Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
October 28, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Very good. So I guess let's go ahead and call this meeting to order. Okay, it's 7PM. Call the order and do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States and to the Republic for which one nation. All right,
thank you. So looking at our attendance board, we have just a couple of members, I guess a few members would be considered the public. Is anybody interested in a public comment or public speak? Item number two in our agenda. Okay, none. We'll go ahead on to item three which is additions and deletions of agenda items. Does anybody have anything, any additions or deletions?
Eric? Yeah, so I would like to add item 12B, Mahoney Sable payment. 12b, 12 is public speak.
Yeah, do it 12b and do it in executive session is what I would like to do. So the reason I added it at the end is because we can kick everybody off and then immediately adjourn after the discussion.
Okay. I'm not sure that goes under 12 under public speak and it almost be that you would add an item, you know, well I guess it'd be something. Yeah, item 13 and change it German to 14. Yeah, that makes you happy then that's, that would make me happier. Okay. All right.
Would anybody like to make a motion to, add an agenda item Mahoney Sable. And in executive session. Yeah. I'll make the motion. Second.
Okay, so Diane's motioning to add an agenda item to the end of the agenda, which would now be item 13 which is the Mahoney stable payment in executive session moving in German to item 14 Kurt seconded. Did I understand the motion correctly? Yep, I think Any
discussion? Hearing none, let's go ahead and take a vote. I'll go around my screen. Diane? Aye. Kurt? Aye. Linda. Rob. Aye. Dave. Aye. Louise. Aye.
And I'll also vote aye because we don't really need to do a roll call vote on something like this. So nobody abstains unanimous. Thank you. Okay, so we will add an agenda item 13 Mahoney stable payment in executive session, which is generally means the public is not participating in that particular section and the German move to item 14. Okay, the motion passes. Do we have any other additions or deletions to the agenda? Hearing none, let's go on to item four which is the town administrator's report. Eric?
Okay, you should have all had this in your revised packet but I'm just going to go over it real quick. As most of you know, because you probably got the letter, the reval is starting, and that's going in the next couple of weeks. That's a budgeted expense. It's going to be at the budget. It is a full measure and list reval, which is kind of difficult under COVID conditions. So basically what they're doing is going around doing the exterior measurement, getting all the information they have. And if they do lift, if COVID restrictions do get lifted, they will then go back and do the interior inspections. But it's unclear at this point whether that can really take place or not. Town clerk, we hired a new assistant town clerk, finally. Her name is Matea Whitford, and she has opted for partial payment in lieu of health benefits. So we decided this year one of the things we would do is if we had an employee that qualifies for health benefits that chooses to opt out per the employee handbook, they can basically get half the cost instead of healthcare. So the bottom line is that saves the town about $6,000 because she opted for that as opposed to signing up for the health plan.
Eric, can I interrupt you for a second? You said something about the revised packet. What were you saying was in the revised packet? The town administrator's report.
I'm seeing the budget summary, I'm not seeing anything with the town administrators report in the packet online. It seems to be kind of blank.
I just pulled it off the website about twenty minutes before the meeting.
I pulled it off around the same time though and I don't have it.
I just pulled it off now. I don't see it there. Okay. Under item four?
Yep. So item four is blank in your packet. My suspicion does have a cover page, top administrators report.
Okay. My suspicion is we've got a link incorrect on the website, and it's pointing towards the original version, not the revised version. So, Amanda, can we take care of that?
Yeah. Would you like me to pull up the report?
Do you want to see it on the screen or do you want me to just walk you through it? I'll
take it. I'm okay with just walking through it. If anybody feels differently and they want to see it, that's fine. Okay, assuming you're going to post the corrected link and packet afterwards.
Sorry about that. Eric before we do that I'd like to, where is the assistant town clerk from Is she local? Or Say again? Where is she from? Does she live in town, or is she, out of town? No. She doesn't live in town. She's one of the adjacent towns. Close, but not in Andover. Public
works, the transfer station upgrade is mostly finished. There's a few minor expenses we may incur, but by and large that project is dealt with. The big item that you'll see later in the packet is the transfer station brush pile. As many of you know, we sent that out to RFP about a month and a half ago. Basically, we didn't get around to grinding up the brush pile last year, and we didn't do it the year before. We normally put aside about $7,500 a year to do that and we just didn't get to it last year to do. So didn't spend the $7,500 last year, we didn't spend the money in the budget this year, so now we have a lot more to do. When we went out to RFP, our original lowest bid was $37,000 At which point I said, we're not doing that. So we looked into renting one and doing it ourselves. The shortest term rental we could get was for a month and they wanted about $55,000 to rent the unit. So that obviously wasn't going to do us any good. I went back to the guys who cut our wood and asked them whether they would consider doing it with their big chipper.
They hemmed and hawed a little bit, but ultimately said no. Scott Persson had a contact with CT Mulch, who originally said they didn't want to do it for us. We went back and forth with them a couple of times. They finally gave us a bid of around $14,000 to grind it up and dispose of it. So that cost is about right. The last time we did it was, I think three full years ago, and that was about $10,000 in a much smaller pile. So it does exceed the amount we have in the budget pretty considerably. Right now we have 7,500 in the budget and the total bill for this thing is going to be about $14,000 So we can talk about that a little bit more later. I'm just laying it out here in
my report. We are still hiring Richard Bagan as a temp employee in public works. We are advertising right now for Maintainer One. As you know, we budgeted for a fourth public works employee, but kind of two things happened. Early on, we had a lot of overtime expense early on because of the storm cleanup from Isaiea, or however you pronounce that. However, it's working out in the sense that we're underspending the public works budget because we've had a fourth person on the books. We essentially have a full time fourth person right now in Richard Bagan, but because he's only a temp worker, he's cheaper and we're not paying him health care. So with the overtime, we're still in great shape. We're still about plus, we're still about 6,000 under budget total for employee salary. But you're going to see when we get to the review that those two line items are over, but within this whole salary category, we're in great shape. So the current road foreman, Ed Kasich, is likely leaving December 1. We're in the hiring process for his replacement and we've notified the union that we're kind of shifting that from a traditional road crew foreman
to a true working supervisor position that will be not in the union. We're also going to hire as soon as Eddie retires, we're going to hire a maintainer one to replace. So that's that. Actually, don't want to talk about that right now. We'll talk about that later. Oil and diesel. Last year, we locked in about this time or a little later really inexpensively for oil for the year and for diesel. We locked it in somewhere around 1 point dollars 5 to a gallon. The lock in right now is really low also, and we ought to consider locking in for next season
now while we can and it's still cheap. It's a gamble. And the other thing that's a gamble is we don't really know right now how many school buses we're going to need. We don't know how cold it's going to be. So it's one of these things where we're trying to lock this in, but we've been consistently over in the amount we're locking in. And it's very hard to predict that accurately, but we're, you know, Laura and I are considering locking in sooner rather than later because right now the prices are really low. And usually, at least for heating oil, they go up considerably during the heating season. As far as the finance department, we're starting the process of moving to Edmunds software. We are currently interviewing for the assistant finance officer. We have the last rounds of interviews tomorrow, at which point we will have interviewed I think nine, eight candidates. And with the intention of the following week picking a candidate and offering the position and figuring out, start negotiating for salary. The other thing that's an issue is that Laura Edwards, who's the building manager for the elementary school has submitted a resignation effective January 1. So that's kind of accelerating the need for the finance director. So we submitted, I found out about that yesterday and we have now advertised for the finance director position with the intention of interviewing for that as soon as we have an applicant pool.
So the next thing up is the federal reimbursement for COVID. This is primarily Barbara is working on this right now. We are filing for repayment for a bunch of our expenses related to COVID-nineteen with the FEMAstate. It's not gonna be huge reimbursement, but it may end up being 4,000 to $6,000
something like that. Oh, wait, can you hear me? I'm muted because I'm on my other computer working on it because it's due Friday. I'm up to over 6,000 if they allow all the costs, so we'll see what happens with it.
Yep. So we're We're on not going to end up filing for storm related expenses for Isaiah. I said in on all the conference calls with the state and with FEMA regarding that. And the amount of effort involved versus what we would potentially recoup just isn't worth going through all the hoops to do it. FEMA is actually pretty crazy in terms of what they require for refunding that. So I don't think we're going to recoup anything from that. But the good news is that we actually didn't really spend any. I mean, we spent $1,500 in overtime expenses, but that's basically our only real expense. We didn't suffer any damage. Know, we didn't segregate out the woodpile so we can't really get refunded
for that. So the other thing I just wanted to give you kind of an advanced heads up now is that as of right now, we're fine on the registrar's budget. But if we go to, since we're going to elections in the spring, if we end up with an additional referendum, we're going to be over on the registrar's budget. And part of that is just the requirements right now for holding an election under COVID conditions are just a lot more employees required, a lot more paperwork, a lot more time than really what budget for in a normal year. So we're fine now, but I'm just giving you kind of an advanced heads up that we may run into that at some point in the future. And that's pretty much it for my report unless you have additional questions for me.
Eric, I have a quick question for you on the oil and diesel. Yep. We locked in, you said about a buck 50 last year? Yeah. I think it was a dollar 52. Okay. Which kicks the butt out of what I locked in on for my own heating oil, which is annoying. No. More appropriately, what is it looking like now?
I didn't see a final number, but I think we're looking at like a buck 60 right now for a lock in for next year. So fairly comparable.
Pretty comparable, yes. Okay, historic low still really. Yeah and way better than we've ever done in the past. Oh my goodness, yes. Yeah,
No question. I mean a buck 60 we would have killed for that a few years back. Yeah, exactly.
I have a question about the town administrator, the assistant. Yes. Okay. She opted out for this year. Is that a yearly opt out
option? So she would have the option at the beginning of each fiscal year to opt back in to the insurance if she so choose.
And that would allow that? Yes. That's allowable? Okay. Yes.
Okay, thanks. By her union contract, she's automatically allowed based on the number of hours she works to have medical benefits. So the way it works is that if at some point in the future, as long as it falls, basically the next time the enrollment period opens, which I think is at the beginning of the fiscal year, then she would be able to re enroll. Okay.
Just like you get as a normal employee, you can change once a year if there's something in your plan you want to change or drop. Probably it would also apply if you had a,
can't remember what they call it, qualifying change in your status. That's a possibility also but it's just the way those things work. Right. Okay.
Eric I have a question just curious as to why we haven't ground up the brush pile in the past. Is it just didn't get to it or what?
Yeah, it didn't get to it last fall. I had kind of just taken over and Eddie, the road crew foreman, had kind of told me that we really probably ought to do it. And I said, go ahead and do it. And then nothing ever really happened. So I think he just never really took the time to and part of it is we had been kind of going from doing it fairly low key with the Handshake deal to actually putting out RFPs and documenting what we were doing. And that just was one of the things that got lost in the shuffle. If I had planned it better, I would have tried to do it in like July and split the cost between two fiscal years because we spent zero on it last year and we're over spending it this year.
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's just nice to have that planned expense and meet the meet the budget and everyone would agree that I'm just wondering Okay.
We have to think about something like that where we have an expenditure that we know doesn't come up every year, but it's like putting aside for a fire truck, you know, we know it doesn't happen. It happens every ten years or whatever it is. We know it. Alright, every three years we have to grind up brush.
Well, you know, the reality is given given the fact that we're piling the brush up on top of a capped landfill, we really should not be letting it go as long as we do. So we really should be grinding this every year. And I think what we have to do is get back to the point where we are once a year grinding this thing up. I think letting it go that long as, know, one, it's kind of hard. It's getting in the way of the drainage right now. So we really need to address this going forward on a regular basis. Okay.
All right. Any other questions for Eric? I'll just point out that Amanda pointed out separately that I'll just let everybody know that the if you click the link in the email that she sent it will go to the old administrators packet. However, if you go to the website and you navigate through to the Board of Finance meetings and agendas, and then you click on the packet link for today's meeting, it will come up with the revised one. So it is there. It's just that they probably both documents live there. You'd have to look like like both of them so.
Anyway, she displayed it, so I think we're okay there. All right. If there's nothing else for Eric, we'll move on to agenda item five, which is the treasurer's report. Barbara? Yeah.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. Just a few comments. Budget, this year, as with last year, things are pretty slow in town hall because of the COVID shutdown. So, no fires to put out in terms of overspending or, you know, people bumping up against anything. Thing I would comment on, as Eric did, there will be extra costs for registrars elections. And the registrar Wally, you know, has talked to me about that a handful of times. He's concerned that you know upfront because if he's coming to you later with overspent budgets, he doesn't want you
to be surprised by it. Do we have any idea what the scale of that's gonna be?
The one thing that's happening is that there is a part time clerk who was actually put on payroll to help with absentee ballots. So right now I don't have a total on that. It's ongoing. I do want to mention though an offset to that Secretary of State recognizing that this was going to happen has actually granted to the town some money and we've gotten about $4,000 so far in grants. That's probably all we're going to get, although you just don't know because that came as a surprise. But it was Secretary of State's office. It came in three pieces. And again, the registrar would like you to know that when you go to maybe have to increase his budgets that there was that revenue offset. So we'll track that as we go along both the expenses and revenues. I'll keep you updated on that as we need to address it, if we do need to address it expense wise. The other thing that's going to happen and this happened last year, the seniors just aren't doing much and they've got a budget with a few thousand dollars in it for senior trips and other activities as well their whole transportation program which is running but not spending a lot of money right now and that could get shut down, you know, as it did last spring. So that's a budget that has a few thousand dollars in it. Eric mentioned benefits, specifically health insurance. And I think you probably know that the second person in my office left in the middle of July and she had expensive benefit package. So that's all being saved. That position was not refilled. I picked up some hours but there will be a savings. There'll be plenty of money left over in benefits.
Let's see the other thing. So that's about it for expenses unless anyone has any questions specifically about It looks like the only thing of significance is kind of running ahead might be the insurance line is that just because of timing of payments, quarterly for quarterly payments.
Yeah. Okay. So we would have already paid for the second quarter fiscal year I, what does it look like I, I'd have to look like it's 58% of budget and we're just not far through the year so it's just the one Yeah, it's quarterly
payments and we also in that budget is fire department, which is a payment up front. It's to be front loaded then. So, it's yes.
And it's probably going to the estimates on that are really good. The Kerma auto. I'm sorry auto property and then the workers comp. Those are usually pretty good numbers. Yeah, any other budget questions? Because the only other thing I'll mention on the revenue side, nothing coming in yet. Although the first ECS education cost sharing payment, which will be a quarter of the money that's received is due to come in at the end of this month. I should see it, you know, by the beginning of next week. So that will show up in next month's budget. And then the Town Aid Road grant, we've already got the first payment on that and that's reflected in the TAR report $93,000 That's a fiftyfifty. So we should be seeing another 93,500 sometime later in the year and that's all I have for notes on on my side so if there are any questions about revenue or expenses
You guys wanna go through it line by line or what do you want to to do with that? Are there any specific things you wanna talk about within the budget summary at this point?
Not for me. Yeah. It's early in the year. We're doing fine. I'll certainly keep you updated, you know, to things that you should know as the year goes on.
Yeah, and just so that you know when for the salary for public works. Right now we're about 10,600 unexpended on the regular salary line. And we're about $4,500 overexpended on temp. And that's because at the moment we're hiring Richard Bagan, as opposed to hiring him, you know, he's still a temp worker as opposed to full time. And you have the offset of the overtime additional too. Yeah, we have the additional over set. So right now we're running about 5,000 over in the 5,000 under in that combined salary bucket. So we're still in pretty good shape and no real issues there. And we're also, again, because Richard has not been on the insurance plan, we're running about another $4,000 surplus for not having paid him benefits at this point. So that's where we're at there with that. The only other thing I think at some point we're gonna run into a problem with again is in mowing and ground care. I thought of that one too. Well,
this is kind of a giant. So the big problem is we had a problem with the well and the well pump this year. And we ended up getting the well pump replaced, which was a little bit of a screw up with the installer because it wasn't the only problem. So the long and the short of it is we shouldn't have spent as much as we did but it was a legitimate expense on their part. I went back and forth with them a few times but ultimately you know, we hired them. So, you know, we're stuck with paying them. We got a new well pump, the sprinklers work a lot better, a lot more water comes out of it. Basically, the problem is that the well is fairly sandy. So the impellers and the pump keep sucking up sand and it's grinding down the impellers. So we didn't get a lot of life out of the last pump. One of the things we tried to do is raise the pump up about 20 feet to get it off the bottom and hopefully we get a little bit more life out of the impeller in the wet end of the next pump. So that's basically what that is. That's about a $7,000 expense we weren't planning on taking out of that line item so we will likely go over that later in the year also as we start paying for all the actual round care expense. And that's really what I wanted to bring up, to you. Those are the only, big ones. The one big maintenance item for public works was, which we budgeted for, but it was a big hit early because we wanted to do it before plow season,
is we took one of the Peterbilt trucks, the twenty fourteen one and then sandblasted and repainted the bed and body just to extend the life of that a little bit. So that was around an $8,000 expense. A pretty big expense front load. Budget said under, Eric? Let
me look. It's under it should be under, like, I wanna say What are you looking for? Vehicle repair. The O303. I shouldn't see the specific one. O301. O301. Oh, okay. The maintenance, 301435.
435, vehicle maintenance. Okay, got it. Okay. Well, you're still only at 33% of your expenditures. Although
stuff can happen. Right. I mean, but we're going into plow season when you normally break stuff and expend money. But we did budget for that additionally above last year's maintenance budget. So we were kind of accounting for it. And then the other one I want to bring to your attention is we are over right now on hauling fees at the transfer station. And part of that is we ended up taking a lot longer to rebuild the walls than we thought. And so we ended up having to use the open compactors or the open containers, which don't pack down nearly as efficiently, especially with regular garbage. So we had more hauling fees than we normally would have expected to at this point. It's not a super lot of money. It'll all work out. I think within the transfer station budget, I think we're okay. But I'm just bringing your attention that that particular one is going to need a transfer into it at some point also,
but not for quite a while. And that's it. That's the big stuff unless again you have other questions for me.
Anyone have any more questions for Eric on the budget summary or Barbara?
I had a question just in regards to the fees for moving the garbage to Willow Benda could be considered looking for a maybe a used container truck like we talked about like Hebron and Marlboro both have done?
I mean the question becomes Kurt, know it's not just a container truck, it's a container truck and somebody hauling a couple of days a week and doing the loads. To be perfectly honest, I haven't looked at it. I mean, it's just it's one more thing that we would have to put on public works bucket. And either that means we gotta add an employee or we cut away a lot of the excess time we've been able to give the department by going to a fourth employee.
Really? One guy couldn't, fill himself away for one or two well, it's it's not all day. I mean, it's it's hauling from Andover to Woolhamatic and back. That's what they the other towns do and, everybody has a CDL license down here and, I mean, figure out your costs of of hauling right now having, Willie Ways do it versus ourselves doing. Over over the cost of a used or a new truck?
Sure. I mean, I'm willing to explore that. I mean, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just know, it's one more thing to have to deal with, frankly. But, again, I I don't mind looking into it, certainly.
Hire the right public work supervisor, maybe that's a job for him or her. Sure.
A lot easier said than done. Any other questions for Eric or Barbara on the budget. Okay hearing none or the town treasurer's report I should have said. Let's move on to item 6A, budget transfers, supplemental appropriations. We really have the over expenditure request which is in the packet. I think that was in the original also. So it looks like we have an over expenditure request that exceeds our normal amount for our trigger amount of 5,000 So this is for the brush pile removal, Eric?
Yeah, it is. I have to read some of this, but One note on this though,
this has not been reviewed by the Board of Selectmen And the reason it hasn't was I got the agreement in place with them, you know, before or after the last meeting. And so if you're more comfortable, we can send it to the Board of Selectmen for approval, but you are the Board of Finance. So I figure you can approve it without them if you so choose. It's just a question of your comfort level. The reason I did it that way is because I'd really like to grind it up next week because I think I have contractor availability next week. So that's why I wanted to talk about it here, whether that was something you were all comfortable with doing without passing back before the board of selectmen. Kinda your call.
And can I just say one thing? Amanda, we've got this is in the original packet. We're good. So this is to get us from 7,500 to 14,000. Correct. This is the request. So we could bless it basically and the board of selectmen can then take that up and execute it?
If you bless it, I'll have the contractor, I'll sign the contract and have the contractor in next week. So we don't even need to skip
the board of selectmen process. Mike I'm personally comfortable with that, because I think the reason we put this process in place was to reduce the burden of you know Eric having to come to us for these transfers and allowing the Board of Selectmen to kind of you know do their thing and that we really just wanted oversight on big ticket items such as this. So I don't know that the Board of Selectmen would have any angst over this and that's something that frankly, from my standpoint, I think it's more that Eric will have to deal with their angst than with us. I mean, we can certainly bless the action. And then in my opinion, I think it still follows the spirit of what we were trying to do.
I mean, something of that magnitude has only you can approve it. It's just a question of whether you want the board of selectmen to bless it before you approve it or whether you feel comfortable acting on it yourself.
Okay. Well, from my standpoint then I agree with Mark. You know, we can make a call now and that's fine. I just wanna just check on what the logistics of that was. That's fine. Process. I think the other question.
I'm just curious why it was so more expensive than the original budgeted price.
Did they say why? Because of of the what we were talking about earlier, how we hadn't done it for a couple of years. So go ahead, Aaron. Yeah,
so basically the last time we did this, which was I want to say three years ago, I had Eddie break out the receipts. We spent about $10,000 doing it, but the pile was far smaller. This is something we should be doing annually. We didn't do it last year and I don't believe we did it the year before. So we're basically chewing up three years of stuff instead of one year. Now in truth, because a big part of the cost is mobilization, the overall cost is probably less to the town if we do bigger piles less often. So this probably is more cost effective. However, I'm a little worried we're going to get in trouble with our permitting because we let the pile grow to a size that's really beyond the scope of what we should be piling up on top of our capped landfill,
if that makes sense. Hey Eric, a question for you. So I think if you had your druthers we would do this every year. Yep.
We're now three, you know, this is a three year in, you know, is there, does it make sense to split that difference and just kind of schedule this every two years?
It may. The problem is the bigger the pile, the harder it gets to work around it and the more it affects the drainage at the transfer station. Part of our problem is because we have a capped landfill, all the upper parking lots drain down and we finally put in a decent drainage basin and made the drainage correct. But the problem is so we can get the water down to the lower level. But right now, the only thing we can do is allow it to infiltrate across the capped landfill. What we'd like to do is put in a pipe and pipe it past the landfill. But what
you absolutely can't do without a blessing by the Pope probably is to dig up an existing capped landfill.
No, no. Okay, this is where my work expertise comes into play. Don't touch that landfill. Exactly.
But you have to realize too guys is that No, girls bad, bad, bad, bad. Three
years worth of storms we've had. We've had a lot of storms in the last three years. Yeah, and knocks down limbs and I get it.
I'm just saying, when you talk about economies of scale when, okay, we let it ride three years and we get away with it. Right. Cheaper to in a sense because of mobilization costs. I get that. That's something I'm familiar with from work. So I just asked the question, but look, I'm not against the idea that we should do it every year at all. I just wanted to raise it as maybe we should, a budgeting standpoint, say, okay, every two years we're gonna do it. It's like pumping out your septic system or something. Every two years we do, you know, it's not every year, it's every two, but if you're telling me it's every year and that's the way it needs to be,
Well, I'm telling you that's the way it should be, but I will tell you that's certainly not the way we've always done it. I know that as a town we've gotten in trouble before because at least once or twice prior instead of getting the actual organic material hauled away afterward, they just kind of pushed it over the back with the backhoe and we're cited for that. So I don't With want to chips, come on now. Right. So I don't want to repeat that portion.
I know I hear you and that's fine. I just was throwing it out there, but, you know, again, I'm willing to totally go along with what you're saying. I just wanted to ask the question. That's all. Sure. Yep.
Correct me if I'm wrong, we've only done it two times, haven't we? Since the last administration, we'll let it all go. Remember they had that giant pile you wanted us to burn and we said no way. Right. Yeah.
I mean, that's we've we've out we've only expended funds twice on this, so I'm I'm all for doing it yearly, personally.
Yeah. And and that was one of my thoughts too, to go back and see whether we could permit it and actually burn it. But one that would be an enormous, we clearly couldn't burn the whole pile. We would have had to, based on the cubic yards, we would have to divide it into six piles, think, and burn one pile at a time. So it just wasn't really, you know It was no good. Yeah. Plus given the fact that we're in a drought, there was no way I was getting permission to burn anyway. So
Okay. All right. Do you have any other questions for Eric on this? All right, they may want to make a motion about approving the over expenditure request?
I'll make that motion. I motion that we I rather I move that we approve the over expenditure request for the town dump. I'll second it.
Okay, so Rob has moved that we approve the over expenditure amount of $6,500 for the landfill for the brush removal. Louise is seconded. Any other discussion on this topic? Okay, hearing none, let's take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. Let's go on to item number seven, old business. 7A is the governor's executive order. Eric, do have any updates? Do.
So they have a new kind of tiered system for alerting municipalities when they reach certain thresholds of active coronavirus cases. So I've been looking and it appears we're going to make it without into next week without being in the red category, red category being over fifteen cases per 100,000 per day, basically. For the town of Andover, that equates to six point eight people every two weeks getting COVID-nineteen. It looks like our number is going to be six. So we're gonna be under the threshold, but not a real lot. So we're definitely getting a resurgence back in the town. And the board of selectmen going forward is gonna have to think about what mitigation steps they want to be. There are no mitigation steps that are being proposed at this very second, but I suspect that may change as Connecticut and truly the entire country is seeing a dramatic resurgence in COVID-nineteen. Don't know how that's going to play out. We've been working with IT on coming up with a plan. So if we're stuck with employees working back at home again, we can deal with it. There is currently one town employee that is nearing the end of their two week, penance for being exposed to somebody who had COVID nineteen. That is the tax collector. She should be back Monday. She has tested negative. But since it's only a couple more days for the whole fourteen day period,
I told her to just stay out through tomorrow and then come back in Monday morning. So far we haven't had any real problems with town employees, but you never know. And I don't really have any information at this point as to what's going to happen for next year's budget. I think it's way too early to really know. What I can say is that we've been able to minimize our direct COVID related expenses. And so far, doesn't seem like the elementary school has been encountering huge problems staying within their budget. But part of that is they've got some supplemental state funding that's COVID related that they were able to pay for a lot of their expenses. So that's basically it. We are requesting reimbursement for some of our COVID related expenses. And Barbara can tell you the exact number, but it's not a ton of money, but it's in the $6.7000 dollars category. So it's not insignificant, certainly worth applying for. But I can't tell you exactly how much we're actually gonna get out of it.
For Are we have do we still have an amount a significant amount of meetings happening in the community room now that we open things back up or not? Not a significant. We have some meetings.
Because I mean, those could go back to Zoom. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. We could. Really do meeting.
Yeah. I mean, to me, that would be the logical next things to start considering pushing the meetings back. You know, the real question is is if we break the 15 per 100,000 is we've got to decide as a town, actually really the first selectman has to decide because he's technically in a public health emergency, he's technically the decision maker has to decide whether we go back to the phase two standards or we stay with phase three standards because each municipality has to make that determination. And then what other measures get implemented. At the end of the day, that's a first selectman decision.
Erica, the Tom by Tom results on the state site for any, do you know? They are hard to find.
They are hard to find. Have to go one of dashboard
items and then it pops up a map behind that.
There's a link I have somewhere and unfortunately not on this computer. It's actually on my work comp where I can go right to the
town level. I found it the other day. So there's like a dashboard item that summarizes rates. And I think if you click on that, then it opens the detail behind it. The main problem I have with the state is
that they're cumulative or at least the ones that I'm looking at are cumulative, which don't tell you anything, unfortunately, because you can ignore everything that happened before or dealing with this now. Right. And my frustration with the state reports as much as they are actually, they have a lot of data but the way they present that data I have an issue with because you don't get where we are now as well as you can and there's actually a much better website. The Financial Times has a fantastic website where they're pulling off of other people's data and doing it state by state, also country by country but you can scroll down and get to state US states and they're way better because they give you a seven day rolling average state by state. We can't get town by town obviously, know, international newspaper.
Actually it is possible to get that out of the state data. It is? You have to you have to do a bunch of manipulation. What you have to do is you have to you have to download the whole thing as an Excel file, sort by town initially, and then sort by day sequentially backwards. And then you can look day by day when new COVID cases pop up and you basically count back fourteen days and say, how much bigger did the number get in fourteen days? So it's possible to figure it out.
I hear you, but that, you know, from a standpoint of, from my own identification, you know, a graph is much more useful than that. I think I
did find the link, I don't know Amanda if you want me to allow me to share my screen I'll kind of show where it is but we may be getting a little bit of off into the weeds here.
We are, but I'll also mention by the way with our discussion with AES, as you guys know, I have two kids in AES and it's going quite well. I've actually been pleasantly surprised. Good. Good to hear my report.
So if you go to ct.gov you're going to always end up with this little banner at the top and then kind of that mauve color you can click on that and you're going to be taken to this covert 19 response which I usually click to see the travel advisory because you know get. Family and other states we got business travel we're still considering, michael but if you click on this covert this little, it doesn't even look like a link, but the Yes, the data tracker. The little below it, I think it takes you to the same place. So there's a daily data report for Connecticut and then you can pull up the town here.
It'll give you raw numbers though. What it doesn't really give you is rates, right?
Shows the average daily I rate of take it back. Right,
the rate per 100,000 was eight. But the new data comes out tomorrow and that should add only two cases to Andover. So we should be at six, which will put us just slightly under 15. Cause we have to have six point eight cases to turn red. Okay.
All right, So you wake up tomorrow and we'll be orange.
Thanks Mark for showing me that because I've been to this, I've been, I've drilled down this far before but I didn't realize that one map. Don't think I went, there was maybe one step I didn't do. But it didn't look like a light map. Since they haven't adjusted for population, that's actually way more useful than I thought. So thank you.
Just just as a note, at twelve noon today, the fire chief closed the fire station due to the, I guess it's four percent nationwide. It's it's gone above four percent, the amount of cases nationwide. So the fire station is shut down, and this is for Amanda. I'm sure the fire commission will be going back to Zoom meetings at our next next meeting but the only thing we're open for is calls only, emergency calls only.
This is I admit it's wildly off topic but bear with me. Thanks. Halloween there's supposed to be an event, know Saturday, what fire department always does a thing for the kids. We're not this year. No, at the gazebo there was a thing that was gonna get done. Is that all done? Is that all canceled As or
of this very minute that is not canceled. If we are red tomorrow, I'm gonna cancel it. If we're not red, I'm probably not gonna cancel it. And the reason actually is that I think the way that's set up is a lot safer than trick or treating. And I think if we don't offer something, we're going to get more people trick or treating. So I've come to the conclusion that I think it's actually a safer overall plan to do it than to cancel it. The way it will be is the static displays will be, up essentially in the back of people's cars. The kids will be paraded in front of the cars, no contact with the people, you know, massive separation from the people and the kids will each be handed one preassembled
bag by somebody wearing mask and gloves and be sent packing. Goody bags, yeah. Yeah, so it's gonna be kind of a semi crappy event anyway,
but I think it's about as safe as we can physically make it. I mean, I'll just tell you as somebody who typically trick or treats in this town with my kids, I texted some people I normally trick or treat with and nobody's doing it. I mean, you know, there's usually this one neighborhood we all go to and I have no idea what, how that's all going to shake out, but a lot of us are bailing And I saw the email that came out about what's being done at the gazebo area. And, you know, we're planning, my kids are planning a strung up and that's gonna literally be their entire Halloween. That's it. Yeah, I know. I wish
But I don't wanna do a Halloween thing that is dangerous at the same time. You know, if that's not gonna happen, I'd like to know. So if you do, because of state numbers or whatever or our local numbers, if you decide to pull the plug, is there a way you can let me know? Yeah. Yeah. We definitely can.
Thank you. Just because I got two little girls who are, you know, that's their trick or treat this year. Understood.
Hey, Eric, on that same note, you used to publicize how many cases came in. I don't see that. I haven't seen that in the past maybe a month or so.
You be going back to that? I mean, I think I will probably start providing that number to the board of selectmen. And I think I want to work with them a little bit about what our safety messaging is. But I do wanna start putting back out there to the community that, hey, we're starting to get community spread in town. We really don't wanna shut down the schools. We really wanna do, don't do all these other things. So please take the precautions seriously, quit hanging out with your buddies drinking and, you know.
I would recommend that because we're up in the 4% level now, people are gonna start saying, okay, what are we doing about it? Exactly.
I mean, I've seen some hopeful things about elementary school kids versus older kids and I hope that's true and I know that my kids and their schoolmates at Annover Elementary seem to be doing well. So I'm kind of thrilled by that and yet maybe we're just in an oasis and it's got a crash over us. I really don't know. I'm certainly not an epidemiologist. All I can say is so far the fact that our kids have been going full time every day. Yep. Most of our kids, not every kid, but my two have been and it's been working out, gives me some hope that they can pull this off, you know.
Understood. Yeah. And I certainly hope so because it's, you know, you want to provide as much continuity to kids as you absolutely, you know, can. And there's no question from talking to parents of kids that are going to ram that the split schedule is very distracting for kids and a bunch of kids are having real, especially those with learning disabilities to begin with, they're really suffering in that environment.
Yeah, my kids don't have any of that and they're both actually fairly advanced for their age and in the spring when we were all virtual, they struggled. I mean, hated it, They hated it. So they're thrilled to be that. And yet, if they have to hate it because people are dying, hey, whatever. But it seems so far that we've pulled it off at AES. I hope that still continues with everything spiking. I mean, we've seen the number, we've all seen the numbers. Sure. It's not good.
The other thing that really plays in their favor is that everybody was really concerned about how kids are going to tolerate wearing masks. And so far that has not really been an issue. But the thing people have to remember is that we're old. So like when a year goes by, that's like a, you know, we've been doing something for 50s, however many years, you know, so change is hard. You know, when you're four, a whole year has gone by. So 25% of your life has been lived this way. So it's not really a big deal. It's just the way it is. You know, kids mashed up without complaint. They really do. They don't mind it. They're fine. It's really the adults that struggle with it, not the kids.
Yeah. Anyway, we're way off topic. My fault. Sorry. Mark, you wanna corral this? I'm sorry. You're muted, Mark. Mark you're muted.
You're muted. Got it. Got it. Sorry. There you go. Find that button. Yeah, no problem. Anything else related to the pandemic or the executive order Eric we should be aware of? Looks like a no. Okay. Correct. No. All right. So item 7B is the fiscal year twenty twenty-twenty twenty one time budget. So that's I don't know if it should even be on here anymore. Mean we've pretty much gotten our budget right so.
Yeah it was just really the budget review if you wanted further budget review. Yeah I
don't have any discussion on that from my end, anyone? 7C, is where I have to fall on my sword, the Board of Education requests for unexpected funds in the school improvement account. So I was supposed to write a letter which I did draft, but I never completed or sent so I'll do that this week and I'll send that around if everyone remembers the. The basic gist of decided in our last meeting was that the it turned out that this was a moot point that the town really does not have the unexpected funds that they had expected, so I was just going to write a letter just to confirm that with the town or with the school. And just let them know that if we're understanding it's different than they should let us know we'll just bring it up again, but this this point is basically off so I'll I will you know skip this on the agenda for next meeting we'll have a copy will close it out at that point. Any questions on that. Okay, item 7D transportation infrastructure overview. I think that we had that before the meeting when Kurt and I were talking about the speed bumps being removed so. Right I think that can be deleted unless you have specific questions.
I gave you all last week or last month I believe the summary of like total expenses expected expenses for major transportation infrastructure. So unless you have any questions for me, would say just skip that. Is Bear Swap Road included?
Might get a hole or two on Bear Swamp Road you never know. Never mind. Now now.
All right, anything else on that? Okay, let's move to item eight. 8A is the hiring committee for the assistant finance officer. Diane, do you want to take that one?
Well, that's in place. So I mean, so we've had, two days of interviews. We have our last day tomorrow and then hopefully next week you guys will pick somebody. Got to move it along. Yes we do. Who makes the final hiring decision here?
That you Eric? That's a good question. That's a really good question. What I would say is that I would like the hiring committee, the reason why I left it with an odd number was I figured we as a group after the last interview really ought to collectively make a decision because it affects kind of all of us and it has to be agreed to between us and the board of ed. So I think collectively if we all come to an agreement on a candidate that would help.
Okay. So let's hope that that is actually how it plays out then so there's no concerns. All right. Anything else? Any questions for Diane or Eric on that one? It's painful interviewing with masks on.
It's my first round of interviewing people with wearing masks. It's painful. Yeah. I had to do that a few weeks ago. It's an odd thing. We're not zooming everything. You know, we're not doing zoom interviews for everyone. No. No? Wow.
Well, let's get this last meeting in because it looks like next week we may not be able to. Well, I was thinking the exact thing. Let's
we'll wait to get the results until we have our last meeting. I spent the last two days on Zoom
for mediation, big mediation, lots of parties. There had to be 30 people on Zoom for these mediations and breakout rooms and all this stuff. It was very complicated, But I'm just, I'm blown away that we're doing in person stuff even now. Yeah,
I'm a little surprised we did one over the summer, but yeah. Okay. Well, anything else on that topic? Okay, good luck committee on that one. 8B, audit status. This is Barbarus. Yeah,
been back and forth with the auditor, A few emails and I've already sent off a pile of stuff. They are probably going to do everything remotely as ended up happening at the end of last year. It's doable. It just means that instead of they're coming in and you know pulling things they need to look at, I'm gonna have to do a lot of scanning, PDF ing and getting stuff to them. I'm working on the schedules and statements. I haven't had a lot of time to pick it up the last couple of weeks because I've been working on this state report for the COVID reimbursement and then just doing the multitude of things in this office that two people used to do. I'm hoping, probably going to and I've discussed this with Eric today. I've been holding my hours at about thirty four a week for personal reasons. And I've talked to Eric about upping it, you know, maybe three hours a week just to work on audit schedules and statements. I have the templates from last year. That was my first time doing it. So, it's going a lot, lot faster this year for me.
And I will see what I can get done by the end of the year. Not sure if I'll be here after the end of the calendar year. May have to turn it over to your new person. But I will see what I can accomplish. So any questions?
Eric, do you have any concerns over that process or schedule?
Not that I wanna go through right now. No. Okay. All right.
Any questions for Barbara or Eric on that one? Okay. Item eight C is the transfer station brush grinding. Think we've talked about that at two different points. Anybody have any additional questions on that? Okay sounds like no we'll leave that there, I think that can probably come off of the business list. We can put it on old business but we've already acted upon the transfer or the over expenditure request. Item eight D is the 2021 meeting schedule and see Amanda had added that on here. I also received a letter in from the town clerk in the mail a couple of days ago reminding the board chairs that we need to have the meeting schedule posted by X date. Can't remember exactly the date that we have to have that done. So Amanda, I assume that you put this meeting schedule together based on our algorithm of having it the first or third, fourth Wednesday or whatever of every month?
Yes. Okay. Is just what's problematic. I'm sorry. I said Thanksgiving Eve seems problematic.
Yeah, yeah, it's as possibly does the week before Christmas. I know people sometimes travel over the holidays. So I mean what I would suggest is that we probably move each of those dates you know the week before. Does anybody have any other suggestions?
I just have one thing. I know this summer that we really canceled two meetings July and August. Should we be having scheduled on the calendar meetings, or only leave ourselves open in case we need to have one. I think we should not much is going on then.
Personally think we should keep scheduled meetings because if we don't, then something comes up, we have to call a special meeting and then we can only talk about the specific topic of that special meeting. It becomes into it. It significantly limits our flexibility in topics or discussion and. You know I mean given something crazy like a pandemic, you know, we were fortunate, I think that things went pretty smoothly. Right and the board of selectmen and Eric and the town. Town employees handle everything well. But my personal belief is that we probably should continue to keep them scheduled to provide ourselves with the flexibility of having a regular meeting. Okay, sounds good. So to go with what you were saying Mark, if I were to move that
we move our November and December meetings up a week so 11/24 becomes 11:17 and twelve '22 becomes 12:15. That's what we're talking about. That makes sense to me personally and I'm happy to make that motion if we need a motion on that. So that's the '20. The November and December meetings are
always yeah, I'm looking at the wrong year. Yeah, so the twenty fourth week would become the seventeenth. Yes, right.
And the twenty second would become the fifteenth. That reasonable to me and I would think we could entertain a motion on it. We can always discuss at that point.
All right. So I move that we do that, that we back up the November and December meeting dates one week, seven days, you know, November.
Well, now it's gone away, but November 17 would be the new date. Right.
I make that motion. I agree with it. I have everybody has hopefully, if we can do it, family obligations on those holidays. Let's let's back on the wood. Anybody want to second the motion? I'll second.
Oh, go ahead. Let's all let's just hand up first. Linda's quicker than me. Linda's like, yes.
Okay. Any discussion on that motion? Okay, hearing none, let's go ahead and take a vote on adopting this meeting schedule with the amendations that Rob proposed. All in favor say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you, team. Thank you. All right.
So Amanda, if you could make the changes on this this document then send me the documents so that I can follow-up with the town clerk also. Right, item 8E is the fiscal year twenty nineteen-twenty twenty annual report. Again, I've fallen my sword. It's due from from this board also and Amanda sent out a reminder and I I have not gotten to that yet it's but I wanted them and I will give it a little thought, I will put something together, probably this weekend and I'll circulate a draft if anybody has any inputs, you can can submit those to me, of course, and we can. Put that into the town. Other comments on that agenda item. Okay, item eight F is the Ram Board of Education contract negotiation. Eric, do want to explain the context for this one, since you've got the original contact there?
The the current, acting superintendent for RAM reached out for me and asked for, the contact information at the Board of Finance because what's happened is they've actually managed to negotiate their teachers contracts early, surprising everybody. And they have basically a finished contract ready to go. They wanted to have a discussion and explain it to a member of the Board of Finance to bring back to the Board of Finance to understand, what the status of the contract was. So they asked for the board of finance if one person was willing to go meet with them to, go over the contracts before it becomes public.
And I believe I forwarded that request to all of you. I didn't hear back from anybody. So I assume there's nobody who's got the deep passion to talk about the Board of Education contract. But go ahead, Rob. Eric, I have a quick question.
When in the week would that normally be done or is it completely open?
I don't know. You would have to reach out directly to the acting superintendent and just tell them what your availability is.
Mean during the day at some point. Yeah, let me follow-up on that. So I reached, I got an email a couple days later and a call from Kathleen Goodwin, who's the vice chair of the RAM Board of Ed. And I hadn't heard back from anybody. So I told her that, you know, I would be available, you know, if nobody else was. She's got a meeting set up tomorrow or she asked if I would be available tomorrow Thursday at 03:45PM which I told her was okay for me. Just happened to be my one day I'm not loaded with meetings. So that's when we have a tentative meeting set up.
Okay, unfortunately I have a 4PM work meeting tomorrow. I would consider it in the back half of any week even though I'm working like most of you all full time from home and whatnot technically I could always carve out an hour here or there if I had to Yeah. But no next tomorrow just how happens I have a thing. Sorry Mark, I would have joined. All right, appreciate it. Well,
if anybody else is interested, you know it's going to be with Scott who's the acting superintendent and Mel Leichter from the Hebron Board of Finance and so they'll go over it now. I'll do my best to summarize. I think it's just informational as they pointed out, they give the option for somebody from the Board of Finance to sit in on these negotiations, but boom, they got this contract quickly. They just want to kind of explain where they are and what happened with it, I guess. I'll attend that summarize for you guys the next meeting or before. All right, anybody have any questions or comments on that? Okay, next item is agenda item nine which is the approval of the meeting the minutes from Wednesday September 23. I personally looked them over and they looked appropriate to me. Does anybody have any questions or comments?
Anybody want to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from September 23? I so move. Move we approve those meeting minutes. Okay. Anybody second? I second that. Alright, Louise. So Rob moves to approve the meeting minutes from Wednesday, September 23. Louise seconds. Any more discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any noes? Anybody abstaining? Okay, it's unanimous. Thank you. Okay let's move on to item agenda item 10 which is liaison reports do we have any active liaison committees going on
Dan, you're muted. The only thing we have on We have improvements, right? Is there anything going The on with
only thing I have going on is that senior building committee. So we had a meeting scheduled that got moved till November. So basically where that's sitting right now is there's been some draft plans drawn up, things like that. And that's kind of where we're at right now. So the site has been picked, the scope has been identified and where we go from there. And that meeting is the next meeting scheduled for November 12. So
Louise, you're on capital improvements planning committee, am I remembering? Yeah,
I am and nothing different from what I sent you back a couple of weeks ago. Okay. About, I forget what it was. Something that we were discussing and Eric had mentioned. I'm sorry, I can't remember it.
You that a new, you were talking about the new or used sweeper for the town. Oh, that's right. Email, yeah.
We were having a discussion. Were sharing a sweeper with the town of Hebron, yeah.
Right, we were discussing that and I just kind of mentioned that it may be a little bit more advantageous to look at a town that's in more similarity Yeah, with yeah. And we haven't had another meeting since. Okay. All right.
Anybody have any questions or other information they want to share on these? I think that's the only open committees we still have going. Okay, let's move on to item number 11. This is board open discussion. Anybody have any other topics I want to bring before the board? Questions or issues? No? Okay, agenda item 12. This was public speaking or it still is public speaking sorry in our in our agenda. Any public comment. Okay hearing none we'll go on to item which now item 13 which is our executive session. So not sure about the mechanics of this, I presume that Amanda stays, but probably So for
what has to happen is you have to make a motion to go into executive session. Right, right. And then you also have to state who should be in the executive session And, at that point, the recording is cut off. And then when we come out of executive session, we'll come out of executive session and we will presumably just adjourn the meeting. And then all we have to do is tell Amanda when we came out of executive session and when we adjourn and I will handle that.
Got it, that makes sense. Okay, All right, so anybody want to make a motion to go into executive session?
Do we all need to stay on during that time frame? You should. What I would
suggest is you as a board invite myself and Barbara Griffin into executive session, and then we throw everybody else out. In a gentle way. Politely. Correct.
I make that motion to have Eric and Barbara go into an executive session and everyone else be thrown out.
Or how about Luis is moving and going into executive session, requesting Eric and Barbara attend. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Okay, David second, thank you. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We checked the Daily Crest in the office doors.
I guess that, takes care of it then. So thank you for, your help, Amanda, once again.
Okay. Amanda, can you make me a cohost that way? And can you kick Nick out?
Nick? Yes, and that was at 08:25, and I am going to stop recording.