting to get bills again for that. Okay. And remember too, because we spend money from both the road improvement fund and the town aid road fund. You know, it's possible there have been a few smaller things paid out of one versus the other. So it wouldn't surprise me that we haven't spent any real money out of that at this point.
And we have not combined the Town Aid Road into the road improvement fund.
We have not. But I mean, I do think we should.
So, so that's another fund that the Town Aid Road is not on this spreadsheet.
That's the first one there. Yeah, and Town Aid Road is on there. Wait a minute. Sorry. The left you'll see. Yeah, there it is. Thanks. Thanks.
And thank you for opening this. Now I see, yeah, did glance at it earlier today. Just kind of wrapping my head around all the different parts of it. Yeah, this is good. Good to see. We're spending all our money.
So moving forward, like, this will be great word-of-mouth document. You know, we'll be able to see it in live time or whatever, however they say, not immediately, but this will be a good tracking thing that you've started. Or have you always done this for years? We have not. We have not. Okay.
I think, like Diane was talking about or when we asked for this, yeah, it's just a good document to have to show how much is getting done. Thank you. Yeah, so each time I cut checks, I'll go through it and update it.
Further questions or comments on those? Okay, I guess that would take us to the over expenditure report.
Okay, and I don't know how you want to look at this. There's two. So you had asked me last month, you didn't really like my format and you asked me to mirror last year's format. So that was one of the things and I supplied this to the board of selectmen at their meeting last month and then I copied you today. I apologize that did not get the packet. Was supposed to be in the packet. So we can either look at the list of budget transfers, that's the file that's called budget transfers, Board of Finance, MP five ten twenty twenty two. Or if you want to look at it first, there's also something that we did a sheet we've started to include, which is expenditures by percentage use. So, you can look at it at a glance and see what's over and what's under,
which is what I've kind of been using to figure out, you know, what things I need to address. So if either of those who want to review either of those, you know,
which are you going to be asking us for approval to move to do budget transfers? Yes. I guess we should look at the budget transfer one.
Okay. Yeah, I think it's it's fairly concise. It's probably that makes sense for us to look at it.
Okay. Let me share screen. Okay, so I'm assuming you're seeing that now. Yeah. So those are what we're suggesting for the first round of it's obviously not going to take care of everything. But those were the ones I felt like at that point we knew enough to know what we were spending and what we weren't. Those were the recommendations I made for the first trench of transfers.
So I have one general question for you on this to answer. Some of these amounts you're requesting to transfer funds in, but it does not satisfy the full deficit in that account line. Why is that?
Well, because we don't necessarily I'm transferring it into from an account that I'm wiping out, and I'm not going to run another account negative to make one count even. So I'm just, I'm trying on most of these to make the easy transfers. And once we do this and once we get a new printout, which shows all the deficits as we get further along in the budget process, we can shore up the remainder in those missing accounts. A number of these accounts, I don't know what the final number is, for instance, for senior transportation fuel or senior transportation. So I know I'm already over. So we tried to partially shore up the account, but we know once we've gotten through the whole year and we know exactly how many hours of usage we're going to use, then we'll need to transfer an additional money. So basically, doing the easiest transfers, the ones I know the money is available right now that we're unlikely to expend before the end of the year.
Okay, so let me rephrase that to make sure I understand. For example, this first group of items here is the deficit is the board clerk, board of selectmen. Correct. We want to take money from the Veterans Day Committee and the dues membership from the tax cutter collector for a total $2.24 63 and credit the board clerk account. Correct. That balance in that account is a negative $5.00 $8 so $2.24 is not going to satisfy that. That's correct. Oh, there's a lot of accounts that are like that.
That is correct. But what I'm saying is we're not far enough along for me to know exactly where I can take enough money. I don't want to take money out of accounts now until I know what's going to be fully expended from those accounts. So right now I'm just taking the money that I know, like I know Veterans Day has been over for a long time. We're not spending any more money out of that. So there's no reason to leave money in that account at this point, you know, and I know the tax collectors paid all her her dues for the organization she belongs to. So we know that money's available, for instance. So that's all I'm trying to do. I'm trying to take the the easy, safe transfers I know I can take now to shore up the accounts and get them as close to shore up as I can.
This next group to offset the legal and professional for planning and zoning. As of the latest report that we have in this packet, the negative balance in that three ten account, legal professional planning and zoning is $5,087. Why would we credit more than what the negative is?
Because they just had Mark Brantz at planning meeting, and I know they ran at least another thousand bucks in expenses on legal advice. So I know we're going to have further bills from that we just haven't gotten yet. I got one yesterday for $2,442 Yeah.
That's that'll come out of there too. Oh, this is kinda why I'm confused because last year when we did this, we basically made transfers to offset the negative balances and accounts, and they were all right on the money. So now this one is totally different. And it seems like and I don't know what the right way to do it is. Either you get everything, all the numbers, and you do it all in one fell swoop, or you do this nitpick stuff at it, but then it's like a moving target. We're always trying to look at it. We're gonna have to look at this every month then to make sure.
I mean, the unfortunate reality is you're not going to have everything until end of August, sometime in September, because there's always stuff that trickles in late. So if you don't want to make any transfers, part of the reason why I want to do as much of this early is because the more you clean up off the books that you don't have to worry about, the more you can figure out how much I really still owe you know, and how close are we?
I guess is how I would. I think that's what I was going to try to intercede but didn't want to interrupt on you. Do you have, now that's interesting to me, I know that in my place we have like a spending deadline and I know you talked about the beginning of June you want to hear what everybody you know every department might want to spend is that sort of why there could be a trouble could be trouble with all these audit? I just can't believe the audit goes so long. I know there was multiple problems or whatever, and we keep hearing. If you the way you're supposed to place all the orders at least by the end of June, I mean, to be acceptable and legal, I believe everything would have to be a purchase order issued or an order made
by June 30. Then like you said, you run around when I was in accounting and purchasing, then you run around, they make us call and try to get the bills ASAP so that we can clean everything up and people are usually accommodating unless you're waiting on a late shipment of course you don't want to pay a bill that isn't for a good that hasn't arrived so is it generally the beginning of June you try to have everybody place their orders? Well that's what I'm trying
to accomplish. But in, and so in going with Diane's question as I was listening, in the past do you think possibly it just might have went longer or there were different guidelines set? I mean, think maybe even by the, you're the boss and you make the rules, but seeing as how the audit is such a problem every year, and I'm just this was my first year in, you know, so I'm gonna have everything up in my head, and that's why I like to learn. But is that part of the problem? Like you said, you're chasing down invoices and bills and things well into August and September. Has that been an ongoing problem and why the audit is in so much trouble? Because I know you can't place everything early in the year. So I I'm just speaking out loud but hopefully it goes better by having a deadline of the beginning of June and then getting orders placed and and then you see what you do actually have left over and I'm kind of in agreement with Diane too just so that we have some kind of reference I understand what you're trying to do Eric which is kind of stop the bleeding and get some of the accounting money moved but is it going to be a problem when we try to figure out next year? Oh how much did they overspend? Oh well we made this transfer in April or we transferred in. I'm just thinking about trying to remember or have it documented for us.
That's all. Just speaking out loud kind of in agreement with what she says, but I understand what you're trying to do, get some of it taken care of, but if it's not going to be the end result and it's going to make a lot more work for more transfers down the line, I don't know what the best answer is either.
I mean, I get that there's not bills that are on here, but I have a hard time approving a transfer of money into an account for more than what the negative balance is because there's a bill coming because I can't see it on a report. Do you know what I mean? It's just it's just not the i's aren't dotted and the t's aren't crossed. It's just like with numbers, it's all got a balance. It's kinda how I look at it. I don't know if anybody else has any input on this. I'm kinda okay if you're not paying the full deficit, but then you're gonna have to go back and revisit all those accounts again
and find more money. It's not like they're spending money, right? Mean, it's just a fund transfer. So I think worst case scenario, if we erred on the side of transferring too much, it either ends up in the wrong account or you end up having to move it back. I mean, So there's a certain incentive on the part of Eric and, Arena to get it right. Otherwise, it's going to engender more work for them. So, you know, I tend to think I'm okay with just having them make the judgment calls about moving it around.
I'm just worried about keeping track of everything because now once we start transferring money in and out, we need to keep records of that. Because we're going to be revisiting this again because we've got a lot more to do. And then some accounts we aren't satisfying, so we've to find money somewhere else. So, as long as we can keep track of it.
Well, I mean, ultimately, you guys are the Board of Finance. We'll take your lead on this. If you want to put it off and try to do one master cleanup in August or September, you know we can do that, but
you know you you tell us what you want to do. You want this as much different than what we did last year. Last year we did transfers a spreadsheet like this in June. And
Right. But then we did more not more when we convened and then we finished it off in September.
Right. But don't remember any transfers coming to the board of finance after that. Seems late.
It's just in my opinion. I remember doing them in June because I have the records. Keep the meeting stuff on my computer. So I have the spreadsheet from last year of what we did.
And I was concerned about the workload of the department too. I mean, Marina can speak to that if it's not a big deal to do multiple sessions, but I mean, I'm always concerned about the worker and, you know, inputting a new budget for the next fiscal year and then getting things started for that while you're finishing the old. You know, I don't I don't know the work if it's not a big deal and it can get done multiple times and we get it started rather than things not dragging out to August or September I totally would be for that
I'm just trying to make sense of sense out of it that's all so I just kind of you know took that spreadsheet and I just added a column for what the current balance in the account was. And then it was just going down and trying to, you know, and obviously within a department transfer, it's easy. Do know what I mean? When we're going outside of department transfer, I just want to make sure that that department doesn't need that money. That's my only other question. Eric, you said you told them they had to get back to you by June 3.
You know all the major ones I either know what's been spent and what's likely to be spent. You know, certainly I had a long conversation with the assessor about whether he felt it was safe for me to move out the money from his legal fees. You know, and we reassigned that money in a couple of different pools, because I know how much he asked for to cover the costs of the the The books, they have to buy. For the automobiles. So I mean I have had those conversations with most of the departments did I miss one I'm sure it probably did. But, you know, if we get to it, you know, we'll address it. And if at the last minute, the town clerk decides to go to
a something that wasn't, you know, anticipated a couple months ago, we'll deal with it. I mean, remember, I did this first one now, most of these almost two months ago, because these were meant to be done and presented to you a month ago. So, I mean, am I guaranteeing that nothing from this has changed? No, I can't. You know, I'm not guaranteeing that, but this will get the majority of the easy stuff addressed now. So, we can hone in on the things where we're still overlaid. Other questions or input on the budget transfers?
Diane, do you feel like it's cleaner if we wait until June? I'm fine with whatever I, you know, if I have to make the transfers, I have to make the transfers, but
I'm just confused because last year, we it was much cleaner. What we were transferring and moving money around was to satisfy a full deficit. So now this is part way. We're not satisfying the just events, all accounts, and things like that. And then we're, you know, there's one account we're paying more into because we know more bills. But before it was more, here's what they're short. This is where we're taking the money from. We're transferring it in here and it was all and done of thing. This is a multiple step process now. Mean, it's up to you guys if you want to do it that way. Right. I think one of the differences
is this budget is a lot closer to zero in the past. How many line items are we over now? Already 70 or 80 line items, and we're going to be over more by the end of the year. So one, there's an awful lot more transfers to make, you know, and we're reaching down and taking small amounts from different budgets, Because, know, we know we're going to be so close to even on the final budget. You know, before we wouldn't we weren't bothering to take $25 out of an account. We were, you know, because we were most of them were bigger items. Now we're trying to take every dime from every place to shore up the budget. And I think that's part of the difference. You're going to see just the quantity of transfers that we're going to need, given how much tighter we're budgeting to what we're spending, you know, you're going to see a lot more. Whether you see it in one shot or whether you see it in multiple shots.
I'll leave it up to you guys whether you want to do some now and some or does it benefit? Is there any benefit to waiting until June? One more you know? Tell you you already gave everybody the deadline by June 3, so you gotta get a better handle on what's coming in. Is there any advantage to waiting till June to do this or not?
I think at this point, like Eric said, if we had voted on it a couple months ago and they wanted to do it twice, that makes sense, but I'd be in favor of waiting we're already at Memorial Day weekend so there's one more month. But that's just me. I'll let the other members speak.
Mean, Maria, like falls on your plate I don't know.
I'm I'm looking at, you know, when the last payroll is, when the last week I cut checks is. So in June, that will be the week of June 22 is the meeting in June for the board finance. So
I don't know. I mean, would, we probably have a lot more settled by then I would think, and then do another one after, you know, the end of the year is, I don't know, whatever, whatever's easier for you, Eric, or for everyone else. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just talking about the workload on you guys and what you have to do. Is it easier to get more final numbers, or is this, you know, get May in here and just do it or not?
Yeah. Or do this I'm in favor for whatever is most efficient for the department. I think they can manage this. I don't see a problem with it. So
One question I have is on line 84, Capital Regional Council of Government. Can you check that account number? I think that's wrong. I think it should be 100O8819 instead of 817. 810. I looked at the expenditure report of one hundred o eight eight nineteen eight 10 is the Capital Regional Council government with a balance of a $105 in it. So if you want to take $96 from that, I just want to confirm that that's a typo.
Hold on, I'm going to look. Sorry, I had to get up. I don't know why that shared stopped here. All right, Diane, you said line. 884 line 84 on that spreadsheet. Yeah, it was for Oh, yeah,
it should be a one nine, not eight one nine okay that's the time. I just want to make sure I'm looking at the right one. 8817
is for zoning. Yeah, so I might have just miskeyed that one but. Okay, that's fine. That's the only question I have.
So it seems that we could make a motion to accept these budget transfers or we can pass and move on. Does anybody wanna make that motion? Okay, hearing none, I guess we'll wait till next meeting. Over expenditure requests, Eric, there anything tied with that in here?
No, I mean unless you have questions for me about specific over expenditures.
No? Okay, hearing none. I guess we'll move on. Item seven is old business. We don't have any list topics listed under there. We don't have any discussion on the budget right now. We'll see what happens at the referendum. Actually, probably the budget should be under old business instead of new business. But new business on item eight is discussed and act upon the following on the proposed town budget. I don't know that we have any action to take here. Does anybody want to make any comments or input regarding the budget okay hearing that moved and done yeah
I was just gonna make one really small small small I promise. Yeah, I just was impressed with the turnout last night. I thought there was more people that came. I think it represented, you know, a cross section of Andover. You know, I'm glad that we respect everyone's opinion and I'm not a big social media person. I've only joined it late in life. I know there was a couple comments that I'm not even going to bring up, but for anyone that's listening out there, I really respect all the senior citizens that show up. Make their points made, get their voices heard power to you.
I just respect them, so I just want to give them the respect. Everyone else is respected in life too, but you know, to come out to a meeting and make a few points and everything, we've got to respect everyone's voice and opinion. So thank you. And yeah, it was well well attended, so we'll see what happens.
Okay. Other comments or points? Okay, hearing none we'll move on to agenda item nine is the approval of the meeting minutes for Wednesday, 04/27/2022. This is item 9A. Anybody wants to make a motion to approve those meeting minutes? I'll make a motion.
Are you Diane? Yep. Okay. Does anybody want to second that motion? I'll second it.
Okay. Louise seconds. Do we have any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's have a vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you. We'll move on to item 9B, which is Wednesday, 05/18/2022, special meeting budget workshop minutes. I want to make a motion to approve. I'll make the motion to approve.
Okay. That was Louise making the motions. Anybody want a second? I'll second. Diane seconds. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, any abstentions? Okay, hearing none.
Sorry, Mark who seconded down my camera I don't know what's up with my internet cut out. I second.
Louise made the motion Diane seconded. Okay, we had in addition to the agenda items we had nine C which is the discussion the meeting minutes for Wednesday, 04/20/2022. I
know that I was the one that brought up the point before and just thought of it. It's just been a whirlwind of busyness. As you all know, we have a million meetings. My job is crazy busy right now. So I really haven't had a moment to look at them and make some suggestions and I apologize for that. It's hard just keeping up with all we do. Can we table this to next month and then just, I mean, they're already posted. They're very, very, they just seem like there should be a little more information. So I was hoping to kind of look at them, make a few edits or suggestions, and then get them back to whoever I need to Eric or the board clerk or you.
I would get them back to Eric. I wasn't at that meeting so I wouldn't even be able to comment and I would abstain from the vote because I wasn't there. So yeah, think if you want to add some edits or something or make some suggested changes you could. What I would suggest is that you write them up and distribute them to the board members and Eric in advance of the next meeting, and then we can vote whether to adopt those amendments.
Nothing major. I just know I'm the one that brought it up last time and I just have not had a minute to even so thank you for letting me have another month to do that. No, we're
fine. Not like we haven't had a lot of meetings, a few meetings to go to. Okay, so it sounds like unless somebody else wants to take some action on that agenda item, we can pass that off to next month. Okay, hearing nothing. Let's go ahead and move on to agenda item 10. This is our liaison reports. Do we have anything? Community center. Diane, if you have anything more, if you guys have met or talked about that at all? Nothing new. Our meeting is
always is next month. We didn't have one this month. So basically, we're at is we're out trying to put together an RFP for the design bill phase. Once that RFP is done, we'll get it posted, get some quotes in, and then and then go to CIP with that.
And speaking of CIP, CIP's meeting was canceled this month. So there's nothing to report. Okay. Anything else? Joanne?
Just to add that I, you know, whenever they have meetings or need a representative from the Board of Finance, I'm going to be, you know, involved in that affordability housing study slash survey, whatever we need to do. So I'll report back to it. But it is, if anyone has a chance to take a look at it, so interesting. So, yeah, I mean, have to have certain percentages in town and all that kind of thing. So based on what we currently have in Andover as far as the housing market and all that kind of thing. So yeah, I'll be happy to report back to that if I'm involved or when things move along. That would be good. Yeah, it is on the YouTube channel. I verified too when we were talking. So it's good.
Good. All right. Any other reports? Okay. Hearing none, we'll move on to eleven, which is board open discussion. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to discuss before the board? Okay, hearing nothing. We'll move on to agenda item 12, which is public speak. Eric, you want to go the rounds?
Okay, the only person I see on here as a member of the public is Kimberly Persson. So Kimberly, if you would like to speak, please unmute yourself. And she's gone.
Okay. Unless I'm missing somebody, I believe that's it. CBC is just the recording. So Nick, unless you have something you want to say, I think we've checked that box.
Okay, very good. We'll move on to agenda item 13, which is adjournment. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I will. I move to adjourn. Okay, Rob moves to adjourn. We have a second. Second. Joanne seconds. Do we have any discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. Any
opposed? Going once. Going twice. Any abstentions. Hearing none. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you everybody. Have a good week. Get some rest. Let's hope everything rolls through this budget and