Meeting transcript
Board of Finance- Budget Meeting
March 11, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
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Alright. Hello, everybody. It's March 11. It's 07:01. It's time for our board of finance, special meeting for our budget workshop. So we'll 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. Nation. Under god, indivisible Invisible. With liberty and justice for all. Alright, everybody. Welcome. Hey, everyone.
Yeah. The first thing we've got is public speak. So give me a moment here. I had it up, and now I've lost it, my list of people. I'm gonna just try to go around. We also have some folks here who are here to present to us, so I don't know if it makes sense to have them public speak. But we'll we'll start with Tessie two. That's Tess. If you can unmute.
Yeah. That's me. So sorry. I'm here to support the garden club, and I wasn't prepared to give a speech, but I have another meeting at 07:00, which I'm late for, but I'll try to scoop back on when I'm done that. And hopefully, will be able to, share my support for in detail for the garden club.
Understood. Eric, you are public works. Correct? Yes. I am. Okay. So I we're gonna have you on. If you have something to say now, fine, but, otherwise, we'll wait for your presentation.
Yep. I'm gonna have plenty to say. Very good. Alright. Linda. All set.
Thanks. Alright. Very good. And, of course, Community Garden who I also believe we are getting a presentation from. So I don't know that it makes sense, but I'll ask you anyway. You want us to just introduce ourselves? Sure. Go right ahead. Alright.
Patrick Mallard. And Michelle Lawrence. We're two of the members of the committee. Great. Okay.
Alright. Well, so we'll have you on. I'll probably have you guys go first because I expect that'll be the shorter of the presentations. Joanne.
Hi, everyone. I usually wait for public speak at the end, but I don't want everyone to have to hear me when they're exhausted after a long meeting. So, I'm just going to say a couple of things. After listening to every budget so far, and of course, the Marathon Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday where they really went into the budget a lot. I know it's going to be a tough situation this year for all of you. You're going have to decide what our needs and what our wants and that kind of thing. So I know Public Works is speaking tonight, and it looked like they were prepared and you had a packet that was attached. So I just had a couple quick thoughts. And obviously, you're all going be asking the questions. We want to know how many trucks they currently have, because they put in the packet that they're looking for another truck, which is reasonable
as far as they're going to put anything out there that they think they need. So we'll listen as the public residents and you guys as the board. I happen to work alongside a lot of people that work in public works situations, you know, and they jump in cars together. Or they are actually, if this couldn't be a need that is met this year, possibly mileage for someone submitting mileage if they have to go somewhere in our small town. That's all. That's my thought on that. And I was lucky enough to tour last year that Public Works Building, which a lot of you know, obviously it's an old building. I'm not here to say it's new, but the guys that did work to it last year had put some good efforts and it's a nice space there for them. Just wondering, you know, there's a lot of things that need to be done. I'm not here to speak to all of them. Just the one that was a big $20,000 price tag this particular year was the heating and cooling type system. So that could be a year that maybe you put in another air unit for another year to cool it off for the guys when they're coming in. I mean, obviously, our public works guys are out. They're not in the shop. They're not working. I know they do work in the shop. So that's all. My couple thoughts are the needs and wants and everything that has to be balanced. And I didn't want to have to give you my opinion like in three hours when you're exhausted.
Thank you. Thanks, Joanne. All right. Let's move along. The first thing I'd like to do, I think I'd like to have the community garden folks go first because I expect that's probably a little bit quicker than our public works discussion. And so we can have them say their piece, and they can then drop off if they wish. Of course, you're welcome to stay. So let's hear it from the community garden. Guys are muted.
Okay. All right. Everybody can hear us. We got we got this. All right. So, I'm going be speaking on behalf of the community garden today and I just want to say that this year and our gardening years in the past we've been very appreciative of the support that we've gotten from the town, because we really are trying to help our community with fighting food insecurity and by getting them out. And especially with this long winter I think a green season will be really nice to have as soon as we can get plants in the ground and we do have some plants already in the ground. So some of the things that we're working on this year include involvement for educational outreach with Andover Elementary. We're working with the senior center to provide two beds for the seniors, maybe three, to also help fight food insecurity in Andover by making fresh vegetables and fruit available to the local community. It's going to be at the community center as well as at the garden. We are going to have a seed library where we have several donations for free seeds that are going to be available at the community center. We have a little library that Jeff built and it's going to contain the seeds in a category.
For community awareness, which is something that we are going to be working more heavily on this year, we're currently developing a schedule. It's going to be a season long schedule to promote garden tours during events. We're going to hopefully advertise through the community center bulletin, town website, Facebook page, flyers home, monthly gardening education events during the gardening season. We're hoping, I'm working right now with the UConn co op extension to get Master Gardeners and Composters to come speak once a month. If not that, we're going to have hands on experiences and Saturdays, every Saturday it's going be gardeners hours from nine a. To eleven a. M. People in the community are welcome to come down to the garden that aren't bed owners and we're going to have our excess vegetables and flowers available at that time for them to
take or to have. We continue exploring sustainability and water conservation practices. We have the pollinator beds to support Andover Beautification Committee, native species of bugs and birds especially the purple mountain mountain houses and bluebirds. And then we're also going to include cut flowers for community events because last year that was something that was requested by us. We did not have any cut flowers that would stay in a vase. I mean honestly it's about getting everyone together outside down there. I know I watch kids in the community. I have Cub Scouts and the Cubmaster of Andover and the Scoutmaster and I bring them down to the community garden and while we water they help lead, they play on the play scapes, they run around. It's a great community experience and we're looking to involve more
people not just the gardeners this year.
Our present irrigation system is isolated sprinklers on pedestals which is a lot I of can't hear him. Sorry. Can closer? You
Yeah. He's talking about Come really close. I hear the irrigation system, but yeah. Go ahead.
The Andover Community Garden was really started probably about eight or ten years ago before the senior center was even in planning. And it was started from Andover Sustainability Committee with Kathy Palazi and Abby Winter. And so we have a capacity of 1,700 gallons of rainwater collection, which we're waiting on power for the generators to supply power for our irrigation system to be able to use that water. We're currently running a hose from the senior center, which is the town well is supplying three buildings. And we are using oscillating sprinklers on pedestals to water the plants, which is not the most effective way of water of irrigating the plants. So we're we're asking for part of our budget to do a drip root irrigation system which will should cut our water usage by about 90%. That'll be under under the soil? That is correct.
Two to three inches on the soil. A twelve twelve inch grid system PVC. And the time timers at each bed
so that we're not irrigating for eight hours at a time. Because one of the problems that we faced last year was the beds would dry a lot faster. So we feel like a drip irrigation under the soil would hit the roots, it would prevent any type of blossom rot, root rot. And so we're hoping that that would be also functional, but it's also, it's friendly for all abilities instead of having to carry a watering can to the far side of the bed where the hoses don't reach, and so we're looking for that too for the seniors and the senior beds as well.
Do I have a question about seeds? You guys mentioned you were getting maybe some donations of seeds and whatnot, and and this is a question that came up in one of our prior meetings. I think there's, some bit of money in your budget for buying seeds. How would that impact so if you're gonna get some donated seeds, is the amount that's in the budget required to get your get your plants off the ground? I I apologize. I I'm a I'm a so so gardener at best.
No. That that will we that's not required now since we've reached out and have it donated. So we don't have to purchase it like we did last year. Okay. Hey, Jeff. Oh.
So go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Jeff, I have a question on the beds that are dedicated for the senior center, community center, and for AES. Who will maintain those? And will they actually will someone be picking those and delivering those to those two facilities?
Our hope for that is to work with TESS to engage seniors in gardening and so they're going to be it's going to be used as an activity here at the senior center. So it's not like donation bed, it's literally a bed where they're going to be participating where it's the beds that are closest to the gate, it's the beds we're hoping to really install most of that drip irrigation system in and so they're going to be tending their own beds and that's where that's for the senior beds. The excess produce that comes from the garden which when we have excess produce that's going to be available to the community as well.
So it's and we have 12 beds total. We have 12 beds total. We have nine filled right now.
Year before last, the community garden donated well over 1,000 pounds of fresh produce to the food pantry. Last year I went and and and spoke to them about getting volunteers to come up and weed and take the produce. That didn't happen and that's why we did not donate to the food pantry this year. Well. We're we're glad we did but yeah, not 1,000 pounds. Not 1,000 pounds. This year, we're focusing on supplying fresh produce to the community center, senior center. Because we wanted to bring it directly to our community as well. I do an
issue with that. Speaking for seniors, most of them are not going to be capable of going out there and doing that type of work. Very few will, I think, at this point. And, you know, I can, but others are much older and some have walkers and they may not want to go out in the heat and do all that. They might not dress for it. So that might be an issue for that. Now I'm just wondering whether perhaps it could be maybe work it out with tests where maybe they, someone could actually end up bringing the produce in and putting it into what we currently have as our bread and all that donations. So when the seniors come for their luncheons and all that, they would be able to just grab it from there without doing all that work.
Oh, let me interrupt for a minute here. Because we've already spoken in test. We have the refrigerated refrigerator that we had on the front portion of the pantry is going to be in the basement of the senior center. And that would be available for anybody in the community or seniors on Saturday mornings to come and help themselves.
And also, I think you misunderstand. I mean, I think seniors are able to decide whether or not they want to participate in the garden and to have the opportunity is their own. It's their own decision. So to say that they may not be able to do it is a little bit A list, and I think that they should have the choice of doing it and of course it would assist them with that,
But for one person to speak for all the seniors is a lot of When designed senior beds in the community garden, the raised beds, so that people can stay on the edge and be able to access the beds without strenuously bending over. I made the pathways between the beds, wheelchair accessible with crushed stone, So it is able to get a walker through to get wheelchairs in there. It's not out of the realm of possibility for disabled people to use our community garden.
I'm sure it's not Jeff, but did you talk to Tess about this as far as the actual and Tess is okay with that?
Yes. And Tess was supposed to be here in support of the Andover Community Garden. It's a collaboration this year with the community center,
AES and the community garden. Yeah, it's a great idea. It's a great idea. I just hope some of them will be able to do that. AES people too. I remember last year or the year before that, you had a couple of gardens dedicated to them and nothing was done with them. Is that going to be different this year?
Here it's educational outreach, I said that in the beginning. Educational outreach and we're having a master gardener work with them. I'm sorry, I'm it's educational outreach regarding seeds and composting so they're going to be growing the seeds at the school and then we're going to be transitioning the plants over here where people can select plants that they can't grow their own seeds for those that are mediocre gardeners I think they refer to themselves as. They'll be maintaining I have plans for you. So they'll be maintaining the garden? No,
they're children, grade second through sixth grade. If their families choose for them to come over the summer to maintain the garden, of course, but people maintain their own beds usually.
In the past, community garden committee and the bed owners have been making sure that those beds get maintained.
Question. Can you guys move a little closer? It's really hard to hear you, but I have a question. Do the people that own, I'll say own the beds, do they contribute anything financially to the garden?
Yes, they do. It's mostly organic fertilizers or if they have a plant of their choice that they want to contribute, they also contribute their time. We have to go in the beginning of the spring and we have to turn all the beds over, we have to rototill them and we all do that together. We weed, we get together on Friday nights, on Saturday mornings, Sundays we weed our beds. I mean manual labor is a lot of time commitment,
and that that itself is is worth a lot. I would I would also like to clarify that there are not bed owners. The the community garden is owned by the by the And people on a yearly basis select to garden in a bed. They sign up for a bed. And that changes as people have more interest or less interest. And so that we're not renting beds, we're supplying them free to someone who is interested in putting forth the labor to help maintain the other beds as well as their own. And also to donate excess produce to either the pantry in the past or this year it would be the community center seniors and seniors.
And Jeff, you might want to speak about maybe the agreement that each of the vet owners have where they were supposed to contribute certain items and also have their work. Cause everyone has an agreement to do certain things on each bed. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes. We
have set up a contract that everybody signs when when they sign up for a bed that we are responsible for making the beds ready to plant. Which means putting in natural fertilizers, lining it, filling it, supplying water to the beds. But they have a contract that they signed that they're aware that they have to plant, pick, maintain their beds, and also finish at the end of the season to clean up the beds. So we even had a bed turnover because some of those people did not fulfill that contract.
And we're changing a little bit of that contract this year. So that, if somebody doesn't have interest anymore it's going to turn into a pollinator bed, a flower bed for cut flowers. We did have people last year that struggled with getting to their beds and they communicate with us and we help them, so there was an individual who lost his father and he couldn't make it to his bed all the time, and so Jeff and I and other gardeners helped out that gardener by helping them and bringing the produce to them and distributing it to the pantry when they wanted us to, things like that. So help them watering,
and there are times when people are on vacations and we all have to chip in. It truly is community involvement. It does take a small village, and it's fun. It's not a miserable experience.
It sounds very well run. It sounds like you guys know what you're doing there.
Just want to say that Jeff has been so We try our best.
I just want to say that Jeff has been so instrumental And in his he's been excellent, know. And I'd love to see it continue the way that we originally had it going and I hope things run as well as you think they're going to. So that's great Jeff.
Thank you. I have a little question and this is more of finance question, it's more of a personal question. Like when you do the rototilling, where does your equipment come from? Do you get volunteers just showing up at the rototiller?
Yeah. I have one. I don't even use it. We had in our I'm sorry. I can offer a line. We have.
Uh-oh. We had in there in our budget a rent a rental fee of $100 for Mantis rototiller that we did use last year. I was able to purchase with this year's budget, a reconditioned
manus rototiller from Home Depot within the last month or so. I've got a little electric one. It's minute too late. Works great if you got an extension cord, and I don't use it anymore because I don't garden anymore, but I used to. I used to love to garden, and I I had a a very large chunk of my backyard where I used to grow tomatoes and basil and everything like that. So I I have a rototiller sitting in my garage that is literally sitting there and doing absolutely nothing. So I don't know. Maybe another time, contact me because maybe I'll just give it to you guys. Anyway, moving on. Thank you
for asking. Can we have a question? I think Kim had a question. Yeah. Please. I did have question. It sounds like you guys are working on having more programs for the community. And I just wondered, are you gonna do all your advertising electronically, like through Facebook, through the community center, places like that, because you don't really have a budget for printing flyers or anything. Andover, you know, you have to get the word out and introduce what sounds like a bunch of great programs. So how can you handle that? Facebook?
We we have several different outlets. So for Cub Scouts, we have the same thing. It's I'm I run Cub Scouts. I run Scouts. We have to get messages out to people. Not only can you just go by word-of-mouth in Andover which always seems to work the best by the way but we're going to use the community center bulletin hopefully we're going to post it. Town website hopefully get our events on the town website. Facebook page flyers home to parents through AES for, that but the thing is is that what we're planning on doing is only doing it, the paper flyers only once. We hope to have before the end of April a whole list of events on one page because as a parent, as a person, I'm very busy. I am and I'm sure many many people are. I like to have all of my information in one place So and I think it's the easiest way to do it, so that's how we're going to do it this year is just have a list and have it all stand out for the gardening season. Of course there may be changes, but we can work on that as we go.
If you go on to the Andover community, Andover Connect Community Garden Facebook page, you can see all of our posts, all of our history, and all the likes and and and unfortunately not a lot of people commenting, not a lot of input, but it's been very, very successful on our Facebook page. And that's what we've been using in the past and we wanna expand on that this year. Well, maybe more people in the community.
Maybe when you advertise, you could put your link to your Facebook page on all of the, electronic advertising. You know what I mean? So people know to go look for it. But, anyways, it sounds great. I just wanted to check.
We have we have things in the River East as well. We've been posting in the River East weekly for the past month. Let us know if you see it though, because if you don't, that's worrisome.
Have you guys, gathered local donations at all? Do you seek out donations, or do you have any donations at all to help fund Matt
Porter and Karen Hunter and Indoor Landscaping have been very generous in donations and giving us things that cost. We are now sitting on a pallet of potting soil, fertilized potting natural fertilized dirt. Dirt, We're sitting at Good dirt last dirt. Dirt. It's like gold.
Yeah, but they they have been very very generous with their donations but we do end up getting some plants that are like cabbage and stuff a little past season so it's a little hard to plant them but we do
And we're appreciating that. You got anything for, like, Hurst Farm? That's another one that occurs to me. They do I know they have a lot of seedlings and stuff like that. Nothing nothing over there? Okay. They do, but they're they're for profit.
Sherry and I go way back and and, you know, we go there every Sunday.
I love the place. In the summer specifically. Why I mentioned it. Yeah.
But no. Not usually because they really grow for their own. You know they don't have like an excess it's not like a landscaping place.
No it's where I used to get my seedlings that's the reason I asked.
No she gets great I love her But, yeah, most of the stuff that we get, we get from people that we know or we we rebuild it or rebuild it or, you know, and it's it's a good experience. You should come down.
I should. I used to actually really like garden. These are all raised beds. Right? That you've got All raised beds. Mhmm. That's correct. Ten
ten by 20, actually 20 by 10 beds that are divided in half. Raised beds that are approximately 18 to 24 inches off off the off the ground.
Now I don't know about you guys, but I always struggled so hard with tomato blight. I don't know, you know, how you guys deal with that. Man, that killed me. No. I went to that last year. It really
well, blight comes from the seeds, and so if the seed has it, then the plant will have it. So one of the things that we do get down there is I did not from seed.
Yeah so mostly Well we get like blossom you could try different plants next time sometimes it lives in the dirt so it'll come up when it's sprouting. There's a lot of different things but we we we help each other out with that kind of stuff. There were some tomatoes that got some blossom rot. The water when we had all that downpour that was really rough because that split a lot of the tomatoes. Yeah. If you get a lot of Too much water, you can get that. Yeah. That's why we need to get away from the,
the oscillating sprinklers and the The spraying, you're you're you're wetting the the leaves, the the foliage instead of the roots, which is what you actually need to get to. Yeah. Yeah. Away from. That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I when I gardened, I was just spraying with a hose. You know? And so I'm wetting the plants themselves, and I'm dealing with blight, and it's just like it compounded. Half my crop was gone by the end. Anyway, alright. Thank you for that. Anybody else have further questions for our community garden folks? We good? Board of Finance to let them go? Yep. I'm done. Alright. Thank you. Thank you too. I I really appreciate your Very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. You know, stick around if you'd like, but otherwise,
au revoir. I'm down to volunteer. Help us in the garden. Please.
And and and I'm serious about that rototiller. It's sitting in my garage. It's got nothing to do. Sounds good. Yeah. We'll take it. It's It's got a ton of torque. I'll tell you that. It's electric. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. So alright. I think our our next one, we obviously should move on to public works. Mister mister Eric here. Who by the way, nice to meet you. Don't know if I met you. This is a new one. So why don't you run us through the status of things in public works?
Alright. Well, first of all, I'll introduce myself. My name is Eric Johansson. I'm the new Public Works Supervisor for the town of Andover. I have over thirty five years of public works experience in all aspects. Basically, you name it, I've done it. And again, if you guys have any questions, concerns, comments, whatever, please feel free to reach out to me. No question is too stupid by any means. Would you like me to go over line by line or just go over the where the budget is? It's higher where I'm asking for more.
I guess what I would ask I mean, guys, board members, you can chime in, but my thought would let's start with the top line and then back up to how we got there.
Okay. Well, we have first of all, it's the DPW town garage budget, medical drug testing. That's for the testing of all the CDL drivers, which we all are there. It's basically flat from last year. The fee for that hasn't really gone up. Next up is the conference and seminar. This past year, excuse me, this budget is 700. I'm asking for $1,500. The reason for that is we do a lot of training through Yukon, which is a t two center they call it. We have a new employee this year, and I like to in the fall send him to the Public Works Academy. What that does is it gets some chainsaw certified, it gets some flagger certified, and he learns a little bit about everything
in the public works end of it. It's very very informal, sorry excuse me. Next up we have the building maintenance, budgeted right now currently at $17,850 I'd like to keep that flat. The building as some of you have come down and seen, it's in very disrepair. We're lucky that the new employee that we actually hired on is a mason, so he took an actual good look at this building and we can do a lot of this work in house, he said. So we can get the materials and he can do a lot of the purging and fixing of the block in house as we have time. Usually it's more of like a winter project or in the summer for in between jobs, he'll actually be able to do the outside. Next one up is furnace maintenance for $10.50 dollars We had the furnace clean this year for $800 through Corbett. There's $200 left in that. It doesn't seem to be going up, only heating oil and fuel and everything as you guys see. So I'm keeping that flat. Alarm system, there is a fire alarm system in that building. That's eight seventy five. I kept that flat because as of right now I haven't had any problems with it. But I guess in the past,
according to my predecessor, they had a bunch of problems with that system with the Wi Fi network and it was constantly going off and they were trying to figure out what was going on. The internet and cable, I guess that's flat as well, that's $14.70. Again, from what I've seen and from what my predecessor has said, it's never gone up. Electricity, 5,000, keeping that flat. From what I've seen, we've come close to that number here and there. Again, it depends on the year. This year was kind of cold. We do have electric heat in our break roomoffice facility, but I have something further down the pipe for that for you guys. Is that baseboard electric?
Yes. Oh yeah, exactly. It's baseboard and we have a window unit that looks like it's from 1985 for an air conditioner to cool
the whole place. That screams out for a mini split, doesn't it? Yes, it does.
It sounds like you turn it on and sounds like it's taken off. Anyway, fuel oil, 6,300. Again, I'm going by my predecessor. He said we've never really gone over that. That what that does is that heats the garage part where we store the trucks.
That now I know the town locked in for heating oil. Does that cover you guys? Yes. So we're good there. Okay. Good. Great. The the the only concern would be, obviously, you know, you're seeing a jump now Yes. For reasons that we all know about. So
you're you're covered with that, I forgot what it was, $2.50 a gallon, something like that? And Jim, when he was here, actually signed up the contract for the coming fiscal year for actually less than what we're paying now, which is crazy. So but I don't I didn't read over the contract. I don't know if there's any stipulations with that. I think both AES and the town did well this year. They did. For future reference, and I have a tough time wrapping my brain around this, and maybe we could talk about this in other meetings. We actually pay more for heating fuel than we do the diesel that we put in our trucks. By almost Yes, exactly. By almost $09 a gallon more. Wouldn't that be the other around? Yes, you would think that. Absolutely. And again,
I have a tough time wrapping my brain around that. If you look at the contract, you'll see it. Then yes, I have that same look, sir. So yeah, but that'll be a discussion for a later date. Oh, those are separate contracts?
It's the same contract, but it's a different number per gallon. We have a I'm sorry, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think we pay right. I was just looking at it today. We pay $2.58 a gallon diesel for the trucks, and we paid $2.62 for heating oil.
Right? You'd expect those to be flip flopped, which is Yes, it's the same. It's the same stuff. So I have this year's contract, same stuff, but one is one is taxed differently, right? Like is that the issue that why it's usually cheaper like heating oil is usually slightly cheaper than diesel, isn't it? Yeah, so we don't pay the over the road tax period because we're exempt through municipality.
We do pay some fees in there. Again, without it in front of me, there's a couple like federal fees like we have no choice we have to pay. I believe we pay more fees on the diesel than we do the home heating oil, but it's like one more fee. Just nickel and diming us like they do everybody else, but
is what it is. Yeah, it's why I got heat pumps. Anyway, go on. Exactly. Wait, Liz, did you have a question? Oh, sorry. You're muted. You're Liz. Liz Liz, you're muted.
Yeah. I was like, okay. Now I'm on. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to ask a question as we're going through because, and maybe this is also a question for Lisa as well. I'm trying to go through the new preliminary budget as you go through line by line, Eric. And I noticed that some of these amounts are a little bit lower than what you're stating. So I'm wondering if the Board of Selectmen got to this and made some decisions or if they did, I just get it.
Okay. So did you go through this with them yet or no? I have not.
Okay. Liz because you're Yes. Did you Yeah. Did you print? Because it the changes they made on Monday would be in pink, highlighted in pink if they made changes.
Oh, this is the one is dated today. I see it. I mean, there's no there's no pink on the public works. Yeah. There's no shading. There's no pink. Okay. Well, you because he's saying That means they haven't gotten to it yet, though, Lisa. Sorry. Liz, I apologize. I I interrupted you. What did you say? So if it's not in so if I understand it correctly, if it's in pink, that means the board of selectmen made a decision about it. Yes. And they changed something. Mhmm. Right. If they haven't gotten to it, now it won't be pink. It'll just be blank, but it doesn't mean necessarily
that it's been adjudicated. It's been sorted out. So I think that's what Liz is trying to get. Like Mhmm. Are the numbers in that chart reflective of what Eric's telling us
today? Because he's saying, the fuel the the electricity will be flat at $5,000,
and I'm seeing I changed it. I forecasted it, and everybody this year is under their electric bill. Yeah. So that's the only change is his electricity. He Which said one is that? It's on 6601 electricity. 601. 601. Hold on one second. 3.
Yep. And 603. Are just my changes, and that was on the original one. Yeah. That's not something the board of selectmen did. I just did that. Yep. Fair enough. I mean, you can put it back up if you want, but I'm I'm Yeah. No. No. No. I'm only noticing. Yeah. I'm only noticing because Eric's going through. I just did a forecast for him for the electrical up to date because I'm in here looking at March.
And We're we're we're just trying to tighten this stuff up and Yeah. Make sure we get the right numbers in there because, I mean, look. You know, what sort of budget you were in? So every cent
kinda matters. Yeah. He said he has spent so far this year up to March 11, $3,200.
I I think we're we're we're really that's the one place where we're really doing extremely well as a town is electrical. So just looking at under public works and grounds, is that am I in the right place? Public works and grounds? Oh, the one above that. Yeah. Town garage. Town garage. Town garage. My bad. Okay. That's why I was having trouble. There it is. Yes. Okay. So electricity, 309601? Yes.
Okay. So you were forecasting down. So your budget request is what again? It's flat at $5,000.
That's what it Yeah. Currently is now. So right now, the budget re okay. So this this spreadsheet requests less than that. That's why loses keying in, like, because there's a $1,200 not quite $1,200 difference. Okay.
Alright. I just wanted to make sure I needed to understand why we weren't seeing what he's asking for. That's all. But forecasting makes sense. So
I mean, honestly, you know, we we we could talk about this a little bit. Like, forecasting it flat may not be quite right either. Right. But that said, you know, if there are reasons why some of our other town offices and and whatnot buildings are seeing declines is because they put in equipment. Right. You know, the town hall, we did the hybrid system. Right? We have a a heat pump in there now. Yep. If you don't have that, then it doesn't necessarily make sense to to project a shortfall. So, anyway, for my purposes, what I'm doing by the way, everybody, I have that spreadsheet that Lisa gave me, and I have my own version saved to my drive. It's not the official version. But I'm when we talk about this stuff, I'm playing around with it. So I just put 5,000 back in there
instead of the 3,800 and what have you that Lisa had projected so that we can at least look at that from the standpoint of, you know, at the end of the day scenario. Looking at worst case scenario. Exactly. Alright. So, Eric, I'm sorry. No problem. Liz, are you good? Or was that your Yep. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead, Eric. Yep. Next
one on the list is fuel oil, the heating oil like we talked about. Yep. For 6,300, I left that flat as well.
Oh, okay. Again, there's another place where we had a projection of a decrease significantly on this spreadsheet.
Right now, Eric, you have only spent $22,800 up to March 11. So, and, you know, last year was budgeted for 6,300. So, I mean, you can, you guys do whatever you want, but it does look like it'll be under a little bit under 6,300. And I do have this year's contract with the prices. I don't know how much how many gallons were used, but I do have the one that you said Jim signed in November. I do have it here. And the heating for town garage is 2.57. And again the diesel is lower at 2.537. Yep. If you can explain that then
good for you. So Lisa, what the number again that year to date we spent 28 something what was it again? Yeah. The fuel as of March 11 right now, it's $2,823. I mean, is that something you wanna just put in the notes, Rob, on the side of our official sheet? Like, just so we when we come back to this, we can Yeah. One second. Sorry. Give me 28 what? $28.23.
23 spent through March? Through through Yeah. Through March what?
I have March 11. Let me see let me just look and see when the last bill is. Alright. I I wanna say that February 8, so that doesn't include March, really.
Yeah. We just got a drop of, like, almost 400 gallons, I wanna say, couple weeks ago. Yep.
Well, have you spent have you paid that? Lisa? No. The last bill we paid was February 8, so we haven't paid that much. So I'm gonna put in February 8, not March 11. Alright. Through two eight. So alright. You know? And, again, this is a spreadsheet. I just literally have my own personal drive. Guys, you know, this is a little a little sketchy, but I I'm I'm trying to work with it. I'm trying to keep us, you know, up to date. So thanks, but good idea, though. Like, that's a good note to have in there. What do we have? Where have we spent? What are we looking at? I mean, you would expect it to drop off from now on. Right? I mean, those of us who have. Right? You you'd hope now we're we're warming up. It's it's not gonna be as bad. We haven't gotten our April snowstorm yet either. And and next week's back in the thirties next week. So Yes. I know. I oh, I looked at the the front. I'm like, what is this? But, yes, long story short, without trying to jinx anything Thank you. You would expect it to slightly, you know, taper off at this point. So in terms of projecting what we're gonna spend, I mean, I under I completely understand your perspective, Eric, where you're just like, you know what? Let's leave it where it is. We'll just flat it, you know, just zero it from last year, do the same thing. But if we're if we are consistently coming in under that, then we we should at least think about reducing. That's all right. Sorry go on. Go on. Are okay. That note,
sorry about that. I was looking at the invoice for the mini split down below and I was wondering whether that mini split would be eligible for a rebate. Don't know so my goal is $500.
That's certain ones, though. That's I had my tech today, and a lot of people Right. It's homeowners. Right. But not just I
don't know what the state has for for municipalities is the question. And you should look into it for sure, but I know that, unfortunately, on the homeowner side, it's really pretty minimal. It drives I had somebody who spent a ton of money doing that, right, just literally this year, you know, where I I swapped out my systems AC systems for full on heat pumps. And, yeah, I'm I'm not looking at much of a rebate, honestly. It's not a lot of money, unfortunately. But we should check into it even if it's $500. Yeah.
Just curious whether that included that. But I don't know how it works for municipality versus Yeah. A private residence. I get it. Okay. Good question, though. Like, seriously, that's
With well, with that mini split with that putting that mini split in, I just wanted to get it on your guys' radar. That way you you see what I'm looking at. You see a number, and it's so, you know, again, next year, if I ask for it, you guys aren't going, hey, wait a minute. You kind of see the number and know kind of what's going on. That's my general You should expect slightly more electricity and less oil from a heat pump.
You Yep. Do have to remember, though, we are in an 1865 building. The installation is tremendous, isn't it? Yes. Eric,
how many square feet is the area that you need to heat and cool with that? Because I mean, I was in there last year, I didn't think it was a very my memory is that it's not a very big area.
Again, I'm still new, so I really don't know that question or the answer to that, excuse me. The problem is, don't forget, we're going in and out of that through the door in the wintertime driving trucks in and out. And again, between it not being insulated well, and just being an old building in itself, Basically the heat turns on sometimes in November, doesn't shut off till April, like this year. Why I'm happy that we have that new employee because he's going to be able to fix a lot of the brickwork there and hopefully even drive this cost down a little bit more. Wow. Maybe he could even do some insulation and pay them As for the
I get going, I may look at spray foam, but the problem is we're in a garage, we weld, we torch, there's a lot of things we do in that garage and that spray on insulation is very flammable. I know you can get flame retardant stuff, but again, then it becomes big dollars and
so forth. But again, that's going to be future as I move forward. And the long and short of this, you get the doors open a lot. Yes. Unfortunately, that's You the nature of the
get it warmed up and then you open the door. Yep.
Again, we keep all our equipment inside. And if we need the backhoe or something like that, and it was zero a month ago, the backhoe's got to drive out. You have to leave the door open a little bit because of the diesel exhaust in there, and then you close it and then the heat's running for two hours. So I know that number at 6,300 seems kind of high, but we've had, I believe that number is because past years where the, as you guys know, diesel's been $6.07 dollars a gallon at the pump. Some of the contracts I believe are probably at $3 and change. So I'm assuming that's why it's that high. But I don't know, I didn't go back far enough to look to see. Again, I worked on this with my predecessor, so he had been there five years, so he kind of knew the lay of the land with stuff like this. Okay.
Right, office supplies, that's paper clips, paper, stuff like that. As you guys know, all that stuff's going up. So I went up $25 on that. Same thing with the computer supplies, $3.50 is budgeted for, I went up to $375 That's, you know, keyboard I had there was missing, you couldn't read the numbers on it anymore. And I'm a henpecker when it comes to doing that, so it's horrible if I can't see it. Yeah, exactly. If I can't see it, the letter in front of me, it screws me all up. So I went up with that. So that's it for the town garage. I can get into the operating budget if you'd like next. That's what I have on my
All right, on the operating budget side, which is it says Public Works Grounds in this tablet. What is the number we're starting at?
4,399. So it's going down further, I'm thinking? Yes. Going down. So you have town garage, and the next one says public works.
Yep. Got it. And then it says public works. Yeah. Thank you. His work is October. Yep. I'm not see I'm
not seeing that. It's just a little bit down the list. It's not just just scroll down half a page.
Wait a minute. Public works the full public works budget request? It's on page 12 of the big book.
Mhmm. Oh, I'm not looking at you mean page 12? Is this line two seventy eight in the spreadsheet?
Yes. Oh, four three nine nine. Okay. So it's line 265 in the Excel spreadsheet if if you're Oh, two sixty five. Yeah. Yeah. Two sixty five of the spreadsheet.
Yes. Oh. Yeah. Where it probably starts. But the grand total is $2.78. Right? So we have in there in this spreadsheet is $4.70. So I'm I'm I'm curious now. Okay.
Alright. You guys all set? Yeah. We're on that? I think so. Yep. Yep. Okay. The first one is public work salaries. I estimated going up 3% because the public works union contract is up this year. Again, on what their outcome is, that's generally everything across the state. That's where everybody's getting. Temporary public work salary, I left that flat. Currently they paid Jay out of that as an intern to come in and do stuff. I don't know if I was hoping to maybe get a part time kid this summer, maybe help foul behind a roadside mower or something, do some weed whacking behind that to use our full time guys and other aspects, but I kept that flat. Again public works overtime salary, I estimated another 3% per the contract negotiations. Fire extinguisher testing, that's $1,200. I kept that flat. I think I paid this year a thousand something.
I don't have the exact number. And we bought, we had to buy a couple extra fire extinguishers for some of the equipment as well. Vehicle maintenance, I went up with that 3%. Parts are going through the roof. As you guys all know, if you've brought your car in the garage. Yep.
I'm just looking at the spreadsheet. We'll make sure it's right. It's what I see in here on the spreadsheet Lisa gave me is 3.1 3.61%, $1,254 increase. Is that correct? Yes.
Yes. Okay. Cool. So Alright. It's up. I it's up. Well, I put 3%, but it's a little higher. Yeah. 3.61. Yep. Okay. Reason the reason for that is the reason for that is I need to put tires on the truck my truck I take home with, and I'd like to purchase a spare loader tire. Reason for that is my last job I was in, loader we have is new, thank God. And also too, we use that thing like every other day. If we get a big storm, if like for snowstorms, I mean this past winter I was clearing the parking lots with it because we couldn't push the snow with the trucks. If we blow a tire on that, it could be three to four days out to get a tire for that. And that is a frontline piece of machinery.
If we have a tire here, we can call a tire service and they can have that, they can come up and have that thing on, and we could have it going in like two hours. Next, excuse me, is like rental, dollars 1,800. I flatten that. So sometimes we rent a screener for various projects. For the Bunker Hill Road project, we hauled a bunch of loam and material out of that, and we'd like to screen it and then we can reuse it for various projects we do around town. Mobile phone, I left that flat. That's my phone for the for the year. My take home phone. Diesel, I left that I left that flat $22 or $22,300 That's basically what we've done year to year. And with the new contract coming up, it's going down, as you guys see. Don't forget too, with that diesel, the fire department, I believe she was off that and because they pay us back and the board of vet as well.
So that I yes. So, I mean, if if it's going out, I mean, the hope would be here that this is actually more than Yes. We really need.
Okay. I think to date now, again, without I think the date because we don't forget we had a bad winter. I think I'm almost up to 13. Yes. I'm I'm almost up to $13 on that number just just with our fleet alone. So we're gonna be close getting close to that number. Yeah. Gasoline, $10,000. I'm leaving that flat. I know that's a high number, but again, you guys have driven by a gas pump, and it's almost $4 a gallon in some spots.
Supplies? Yeah. It's it's definitely higher than we've spent in the past. Well, that's what it was last year, I believe. That and so I'm just going by what No. It's probably budget is what we budgeted, but it's pretty clearly not what we've been spending. I think we were being careful.
Yes. Again, with that gasoline so volatile like you guys are, and we don't have a contract. We're at the mercy of going for gas pump. Yeah.
That's just, you know, you bomb and ran, and all of a sudden, it's $4 ago. Yeah. Yes. I do.
Or worse or worse. Yeah. It always goes up quick. It never comes down quick.
Wow. Yeah. For sure. It it is funny how all of a sudden the gas in in the actual tank cost more now. Anyway, go on.
Supplies, basically what that is, that's like our uniforms. We buy oils out of that. All our shop supplies, like all our nuts and bolts and things of that nature. I did go up with that $950. Reason being is our uniform, we have a new uniform contract, and I believe that went up 3% as well. Like everything else going up. Equipment, that's like tools. Trying to think what else. Like darn it. I'm in a I'm in hell of a mess. I apologize. So we buy, like, our tools out of that. We take some of the, like darn it. Sorry. I'm drawing a blank. It's okay. It's
replacing the memory. Of that. We take there there's various things we take out of that, and I apologize. I don't have that in front of me. It's it's broken down on my spreadsheet and my computer at work a little better, but it's I it's flat. Yes.
So the one thing I would mention, and this is something where, to be fair, you know, Lisa's new and is still trying to get through everything. Yes. But she has a line on our spreadsheet for, like, what's been expended from the beginning of the fiscal year through the end of January. Absolutely. And the equipment line has $11. Yes. Is that something that's very cyclical, like, seasonal? Do you spend all in one shot? You know? It's confusing because I don't I don't have a huge problem with the number. The the question would be, do you buy things all in one shot in the spring or something like that, or is it really as you need it?
As we need it. So it's like throughout the year as we need it. We may need, just trying to think like, need like OSHA, I don't know if you guys knew this came through our shop last year, right before I got there. OSHA actually visited. I remember this.
They visited You guys actually did quite well, if I remember sure. Yes.
Yeah, we didn't get fined very much at all, but we had to bring a lot of stuff up to compliance. So we like our, they call them sump chains, when we go to lift the catch basin up, there's these chains that are certified, have to be certified, and every year the chains that they had were basically out of date, so they had to throw all their chains out and buy all new ones. And I believe it came out of that equipment account. So it's it's stuff like that that they're we're buying out of that.
Yeah. So I mean, looking looking at this from my perspective, If we're not spending like, looking back at the at the spreadsheet. Right? If we It is up to like that in past years, we have spent 7 or 8,000. So it's not crazy. It's just this year, it didn't look like we expended much. So I don't have a huge problem with it. I just wanna you know, are we in fact spending that money? Does it need to be a you know, going forward is is a question that comes to my mind. If we if we haven't really spent it this past year, maybe this past year, we were a little disrupted. We had a lot of turnover, etcetera. Maybe we haven't really done it. Fine. It also could be we had that ocean inspection. We did a burst of spending, and now we're good for a bit.
That's why I asked the question. Does it need to be I I think Lisa knows what I've spent in that account because, again, I don't have it in front of me right now. $70. Yep.
Okay. Say that again. Go 5 this year. $5.70. I didn't hear that. 570. 70.
Less than you know, you know, again. Yeah. So if you look at it from the standpoint of $80,000 budget No. I understand.
But to be fair, if you look back on the spreadsheet, the past couple years Yes. It's another story. You you 7,900, 6,900. So I am not of the opinion that I would suddenly slash this to the bone. I'm I'm just saying Okay. Do we need to be there? That's all. Alright. So, like, it looks like this last year, we haven't spent a ton there. We we did obviously, I remember us react. I do remember that. Osha is back. It was funny. Eric gave us a briefing on it, And, you know, it was one of these things where the the line that we got was the ocean inspectors basically live to find something, and they could find almost nothing. And we had very little to do. It was actually really gratifying. It's Yes.
Not all the towns fared that well. Let me tell you. Right. Exactly.
Anywhere because they were in Salem also. They surprised us in Salem too. Yeah. Yeah. They were everywhere.
Yep. We did surprisingly well, all things considered. If you get a surprise, in fact, inspection like that. So no. That was very, very good. And I'm not ripping anybody. I'm just looking at the spreadsheet and thinking to myself, you know, is there a couple thousand bucks here that doesn't need to be there? So that's all my that's all that's it. We've spent about $500. So
No. Listen. I I understand. Yeah. I totally understand it. On the membership, dollars 75. We left that flat. That's basically for membership fees here and there. There was some money taken out of that to send one of the members to Tree Warden School out of that, but that was before I got here. So I don't know why it was taken out of that, not something else, but that again, that was before me. Maybe we had some money built up there because it looks like we spent
we wildly overspent that this year. Yes. And it looks like my guess and Lisa can correct me on this, but my guess would be
we built up some money somewhere else, and they used it for that. Okay. Again, this was all this I saw this when I got here. So this was put into place sometime in July, August, September, I believe. Mhmm. Alright. Yes. Moving on for the snow removal account. That's 4307.
That three orange thing was in last July, but I don't know why they put it there unless they just didn't have anywhere else to put it. I don't I don't know. Yeah. I I don't know either. I kinda question that. I would think it would be under training or something, but I guess there's no training here. Unfortunately,
that's an Eric question. Eric's gone. So we'll have to try to figure it out. But Okay. Sorry. So back to snow removal, which seems rather topical since we've I I have to imagine we've blown that budget this year. Yes. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Yes.
For We've gotten working for too long. For the overtime, which you guys know we're way over, again, that's $23.09 50. I would estimate another 3% for the negotiated contract. Ice maintenance building, that's more the pallet of sand, excuse me, salt that we buy through LESCO. It actually went up per bag. I had usually there's 48 bags on a pallet and I can only buy 46 because we only had $600 in that. Wouldn't
Are we even getting it? I mean, we had this I issue with
got it in the fall, the bag. So everybody was out, and we had plenty of it. So we use that for the, you know, the town hall. We use it, you know, for the water. This is this is a different category. Totally different. On our big pile. Yeah. No. Well, that's a small pile now. Yeah. I was this close to putting that stuff in our trucks almost. It got down that bad. You laughed. A lot of contractors were doing that because they weren't to the
contractors. Because the state in town got a delivery and they're like, they're coming next week. They're coming next week. Yeah,
yeah, I got the same thing. The supplies, that's our plow blades. Right now it's at $4,800 I'm asking for $6,500 The reason for that is, don't know if you guys know this, run two blades on the big trucks. One's a carbide and then one's a steel blade in front of that. So we run two blades. The carbide actually, what it does is it takes longer to wear it down. Carbide is through the roof right now. For some reason, China's one of the biggest suppliers of it, and they're mad at us allegedly. This is what my suppliers are telling me. And they're mad about these tariff things, and they're saying, Oh, the heck with you? The heck with us? Oh, the heck with you? So we know you need carbide, we're to give it to you at a premium. That's what that is. Sanding equipment, 800. I'm leaving that at 800. That's basically for like Uh-oh. That's basically for We have a couple like sanders that we use and fix. Sand, the road sand, 2,500. I'm leaving that flat at $2,500. Although if you guys have noticed because we were very low on salt, I ended up mixing sand salt. So you guys probably see old school sand on the road. I actually ended up using that line item to mix sand salt. The salt budget, 68,000. I'm leaving that flat at the moment just because it's not that we didn't have the money, it's just we weren't able to get it. I was very close to running out a couple times and that's a story for another time.
I'm going to do something different this year. I'm going to try to get two vendors so we don't have this problem again. At least if worst case scenario, because Morton is our vendor right now, if we can't get it through them, then I'll have another supplier to at least get something. Meals at $850 I'm asking for 100 more. As you guys know, you've been out to a restaurant lately, everything's through the roof. So what that is, per the contract, when we plow snow, the guys work over a certain amount, they actually get a breakfast and they get a dinner. So a lot of times what we do is we have places that'll actually feed us. We go to Shady Glen for like breakfast in the morning, For a meal at night, we'll go to Andover Pizza, and it comes out of that. And that's basically about it in a nutshell.
Do you want the price of what the overtime was and the salt was? Does that help? Sure. No, I don't. The
overtime right now is at 46,000 and we budgeted 23. So we're over 23,000.
So that's something that, you know, brings me to something I was thinking about for later, which comes down to, you know, what do we have in our fund balances and what do we have in our contingency and everything. I mean, I don't know how we're doing in the rest of the budget. Sometimes we come in under some places and we can shift some money around. But if we can't, then that's contingency money right there.
Eric, how much do you plan on buying of salt? Because your salt is only at 35 and you budgeted 68. Are you gonna buy more for next year before June 30? Oh, yes. I'm gonna go. I wanna
What I have left isn't even going to fill our salt shed. I'd like to fill that salt shed so we're good going into the next year. So I have an order right now. I couldn't get the treated salt, so I have an order in for white salt. I'm expecting one more truckload and then you'll see the bills for that. That's going to be around $17. And then I have another order of 200 ton for the treated salt coming in, and that'll eat the rest of that 68,000 up. Okay.
As the Board of Finance, and again, I know, like I said, my overtime is way out there. I'd like to have that salt shed filled before going into next season. Because if we have to fill it starting right our season off, that doesn't end well for everybody.
Yeah. No no question. And the reason, I mean, the reason I ask about these things is Mhmm. Every year, this town has a $50,000 contingency fund. So far, we have we have a weird thing on the on the spreadsheet of $2,000, but we we actually haven't tapped it at all this year. Typically, in a good year, we don't tap it at all. Now in a lot of years, what'll happen is we'll have an overage somewhere, but somewhere else, we'll have something coming under, and we can move money around and plug the hole. I don't know if that's the case this year, and it's important because when we go to our capital budget, which is something I really wanna focus on soon with this board. You know, if we have $50,000 in contingency we're not gonna use, the answer is to roll it. Whereas if you look at our budget spreadsheet right now, it has us loading another $50,000 into it like we spent it. And and that's not that's not right. That's not how it should work. But if we are, in fact, tens of thousands of dollars over in in public works overtime because of the snowstorms, we don't have anywhere to pull that from, then that is gonna come from contingency. And and we need to know that. So, Lisa, we gotta we gotta figure that out sooner rather than that.
What Did you see in the the audit, Rob? Did you see in the audit that unassigned fund amount is in that audit does list it? So but, I mean, that's 01/30/2025. 06/30/2025.
Sorry. Did I did I say January? Yeah. I meant June. I'm like, where'd you get that from?
Yeah. Out of out of nowhere. 06/30/2025. So, obviously, many months ago.
And then things have happened since then. Yep. But it'll be determined that'll be determined, you know, with what you have left from this year, adding or subtracting from from the unassigned. Contingency, you know, contingency, I've only ever seen it as it's actually an account that we put $10,000 in. We don't put it in capital. We don't reserve it. Right? That's what I've ever done.
So Oh, yeah. I mean, we always have we have 50,000 in there every any given year. And, usually, we don't use it. Usually, we roll it over. Look. I went through all the fund balances in that audit. Okay. I looked at them all. There are some ones that I have picked out that I really wanna talk about at some point. Terms of where they were then and what's happened in the last eight months, where we are now, where we're headed, you know, that kind because there's there are a few funds in there where there's significant dollars that it's not clear to me that need to necessarily be there, and and we should talk about them. But
when it comes to an overage like this, when it comes to I mean, we know this can happen. We always know this can happen. You get some snowstorms. It happens. Where we're gonna pull that from in the past, what would happen is our time administrator come to us and say, look it. We're way over on snow removal over time. But guess what? We're under here, here, here, and here, and we can make it whole. I don't know if that's true this year. We need to sort that because, otherwise, we're pulling from contingency. Right? And then it affects our capital budget. So that's what I'm getting at. We need to sort out because, obviously, we have to pay those bills, and we're well over we're well over the budgeted amount. So we need to find that from somewhere else.
One of the things I've I've noticed, like, just when I got here with the overtime, I again, I I don't know if you guys know this. I worked for Coventry for twenty two years. So I kind of knew the guys when I started in Coventry here and there were only three guys. There was a foreman and two workers in a nutshell. So now there's myself, which I don't get overtime, but now there's four workers. Oh, gotcha. So I wonder if the if that number reflects the four guys or does that number reflect
past years where we only had two or three people? No. We've had four for a bit now, I think. Okay.
I I guess I don't know if fully I think we're fully adjusted to that. I I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure we've been at that higher level of staffing. Okay. Okay. But, you know, we got seconds. What what it boils down to is we got a couple of ridiculously mild winters. Yes.
Yep. Doss are happy. Oh, no. I know. So we got away with we got away with a lot. And then we got this winter, which was more normal from, at least, normal for me anyway, from my age. And all of a sudden, ruh roh. But, no, we we went through a stretch there three, four years where I I feel like we we got hardly any stuff. What's up, Liz? You're you're muted. The other thing that happened too.
Yep. So the other thing, and now that I just unmuted myself, I maximized my view and I can't get back to what I wanted to hold on. Exit full screen. The other thing I was thinking, and maybe Lynn can help me with this. Did I say Lynn? Yep. Lisa. Lisa. Sorry. I keep wanting to say that, and I know it's wrong. That's okay. What is our what is our year to date on the community center? Because I'm concerned that we're over budget in that as well. Let me look. Which number in particular are you looking for? It's, it's, well, in salaries.
It's in the salary part. So 4214 community center, not the senior center? Yes. 4214. Correct. Okay. We're over 13,000 in salary for wages director.
One thing I will say is if we are set with Eric, we could let him go. We could. We could. I just wanted to point out Is the Does anyone have anything further for Eric?
Nothing to do budget wise. Just a curiosity question. What's the difference between treated salt and untreated, and why do we use one or the other, and how much more is treated than untreated?
All right, as it stands right now, treated salt is what we're buying it for is almost $10 a ton more. Regular white salt, untreated salt, only works down to maybe about 18 degrees. The treated salt, it depends on what type you have. Some of it can work down to like six degrees. The green stuff, the clear lane, the stuff that really rot your car out, that'll work down to like minus 10. All our trucks, I don't know if you guys know this or not, road temp sensors in them. So when we're driving around, we can actually look and it'll tell us the temperature of the road. That helps a lot because then we know what type of salt and material we need and how much material we need to put out.
Speaking of somebody whose suspension got completely rotted out by salt, I actually am not sad about us buying the old stuff. I gotta tell you, wrecked my car. Oh my god. I had all I had three control arms go. It was bad. So hey. And, honestly, it makes a lot of sense if we can't get the other stuff. I I understand why we buy the the high test, but if you're not how often do we get to six degrees?
Well, again, would you would be amazed. It's it's crazy. You wouldn't think it. And I'm gonna tell you guys this, and it's it's nuts. The the frost in a road is thicker than the frost in your in your yard because the frost in your yard this winter was under two feet of snow. The road was probably like four feet down. And what happens is the road actually holds the cold more. So if it's 35 degrees and it's raining, the road temperature could be 30 degrees and you're sliding all over the place. So it's a weird balance.
That's how you get those frost eaves and everything. I mean, Townsend Road's a bit of a mess right now. I I noticed it. Town Hall is horrible, unfortunately.
It's coming back down, but it's not lucky on Gilead, but I think Townsend took a beating this year. Yes. It did.
But the the white salt, what some what some towns will do is they'll actually start running that and, like, sometimes you get, like, late November storms and or warm storms, so we'll use that, then they transition over. And then like now where it's starting to warm up a little bit, we transition back to the white salt. The problem with us is our barn really isn't big enough to accommodate that because this winter we went right in the cold. There was no, as you guys know, oh just a little taste of nothing. No, once it snowed, it didn't stop and it got brutally cold and that was it. So if we had half our barn full of white salt, we might have been in trouble. What I did was, as the white salt came in, I mixed it with our treated salt, so it gave it a little more sticking power to melt the stuff.
The last big storm that we had, because we were so low, I initially went out with treated salt, and then I had the guys run sand salt only where they needed to. And then in the very end of the storm, we ran treated salt again. And what that did was it broke up all the snowpack. Typically, can run the the salt throughout the whole storm, but we just didn't have it.
I mean, just speaking for myself, my road, I think you guys did fine. Honestly. It all seemed pretty it seemed like it worked.
Oh, the guys I'm I'm very lucky to have a good crew. There's no doubt about it. They they did extraordinary this winter.
So alright. Does anyone have any further questions for Eric? So, you know, if if not, I'd like to let him go.
Thank you, Eric. You know what? Can I ask one more can I ask one more quick question?
I know last year or in prior years, there was discussion about the guys being able to do maintenance, some maintenance and work on the trucks. Is that still the case you know, under your supervision or Yes. How does that
So me coming out of Coventry, I was a mechanic there for many years as well. So I understand the workings of all the stuff. There's a young kid there, Zach Zito. He is a phenomenal mechanic, and we're very lucky to have him. He actually worked on the same thing, the big trucks and all that other stuff. So he knows those trucks in and out as well. So we can do a lot of work in house with the bigger trucks. But there's times where we just don't have the software, and we have to call Freightliner or Peterbilt, or bring our smaller trucks to Dubois, They have to read the codes and everything like that. Sometimes they can read them, we pay them, and then we can fix it. Other times we just don't have the tools or equipment to maintain it.
Okay, great. Thank you so much. This was very informative.
Alright, Eric. Thank you very much. I just have one more question, and, Robert, if you don't mind. You guys did you guys I I also sent, like, a, like, a capital thing over.
Yes. Or is that a different meeting altogether? I I honestly, I glanced at it. I really haven't had time to digest it. Okay. Then that's fine. I don't wanna gum stuff up. No. It's fine. No. No. That's actually really important, though, because I keep banging on about our capital budget. So fair enough. That's something we have to talk about because I don't think the public works equipment fund has much money in it. Oh. And so, you know, looking at the audit, there's not much there. Okay.
Again, I just want this on your guys' radar just so Absolutely. If something happens, you guys know, say, hey. You know, there's nothing worse than being blindsided, and I'd rather you guys know about this upfront than, you know, if something did go bang, at least you'd be like, oh, yeah. You know, he did say something about it. No. First of all, excellent. Second,
when you have time, when you have the ability, I think it'll be good to bring that before CIP. Okay.
To give us your so it's just sort of your your capital plan. We know what equipment that you think is aging and might need replacement. And and then we need to look at what's in that fund because, again, looking at the last audit, I just don't think there's very much money in there. So if we are looking at some expenditures, we need to really think about what we need to load in there. Okay.
Now Okay. Was just anything that is that is I guess, the the the one thing I'll ask before I let you go Yeah. Is is there anything that's flashing red? Like, disaster, like, we need to do that right now. Yes,
as a matter of fact, there's two of them, and then there's two of a wish list that I have. But one of them is our fuel management system. That does is, and Lisa knows this from her last job and I've had this conversation with her, we're working on basically a dial up system to track our fuel. It probably takes me a good almost two hours to get the information out to track our fuel. It's basically dial up in a nutshell. The parts are obsolete for it. And if this thing goes boom, I'm going to have to put a mailbox out at our fuel pump with a clipboard, and everybody's going to have to write down what truck they put in, what the mileage is, and what the, you know, how much fuel they put in. You have to remember too that the buses also chew off this along with the fire department. It's not just public works. That's it. Again, the system was put in, I believe in like 2002. I've had a problem with it already. I had to call service station equipment to come out, and the kid that came out to look at it said he remembers playing with a system like this when he was in fourth grade.
So there's also on each piece of equipment and each vehicle, there's a key system for it. So you actually take this plastic key, you insert it, you put a code in, and it tells you so they know who who's pumping fuel and what vehicle it's going in. The there's spare keys, but we do not have the code reader as it's to to to program these keys. As it stands right now, the buses are running on one key. If that key goes down, that's it. They're gonna have to we're gonna have to put it in an override mode, and we're gonna have to do the clipboard system. And you know how accurate that'll be.
I can say I did like that system, and he's right, there's fobs for it and there's codes for everything, we did the same. We took the whole oil tank out, replaced the pumps and everything, so it was a lot more than the 12,000. But I did like the system. It's a GIR system that I used and it was very helpful trying to allocate cost at the pumps.
Well, as you know, it's a cloud based system too. So it would go right to your computer or your assistant treasurer. I wouldn't even, I could just look to see what I got. DATCO, I believe, is our fuel, is our people that run the buses. It could go right to them. So it wouldn't even, we could see what they're doing, but it would just bypass a lot of stuff. But again, this system is not good. So I just like to keep that on your guys' radar. The other thing too is, we actually have two buildings at our public works facility. I don't know if you guys know that. If you're looking at our building from the road to the right, there's like a cold storage building. The roof on that is basically gone.
It's going to need a replacement. We're at a tipping point right now where if we don't replace the roof, then we're going to have to tear that piece of the building down. I did get a price for that. I didn't get three bids. Again, this is just pricing for put it on your guys' radar. I got a price to replace that roof minus any plywood for like $27. The fuel management system, I apologize, I'm going go back to that. That was about 12, that was almost 12.5 to replace that system. And there's a $400 charge, I think, for teach us and to do for a cloud based fee or something like that.
But those are my two those are my two biggest ones. I have two more, but it's just more of a wish list. One is like a small pickup, and another one is a heat pump for the garage that we're in just because electric is through the roof. It's just what we have right now, like I was telling you with our AC system from 1985 and our electric heat. It's just very inefficient way to to cool that heat and cool that part of the building. So again, just things that keep on your guys' radar if something does go boom. All. I want that. And Lisa,
there's a fund. When I look at the audit, there's something called equipment reserve fund. Is that in fact our public works
equipment? I was just looking here to to looking at my part of it, but I mean, I guess it could be $20 not fired. You know what I mean? There's there's
there's a lot of funds, and I'm trying to get my mind around which ones are the ones we need to be looking at. And one of them is equipment reserve fund. And end of the year so, again, 06/30/2025, $13,000.20 $13,028 left in it. If that's the if that's the fund that I'm thinking of, right, what he's talking about, I mean, there's not enough money in there. Now when we look at our spreadsheet, when we look at we have a a we we call it something different on the spreadsheet. We call it public works equipment fund. And the last few years, we've loaded a $125,000 into that annually. You're talking in capital. Right? Yeah. Again, I'm looking at capital. Capital is capital is really important. Capital is a million dollars a year, give or take. Every year. Right. Correct. So I I really wanna look at that hard this year given what a difficult year it is and what I'm seeing in the audit.
So I I, you know, I look at this and I say, okay. Look. We have some needs. I wanna make sure we're covered. And and I look at the audit. And some of these funds, I have some real questions about whether we need to put more money in them because they have money in there. But this one, if equipment reserve fund is the one that I think it is, if I've got it right because there's also a town garage fund, so this is a little confusing. There's an equipment reserve fund, and there's a town garage fund.
But now you see my plate. That's a little confusing. Oh my gosh. Uh-huh. It's in queue. Would really like to the bonus in in two QuickBooks. That's the problem. It's in two QuickBooks. Yeah. 13,000
in one of them, and you've got, 27 oh, not quite 27 in the other. So you've almost 40,000 there. And then the the question becomes, when we we try to tally that up with our spreadsheet, our spreadsheet doesn't actually match specifically to those funds. And Mhmm. How are we handling that? So he he don't we have our public works director telling us we have these two needs for x dollars. Okay. We need to plan for that, but I also need to know what the heck we have in these funds. So and, you know, with all due respect, then you know why why I'm asking these things. So, you know, the more we can get on that, the better because we need to sort that. I know we have that root. Like, that roof's been an issue for years. A long time. Like, I I'm not even questioning the need. I know we've got our salt and sand issues and stuff from from these snowstorms. So, you know, I I just wanna make sure that we know what we have
so that then we can say, okay. If we need x, we need y to put in. And right now, I don't feel like we know that an that that that x. So that's where where I'm at. And, Erica You're correct. And I do our best, you know, to get you guys what you need. Yep. I'm just saying, you know, right now where we are, we don't know enough right now to make the decision. So we'll get back to you on that. But thank you for I I appreciate the rundown, you know, giving us I I always want that heads up. And I always want that and to the sense that you can bring that to CIP and tell us because I'm I'm the board of finance member who is part of the capital improvement committee.
When we talk about that stuff, it's really helpful to to say, look. Next five years, this is what we're looking at. We got an ancient piece of equipment. We've got this. We've got that. And then we can plan. And then we can take it to board of finance. It's the process, and it really helps. No. I understand.
Again, I've been in a couple towns. I understand it doesn't happen overnight. Very communicative and I like to at least put these two things I know that are going to need attention like sooner than later, I'll say. So at least if it if our fuel system did go bang, you guys aren't going, hey. You never told us. No surprises. No surprises. We like that. That's good.
No. Tell us obviously, tell us sooner rather than later. So thank you. Does anyone have further questions for Eric before we let him go? Liz, Kim, anybody? I'm all set. Liz, you're good. I'm good. I'm all set. Thank you. Alright. Eric, thank you. Thank you very much. So, you know, guys, just back to that that issue of the capital funds. Something I sat down, I spent a couple hours today going through the audit, and I accept that it by the way, it's preliminary. Right? This isn't the final audit, but this is the draft. I don't expect these figures are gonna change dramatically or anything, but, you know, this is what we're looking at. And there are some fun balances here that I think we should look at because I know we're we're in a tough budget year. We're in a rough year. If you take the current ask from the town, from the school, and from the regional school, and you plug it all in, and then you keep our capital where it was last year, we're looking at a 9.5% tax increase. Just that's a lot. I'm looking at these funds, and I'm like, okay. So I look at things. And now some of these funds, I know between the end of last fiscal year, again, 06/30/2025,
that's months and months ago. I know things have changed. For instance, the fire equipment fund. We had $435,000 in there. However, I know because I was on this board that we approved almost $240,000 in spending from that account for their new breathing apparatus and their kitchen, repairs. Right? So if I'm my math is correct, bear with me. I am literally backing this out on a calculator. The fire equipment fund has a $196,000 left in it, I think. And we know, of course, that we have to spend a $137,000 a year to pay for the fire truck. That's that's a lease that's locked in. We have to spend that. We have, according to the spreadsheet, according to the sorry, the audit, you know, was $425,000 in the multiuse building fund. That fund
was originally intended to help us build a community center. Right? But we threw the ARPA funds at that. So it raises the question, do we need $425,000 in that fund? Or or rather Do we need to keep contributing? Spent this year? Because I know there's some more stuff that needs to happen at the community center, so don't get me wrong. Did we spend some more? What that real what is that number really? But that said, do we need all that money in there? As in and let me just finish this because I I got a couple more, and then and then by all means, go ahead.
Yep. Yep. Road improvement fund and town aid road fund. We have two road funds apparently. I don't think I fully realized that in the past. According to the audit, at the end of last fiscal year, we had $323,000 in the road improvement fund and a 117 almost a $118,000 in the Town Aid Road Fund, which is $440,000.
Now How much how much in the road improvement? 300 and what? $3.23 Okay. 9. Thank you. $3.23
$0.00 9. Okay. And then $1.17 $9.00 6 in Town Aid Road Fund. Put those together, it's about a 100 440. I'm rounding. Okay. So now less expenditures, of course, since then, but also those money you we loaded money into those too or at least into the the road improvement fund, and then we get town aid road money from the state. So I've always been under the impression that we basically spent whatever came in on road work. What if if that's not quite so, if we do in fact have 400 plus thousand dollars built up there, we should consider what we're doing in terms of loading into that fund. Similarly, the Bunker Hill Road Bridge fund. According to this audit, we had almost $440,000 in that sitting at the end of last year. And my recollection is that the Bunker Hill Bridge, number one, it's a it's a completely it's one of those things where we had to lay out money, but we got all back. And two Did we get it back yet? Project's done.
No, Robert. Yeah. Robert, can I can I talk to Yeah? Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. So what is worth what's happening here is the money that we had to front load to do Parker Bridge not Parker Bridge. Bunker Hill. Bunker Bunker Hill. You get reimbursed that. When that job's done, Long Hill comes along. We have to have the money up front to do Long Hill. So as the money comes back, that's to do a multimillion dollar Long Hill Bridge, which starts this spring. This money isn't just extra money laying around by any means. Okay. Okay. As far as the road fund goes, Robert, let me just continue for a Yeah. As far as let me continue with that one. So what happens then is when that job gets done, there's culverts in town that it cost over $1,000,000 a piece to do.
There's Lake Road, Bosola, there's Bear Swamp, there's Hutchinson, there's a whole bunch of culverts that are failing that when Long Hill's done, the money that comes back to us will do those culvert projects. Okay? So that's how Eric had that all set up to work so we can do these jobs. As far as the road fund goes, the reason we've been funding that all these years is it costs over a million dollars to do one mile of road. Mean, maybe you saw the road here, Eric. What does it cost to pave a road? We already have our roads in some kind of decent condition, but they're going to keep on failing and failing and failing and wearing out. And you don't want to suddenly wake up when they say, all the roads are shit again. So you're building up a road fund so that you can take care of these roads. I have a 110%
in favor of us continuing to hammer away on our roads. Like, we've made progress. It's so good, and I want so much more of it. I just wanna know what we have versus what was coming down the pike in spending. Vis a vis Bunker Hill Road, fair enough. We have another we might just wanna rename the fund. Know? The reason I bring this up, though, Bill, is this. Bridge and culvert's a separate fund. Right? We got, according to the audit, half $1,000,000 in that. Now I don't, for a moment, think half $1,000,000 in bridge and culverts is enough. But if you had if you had and this is my thinking, and I'm just gonna preface this by saying what Bill said complicates this. If you had $440,000 sitting in a fund that you could close out and you had 420 $520,000 sitting on their fund. Put them together, it's almost a million dollars. It's 955. However, we have that other that other culvert or rather bridge that we have to do that is a it's another one of those Bunker Hill projects, right, where we lay it out and they give it back to us. Right. Okay. So fair enough. The Bunker Hill Bridge money
probably has to roll over into that. Okay. That's what the plan I'm not you know, again, fine. I I don't have a problem with that. I just wanted to ask the question. In terms of bridge and culverts, we do have half $1,000,000 built up. Great. If we have the bridge project we're gonna embark upon is like Bunker Hill, where we'll lay it out, but we'll get it back. Then we should think about when we plan for bridges and culverts. Ultimately, we get that money back and we can load it in to that bridges. Mean, I would think the natural place for that money to go, right, would be to bridge the culverts once we're done. And I don't know how long that's gonna take. So fair enough. And, like, that's not this budget year, obviously. As for the road money, again, I don't have any problem. I I wanna I wanna go like gangbusters on our roads. I would be thrilled if we could do even more roadwork than we do. The issue that I have is if we had you know, as you know, Bill, we put it about $400,000 a year into our road fund. Right? $3.85 last year. But usually, we try to shoot for 400. Right. But if we have between these two funds, 440 sitting there, then I ask the question, are we did we not spend it? And and this is where I need Lisa. This is where and there's everybody understand. I'm looking at audit that only gets us through 06/30/2025. It's eight months ago.
Right? So I'm looking at this, and I'm like, you know, I know we've spent some of this money.
Right. Yeah. Because I'm looking into Bunker Hill and what's in QuickBooks that I'm trying to understand, and there's been a lot of activity in Bunker Hill. I bet there has because we're we're putting money out, and they're giving us money back. Yep. No doubt.
My main quest so my main to to focus this, Lisa. Couple questions. One is the two road funds. I'm a little confused. One is Town Aid Road, which seems to be the fund. I assume that's the fund where the state gives us money and we plunk it down into that because that's where we're gonna put it. We have to find a place to put it, so we put it there. And then we have road improvement fund, which I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, is when we as a town vote to say in a given budget year to put $400,000 towards our roads, that's where that money goes. Is that right?
I'm thinking that and we always did that. We always stuck 400,000, and we would use depending on the public work director, we would use some years would roll over a couple years worth, but in the most recent year that I was there, we went through, we were down pretty low to get rid of all of that. Now the first quest, what was the first, the first fund you were talking about again?
Sorry. Back to the roads. We have two road funds, road improvement fund and town aid road fund.
And Town Road sounds like a grant. It does. And I don't understand that that either. It's in a separate account here. We never did that. You just put it up in revenue. And then when you, you know, you used it towards your roads.
Right. We have never we have never put our town aid road money in revenue. Now why we didn't?
It should write what I always did, I put it when those governmental
those governmental revenues. That was listed right in there with those. It it it it honestly, I think it should be there. But the point is, according to our audit, at the end of the last fiscal year, we had almost a $118,000 sitting in that fund. You would expect it to be spent. But, apparently, at end of the last year, it wasn't. So the only reason I asked the question I mean, this isn't I'm not trying to be an urge about this, but if we have a $118,000 sitting in a fund for roadwork, we ought use it for roadwork. Should we should we transfer it, you know, or or spend it,
you know, on our roadwork? Think you can transfer anywhere.
Yeah. And then and then has to be for roads. The road improvement fund, according to last audit, at the end of the fiscal year of last year, we had $323,000 in it. So here's let me back up and explain my mindset. I always of the, was always of the belief that basically every dollar we threw at Rhodes got spent. You know? We we have an infinite amount that we could spend on our Rhodes, frankly, because of how far behind we were. So I just sort of assumed if we put $400,000 in our budget in a given fiscal year, we would spend that money like that. And it doesn't seem to have happened.
And so that's where I think to myself, all right, hold on a moment. If we actually have 400,000 plus sitting in funds, I'm not against I I still wanna fund our roads. But what do we need to load in this year is a little bit of a different question than if I thought those funds were zeroed out. You see what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. Totally get what you're saying. I mean, but what all I've ever seen is, yep, every year
might go from, like, $3.80 to $4.20, but every year, that's what was put into roads and it eventually got used. We had capital. We could leave capital there and not touch it for two years. You had to touch it within two years, it goes back in general. Was our policy and our charter. I don't know what it is here. I haven't had a chance to dig into all that.
But they pretty much because they figured roads always needed improvements, always needed repairs, that that's what think We're always it always feels like we're we're just catching up. So don't get me wrong on that. I I am a 100% supportive of
getting our roads in order. But, Rob, what what I think they're trying to do is they're trying to build a road fund because Right. $400,000 is nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing. Know it's of dollars to do one mile of road. I know. What they're trying to do is they're trying to build up every year and put money into the road fund. So when you had to pave a road or miles and miles and miles. So it's not like you're gonna use the 400,000 every year. It's a road fund that you're building up so that you can do
big road projects. Yeah. I I don't disagree with that, Bill. I just I think I had a different concept in my head, and I I wanted to just talk about it. But, you know, I I don't again, I'm with you. I know there are roads in this town that when we get through some of the other work where we have to just rebuild a road, and it's super expensive. And I I know that. So, like, again, I'm not I'm not criticizing. I'm just trying to sort out what the heck we have
and then what we need. Well, do you I mean, I could get a bill, yeah, from from roadwork. It would be one road. It would be 299,000.
And that's one road. You could spend a million bucks a mile if you, you know, if you're doing it right, you know, really, the the full rebuild asphalt, I think I mean, they walked us through this a couple years ago. It's staggeringly expensive. Yeah. So don't get me wrong. I'm not against it. I wanna figure out what we have. Yep. Multi use building fund. You know, again, do we have 425,000 in that fund? Because that's what the audit says from last year.
Not sure it's gonna change. I think it looks pretty I'm not gonna guarantee it, but I'm looking in one of the QuickBooks, and it's pretty close to that. Whereas the roads, I'm not seeing as much as you're talking about, but I don't see town town a road. The only town part that I road improvement I see is like 2 something. $2,200
something. Yeah. We may have spent again, this is it. This is the issue. Right? So June 30. You know? We've spent money. Fine. And I I'm all for us. Yep. I want us to do that road work. If we if we spend every penny of this, I'm good. That's great. We need that. But the multiuse building fund, that one, I I keep going back to because I'm like, wait a minute. That was originally intended for the the community center, and we built that. Now I know we've had a few things we still gotta do there, but I don't know that we have $425,000
worth of work to do there. I wonder, though. I don't know how they apply the revenue because didn't some of that most of that get paid for with ARPA? ARPA. So I don't know. Took
a million dollar almost a million dollars of ARPA funds and built that building. Yep. That building still needs a couple things. It still needs some kitchen work. Kitchen. Yep. Just kitchen work. And needs and and there's discussion about the Ground Floor the the basement ground Floor level. That said, the reason I bring it up is 425 is a big number. I don't think the kitchen is anywhere near the even, you know, even so we have to consider as a board. Do we need that much money in there, or should we take, say by the way, this is a completely made up number. Should we take $200,000 out of that and put it somewhere else?
But can you do that? Because I like I said, I haven't we you would have to have a vote on that, I thought. I don't know what you're trying We would absolutely have to vote on that. Okay. I was gonna say because it is dedicated to that. And the other thing I wanted to say is We we can do fund balance transfers, though. We we we do have that authority. Let her talk from it. That's I I wanted to say I don't know if the funds are applied or not applied to that balance. That's why I want to make sure that balance is correct.
Fair enough, Lisa. We should run that down. Yeah. But I I
know you want to use whatever you can for revenue. I I get that. I just wanna be careful that we're doing it properly. That's all. 100% agree with you. I do not believe there's a penny of ARPA money in that fund. I don't think that's how that worked at all. No. And it's okay if there is because
it it's like that's where it should be, but now you still have to send it on that building. That's Correct. Then it's then it's earmarked. No. No. No. No. Yeah. I I really don't think that's how it went down. Okay. Alright. Yeah. I just haven't had a chance to look. That said, I am open to the possibility I'm wrong, and we should run it down. The other ones are, like, you know, again, fire equipment, I think we at the at the last audit, again, $435,700 in there, but I know that we spent about $2.40 this year on their breathing air apparatus and kitchen repairs. So if my math is right, we've got a 196 left. And I know the fire department, of course, we always wanna try to stay ahead of the next thing and the next thing. We know we have a $65,000 compressor request coming from them, that sort of thing. So when we talk about what we load into the fire equipment fund, if we got if I'm right, we have $1.96 in there, and we have 65,000 coming from a compressor and assuming we approve it, you know, then we know what we've got. We can say to ourselves, okay.
We have $1.30
What did you say you show in that in the fund?
So according to last audit, at the end of the last fiscal year Yeah. In the fire equipment fund, $4.35 700. Right? But I know from being on this board, we approved the expenditure for, new breathing apparatus. $290,000, yeah, has come out since July. Right. So what I oh, $2.90?
Yeah. There's an ad there's a fire equipment payment that came out to M and T equipment lease in September. Uh-huh. And then there's $163,000 that came out to municipal emergency services for the breathing, Right. I It was not $400,000
Rob, because you're looking at June and we spent money. We but we put money in too. We put $1.37 in. So the $1.37 should cover the lease payment. There's also another 7,000 and another 600.
Right. Good. What I what I was getting to is this. The $1.37 that we load in every year Yeah. That's locked in. That's the lease payment. Right. I'm not gonna touch that. Right? The the the no question. That has to pay for the firetruck. Mhmm. So you're gonna see that going out every year. $1.37, I believe, is the number. What I had in my notes, and clearly, it's not quite right, is I had $2.21 $9.92 for the breathing apparatus, and I had 1700386 for their kitchen repair work. So that came to 239378. What? 240. Alright. Let's just run up. That's what I had. So if we have more than that going out and it's not the fire truck,
then I'm missing something and okay. Well, what is that? I haven't had a chance to look. What is that M and T equipment lease? That's not the fire truck, or are these partial payments? Well, how much was the M and T thing? $120,000.31 15.
Sounds like the fire truck, but I thought it was $1.37.
And that's what it looks like we put in there every day or every year. Yes. And like I said, I haven't had time to look, but do we not also put something in there for like gear and hose every year and that's added to the one thirty to one twenty. I don't know. I don't even I haven't even found the contract is probably in the town manager's office. Yeah. So I don't have this stuff.
No. No. I hear you. And this is what I'm looking at. I mean, look. My recollection, Lisa, that that payment sounds like the fire truck. Okay? Yeah. That $1.25, that sounds like the fire truck. Mhmm. Sounds like the lease because we leased it. We couldn't afford to buy it. We leased it. Anyway, all I'm trying to say and and I'm not trying to hold my this is like scribbles. Come come on. I'm not trying to hold this up as like, guys, this is gospel. This is what we have in there. I'm simply trying to say that just as somebody trying to sort out what we've got, where we are, where we're going for capital, we gotta sort this out. And so this is why I asked you, Lisa. This is why I've been emailing you and and this and that. And I'm gonna let it go now because, frankly, these numbers are all fuzzy. Mhmm. Right?
Yes. My numbers I don't ask any of you to take my numbers and put any real stock in them. I'm I'm just saying this is me sitting there with the last audit and going through what I remember we agreed to spend, what we agreed to put in, and trying to net it out, but it doesn't mean that's reality. When we go So what do you say million dollar capital budget, we have to know what we're starting from. That's Yeah.
And and in my previous job, I'll tell you, it this was done a long time ago, but this has been like a circle. And there's due to, and there's due from, and there's QuickBooks 21, and there's QuickBooks 23, and I'm trying to circle around, gather around the wagons, and figure out what is in there. I am closer. I'm definitely closer. What did you say left was left in fire? What you think is left in fire?
Oh, I mean, again, this is I mean, we've already blown this because you already told me it's wrong, but one ninety six four twenty one? Well, this is saying something about a little over 200.
But, again, I wanna look, you know, and see if everything's been covered, where the one thirty seven was entered this year, because I I'm not sure
if I'm really let me just see let me just look at one thing. I mean, all I did, Lisa, is I went back through my emails and I pulled out the the quotes we had for the SBAC, which is the breathing apparatus Yeah. And the kitchen repair work. And I tallied them, and I subtracted them from what the balance was shown in the in the audit figure. Right? Figuring that the $1.37 net I thought the $1.37 represented the lease payment, so I just figured that was netted out. So I just ignored that. And I just said, okay. What do we have to start? Here are the two things I know we spent, and I get to $1.96.
Yep. And you know more than I do because I wasn't here last year.
And and I'm I'm I'm happy to to walk you through that. And then Wally is another resource. Do you know have you have you met with Wally at all? Only I what I saw in here last week. Okay. Yep. You know, he's another resource. But, yo, that's when I look at the fire equipment fund. Again, if there's one 96 in there, great. That's just a number we need to know. It doesn't mean that's enough.
Doesn't mean that I'm actually gonna cut something. I I just wanna know what's there. Yeah. Before we start Oh, I don't blame you. Yeah. I just wish there were more hours in the day.
Indeed. You know? And there's a couple other funds in there where I have question marks. There's just something called the nonrecurring reserve fund. I don't quite know what that is, but it's got $40,000 in it. 41,000. Our tree fund looked like we were underexpended. And, I'm I think we're just tremendous any of that left. Yeah. Great. Okay. That's that's good to know. If that's I gone don't think so.
Fantastic. But it doesn't look but what I'm looking at and, again, I can't verify this is correct or not, but it doesn't look like there's much left in. I was just looking to see what had a lot of activity and what didn't.
So that's what I'm looking at right now. No. The tree fund, we were doing great work with it. I have no problem. If we spent that money, it's been well spent. But, yeah, just looking at the audit. When you have $18,600 in it and then we loaded 50,000 in, did we spend it all? Apparently, we did. Okay. $68,000 in tree work. Cool. Fine. But then I I just wanna know that. That's all. So and, again, I mean, the reason I ask this is just because our capital budget is about a million dollar. Right, guys? When we look at what we're looking at for for this year's budget, I had Lisa whack up for me a spreadsheet that produces a number for what our tax increase looks like. That that spreadsheet normally is a tab in our budget spreadsheet, and I'd like to get it there. But right now, it's a separate spreadsheet. And we're at 9.5% with the town at what is it? Four and a half? Actually, it's a little more than four and a half now. Yeah. Four and a half for the town, 2.9 for Ram, and 10.9 for the school. All of this ends up at a 9.5 tax increase, which, I've been here since 2007. I I I don't think we've seen that. So I looked at it, I thought to myself, but I looked at the numbers.
And, I thought to myself, what does it take to get us to 5%? The answer is $450,000, basically. Four fifty five. Yeah. We're at nine fifty five increase. So if you get down to $4.50, you know, you take four fifty out of that, you get to a 5% tax increase, which is not a small thing in and of itself, but it's not 9.5. Where do we find it? I think we need to talk about AES.
Well, we have to talk about all of it. Yes. Well, we do. We do. We have to talk about what we wanna recommend there. We gotta talk about talk about that tonight. Because we yes. We do. That tonight. Okay. We do. And I and I'm not I'm not trying to dodge it. Okay. We have just just to be clear. So, again, we have if we look at hang on. Let me pull up the spreadsheet again really quick. Sorry. So the AES request to increase is $498,189. Right? Just about $500,000. RAM is one twenty. Can't really do anything specific there. We can hope it passes or fails, but it's one twenty. And then the town budget right now, as it stands, my understanding is the differential between last year and this year is $190,790. It's just shy of 200,000. So if you think about it in raw you know, in rough terms, you're looking at half $1,000,000 from the school and 200,000 you know, just shy of 200,000 from the town. And that's where that's somehow between those two, we get to find some money. We have to find something. Or we have to pull from fund balance, but I will say, and I've said this for years and years, if you do plug a hole with fund balance, you just have to understand it's a one shot deal. You haven't fixed the underlying issue. You you've cushioned the blow.
Right? If you take money from fund balance, if you if if we do have because if I'm reading the audit, right, we actually are pretty good on a in a good spot for from a savings perspective. But if you pull from say, we find some of these funds and we move some money around and we decide, hey. You know, we can use some of this money to cushion the tax bill. That's a one you fixed it for one year,
and then next year rolls around. So We're at a point where we'd wanna talk about.
It's only it only does so much. Like, I'm not against I I think everything's on the table, but we should recognize that when you have an operating, you know, operating budget versus capital, it's one thing to take money from to throw at a specific capital need that's done in one shot. It's another entirely when you take it and you throw it to plug a cap no. Sorry. An operating gap. Right? Yeah. I think I think, right now, we don't know enough about the details of the fund balance to even talk about that part of it. No. I I wanted to raise it, and then I'm I'm happy to let it go at this part, Liz. That's fine. I think we should come back to it on our next meeting.
Yep. I think that's entirely fair. I think we need to move on and talk about people's thoughts about school because tonight's the night we have to make a recommendation. Mhmm. So
to be clear, I'm just gonna throw it out there, everybody. I think you're all aware there have been duly legal opinions and this and that. My take on this is that we ought to make a recommendation. My take is that there are duly legal opinions. I don't wanna really deviate too far from what we did last year, which is what we we can we can tell the board of ed that we think something. If they go in and the budget fails and it bifurcates, last year, we then stepped in and we made a cut. My intention would be to follow that basic paradigm unless and until we get to a point where maybe there's a charter revision or a charter gets clearer. The way it is right now, you got dueling lawyers. I am not myself a lawyer, although I am very familiar with legal arguments. I have my opinions on who might be right and who might be wrong, but I am really reluctant at this point as a board to do more than recommend at this stage. So but that said, I think we are our job would be to make a recommendation. If you know, before we go to town meeting, before we go to town hearing, tonight, make a decision to say, alright. Look. You're asking for almost 11%, and here's what the board of finance thinks. I think that's perfectly reasonable to do. And we should talk about what as a group, what we wanna get down to. And this is where I bring up the spreadsheet, and I apologize. I kinda have it, you kinda don't.
I'm looking at the spreadsheet that Lisa gave me, because it's a draft form, and and it's got its issues. But, you know, what I'm seeing on this chart is that we're up in terms of what we need to raise by taxation, $955,000, and that's 9.5%. So if you just think about it, I mean, we have we we what we raised last year in taxation was just a hair over 10,000,000. So it's actually pretty clear math, pretty easy math. If you wanna get to 5%, you know what your number is. You wanna get to 6%, you know what your number is. So the question is, what number are we trying to get to, guys? What what number do we think this community can accept and absorb? Right?
I would like to know what people's thoughts are on the AES. I don't want to back into a certain number that will fit what the town budget is. I want us to discuss the AES budget because I'm not comfortable with it. I honestly don't think we know. We don't really know what those numbers add up to. We've all seen the presentation. The presentations that were given, even in front of the Board of Ed, were not specific enough so that the Board of Ed looks at the line level. Like we look at this line level, we know how much every employee makes, and we know how it all adds up, boom, and we know how our budget comes together. I asked this question in a Board of Ed meeting and they said, Oh no, we don't do that because that's why we hire Valerie, we trust her. So given the fact that last year they asked for 9%, and we got them down to 5%, I think. 5%. 5%. It was 8.8% and then 5%. Okay.
They still had an overage of about 5% last year. I have questions about the fact that we have no idea how much the taxpayers are paying for preschool. And people are so tired about hearing the preschool, but let me tell you my thoughts about preschool. I have no problems with preschool. Most schools in our area have two preschools and a waiting list. In November 2023, AES, or the Board of Ed went into an executive session to discuss the expansion of the preschool. They came out and voted to hire another teacher. There's no with really no explanation. So now we find out down the road, they've been expanding it to out of towners. And we've been told it's self sustaining. And I've been trying to get more information about how many students, how much money, and every time I ask, I get pushed back, I get shamed, I never get the actual number, And so then I find other ways to find the number, then I get shamed for finding other ways to get the number anyway. So we went from two preschool classes in 2023 to now four preschool classes. Like a typical class might have been between thirty and forty kids, 45, now we're up to 70. When does it stop? So people are coming to Andover because there's the cool program. They have a full
time preschool and a before and after school program right in one space. They're not coming here for any other reason other than that, in my opinion. I am afraid that we don't know how much of that is coming out of the general fund because even the Board of Ed doesn't know because they don't ask.
My understanding is that when you put together a preschool class, you look at how many Andover kids there are, and then you sprinkle in out of town kids to fill that room, where you might have a room where so let's say you have 15 kids in a room, and then you get to the point where you gotta get another room, and now you're down to 12 room. But that's not terribly efficient. So you say to yourself, well, I could put two or three out of towners in there, bring in some tuition, and it actually benefits us.
Is that not an acceptable answer? You know what, that might very well be the case and it might be true, but we are never privy to the data to understand that. Rob, you know that's true. We can't get the data. They won't show the data. Even the Board of Ed doesn't ask for the data. We don't know how much it's costing us for all those benefits for eight teachers that are in that classroom or in that preschool. And next year we're facing universal preschool. We have no idea how that's going to affect us as a town. So that is one of the issues that really bugs me. Seems to me we're teed up. If I sent over and said, would you send me a profit and loss statement for the preschool? Do do you think you could get that, Rob? A profit and loss statement?
I I'm not clear on okay. Again, let's back up for a second here. I mean, I I I go back to what our job is and what their job is. And I'm a little confused because, like, my thought is we need to look at their top line and decide whether we can handle that. And they need to look at what they're spending, and that's their job, not ours.
Well, we are determining how much we're funding, and we really don't know how much we're funding. Don't know how much we're funding. We know how much we're giving them, but we don't know how much they need until the end of the year, and they're $203,100, dollars 100,000 over budget, and then they make transfers.
They're down their 2% non lapsate to plug the gap, I think. No, no, that's not what I'm talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. No, but I mean in terms of being over budget.
I mean, they no. I mean, they can take the 2% if they're underfund, you know, if they don't spend all that money. I understand that.
Can I ask something? Go ahead. Yes. Okay. I very much agree with Liz. We have been trying to get data from the school and they are not transparent. And what we need to do is determine what we feel is a good number for our town people. And like the superintendent asking for 11% where everyone else is getting 6%. That to me is kind of high. And when I asked certain questions, it kind of went around in circles. I didn't get straight answers when I asked that. So the transparency is not there. So we need to kind of determine as a board that there should be a reduction in that budget and they need to figure out how to spend it. We are not telling them how to spend it.
We never tell them how to spend it. We need to get it down so the town is not gonna be taxed 9%. Alright. Simple as that. And
then of course the obvious question then is how much and then what does that do? Like I have the spreadsheet. We can talk about this. If we ask them for a cut of x, what does that compute to? Right? So just just as an example, guys, I'm trying to be very practical here. Okay? Everybody, I'm not you know? So if we look at this, every $100,000 is essentially 1%. Okay? So AES is up 500,000. The town right now is up just shy of one they're $1.90. Okay? And then RAM one twenty. That computes to a 9.5% tax increase, which I think we all agree is very high. So in order to get it down, every 100,000 you knock off that, you get a percentage down. So if you wanna get from 9.5 to five, let's just as an example, you need to find $450,000. That's my point. I'm trying to focus this on what the numbers are and where we're gonna ask for them, and we're gonna find it. So if we go from nine to two We have basically three places we can look for it, just to be clear. Right? We can look for it from the town side ops budget, the town side capital budget. Sorry. Four places. Town side ops budget, town side capital budget, AES budget, or fund balance. And fund balance, of course, is the last place I'd like to again, I'm pointing out it's a thing we've done in the past.
Right. I'm only putting it out there because it's real. It's a thing you can do. I'm not saying it's best practice. That's that's all I'm saying. So those are the places we can go to find $450,000 if you wanna get to 5%. If you wanna get to some other percentage, you need a different number. I'm throwing it out there. Those are the numbers. So where do we find it, guys? And what do we wanna ask from AS? If we wanna make a recommendation to the board of ed tonight, cool. We need to entertain motions for that, and we need to think about what that number needs to be and what the effect it has on the overall budget. If we ask them for a cut of a $100,000, telling you right now that's 1%. That gets us to 8.5. Just so you know. Okay, Rob. Thank you. Yep.
Rob, I just I wanna would like to hear I'd like to hear other other people thoughts. I think Oh, who? I'm sorry.
Well, first of all, when I add up 500, 120, and 191, I don't come up with nine, nine whatever you keep on saying, bro. I come up with, like, a 100. 811,000.
It's interesting because I I'm going to the spreadsheet, and I've got so what I've got for eight over a month is a little over 5,000,000. Ram is $4.04 and a quarter, and they got a town budget with capital at 4.4 or just shy just shy of 4.4. So I I plugged these numbers in. Before I put in the changes from the last board selectman meeting, we we were at 9%, and now we're at 9.5 because they increased some things. I just wanna point out, Monday night, I don't know if you're all aware of this, a number of town salaries were increased, and it changed our numbers. So hang on a minute, guys. While while we're here, let's let's do this. Let's do this. Let's share Okay. My screen. Okay. Can you all see this?
Yes. Yeah. Can you make it bigger or something? Yeah. Hang on a minute, Bill.
Just try to keep it all at one. My my favorite feature is if you scroll and hold your control key, you can what I was doing. But if I do it too much, then you can't Anyone looking can do that. Anyone watching through Zoom could zoom in on a Oh, now what did I do? Oh, god. Now I've messed it up, man. Look what you did. Hang on a second. Let me get back to Can I just say something? Yeah. Go ahead, Liz.
There's still a lot of the budget work that town budget work that we have to go through and do. This is not going to be done tonight. No it's not. To do all the hypotheticals about if we did this, if we did that, I think we can do that. I think we definitely will have to do that. We did that last year, we went line by line, whatever. I want to know how people feel about just having a hard discussion about AES and seeing what everybody feels about it, because we could probably cut a big chunk off off that there, you know, depending on how people feel. I definitely think we need to do it.
We can certainly recommendation. We can certainly single them out if it know, but I would just say at the same time Well, not sing it's not singling them out. It's we've been working on the town budget. We can't we really don't have everything we need to work on the town budget. We don't I'm kidding. We know. That we know. There's a budget that we know that an elephant in the room. When Few
questions and some of it may be my newness to the board on AES in particular. The first is where I mean, we looked at the budget. I'm remembering some specific numbers off the top of my head. Where specifically would would we suggest cutting if we were to cut?
No. The the issue there, Nick, is that we don't have line item authority on their budget. So the the only thing we can do We don't. We do not. Even if, you know, you take the full Dennis O'Brien approach that we can cut them anytime we want, it's a top line cut. So what we can say to them is, look. You asked us for $5,000,000, guys. We're gonna give you 4.8. That's the thing we could or well, let me put it this way. At this point, I would say we recommend that. And then if we if the budget makes it through and we bifurcate,
then we do what we did last year and we step in. But the the the point being that the idea is that we, as the board of finance, recommend a lower number. And then the board of Ed, it's their job to sit down and say, well, if only if we only got 4.8, what will we do?
Right? So, ultimately, regardless of where we sit at the end of this, we'd either make a recommendation to their team or not to cut the budget. Mhmm. And then if they it would be up to them ultimately whether they move forward with that budget or not, if I'm understanding. They they have the ability to then write back to us and say
what they wanna say. My take would be that at that point, we go to town meeting, and we see what happens. Last year, this is what occurred. Last year, we went to town meeting. If my recollection is correct, the budget actually made it through town meeting, and we went to referendum. It failed at that point. And at that point when it failed, the budget bifurcated. Now when we have a referendum, there are what are called advisory questions on the ballot that'll say things like, do you feel the town budget is too high, too low, or just right? Do you feel the school budget's too high, too low, or just right? And what happened last year was when the budget failed, most people said town budget's okay, and a majority, it was like 55, 45. So something like, you know, this this school budget's too high. And so when we got the budget back, what we said was, okay. We've gotta cut that 8.8% down. And we, at that point, took action to do so, and we cut it to five. And the board of Ed rolled with that. They they did what they had to do with that. The thing is we have never done and because we don't have the authority to do it, is to reach down to the budget and say, this particular thing, this salary, this
particular educational choice, this supply number, whatever. It it that is not our job. I don't think anyone is interested in doing anything like that. No. No. Nick Nick raised it. So he he was talking about what would be specifically caught. And what I'm trying to explain and I may be going on and on, and I apologize if I am, is just to make clear that that isn't the idea here.
Yeah. I'm just wondering what we're gonna like, what we wanna do with that. I I do also have some homework that I did, to show the team. Yeah. Was interested in that. Yeah. I was interested in that. Thank you for doing that, Nick. Yeah. You're welcome. I mean, it doesn't have to be right at this point. I mean, I I would love to if you have That it
would be I don't wanna ruin the I can grab it right now if it's good That's with about you,
the the salary discussion. It's really although we can have opinions about it, it really is out of our out of our hands and out of our minds. That
that gets back to the issue of at the end of the day, that's the board of ed's call. If we say to them, guys and, by the way, this is entirely hypothetical. I'm not putting this forward as an idea. But if we were to say to them, guys, we really think you get you need to get down to 8%. Just pick at a number, guys. Mhmm. Okay. That's a 2.9% cut. That's it. That's what we do. Then they would have to take that and say either no or we're gonna do something in between or we're gonna hit that number. But how they choose to do it, that's their job. That's their job. The not ours. What we could say is, guys, $500,000, we're just shy. Can I ask you a question? Even?
You know, that's our job. Heather has a question. I did. And thanks, Rob, because I was like Nick. I'm new, so I wanted to know what we do. But I had a question, and I agree with Liz that they do need to be more transparent. And I don't think I really understand the whole preschool and what's involved with that. But you said that they had a surplus. Was that from 07/01/2024 to 07/01/2025 they had a surplus?
And then we we don't know if they will this year. No. They won't have a surplus this year. I've asked this question repeatedly. They're they're not gonna have a surplus this year. I think this year is the opposite. They're actually gonna be pulling from their 2% account to to make their budget this year. And then I think and this is something we should consider when we make a recommendation, is I think they'll have a little bit left in their 2% nonlapsing fund, after they do that, like, you know, going into the next budget year. And one thing we could just say is, look. Best practice would be given the amount of money you're asking for to zero out that account.
The only thing is My recollection
is that 2% account would have about one twenty or one twenty in it going into the next budget, but that's that's a fuzzy number.
Tim, did you have a question? It just does it does seem, though, that for many years, there has been, a surplus.
Yeah. But it's that's over. I mean, that it's true. There was. There absolutely was. There was a multi year period where we had Years. It was two or three years in a row where we had $2,300,000 kind of, underspend. Yes. That's a thing. That and one of those years is the year that we put March, I think it was, into the capital fund, which was that would have been '24, I think. 2425.
So I just cut Bill. Bill, go ahead. Wait. You can make a recommendation. Right? And it's and it's only a recommendation. Okay? So I was gonna Ultimately, the town is gonna say you know, we can say, we recommend 6%. I'm making numbers up. And they say, no. We're sticking with our 11. The town is gonna vote it down. There's no way the town's gonna vote for 11% increase. We all know that. Okay? Right? I mean, does anybody that disagrees with me on that? They're not gonna 11% increase. So it'll get bifurcated. And so come back to this board then, and we're gonna we're gonna pick another number. I I mean so we can make a recommendation tonight, and we probably should. I think we should.
But what is that number? How much work have you guys done looking at the spreadsheet that she shared with us? She went over the cost, the teachers increases. We lost to $45,000 for the psychologist. We lost or there's an increase in insurance that we can't do anything about. So you got to look at what she can't do anything about and what's flexible that she can't do something about. I mean, is that reasonable to say? That's
reasonable to say, but you know, for instance, the psychologist cost in the budget, there's the $90,000 that's budgeted, but there's a tremendous amount of money that's not listed for all the benefits that are going to go with that role and all the other teachers staff. And it's important. The kids need this stuff. I'm not saying they don't. But within the budget, we never can see what is the accurate staffing budget, what are all the benefits, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It's spread out in different reports or not listed in a report. And when we ask for it, we'd never get it. So I would be all for saying,
go ahead, spend, but we don't have good information. For as long as I've sat on the Board of Finance, we've been looking for it, and we just can't seem to get a clear picture.
It's been like that for a few years as well. It's tough. Eric had tried to get information too, and he couldn't. So we need to make a record. You're
saying we have no idea what their benefits are, costs are?
We have the number that they give us, but we don't know how the math, we don't know how it adds up because they won't show us that. And the other thing about the benefits too, I would kind of just urge us to kind of remember is that usually the benefit number I think is given to us by Ram, right? Yes. And from what I understand, when we get that number right now in the early part, it usually goes down until they finally get the real number. So they may say it's 15%, but it may not actually be 15%.
The issue that we have with that is this year, it's been very consistent. Every single time they've talked about it, it's stayed at 15. Usually, you have some indication that it's gonna drop. And this year, we're not getting that signal. Well, we haven't Yeah. I mean, I would love to I would believe me I would love to believe, Liz, that that number is really gonna be 12 or something. I just don't see any indication
that it's going I don't think we ever In the past, feel like we have had some signals on this. And to be fair, this is all fuzzy. So I understand you quite I mean, like, it's a fair question, but I don't see it this year, and it worries me. I think that 15% may be real. I've been treating this. It might be. And I don't real for that reason. In terms of the rest, in terms of, what their benefits costs are, we do have a number. We just, you guys don't trust No,
you're right. I don't. I don't. Because last year when they had an overage, they transferred, let me tell you, like it's the salaries and the benefits. We don't really know. It's a number, And it could be padded, it could be thin, who knows? But last year, they did a budget transfer, and they transferred $181,000 out of salaries and benefits and retirement alone. So to me, I look at that and go, okay, are we padding this budget? And then we're spending it in repairs and maintenances that we didn't budget for because they way overspent on that line. It makes me As ask the someone who is responsible for the taxpayers, I have to ask these questions because I don't see it being asked over there.
My perspective is that we've had all sorts of stuff like that happen on the town side too. We have a clearer oversight as a board on the town than we do on the board of ed because it's really their job. We also offer a lot of transparency too. Well, we Like, we have we are the ones who are are asked to make the transfers as opposed to, you know, the board of ed is the one that makes the the transfers within their budget. I'm not talking about transfers, but I'm talking about the If Eric came to us and said, Rob, I I need to transfer a $180,000 from here to here, we as a board would have to take that up and approve it. Right? I understand. That's a board of ed thing on their side.
I'm talking that's one little piece of it, Rob. The other piece of it is they don't the board of ed does not go through line by line on the school budget like we do. They admitted it that they don't because they leave it up to Valerie. And so where is the oversight? So they basically got the same presentation we got, which was just a big narrative of you know, why they need this, why they need, you know, this money, that money, whatever, without any meat. That's all I'm saying. And this is not about not wanting to fund the school. It couldn't be further from the truth. We have a responsibility to the taxpayers, and I feel like last year we didn't do our job. So this year I wanted to make sure that we made the proper recommendation and see what they say and come back.
So Liz, do you have a recommendation in mind? Do you have a level or a thought? I have a recommendation and
I don't know if it will get voted yes, and they have every right to look at it and say, well, we'll do what we can and then come back to whatever. But I'll make a recommendation if anybody's ready for that or if anybody wants to ask more questions.
Well, I I would guess what I'm asking you, Liz, is like We can have discussion on emotion. Wait. Wait. Let's get on the floor. Let's talk about it. But what I'm saying, Liz, if you're give a recommendation chance to talk.
All I trying say is if you're gonna make a recommendation, it should be based on something. So I'll just give you an example. Okay? There was a year where a certain member of the audience stood up at the town meeting and said, I make a motion we cut $400,000 from the AES budget. I was like, okay. Where? And this person had no idea. Just cut it. So what I'm saying is if you're gonna make a recommendation, it should be based on something. This board should basically say, you don't need this, you don't need that, you don't need this. Okay, you need that, you need this. What are you gonna make that much? Just on a theoretical,
just what I feel comfortable with? Or do you have an actual number based on you did some math and you think they lend you and I'm not criticizing you, Liz. I'm just trying to say, do you have a number that you've got a spreadsheet and you said this is what we should be giving them and no more? That's what I'm trying to get a bottom to. I don't want to take a stab in the dark. I want to make a real recommendation.
I honestly don't feel like we have enough information to support the budget that they have given us. That's what I feel like. I would make a recommendation to cut it to 2%.
That doesn't even keep the that you're all for education, but that's not That doesn't even keep the lights on. Not true. You're all for education. You saw her presentation.
The 15% health care Yeah. I did see her the 3% did see presentation, I could debunk a lot of the stuff, and I'm not gonna sit here and do that. You can't do 10%.
What I am totally fine with making the recommendation to cut their increase down, but my lord. That's that's too much. How do you even keep the lights on for that number? I'd say something. Go ahead. Okay. I'd like to second that.
I mean, it's gonna be up to the town Sure. To really decide. Up to them anyways. They're not gonna come back and accept it anyways. But you know what? At least we Can I ask another- I also had another question? Yes.
Based on what all you guys are saying, some people think we're not getting enough information or the board of ed is providing it or whatever, but does the board of ed, does their budget get audited so someone would know if Yeah. They're in the audits. Sure. They get audited every year. Yeah. Yeah. The auditor was quite positive this year if you I mean, I got the draft audit just the other day. I I don't think it's been sent around to everybody.
So But the auditor has no had no, like, red flag or anything to say about AS. He he he basically said Listen. There was only one thing in that audit, write up in terms of corrective action this year. So when they And it's on the South Side. When transferred the 80,000 from salary to whatever, does that show in the audit too? Or no? It wouldn't be because they weren't over budget.
Okay, the auditor doesn't make a determination on how they spend the money. Right. The auditor basically balances and makes sure everything is where everything reconciles. Yep. So they don't make comments or recommendations
about whether or not they agree with how the money was spent. Sure. They're not looking at an individual expenditure and saying, guys, you paid too much for, HVAC repair.
Well, didn't I see, though, that they're going they're still going to do a letter of recommendation because the corrective action wasn't completed by June 30? Well, that's that's that's because we Board of Ed or the Board of Ed. Yeah. But it was Okay. Because because Jeff had Val hadn't gotten that sorted out, but that's a whole another story.
I don't think that had anything to do with any material defects to their budget, though, Lisa. I think it has been a few years where there have been issues with Sure. But they've been sorted. I mean, that's the issue is that slowly but surely, both the town and the AES budgets have gotten and and from the standpoint of the audit, they've gotten better and better. We've gotten closer and closer and closer to getting through an audit. Tell me the town. The town really I gotta say I gotta say as a town as a town Town. Really, our audit would be done by the end of the calendar year. We have been edging towards that. We there was a year we were a full year behind. We are now we're in March. We're about to complete this audit, so that puts us three months behind. We used to be, like, twelve months behind. We are edging towards Just so you know, Rob. The reason the capital isn't done is because I'm trying to get 24 or 25 things. I fully respect that, Lisa. My point is we've been improving, you know, on both the talent and and AES sites as I understand it. And as I understand it, AES and the auditor are pretty good, you know, terms. Like, if you read the audit, he's not ripping them or or really the town either. This frankly one small thing that these he talks about about Alright. So there are way the town reckons Miles money from this one. Rob. Give somebody else a turn. I'm sorry. I Other was people have Kim's been trying to finish her sentence. So By all means, I'm sorry. I was trying to answer a question. I was just trying to speak to Heather's comment about,
the audits. That's all. There
have been problems in the past with the audits because of lack of communication between the school and the town and sending the information to reconcile on a regular basis. We have been the town and the school has been dinged on that in the past. That has been rectified at this point, but they do not comment about how the money is spent. The other question that I have is that I also know for a fact there is a bank account in the Berkshire Bank where all the other money goes to. So there's a general fund M and T bank account where the general fund money goes, but then there's a bank account where all the grant money, tuition, cafeteria money, and I think the Kids Activity Fund, that goes to a different bank and it's called Berkshire Bank. And that, we have no idea how much is in that. That could be accumulating money that we have no idea what's in that bank.
What And- are you talking about? The school lunch fund?
No, I'm talking about the Berkshire bank account where all the other money, all the other revenue comes into where they keep that.
Because I mean, I'm starting to look at the audit, and I'm trying to find the funds that you're talking about. That's all. Oh, that would be great if that's listed in there. I I mean, they have they have their we have we have, like, 50 funds, and then there's something there's a school lunch fund. There's at the end of last fiscal year, there's $6,500 in it. $6,534 as an example. School grants, student activities, there's a slew of these funds. Most of them are not school funds. Most of these are, they're town funds, but they're they're So, I mean, we could we could look up over that. The fact is we should to share asking,
Lisa to Right. So
Lisa would not be privy to this accounting. I wouldn't. School has it. It's a heavily guarded secret. It's a heavily guarded secret. Most of my stuff is in M and T.
Okay. Well Right. Right. It's a straightforward question then. Like, once we have I mean, we have we just got literally, like, today or yesterday, the audit figures, and these are preliminary. Right? Okay. So we could ask the school finance department, what do you know about these funds? The problem that I recall, and this is my recollection from being on this board for a while, is a lot these funds are held by the town even though they're school money. So
What I'm telling you, Rob, is this is not held by the town. This is held by the school. Correct. We have no insight to this at Okay. So we don't know what it and I know the town of Coventry has the same situation. They get their grant funds. It goes into a different bank account. Okay. And it's reported in their it's reported in their big budget book of how much money is in that account. Okay.
And I would love it if you could maybe ask for that. Ask for what the balance is of the Berkshire account.
Berkshire account. Okay. Well, I mean I mean, I'm I'd be happy to write an email to Caitlin asking, you know, to understand board of finance understanding there's a Berkshire account for some of your funds and, what's in there. Sure. I I don't have a problem with writing that email. That's fine.
Are we ready to vote on this? Was there a motion made? A yes. Motion? Yes. And I was second it? I second it. You guys said it's Berkshire Bank? Yeah. Berkshire Bank. Just apologies.
Before we Berkshire Bank is now Beacon Bank. Berkshire Bank just changed to Beacon Bank. Thank you, Lisa. Yep. Thank you.
In the budget, the the 3% that most of the teachers are getting and the insurance, like, none of that is gonna change. Right? No. No change, it's contractual. That is what So it a 2% It's
absurd. No, Come here. It's not it's not possible. But It's not even possible. You know that truly. At least it's at least as crazy as 11%, if not more. Because you know that's absurd. Come on. But, hey, you know what? We'll vote on it.
Can we count? I'm just saying, what are you basing that on? Let's
have a conversation, an intelligent conversation. The way, let's We look the
don't have any data to support what they're doing. She's told you how much it cost for the increases. She told you how much it cost for the insurance, she told you how much it costs for the thousand dollars We
don't know how much we're paying for the benefits and all that other stuff for those eight employees from the Pre K. We don't know, we just don't know how it all adds up. I mean, there an accountant here anywhere? Is there somebody here an accountant, Lisa? I'm not a CPA.
So last year they off, they wanted, I think it was nine point nine. We arrived at eight point eight.
It was eight point eight. And we arrived at five. Correct. They were perfectly good hiring two new teachers and another para, and I and whatever else things they did, and they were fine.
So And they and they had a a 5.5 underspend. What?
Not last not this year. Didn't no. They're not year, but last year. Last year. If you look at their last year final final
Right. But that was where we put the money into capital fund for the Capital fund. No. That's what you're saying before. Just to everyone That that was a year before. That was a year before. As a year bear in mind with these audit figures, guys, we're often a year or more behind. I would just say just so everybody understands the motion. I wanna be very clear about this. I want everyone to understand it. A 1.2% sorry. A let me correct that. A 2% increase. That results in a budget of $4,656,771.21. That is a cut from their request of $406,879.76. If you were to put that in, hang on, and pass that, that reduces our amount to be raised by taxation to 5.5% by my calculations. By my preliminary calculations to be determined when Lisa and I finally sort this spreadsheet out. But right now, that's the result. You're cutting of just over $400,000 out of their $500,000 request. Just to be clear, that's what the motion does just so everybody understands it before they vote on it.
I know that's extreme. I know it's extreme, but their ask is is extreme considering what we've been given for details. Okay.
Does anyone but I I don't wanna cut off discussion. If anybody has anything further to say, otherwise, we will move to a vote. Does anyone have any further discussion on this motion?
I guess I'm a little lost myself. We're looking at particular funds, including salaries and including benefits. If we do straight linear math and everybody in the preschool took benefits, I was in the school and I saw what how many preschool classrooms were, the maximum and I'm just doing straight back of my hand math here. The maximum we could have been paying in preschool salaries and preschool benefits could have been a $100,000, the maximum from what I'm seeing for all preschools. If we cut pre How do factor that? Took straight linear math. Val said in one of her meetings, has about 52 employees. We had about
eight ish. I think we have eight teachers and eight paras in that
Eight teachers and eight paras. How do you base your math to get that? Because I think that's really low. I think that's low for benefits. The That's other stuff comes everybody the benefits, which they don't.
So okay. I I got that wrong. It's about $35 usually.
No. I got a $107,107,692 dollars. I took straight linear math, took the $700,000 benefit. I'm going off my memory. So there could be a little delta there. I divided it. I divided it by 52, I think. Let me look at my calculator. I divided it by 52, and then I multiplied it by eight. That's a $107,000 is the maximum. According to my quick math, the maximum we could be paying in benefits. And I I'm just thinking
And, again, we don't really know. So and we do have to Well, that's it's an order of It's a it's a question of order of magnitude. But any any event, that's The give or take. Let's look at that. That's
So worse I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking of every single way we could dice this. If we proposed a slice, obviously, they need the staffing there. We could potent I I don't know how much money we could save if we're proposing they slice something there. Where would you I mean, we're looking at a 100,000.
Yeah. That's up to them to decide. Yeah. We don't I don't look in Nobody's asking a fair question. He's asking a It is
It is a fair question. I guess he Let me finish the statement. The first thing I'm thinking about is we're proposing that they cut things. I'm just wondering what we could propose that they cut that they could rationally do in a school that would move the needle much, where we could come up with something like cutting staff like that and cutting I I don't know where we could go with that benefit that would save the town a ton of money. I guess it's where my ultimate point is.
So and the other thing I'd mention guys is, look. The the the line item and lack the lack of line item authority on our board is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it's it's fair to say we can't reach out of their budget and monkey around with a particular line item. On the other hand, when you go to propose a top line cut, what that furthermore means is it isn't actually our job to to say exactly how they would sort that out. You hope that that top line cut that's proposed is reasonable, but you at the same time, to be fair, if because we don't have line item authority, because we do not have the it's not our job to go in there and say, cut a teacher. You know? It's it's a little much. It it it kinda cuts cuts both ways, guys. You can't kind of
do it one way or not the other. It it what it boils down to is what do you feel the the reasonable top line number is that this community can afford? And then it's a board of head's job to sit there and say Yep. Yep. Row, we gotta do something. So now there's a motion on the floor that we make a recommendation to the board of ed that they cut their increase down to, and I wanna get this right, Liz, 22%. That is the that is the motion on the floor. So I would, unless there is further discussion, suggest we vote on this motion. Does anyone have anything further to say before we do so? K. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
K. All opposed? Aye. Aye. Nay. But yeah. Okay. Motion fails four to three three to four. That does not mean we can't make further motions. If somebody else wants to come up with a different number I'd like to make a motion.
Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. That we cut it down to 3.25%. I'll second that. Discussion.
I feel like people don't trust the numbers that we got, so we're just cutting it. And I think that's very hard, like why don't we trust the people at the Board of Ed? I'm not saying they don't give us enough information, but it's awful if we can't give the stuff that they're giving us.
It's a terrible position to be in. You're absolutely right. It is. We don't want to do this. We don't. I I have a solider. If I saw them go like we do line by line by line, I and don't think we've gotten to the point where we've gone through all the employee lines like we did last year, I would love to just say, okay, I can see where you did the work, it makes sense, but I don't see that. And I just, If I didn't get such pushback all the time, you know, and there was more of an easier give and take of a communication, I might feel differently too. It's just that's all. This might actually create Discussion? Yeah, action.
Yeah, I agree, Louise. That's a very good point. I mean, if we get the great I mean, this is not just one year. This has been going on for years. And, you know, if if we just let it go, we're not doing our taxpayers any service.
I'd point out that, yes, you're right. This has gone on for multiple years. And, you know, the board of Ed's perspective on this is somewhat different, as you I think you all know. We've had board triboard meetings where I don't remember if our newer folks I know I don't think Nick and Heather definitely, you guys weren't on the board yet. We had a long triboard meeting where everyone not the last one, the one before. There's been a lot between the boards, and there's a lot of built up frustration, and it's not one way. So as somebody who's attempted to mediate this kind of thing for years, I can only say that I'm trying to work with what we've got and try to find a way forward, and I don't think the best way to go about it is to treat the board of ed like they're a bunch of nip and poops. But, anyway, let's do let's talk about I've never said that. Never said that. I mean, you basically You said you don't trust the guys. You're lying. Come on. Make them nicks. That doesn't make them nicking poop. It just means that they Not at all. That You try to be punitive. Make them encourage. You're trying to be punitive because you don't like them or trust them. So you're being punitive. You know what? For the kids or the school. You're being punitive. That is you are so wrong, though. I'm not wrong with you. You're not. I can read your emails to these people. You are so vindictive and mean to these people. It's unbelievable.
Can I? No. Because I asked a question. I'm
vindictive and vindictive and mean to come doing my in to You know the word. What? Don't like her? Can you try to punish her? It's ridiculous. Trying to punish her because she I and I said, I'm gonna apologize. But let's let's take it down a notch here, all of us, myself included. Absolutely ridiculous. And no. You are. But there is a The the meanness and the addictiveness is unbelievable. Where the board of ed is not trusted, and they know that, guys.
They know that. What do you think we can do to help fix that? Can I show what I did? I
guess the only thing we can do going forward because there's no there's no easy fix. The the answer is the the truthful answer is there's no easy fix at this point. We're pretty far down this road. So the only thing I can imagine, and I can't promise you it'll work, is that we just, all of us, keep doing everything we can to kind of forge bonds between the boards in a, you know, make connections. Know? And sometimes this might involve biting one's tongue. It might involve trying to meet somebody where they are. The thing is it's it's clearly you know how it's gotten, and it's gotten and I'm not saying it's one way at all, Liz. I know it's not one way. It it I've seen it both go both ways. It's toxic. Right? And it's really hard at this point to get people to deescalate and say, okay. Wait a minute. This person is asking something in good faith as opposed to this person's out to get me. And I think that's the fundamental problem. Now how do we get from where we are to where we frankly should be? You mean a functional community again? I've been trying for a couple years now. Haven't succeeded, so maybe I'm the wrong guy to ask. I keep trying, and I'm gonna keep trying. I will tell you I'll never quit. But I'll say this. We
have to we have to try to get there. And one of the things that's really difficult from whenever I talk to people on board of ed, they get very, very frustrated with being whether it's outright stated or simply insinuated that they don't do their jobs and that they're essentially a pack of incompetence. And I understand, oh, you didn't say those words. Yes. I know that. But that's what they competence. It's it's questions that don't get answered. It's questions they don't answer. It's questions they don't answer. Transparency. Yeah. Yeah. And then they feel like transparency.
Okay. Alright. So Nothing. Well, let's let's get back to the motion. Guys, guys, we're so we are Yes. Let's let's get on to We
have a motion on the phone. Second. Just wait. I think Kim second the motion. Think seconded today. Was Lisa's motion. Correct? I think Nick wants to say. Okay. Oh, Nick has been raising his hand over and over. So I'm gonna No. I did. I raised my hand. I just wanted to I thought it was a good time, actually. I just wanted to show what I did. So I'm gonna send a request right now to see if I could share my screen. Go ahead. I think I just gave you access.
Thank you. I did a little research. It's not as transparent as I originally thought online. I think you gave access to other yeah.
Can everyone see the breakdown of the salaries with the Yeah. I see a spreadsheet at least. Why
is it being difficult? Sorry, everybody. My screen's doing see it? Well, the moment you want it, you're gonna do something for others. Of course. So It's been fun.
It's just his thinking. I wanted to just take a second and show all this. I went through. I found the some of them are approximations. Some of them are calendar years further to the left than where we are right now, so they actually would have been up in salary based on where they were. I went through. I was just curious what the I was just curious where things were, and I wanted to make sure we were it's a good testament to the research that the other that teams have done. I did a price analysis and a price assessment. If you go on AI, you're getting this as an average. If you go across the different boards and across I mean, the different towns and across the different areas, you're getting these. I did some math to adjust from these salaries, in some instances, to the equivalent FTEs for Vail, which is point six a week. And these were the numbers I got. As you could see, I threw in AESs. We're generally seeing about 5% here. I saw a grant. I I saw some of them are incentive based. I don't know if there was any of that in that the contract we just had. I saw some are incentive based,
and I also kept seeing a common theme of educational reimbursement as I was taking some of these contracts apart. So I I just wanted to present this to the team. I did look at it, and I did view all the towns, and this is the data I came up with.
Where did you find the data? Was this did you go to the actual town?
I did Google. I did AI. I did, several different things. I did some estimates. Some of them gave me data for, like, 2020. So I went through the contract, figured out what the raises would have been to get some of these numbers. So I looked at each individual town.
Are you looking also I'm sorry. Are you looking also at the number of people in the town as well? I did not pull that data in here. I didn't has a lot of people in it, in Lebanon. It
does. These these were the towns they used, right, for their analysis? This is their analysis. I looked at that. I didn't compare pupil to pupil. I didn't compare town to town. Yeah. I
mean, quite honestly, I ran out of time. There there are every town has their own thing. Like, I I remember looking at this. Nick and I were talking about a little bit before he embarked on this project. And, like, as an example, Basra, which is unfortunately blank here, Basra has k through eight.
Yes. And Basra I actually yeah. And Basra's salary is $74,003.29.
I actually found that on their website. Do you know what that's what the point like, that a I think it was a point four. Point four?
I think it was. What was that? And what year was that?
I'll tell you that I have the contract. It they could he's contracted for a hundred hundred days out of a 180. So what is that? And it's for 205 students. So that might be closest. It's 56%.
The next closest really to us would be Marlborough who's, I believe
Yeah. I had her. They're they're a slightly larger town, but they've got so their elementary is probably a little bigger. But
It's a little bigger, but it's it's the closest to the demographic. It's got k through six. Right. They've got 465 students. They're the closest really in demographic. Bosworth only has 205, and then you go down from there. Franklin, one eighty five. And then you go up from there. Hebron, you can't really equate Hebron. That's 697. They have two two grammar schools.
They have a I believe they have a k through three and a four through six elementary. Right. I mean, I call them grammar schools, but yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Sorry. I'm just trying to fill in inform I'm not trying to Right. Contradict you at all. I'm just adding I can't remember Levin is I I think Levin has four schools
four schools, and they're, like, 202,000, but they're four schools. I think what does help
put us in an apples to apples category is adjusting for the FTE. So I put the point six equivalent here, which ratio and proportionally shoulda I I maybe adjust. I I would say that's probably the best you could do. I mean, honestly, you know, obviously, you're not gonna take Hebron's
superintendent's full salary and compare that to Bell. That that that's silly because they have so many more kids. That's what the you know, at least and it all of this is quick and dirty, but, you know, points that's what the point six adjustment kind of exists to do. Correct. I You know, in some of these towns. But I do think I think Basra and maybe Lebanon and a couple of these others, Marlborough, you're right, are are probably the closest to us. And if they have I don't know. Does Marlborough do you know, Nick, when you looked at this, is Marlborough running a a full time superintendent, or do they have a plus point six as well? Oh, it looks like they've got a full time.
They do. Full time, and they're pre k through six, and and they've got 465
students. I think that makes sense. It's a bigger it's a bigger 10. Okay. That's fine. I would I would So that to me just seems to make sense then that the point six adjustment to that makes total sense. I would say this I this is how I would look at it if I was hiring at my company. I would say this is fair market rate, and this is the equivalent of what the job would be. So this is us this is what we would pay for one FTE of the skill set. This is what our adjustment would be based on the size of the school and how much time we anticipate it being. Uh-huh. And then this would be the value there. I just pulled the data. I I thought it was pretty interesting because the way I pulled it, it made me actually feel good at the end of the project to see that that aligned to what the board said. Yeah. I mean, speaking
oh, sorry. Go you know what? Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just gonna say, so this is excellent.
And I think this also speaks to what you were saying is that we need to get the Board of Education and the Board of Finance or whatever to be able to talk to each other because the Board of Education could have provided this, but they gave just a vague chart. Yeah.
And then they also said we should divide by point six in one of those emails as basic math, which is was wrong. But I I don't know. I just like, why can't why can't they say this
easy? They could have they could have done this instead instead of arguing about it for three emails or whatever. Right? Yeah. I I I I happen to agree with you. The the the the I know why they did it the way they did it, but, you know, basically, Val was like, I don't wanna call out specific colleagues for their salaries. And I'm like, no. That's silly because we're literally arguing salary. So, no, I I I'm with you guys on that one. This should have been probably the chart that they provided,
not the the graph that they did. I don't disagree with that. Maybe they have the same thing. I don't want anyone in a strong sense really holding me to these numbers. This is googling. This is adjustment for phrases and everything.
Estimation. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate it. It's a good faith effort, and it shows something that's fairly fairly consist. Honestly, it makes sense. Thanks for taking this. You know? But, no, I I I happen to agree with Heather on this that if we had gotten something like this, you know, it might have made things a little More palatable.
Little more palatable, a little smoother. So and this is where I will continue my efforts. But, over the years, we've gotten to a place where the level of dysfunction and distrust within this town and certain board members and certain boards has gotten to the point where even when a request is completely reasonable, We sometimes get pushback unless this is resist frustration. And sometimes, honestly, sometimes I feel some affinity for the folks on on the other board. But that that said, we remain in a place where we have a motion on the floor to cut to recommend the AES cut their budget down to a 3.25. Correct, Luz? Is that the request? Yeah. That's that's correct. 3.25
increase. Is there further discussion on this motion before we proceed to a vote? Yeah. What would that be for the town? Give me one second. I have to do some math. Okay. Probably around six. 3.25.
Hang on. Hang on. I got it. I got it. Okay. If I've if my math is correct, that's a big cut still, 338,000 and change. It gets the amount to be raised by taxation on the 6.1%.
6%. So is that a $338,000 cut, or is that the
increase? From from sorry. Cut from the increase. Cut. So and I'm sorry, Liz. I'm looking at it from the this is this is just the way the spreadsheet works. Right? Their original request is 498181 oh, sorry. 189. 498189. And this brings them in significantly lower than that. And so I'm looking at it going off of that, not from a baseline of zero. So this is still an increase. Obviously, it's it's a 3.25 increase. Right? Sorry. Anyway, I'm I'm looking at it from the standpoint of what what does it do to taxation. And so it's, I'm playing around with the spreadsheet, and I'm I'm kind of frantically doing this behind the scenes. And anybody, do you have is there any further discussion or or do we wanna take a vote on this one? Okay. Hearing none. We'll go ahead and vote. All in favor of this motion. Three votes in favor. Very well. All against. That's three. Nick, I don't see a vote from you. His hand up. No. He did. I didn't see it. It blended with the bookcase.
So we should we should be, like, announcing who's voting what for the, for Marina.
Sure. Okay. Usually, we just do the numbers, but okay. Fine. Alright. Liz, Liz, and Kim were in favor. Myself, Bill, Heather, and Nick were against. Motion fails. But, again, we we could always entertain additional motions. I mean, I I speaking for myself, I agree with a lot of you that I think it's unlikely that an 11% increase AES increase is going to sail through happily through town meeting and referent. So, conceptually, I'm not opposed to a recommendation that they do something. One of the things that occurs to me they can do is zero out that 2% account. Whatever's left in there, plug a hole. Try to find a way whether they do anything with the superintendent salary or whatever. By the way, speaking of superintendent thing, just so everybody understands this, I I reached out to Caitlin. There was an email that went around that talked about the process of their decision making vis a vis that particular thing. And what I got back from Kate was one of the reasons they had it on their agenda tonight was that back in September when they originally made the determination, for that contract, they went into executive session. They had the discussion. They came out of the session and forgot to turn the recording back on. So then when they voted for it, it's not recorded. So they're going their intention, my understanding was tonight as we speak, they will be rectifying that by redoing the vote. Alright? Just so you know. We've had that sort of thing happen to us repeatedly over the last six months. So I think we've had a couple of meetings where we've messed up the recording in some way where I or
Jim or somebody didn't click the button right. You know? So that's what apparently happened. Anyway, back to back to the issue. Since we are in a position where we're not really ready to talk about town capital, since I don't think at this late hour, we're really gonna go through the choices that the board of selectmen made at their meeting on Monday on town salaries, which I think we do need to talk about maybe next meeting. Yep. Then I would just simply say, does anyone else have a motion for a recommendation to the board of ed that they'd like to put forward? I mean, I think I think it's reasonable to make a recommendation. I just we haven't gotten one that the board's willing to bless.
I I'll rec I have my own motion for four. I'll make a motion for four. I'll second that. We need to do something.
Four. Yeah. Okay. We need to do something. But guys, and I'm I'm talking
with you guys that we need to do something. Eleven's not gonna fly. But if we're gonna make a recommendation, all I'm trying to say, it has to be based on something. When you make it Louise or Liz, you have to base it on something. You you you either believe you're saying we don't believe there's 3% salary increase for the teachers. We don't believe we need $45,000 more for I didn't say we didn't need 3% salary for teachers. Talking for a minute. I didn't say that. I got I got the minute. I got the moat the floor here. Is is the words in there. What don't you believe about what you put forward in the budget? There is $45,000 for a psychiatrist. There is a 3% raise. There is a $15,000 increase in the insurance. All I'm trying to say is if you're going to make a motion, make it a reasonable motion based on fact. Okay? You can't just say 2%.
That's obviously and you just admitted it, Liz. It was a ridiculous number. Base it on something, and I would support anything. But tell me they don't need this. They don't need that. This is bullshit, that's bullshit. Don't say we don't get all the information we want. Say what they gave us for a budget, this much is bullshit. Cut it out. And I will support you 100. But just say you can't just make up arbitrary numbers. There's a real school that has to be runnier, guys. So come up with a real number. That's all. I think 44% increase. Increase
in a school budget is pretty average for the area. That does not sound unreasonable at all. Rams coming in with what? A two point something percent increase? They're 3.3.
The reason ours is 2.9 is that our levy is down because our population level And is that's another problem too. They're in 3.3, from a much higher base, by the way. Much higher base. Ken, I
asked for the math another way. Sorry to do this to the team, but I think this will be insightful. We have an 11% increase in school budget. If everything across the town remained flat, what would that 11% transfer to to our taxes?
Is it a five five Alright. Hold on. Hold on a minute. Let me It's a good Alright. Hold on. If we zeroed out AES? Zero out everything but AES. They bought AES.
I apologize. It's 500,000. Right? Hang on. Yeah. Well, they have they have about 500,000. But if I if I zero out hang on. This minus I'm just give me a spreadsheet. Give me a second for the spreadsheet. Now bear in mind, we're zeroing out RAM, which we can't actually do. Right? We can't.
No. I I'm just sitting there thinking full blown. We're just looking at what? It's
a 6.4. No. That can't be right. No. That's not quite right. Hang on. That's gotta be wrong. Give me a moment. It's about five Let me do it this way. Hang on. Let me do it a different way. Give me a second, guys. I'm playing with a spreadsheet. Bear with me, please. I'm having some technical difficulties because when I went to do that Do you have a calculator in front of you? Yeah. I mean, I I do. I could do it that way. You're What are you trying to do?
You're trying to not increase anything but this but AES?
Yeah. Yeah. And what that would be for us because it's alright. We were at 10.9. Oh, this is raised by taxation, but yeah. So Well, take last No. We were at 10,000. Sorry. We were at 10,000,000. You just take last year's budget. Last year's budget. Right. That's right. Plus 500,000. Yeah. It's 5%. 5%. $500,000.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's a hair different than that, but, yes, the the answer is it's just shy just shy of 5% for AS alone. Yeah. And I could have done that math. Sorry to make you Yeah. No. No. Guys, I was going my brain's a little bit. I was going about it the wrong way. I was coming about it entirely the wrong way. The the easy way to do it is to just exactly look at the amount raised by taxation last year, which was just a hair over $10,000,000 and apply $498,000 and change to that. So you end up with, like, 4.9. Yeah. Okay. So then we take I wanna do the same with I'm gonna do some bad town the town right now right now based and, again, this isn't I don't know that this is the end of the day number, but the town right now is at an increase of one ninety seven ninety. Again, that so that's about it's a 4.5 increase 4.5% increase to the town budget, but the actual impact, you know, when you put it up against a $10,000,000 taxation, right, you know, it it it's it's, you know, 2%. Not quite. Okay. So that And then RAM is one twenty. Wait. Let me just double check. Yeah. One twenty. So
because I wanna see what it would be if we took I mean, everything's going up right now regardless of what we're buying. So if we took everybody else out of the equation, just isolated them, we're looking at them contribute them as an AES contributing about 6%. So if we I'm just doing the math another way and working a little backwards. Yeah. 55%
is basically their their Increase. Of the change. And bear in mind, you know, we have we have town we have town capital, and then we and and, you know, that's a place, again, we have to look at. But so yeah. We're looking at, you know, if if the math is right, and I think it is, you know, if we're at 9.5, five of that is AES, roughly. The the remaining 4.5 is the rest.
So I'm just gonna do some math. No. I'm just gonna do some quick math another way.
That said, I mean, part of this is that, you know, revenue isn't going up by very much. There's a little there is a little increase to revenue. Lisa got me that. Right? It's in there, but it's not a lot. Our ECS grant money hasn't changed in years. We don't have any information. Like, we're not gonna get any extra money for Towne Road or anything like that, Lisa. That stuff, by the way, we have some stuff that's off our budget too when we talk about transparency. There are some things in our budget that have never been displayed, and one of those is things like Town Aid Road. Town Aid Road? We've never put our Town Aid Road money in our budget. It's just netted out and ignored, but there is a grant not a grant. A state It's a state. Yeah. They give every town a certain amount of money Certain amount of money. For their roads. For roads. We call it town aid road. We also get low SIP funds. There's some other things. They are not plugged into the spreadsheet. You don't see them. They're under the hood. Very true. To the extent that those are the same Lisa Cool, if they're not if we if we're gonna get some more, then obviously, we need to Yeah. Everything that I have gotten so far is in that,
except for the town road. Everything that they sent month ago, that's all I've gotten in. Whatever there were no changes except for that 43,000. And then the other 99,000
is from the grand list, the filing of the grand list. That's that's grand list improvement. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yep. Which is what I was waiting for, and I saw that today and was happy to see it. So thank you for getting that in there. We do have a slight revenue bump there, but it's not enough to do a heck of a lot No. To cushion this. So, anyway, we're back to emotion on the floor for 4%. Unless there's further discussion, we should vote on it. I mean, it's getting late, guys. We we should try to wrap this up soon. So, all in favor of a recommendation to cut a s you know, the a s cut their budget down to a 4% increase. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye.
Alright. All against nay? Nay. Nay. Any abstentions? No? Okay. Motion fails four to three. Me, Bill, Heather, and Nick against. Louise, Liz, Kim, four. Okay. So, again, I think a lot of us, even those of us who've been voting no, are not against the idea of a recommendation, for some sort of cut, but we haven't gotten there yet. Do we have another motion that someone would like to make that we can maybe go with? I
mean, what I'd really love to see is, again, the spreadsheet or the budget that they gave us, and we go through it and say these are things that we can't control. The salaries of the teachers are going up, the insurance is going up, the psychiatrist. But these things are things that we can say you can't get this year, it's a bad year, we wish we could give them to you, but we can't because it's a bad year. So if we could sit down and just say, these things are necessary. They can't you you can't say no to them. Maybe you're not gonna get the teacher this year. Maybe she's not gonna get a raise this year. I'm just saying
that's a reasonable thing to do to to say these things can't be cut. You have to have them, but these things, we wish we could give them to you, but you can't. Yeah. There's a number in there somewhere that's reasonable and real, And that's all I'm trying to say rather than Okay. 2%, three and a half percent. Here's my number. I'm speaking. So instead of just making up arbitrary numbers, let's come up
with a real viable number that we can support. If someone says to the board of finance, well, how did you come up with that? And we picked it out of our ass. No. You gotta come up with a real number. That's all I'm trying to say to Liz. I agree with you, Liz. It's too much. I agree with you, Louise and Kim. They're not gonna get 11%, and we know that. But what is real? What is What do you believe, Bill? What
number would you pick, Bill? I don't have that number off top of my head, Louise, because I don't have that spreadsheet to say. You
have to give them the things have for the teachers. This was the day that we that we had to do this. We have to day we asked this. Has to be done. My recollection is Right. We have to How is everyone comfortable with Yeah. 5%?
No. I would say How does that go? I Kim, all I'm trying to say is that. Is is 5% arbitrary number or is it a real number based The on
that we've been The 11% is arbitrary in my opinion. And the math that Nick and the and the math that Nick just did with us and the formulas that he showed us, how does everyone feel about 5%? That's meeting in the middle of both sides. I I think that that's getting closer and fairer to to what we're all trying to achieve here tonight. I It is almost it is 10:30 in the evening. Yeah. We're all getting tired and punchy.
So my recollection, and this is a little fuzzy math, but my recollection is between the teacher raises and the health insurance and stuff like that. Like, you're at four or 5% before you even are done with that. And then you've got the question of you know, loss of grant money, and then you've got the request for the new teacher. So I guess the question is, guys, if our take as a board is you've gotta get that number down, guys, The question would be, what would you save if we were to say, you know what? We recommend that you cut you cut down to x because you could do it by not hiring that teacher. That's, in my opinion, not really our I mean, that would be our basis. It's not our job to tell them to do it that way. My recollection is that that doesn't get you that far. It might get you a couple of percentage points down.
If you at the end of the day, as arbitrary as it is, what it boils down to is the board of Ed has to make do with their their budget number as best they can. I would be very reluctant to make a large cut or sorry. Recommend a large cut because I don't feel like I am qualified to tell them, well, you don't need that para or you don't need that teacher or gosh, you know, it seems like you're paying too much for psychological services. At the same time, I happen to agree with most, if not all of you, that 11% is, you know, running into a bussaw. So my rec I mean, I don't wanna make I I'm the board chair. I'm just trying to I'm trying to hang back here and let you guys talk, but my humble opinion is that it should be a my gut is that if we make a recommendation,
it should be something they could realistically hit, which means probably high single digits, not, you know, four or 5%. That's my take. Do with it what you will. I'll vote my conscience, you know, whatever. But I'm not gonna I'm not gonna perform a specific number, but that's my gut answer here is that, number one, get it down below double digits. Number two, I can't imagine that even five percent is really functional for them in this year as rough as everything is for for what they're looking at. So that's my take. I'm done. I think I did a little math. I did a little math, and if I if we did, like if they got a 15% increase on their benefits and maybe cut the
well, I know we can't tell them, but if I looked at 15% tethered increase and took out the 24,000 or something they had in transportation, I think that gets us to like an eight. Transport is not something they really control.
I got us. I'm thinking 415,000 is what my math showed me. It shows a 9%, which gives us below that number. It saves taxpayers almost 2%, if my math is correct. I added I did quick kind of math, I think similar to what Heather did. I did salary increases, psychologists, the raises, and health insurance. And I I don't remember what the insurance increase was. 15%. 15%.
15%. By the way, I would just wanna mention something. By the way, I I love what you guys are doing. This is this is fact based. I would just wanna say one other thing. The with respect to their transport costs, one component, I think, of their transport costs is them paying literally paying the town for a vehicle. So be careful there. Like, you're not actually saving a city if you cut the Yeah. Cut the bed. You know? Right. Some of it also might be, when you have a sped kid that is out placed, we are by law. If they have to have transportation, we gotta pay for it. Like, it's not a question. You know? So transport, I wouldn't screw it. But everything else, this sounds good. Do your math. I mean I like something
didn't it come up with, but I don't think, honestly, the town won't vote for it. Right? Yeah. I I listen. I'm not I'm not making a joke. Like, I'm just going I know why lived here a long time. I'm not gonna vote for 9%. Since 2007, Bill. I'm not I'm not crazy either. You know? But you so I think it's somewhere listen. I don't wanna pay more taxes either. I'm just trying to be reasonable to what she deals with, what the board and vet has to pay for. Mhmm. That's all. We gotta come to something. Up. So what is that number? Yeah. I think it's probably, you know, even if we recommend nine, it's not gonna go through. The town won't vote for it. I think you're more in the seven or 8%. Maybe the town will vote for it, but nine this time won't vote for it. And I think any 6%, we're not giving them enough to pay what they have to pay. Which
is rock on place. It's a rock on a hard place situation. It It is. It's legit. It's difficult. I think eight is And and it it's it's hard though in a way no matter how you slice this, guys. I completely agree with you. I've been here since o seven. I'm not an idiot. I know how this town is. I don't expect the town to suddenly go, great. We'll do a 7% increase in taxation year over year. Like, I I know this town. I'm not a fool. But that said, you know, part of what we need to do this is the process. Sometimes we have to take a budget in and and say, look. We did our level best here. This is what we're bringing to you. And then the town says to us, pound sand. And we go back, and then we we do what we have to do. Sometimes you have to go through that process. And
what I would say to you guys is tonight, I am all in favor of making a recommendation to the board of ed for for a, you know, moderate reduction if that's what you guys wanna do. However, understand, like, what is your aim? Are you aiming to get to something that the board of ed might actually accept or not? Because if you come in and you're like, we wanna take your 11% down to six, you're cutting it by almost half. So you know what the answer is gonna be there. So as much as we're gaming this out from the standpoint of the town meeting, the referendum, Right? Think about what if you're a member of the board event, think put yourself in that position. I got a that. If we make the recommendation
and can the school can AES say no? Yeah. That's the idea. The idea is they get to write us back. They get to write us back and and send us a letter and say for x, y, and z reasons, no. Okay. Then we go to town meeting. We go to referend you know, if we make it to referend. And if the budget bifurcates Yep. Things change a bit. Yep. That's that's the plan for now. So, yes, the idea here is we make a recommendation. If we say to them 8% again, making up a number, And they write us back, you know, Caitlin writes me a letter. Share with your board, Rob. Here's my letter. This is why the board of education says, no. We have to have 11.
K. That you know? Okay. But last year, we didn't do that. We actually went down Last year, we didn't do anything. We didn't do anything, then it came back to us. Correct. Right. It went down to six. Right. Because it was bifurcated Five. Yes. After the Yeah.
But they Once the budget bifurcated, we took action. We didn't make a recommendation to them last year. No. We didn't make a recommendation. We didn't. We, we took their 8.8 straight up. We didn't make a recommendation. That's the change this year, that we've re I think, again, we've all read charter provisions and statutes that maybe we hadn't read before. Can we talk about 7.5? Would that would would does that seem fair? I'm sorry. What was that? 7.5.
7.5. Does that seem fair? 7.5? Yeah. Does that seem a little closer?
It's a recommendation that I think it's only a recommendation. I mean, I'm not laughing. The taxpayer well, that that's something that the taxpayers,
you know, will appreciate. Let me run the numbers just so you guys know what that means Okay. You while you talk while you talk. And
the the board of finance can stand behind as a team, a unified front, and we've spent a lot of time talking about this. I think we definitely all have some ideas about what we want to get from the Board of Education moving forward so we don't have to be up at meetings at 10:30 at night talking about what we're not getting. Maybe that's for the next meeting, but I'm hoping maybe the seven point five is fair for everyone.
Does anybody else? Just so everybody knows, just just just to give you numbers, that is a reduction to their request of a $155,007.79 35. The impact is that we get the taxation number down 7.9. Okay.
Well and, again, we haven't cut anything from the town side yet either. We haven't yet. And we we know we're gonna we're gonna talk about our capital. We're gonna talk about those things. Yes. So I second that. Okay. Alright. Any further discussion before we vote on the 7.5 idea? Recommendation. Recommendation. Recommendation.
Exactly. Anybody? Okay. All in favor of recommending a 7.5% increase to the board of ed? Aye. Liz, you're not voting? Thinking. Okay. I'm thinking I'm thinking too. I'm thinking
too. A I'm thinking lot of people, I think, are thinking. Hold on, guys. This is fair.
Well, I did have that question that, like, they can just say no. Right? So Oh, they can say yes. Say no anyway. This is that. They're gonna say no. Can. It's a recommendation.
Say yes because I'll say yes. I don't want it to go any higher. Yeah. Thank you, Heather. I I think They're not gonna anybody anyway. This meeting, they would understand that that's not your I don't want it to go anywhere. Your heart lies. I think we get that.
I think we've done our due diligence, though. Just I just want transparency.
That's all. Let me go back. We had yes for Kim. Yes for Liz, yes for Louise. Anybody did I miss Heather's schedule? I'm gonna say yes. Okay. Yes. So that's for it doesn't really matter what the rest of us do. That passes. Just for the sake of it, Nayes? I'm gonna have Steve. Yeah.
We're gonna have Steve. I'm gonna be brave. Seriously? Go Nay just to be that guy. But, anyway, Nick? Neil, you called us. I I I'm
not a I'm not a hard no on it. You've been swearing at us all night. Yeah. Yeah. I could abstain with that. We have four in favor. We have two abstentions and one no. Okay. That motion passed. So what I will do is I will write an email to Caitlin and inform her that the board of finance's recommendation is that the board of Ed reconsider their budget and aim for a 7.5.
Alright? I think it's fair. I really Kim, I I think all of you, I think it's fair. That one is a number that's not It's fair, but you abstained? Well, my my reason again is, again, is if we had all the numbers in front of me and you could say, this is how much the mandatory increases are, I would feel more comfortable about making a recommendation. But without that exact number, I don't feel comfortable making a recommendation. But I I'm thinking basically on the side of the town and what the town's gonna vote for. I don't know if they're gonna vote for 7.5, but I feel it's a fair number to go out and make a recommendation to and let them work towards. It's not I'm hoping that they'll take your 11 and try and work towards that seven and a half percent. So I think
yeah, I think some of the taxpayers are going to vote it down. Oh, taxpayers are going Yeah, they're going vote down. The most important thing I think I want to glean out of this conversation is, you know, we need to talk more as a board about what we want to get from the Board of Education and work together as a group to get it and work with the Board of Ed. But we got to do some more It's really important moving forward. I think that's absolutely true. I sent them a really nice email asking about that one question about the grant because I couldn't find it in my research. You know, the answer that came back to me was so rude. And my question was so precise. I was not digging. I was not poking anybody. And what I did pull out of it is that there's a federal grant that's not listed in the state side of the state grants that I didn't even know they had. It's recorded anywhere. So that's not done to be bullying or
picking. It's to pull information out so I can make good decisions
for Yeah. The I tell one story too? Last year when I started on this board, I was trying to understand, you know, how the town works whatnot and how contracts work and whatever. And I wanted to understand the contracts of the town. So I was nervous because I was new, but I sent an email to Eric, Eric Anderson. I said, You think I could see the contracts for the contracted employees in the town? And I felt a little odd about it. Within five minutes, I had it in my email. Bam. I'm like, Oh, he's like, Here you go. I'm like, oh, well, thank you. And I once had a conversation with him, I think it was the first year we went through this. And he goes through this whole budget worksheet and he's going through all the salaries and we're going line by line and I'm looking, I was in Florida at the time and I'm looking at this and I'm going, Oh my God, there's like people's names and their salaries and all this and that. I'm like, I was very uncomfortable with that. And I went in and talked to him in the office. I said, I'm a little uncomfortable that you're like displaying all this out for the world to see. I said, I get it, we need to look at this and I appreciate it, but you know maybe we could like skinny it down so we're not, you know, like so there's a title and not a name. He's like, Liz, it's public information.
And I was like, And it is. Okay, I get it. Yes. And it was just so easy asking questions. And that's just a story to relate to the difficulties. Anyway. The polar opposite. That's all.
Fair enough. We can move on. So We can move on. Yep. No worries. Oh. So I think what we ought to do at this point is do the last round of public speak if anybody's actually left and, adjourn because we're getting late here. We've made our recommendation. I have sent Yep. Already the emails to I accept two emails to Caitlin. Oh, good. Because I did not forget about first question. Nope. I had it up. I just hadn't actually sent it. I admit I put it I phrased it very I was like, I I don't know what this pressure bank thing is. Can you give me more information? Just bear with me on this list. I I won't let it completely go. I just it's new to me, so bear with me. I phrased it. Yeah. I just And then I sent a separate separate email saying, so you are aware the board tonight voted to make a recommendation that you guys get down to 7.5%. So those two are sent already. They're done. So okay.
Can I just feel like can I say ask some question? No. I was just gonna say, I know there's obviously some friction with the board of ed and everything. But if people communicated better or sent their information like Kim said, and both ways, maybe the 11% we would have said, sure, because everybody trusted We would never have said sure. You know what I mean? We would have thought that. But you would have trusted the information and say, okay, 11 is right. We wouldn't have gotten gotten behind it. We ought to get tax payers. Trust
from both boards. Both boards. Yes. And it's it's a it's been it's proven very difficult, over the last three years, I'd say.
Know? I thought it was just when me and Nick came. Frustrating.
No. Nothing to do with you two. Yeah. No. No. No. Preexisting condition, you might wanna say. Anyway, so look, guys.
Just want say one thing, Rob. I tried to get actually the board of Ed and the board of Selectmen and the board of finance together on a non business type of thing, like a get together. Last summer. Last summer. And no one from the board of Ed even replied to me. So Yeah. You know, you can do what you can do, but if people aren't open for it, what are you gonna do?
You know? Yeah. I mean, again, there's a lot going on here. I know. But it was I'm not against your idea. Social And also understand, like, you know as well as I know. Like, we're all volunteers, so it's often hard to get people together. But, no, I'm I'm not against that at all, Louise, and I appreciate that you tried that. You know I've tried in my way. We have maybe different approaches, but neither one of us has managed to succeed. So Yeah. And
I wish I wish we were in a better place. Honestly, do you I just always felt like the board of finance and board of ed worked recently altogether. It was, you know, there was a lot of friction between poor and board of ed. Anyway, without airing all of that tonight, I'd like to do public speak and proceed to the end of our meeting. So let's see. Who do we have? Joanne, would you like to speak for the public?
Oh gosh. I mean, I don't envy you guys. It's not easy at all, clearly. Nope. Good luck. It's it's a hard job, and but I I do wanna commend that everybody deserves to have their opinion and be respected for it. You're clearly it's easy to read the room where everybody is, and I probably could have pegged it before the meeting even started, but you're all allowed to voice in your opinions and should be respected for that. You know, as a former member, I put so much time and effort into it, and you guys need to do that too, you know, and you are, and you deserve respect for giving your time like this. But the one thing I found too, and the other person that deserves big kudos again is Lisa because she's new but she has done so much stuff. It's amazing.
Oh Rob, I want to commend you for bringing up those funds. As you know, I've always campaigned to put a couple cuts here and there because they are like big savings accounts. And sometimes in a hard year like this, you know, they're saving to do projects which are needed in the town, you know, by budgeting a little bit each year. And maybe this could take a little bit of a cut here and there. Nobody ever wants to do it and it's hard work. But like Bill said, nobody's gonna pass this budget if it's that high. So you may have to just, you know, knock a little bit off here and there, you know, because there's big amounts in each one when you get the balances. I had found Wally's, while you guys were all talking, that that yearly payment for the fire truck is 117,780.52. And Wally had sent us a memo
that he was asking for that SCBA equipment because the fund balance was up to $567,000 and 673. So it was a huge amount. So by lopping a little bit off here and there for one year and then kind of figuring out what you need each year, you guys can do that. Thanks for looking up the lease payment because that's lower paper that went ahead thought was. I may have to go back to Wally and and and double check that because the $1.37 in my head had been
He said added to the budget this year into the capital fund Yeah. 137,000. Don't know if it's if it's truly flat, but may have to go back to Wally on that. So thanks, Joanne. Yeah, the 137 makes up a couple things. That's what I thought that it was. Yeah, that's the payment. That's all I'm just looking for crazy things that she can't find the poor thing, you know, so I found that one piece of paper that That's exactly 37 deposit. $1.17.
Very very close to what I paid Salem when they had verified the truck thing. We're gonna we're gonna get there, Lisa. We're gonna get there.
Good luck. Thank you, Joanne. Welcome. I do appreciate it. Tess, do you have comment for us? She's sleeping?
I was gonna say she feels might have put her in bed. I don't know. I don't blame her if we did. That's it. Alright. And and, of course, I mean, Eric, I I can't believe you stuck with us. I can't believe he did anything. Further to say, sir. Now is the time.
I'd just like to thank the board for having me on tonight. You guys got a rough job ahead of you. I wish you luck. And if you need anything from me, please feel free to contact me.
Yeah. Will do. Thanks, sir. And likewise, thanks to Lisa for being here, and helping us so much. You know? And you and I will continue to work on this stuff.
Yep. Well, I'm dying to get to the bottom of it. I hate when stuff is unsettled. I don't Well,
I I got that impression from you, and I appreciate it. So we'll see what we can do there. Okay? Yep. Alright. And I think I mean, honestly, I don't see anybody else. It's just Community Voice, which is our channel. So that's it, folks. Unless, you know I'll make a motion to adjourn. I second. Love it. Seconded by Bill. Very good, Louise. Motions. Bill seconds. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Aye. Bye bye. Looks like seven o to me. Well done, everyone. Thank you very much. And we will be back again next week. Next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. Do you wanna stop recording the