Meeting transcript
BOF Regular Meeting
June 24, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
And start. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, to the republic for which stands for which stands one nation Oh god. Under god. Loathe
justice for liberty and on. I guess he's doing the recording probably. He's from CBC.
Yep. Okay. Okay. Well, hearing no public speak, we'll go ahead and go to additions and deletions to the menu the agenda items. Does anybody have any additions or deletions? Alright. Hearing none, we'll go on to item number four, found administrators report. Eric, I'll hand it over to you. Okay. Amanda, can you enable screen sharing for me? Amanda, are you able to?
She looks like she might be Looks like she's frozen. Frozen. Yeah.
Okay. Alright, Ro. So there's some chance that my connection will fail. I am at home because our Comcast Internet at the town hall completely and utterly died today. So we are waiting for them to give us a new cable box, which is a little annoying. But we'll get to that in just a sec. So what I wanted to do is talk through real quick, Justin, end of the year project and capital summary. And I apologize for not sending this to you all. It's been a long week for me. So I just wanted to talk through like what we've done this year. We accomplished the roof replacement for the Public Works Building as well as the asbestos abatement and the removal of the shed rooms off of the Public Works Building. We did an enormous amount of work cleaning up the junk that was at that facility and getting rid of all the scrap metal and other crap that was there. We completed a lighting upgrade to the Public Works Building, which was much needed. And the light quality is vastly improved in that building. And we also worked off the majority, not everything, but the majority of the electrical issues and potential OSHA violations in that building. So we have gotten a pretty large way through the IT upgrade to the town hall. The server is installed. It is set to be doing automated backups
on a daily basis, which is for the first time in recorded history in Andover. And it's a raid. I wanna say it's a raid five array. In other words, you have your primary storage, you have a complete backup, and you have a second identical complete backup that's not comfortable from the outside world. So, and the building has been completely rewired for the for both VoIP and new electrical or basically new ethernet wiring throughout the whole building. We are anticipating this weekend doing the changeover to Office three sixty five as our email provider. You know, we've been having an enormous amount of difficulties with site five as a provider. It's it's been quite bad the last couple of months. I mean, I've even resorted to going back to faxing things to suppliers, which irritates me. So we're we're also working with Eastcon on completing the fiber connection through the school. And I had a long conversation today, this morning. Yeah, yesterday, this morning with Tom Shank who's the Eastcon technology guru for the school. And the really good news from our part is he assured me that there is an unused basically fiber pair that runs between the CEN server closet and the multimedia slash library room, which is where the connection from the school
terminates in the building. So it doesn't look like there's anything that prevents us from doing a direct connection to the CEN hub. So we should be able to do that without really spending any money. And the cost for CEN is and for a fiber connection to the town hall is basically identical to what we're paying now for Comcast, except the upload and download speeds go up by a factor of, you know, 50 or more depending on the day. Okay, so that's it for kind of IT stuff that we've done so far. Soon as that's done, I would also execute the, you know, going to void. Have a couple initial quotes. We need to get a little deeper in that, but there's no sense doing that until we know exactly what we have through
CN. So next item is the transfer station that's kind of the like last big project we have going right now. As most of you know the left side walls are complete, other than a railing and repaving the right side walls. All the blocks are in place at this point. They're finishing the backfilling all the electrical conduit is installed. We ended up putting a new meter on the building and or you know a whole new meter socket on the building, a whole new service drop and a new main service panel. And basically we've we've elected to completely rewire everything from the pole on just because every time we you know we looked at something in the electrical system. It's like, alright, well, you know, the service drop the cables really frayed. Alright, so you do that, And then it's like, so the more we've gotten into this project, the more we've realized how many things there were really in pretty rough shape. So the, the downside of that project is,
you know, we're way over budget compared to what CIP initially estimated for the project. The major contributor to that is when CIP was doing this, they were not really. When I say they, I mean we because I was on CIP. So I'm not trying to pass the buck to that one. We were not really anticipating major electrical work as part of this process. And one of the things we, you know, we kind of found out last fall is that we're having so many problems with our compactors. We really needed to address the existing static phase converters and redo the electrical system. So long and short, there's two things that have have run kind of considerably over what we anticipated. The first is the electrical. And the second is when we remove the existing compactors that were there 10 had access to the the concrete slabs under it. Found that a couple of slabs were in really poor shape. Had anticipated we were going to replace one of the slabs. The end we're going to replace four of the slabs, you know, but since it takes so long to remove the compactors because they're bolted in place and wired. It makes sense to do it now. You know, again, that's a fairly good price, you know, adder, but it's a lot more cost effective to do it all at once, then do have to tear out a compact your back, you know, again and report slab. Those are, you know, in terms of what's, you know, big ticket items that are, you know, are over budget that's certainly the biggest one we have. I can also share with you.
No, never mind. I lied. I can't share. Amanda can I share yet? Everybody else looks frozen. Can you still hear me? Yes. Okay. Okay, try Okay. It Got it. Perfect.
Okay, so what I just wanted to show you is kind of where we are right now with transfer station expenses and how we got there. The left side of the transfer, the left side when we initially did our block, our look at blocks, We found about six vendors, but we really came down to a couple that were had the product that we needed, which was new poor basically high strength blocks. So we used one vendor for the left side. We use builders concrete east because they were the lowest cost vendor. But we had some real quality issues with their blocks, not in the concrete, but just in the fact that they didn't they came from two of their different locations and the two locations weren't the same. And they weren't particularly square. So we elected on the right side to change block suppliers, which increased the cost. If you know, in the end, resulted in about an extra $3,000 in costs for the blocks. That side was gonna be a little more because it was longer anyway, but it also increased the cost a little bit.
Those in those those cases, those were the two lowest cost vendors we had for that. So that's what we went with the electrical work we assigned to Lenco, we did an RFP for that we advertised it, you know, had the walk through and the only company that act business for it. The shed replacement that came in we knew those costs those costs really haven't changed. We ended up getting four bids for the shed. The for what we were trying to get the barnyard was the cheapest. We initially priced out just two slabs. And we ended up, you know, getting, you know, multiple bids on that. And we went with a company called Modern Concrete Pumping as the lowest, you know, qualified bidder.
Eric Eric, don't interrupt You broke up during your explanation of electrical work with Lenco. Oh, okay. They went out to RFP and then I didn't hear anything after that.
Okay. So we went out to RFP with Lenco, or we went out to RFP, and Lenco was the only one that actually bid on the job, even though we sent it out to all the local electricians and tried to drum up business specifically. Part of it is that project, you know, even though it's a fairly expensive chunk of money, it requires, the he's probably had somebody on-site eight or nine days so far as part of this project because he has to align what he does on the electrical end to what public works is doing. So I think that's part of the reason I think most of the contractors didn't really want to touch it just simply because it was going to tie up so many days of effort even though they weren't necessarily the electrician wasn't going to be there necessarily the whole day. But, you know, they had to be there for, you know, two or three hours at different stages. So as far as the slabs go, we finally made a decision on what slabs we needed to actually replaced today. Just based on on what of the existing we're salvaging about half of the existing slabs there and we're redoing about half of the slabs.
And the second thing we're doing ultimate is we're setting that side of the transfer station up so that we can accommodate a fourth compactor in the future. Know, because we're we're definitely at the point where on busy times running three compactors is close and we end up dumping the excess and open top dumpsters. So at some point it will be worth our while. I'm not anticipating doing it this year, but I would think there's a good chance that next year I'll be recommending that we go to a fourth compactor. So we we built that side and we built the walls to accommodate that now. We're also moving the mattress. You know the conics that the mattress goes. We're moving the location of that to get it out of the way from where it is now. So that's underway. The only thing I don't really have costs on that's going to be a significant cost is the cost of repaving that. I walked it with, you know, two paving contractors earlier in the project, but none of them had any interest in, you know, in bidding until we knew the extent of how much of the existing asphalt we actually tore up as part of the project. So what we have done is we put out an RFP that basically asks all the local contractors to give us their day rate for production for a paving box and paving crew. And then what the cost is per
truck per hour to bring in asphalt. So what we're trying to do is even though we were not necessarily going to know exactly what the cost is, we can at least do a competitive quest for quotes and be able to compare costs among vendors and we sent that out to Amanda could tell you exactly. We got a list from Eddie of all the paving companies that we've dealt with. Plus we put it on the state site. So that went out personal like six paving companies plus it on the state site in our website. So long and the short of it is the total for that project is gonna be somewhere around $35,000 over what we estimate which is obviously a huge chunk. We have the money in contingency to cover it. So it's not like we can't pay for it. But it's just when I keep looking at that and thinking if there's anything we can scale back. But there's not really anything as part of the scope of that project that you can eliminate without costing yourself a lot more money to redo it in the future. So I'm just kinda giving you a heads up that you know I know we've talked about before that I was over budget but I want to give you a sense of where we are
relative to what was originally budgeted for that project. So initially if you look down at the bottom, let me scroll down a little bit. We had two pools of money for that. We had money in a transfer shed and money in a transfer station repair, a total of $50,000 and then I think we're gonna end up spending somewhere around 35,000 not a contingency to finish off that project and the paving I'm anticipating just taking it out of the upcoming year's roadwork budget because it's part of the town road network. That's really all we can do with that. Do any of you have any questions on that? I know that's a lot to throw at you.
Eric, it's a quick question. So the total you've got here on this spreadsheet is 87,000 and change. So that's like 37,000 plus is that when you say the paving you get can get pulled from the road budget. Is that why it's not 37 from contingency?
Well, no, because the road, I hate to say this, but the paving costs aren't even listed there. So I'm not even accounting for paving. I'm just accounting for the major construction other than paving. I'm also not counting on everything because we haven't really settled on a final railing design either. So there's gonna be some money expended for that.
So I just I just to be clear, you know, if it's $87.01 $1.02 or more, and we have 50 k budgeted, the excess is probably higher than 35. Right? I mean, if I'm doing my if I'm doing the math right. I would say You're breaking up. Over that.
Hey. Can you hear me now? Yeah. But I lost pretty much everything you said.
Okay. I I guess what I would say is we are going to be considerably over budget. Okay. You know.
So 35 is a bit of a placeholder. Is is that what I'm hearing?
Yes. What I'm saying is we have the budget. I mean, we can absorb it in contingency. The majority of it really spent any money out of contingency so far. So we're okay. It's just I'm annoyed that we're chewing up this much money on this project. But I also think that given what we're trying to accomplish, there's not a lot of alternatives. We looked at can we cut out some of the slabs and not use some of the slabs. But every place we put a dumpster where we put a dumpster and we're not putting it on top of a concrete slab, we basically wreck the pavement. Because you can't roll on and roll off the thing, you know, once a week, you know, over a period of years without completely digging up the asphalt.
Yeah, I hear you. I'm not even questioning that part. I'm just trying to get my arms around what's likely to really come out of contingency. That's all. Yeah, that's all.
Yep and the other thing is honestly, if you would ask me pre COVID, I was assuming we were gonna have solid $15,000 left over in tipping fees and bulky waste. One of the things that was interesting about COVID is the amount of bulky waste and the amount of tipping fees for that period of time, you know, skyrocketed. And we really kind of closed up that deficit that we looked like or not that deficit, but that surplus we looked like we were gonna have in a very short period of time. So that was another source of money I had assumed we were going to be pulling from that project. It just kind of evaporated as soon as everybody had all the time to do major housecleaning projects. So that's kind of where we are with that. I'm not trying to present that as a rosy picture. It's not. But I think what we're I look at it and say are there there aren't a lot of ways we would cut the costs and achieve the product that we need at the end to have a functional transfer station. So, you know, and I think too, realistically, the the biggest thing that CIP underestimated when we looked at this initially is we were not really expecting to spend money on electrical. And that alone was about $35,000 and is the vast majority of the difference between what we're going to end up spending and what we budgeted. Questions on that? Okay, I'm going to that other shop.
You're breaking up again Eric. Yeah you're breaking up again buddy.
Okay. Can you hear me now? Yep. Okay. That's the problem with my home Internet. Is why I almost always do these meet meetings at the town hall. Okay. So as far as other projects that are going, roadwork for this year, we we paved Sunset Lane, which was a small road over by the lake and we had to breaking up again.
K. Can you hear me now? Yep. Yes. Okay. So again, on Sunset Lane, we started that project with basically a gravel road in rough shape. So we completely built that up from, you know, the sub base, the base and then two courses of paving. So that even though it was a small road this year. We spent quite a bit money crack ceiling roads because that's one of those really important things for preserving the life of a road. We also contracted out something called mastic ceiling on a couple of roads and we did that because we had two roads that had exhibited like really wide cracks in some cases wide as four inches and that just happened to be the most economical way to go about fixing that particular problem. We tried it last year. We're fairly successful. We also tried it for addressing potholes and we were not particularly successful with it for potholes. So we're probably not going to do that anymore. And as many of you know, we've done quite a bit of chip ceiling this year. We chip sealed quite a few roads.
We did the chip sealing off the Connecticut DOT bid contract. We didn't use the contractor that won the DOT bid, but basically what happens is whoever wins the bid everybody else to get work has to match the low bid price at the state level. The advantage of that is you can use the contractor you want based on quality and they'll basically all pony up and match price. We are also going to be going back over some of those roads we chip sealed with a process called micro surfacing. There was another that had a package or that had put out an RFP recently that was basically identical to what I wanted to do. So I just used the results of their RFP to pick the contractor since they're just I mean, so it's basically a quantity based bid. So it didn't seem like it made sense to redo the RFP for that one. We're also going to be doing something called fog coating and we do that again on the roads that have been chip sealed and what happens is you come back and you put another thin layer of asphalt on top that fills in the grooves between the stones and smooths out the surface to make it more amenable to the public. And the last thing we're going to do is on some of the asphalt that's in good shape. We're going to use basically a penetrating fog sealer which is a product that essentially sinks into the the pavement and reduces the oxidation, the sun oxidation. And again, we're doing that because these are roads we cannot afford to pay for a lot of years. So we are doing everything we can to preserve the pavement
to prevent having to pave. Next up, smaller projects. So we're doing a series or we got series of things done. We installed a light at the town hall flagpole because I kept getting repeated missives from the veterans groups that we had an unlit flagpole which is a federal law, I guess. We did some addressed some electrical work at the old town hall. We're also installing the old video surveillance system that we had in the town hall into the old town hall and kind of repurposing that. We installed an advanced sand filtration system at the rec field. Once we drilled the new well for the renovation about five years ago, we've had repeated problems with getting sand in the irrigation system and in the pumps and all that. We initially put in a filtration system and it clogged up with sand so much it had to be manually cleared pretty much every single day you ran the sprinklers. So we finally bit the bullet this year and converted it to an automated sand filtration system. It clears itself instead of making Scott person go up there every single morning and fix it. So we've also accomplished a fair bit of rehabilitation of that softball field that's behind the soccer fields that was done almost exclusively by volunteer effort by the hammer softball organization. The other thing we switched this year is we switched to a kind of complete maintenance package for the soccer field
from Hebron Parks and Recs. And that has been working well, you know, they're they do a much better job of dealing with the field than we were doing previously. We are in negotiation right now, and we're pretty close to signing a contract with one of the users of the soccer field, will end up netting the town about half the total maintenance costs for the field. So that should be in place by July 1. We also did a number of capital equipment purchases this year. We purchased the F-two 50 pickup truck to replace about a thirteen year old pickup truck that wasn't really doing too well. We purchased a new Peterbilt plow truck and then we also are expecting the arrival of the fire department truck and Kirk can probably tell you exactly when that's coming to the hour, but it should be pretty quickly. And this year, because we initially were anticipating picking up the new roadside mower, but because of financial constraints due to COVID-nineteen, we ended up not doing that. So what we did do is we did do purchase essentially three smaller items that were needed. The first was the material handling arm for the loader. It's basically just a way to instead of putting the bucket on the front, you put something that you can pick stuff up with. So we purchased that and we purchased a blower unit for our Steiner tractor and we just got that the other day. It's still not even out of the crate yet,
but it's sitting in the facility. And we've also the fire department UTV with rescue stretcher is on order. Again, that was that comes out of the fire department line item, no capital equipment line item. And then the last thing is the material spreader for the one of the big plow trucks. We did purchase one of those, but those are, you know, it takes about six months to get. So that will come out of the capital budget. You know, and at some point in the fall we'll end up having. That basically summed up all the capital purchases we've done. As far as grants, there are kind of two active grants. The connectivity grant, we're waiting on final approval from DOT District one. I've talked to the rep this morning. There will probably, you know, hopefully they'll send us a letter pretty quickly and we can keep that project rolling.
In terms of starting that project, it's a little unclear at this point because that project comes after another DOT project that will do the signalized interchange upgrades. And basically what has to happen is we have to meet their work. So we can't really start until they finish theirs and clear out and they've given us a completion date sometime between June 1 and somewhere around October 15. You know, so we have no idea when they're going to do it. It's part of a larger project of about 15, you know 15 sites. As soon as I know more about that, I will. You know, I'll get it to you. And the last thing is we have a small grant that I need to spend the money for pretty quickly called PEGPESA, which is a technology upgrade to the town hall, which will allow us to do multimedia. So when we go back to public meetings to be able to live stream public meetings through CBC and archive them, you know, with good audio and visual. So that's pretty much it for my summary, unless you guys have questions for me.
Eric, it's Kurt. I got a question. In the chip ceiling, did you have Island Street on there? And I noticed that it wasn't done.
Yes, we did. So we went back and forth about that. One of the things I'm trying to do is I'm trying to experiment a little bit. So because we were going to chip seal and then cover it with my The nation process is referred to as a cape seal. We elected because Island Street was a little better condition than most of the road to just straight micro surface that so we could compare how well the quality of a cape seal is versus a straight micro. So I kind of deliberately in the end took that off the chip seal list just so we could. But it will get touched this year and it will end up with a nice surface.
Nice. Okay. And another question regarding roads was actual paving. You're going to do Long Hill from Route 6 to Bear Swamp and then also maybe Shotty Mill from where to where?
So the initial my initial goal was to do Long Hill from Route 6 to the intersection of Bear Swamp and then secondarily or to also do Shoddy Mill from Route 6 up to the intersection with Whales. The problem is that you know we have preliminarily gotten estimates from a bunch of the paving contractors for those as individual prices you know and to try to compare whether we wanted to do just a straight overlay of pavement, whether we wanted to shim an overlay, whether we wanted to grind it up or what we wanted to do. And the problem is is I probably don't have money to do both those roads because shoddy mill is going to end up getting really torn up because we have so much drainage work on that to do. I think the priority is going to be to do shoddy mill correctly and then shim the worst spots on Long Hill and let that go for now. So that's kind of where I'm leaning right now just because I don't have the money to do both.
Okay. And in regards to the tanker truck, as of it left South Dakota on Friday, and it's somewhere in route between South Dakota and North Haven, Connecticut to the dealership. We expect it any any day. He's supposed to call me when it does land in the dealership. Then we're gonna go down and take a look at it. Hopefully get it in get in town sometime next week. So, more to come, and I had a question for, for you and Barbara. U. S. Tank sent me a paperwork to electronically send the money to them. I haven't got an invoice yet, but once I do, I'll get the invoice and that the directions for wiring the money to Spartan Motors. They're the ownership of US Tanker. I'll get that to Wally and then he can get into town hall. That's okay?
Yeah. We can do an ACH. We just need all of the wire instructions.
Yep. That's what I have, Barbara. I'll I will once I get the once I get the invoice, I'll I'll include both. Okay. That's it. Thanks. I
have a question for Eric. Sure. The back a few I think the last two two BOS meetings ago, I had asked about the connectivity grant where you could possibly use the monies to fix the roofing on the pavilion. Was that checked into?
Not the connectivity grant money, no. So we can't. So one of the that was one of the questions because we were a little under budget. So we looked at what we could do, but we really have to stay transportation related and we have to do it. You know, it's so it's okay to expand the scope a little bit in the area we're actually working in. But they weren't gonna consider. Okay, so they weren't gonna consider something that was like in a completely different location. So what we did do is we were able to do one of the or get one of the library's priorities, which is to do the handicapped ramp and front steps to the library, which has been a safety hazard for a while. And at the same time redo the railing, which they welded a couple times, but but it's pretty questionable. So we have gotten some additional things that we didn't anticipate with that grant. But at this point, it doesn't look like we're gonna be able to do the, you know, the pavilion.
Saw a bunch of tree work being done on 03/16 the other day.
Yeah. That's the the state is bidding that. I think they're doing using asplund. They're also spraying which I'm not really excited about because they called the maintenance division and they wouldn't tell me what they're actually spraying and I'm not overly happy with spraying a bunch of chemicals and won't fess up to what they're using but you know. Eric
they're using the that distinctive tree there those those monster machines that do the interstates.
They had that they those they had two of these huge trucks and they just grab the tree, chop it up, the whole thing. One one one truck takes care of everything. It's amazing.
Yeah, that is one we are because we we put out tree work to RFP to RFP you asking for all the companies to give us, you know, what they have for equipment, you know what their, you know what their maximum reaches what their crew sizes, what they charge per day. We definitely included distinctive tree care on that. The problem we have is that given what we have for money. We the great thing about distinctive is their productivity per day is immense. They're also expensive. I mean they're like $10 a day, something like that. But the thing is that they're the kind of priority trees we have are spread pretty uniformly through the town. So I'm not sure we can really use them because I think they work best if you can close a road and then just say, hey rip out everything within 20 feet of the road all the way down to the transfer station kind of thing. We don't have the density. Yeah. So I don't think we're in the end. I don't. I'm not sure that's going to be the best approach for the town, but we are considering them. So gotcha.
Any other questions for Eric? Okay, well, none, I think we can move on to our next agenda item, which is the treasurer's report. I'll turn it over to Barbara. Eric, go ahead stop your screen sharing. Oh, yep. Either
way is fine, but it doesn't really matter. Sorry about that.
Okay. The financial statements finally finally, became available from the auditor. So I did forward a copy to everyone. I invited him to come to this meeting, but I did not hear back from him. So I can just give you just a few highlights, although we will invite him back. Fund balance did increase. I'm gonna just quick look through here. I have my notes highlighted.
Yeah, end of the fiscal year, the unassigned fund balance, 1,900,000 is still 15.7% of budgetary expenditures. So, that's still generous. The goal has been to get that down to about 10 or 11%. So, something to keep working on. That does include that unassigned fund balance 1.9 does not include the money that was set aside for the FY 2020 budget. The one we're in now, the 976,000. So the 15% is still something to work down. This budget coming up, fiscal year 2021, you're chipping away again. You took about a half 1,000,000. So still a healthy, very, very healthy fund balance that you can continue to chip away at. So I'm not going to go into it too much, just to let you know that you still have a very, very healthy fund balance despite taking almost 1,000,000 to pour into the budget we're in right now and another half million to pour into the budget in the next year. I will continue to reach out to the auditor and see if I can get him to attend
a meeting. And I guess we'll try for July if you are in fact meeting in the summer. So as far as I can go with that. On the revenue side for this year, the year we're closing out, healthy amounts of revenue. I'd already mentioned that education cost sharing came in 134,000 more than we had budgeted. So that's just something that's gonna go right to fund balance. Couple of other state grants, one that was still outstanding, we got in this week, needs to be posted. And otherwise, revenues look healthy. And one indicator of that, interest on taxes, lean on taxes are running ahead of budgeted over what we budgeted, which means tax collections are healthy. And as an aside, May collections, the tax collector, and I looked at those, the May collections had been comparable to a year ago. So, nothing alarming. And she just poked her head into my office today before she left and said that for the month of June, the month we're in, last year collections were about 40,000 for the whole month. As of today, she's already collected 70,000 for the month. So despite the impact of COVID, it doesn't look like it's going to affect town revenue at least this year. No telling what's going to happen
with collections for next year. We'll know, of course, more after the heavy collection in July. But based on the information we're looking at, I think we project about a 98% collection rate for the year. And I expect to be on target with that. The only revenue source that's down is, and I mentioned this last month, transfer station receipts are off about 13,000 because permits were not issued in June. So but overall, the net revenue is going to come in higher than we budgeted. On the expense side, I had started to talk about some of the department budgets that will be underspent, particularly elections because they had to cancel their elections and all other activities, conferences, things that they would have spent money on. And I did talk to the registrar and of about 22,000 that would be left in their budget, he's going to end up encumbering 7,000. They do have an election in August and it's going to be more pricey than they expected. They have just some
Secretary of State requirements that they have to abide by that's going to cost a little more than they would have wanted to take out of next year's budget for this August election. So he is encumbering 7,000 of the 22,000. But of that 15,000, Eric and I'll still look for a place to reallocate that. So we won't let that flow to fund balance, we'll find another use for that. Senior transportation was another one because they stopped driving. They resumed within the last couple of weeks, but still we're going to have some money left there, a few thousand. And again, Eric and I are gonna try to reallocate that. I've been through all of the budget line items, started a list. Eric and I have been going through it and just making sure that as we approach year end, we're finding other places for that money so we can use it in this year. One of the things that we will be using money for that we did not budget was time clocks. The Board of Selectmen has made a request that we install electronic time clocks in three places, town hall, library, and public works. Replace the
old mechanical time clock at public works with the new electronic. In all cases, these time clocks will be linked to our payroll. So people now punching in and out, there will be a direct link to payroll. It's going to cut down on the manual activity that goes on around processing a payroll. Back to the expense part of it, were about $1,800 apiece. So about $5,600 that was not budgeted, but we will not have a hard time finding some place to take the money from. And that will be this year's expense and they were ordered. And Eric, I forgot to mention, they did arrive. They're Oh, great. In my office. They're small units. So we'll distribute them where they need to be, get them hooked up, go through a lot of training.
So it's still going to be another cycle, a couple of cycles before we're actually up and running with them. Sure. Other expense items, I will reach out to the business manager at the school between now and probably the next selectman's meeting and see what kind of surplus they expect. They generally do have a little surplus, but they indicated they probably would try to see what they could do for next year if they do have some surplus so as not to turn too much back. The RAM budget came in to the penny. We've done all the payments. Whoops, oh, that was a window that I tried to open. The RAM budget, I'm guessing that our budget was finalized after they voted on their budget because in the past that hasn't always matched up. But this year, it came out to the penny. So, we're working, I am working on a list of departments that will have surplus, working on departments and line items that need money reallocated, going to try to have that totally fine tuned by the selectments meeting the second Monday of June, and then they will be able to authorize any transfers, appropriation transfers up to 2,000. Anything over 2,000 will bring to your meeting at the end of July. So that is where we stand on this year's budget. Any questions?
Well, just one of the things that's always outstanding is the town never gets the bill for the resident state grouper for a considerable period of time after July 1, which is annoying since that's you know it's somewhere around a $175,000 expense plus or minus 10,000. Just so that you know we probably won't have that
detail not nailed down before the board of selection meeting. I have never seen that bill in any town I've worked in before the end of summer. It barely gets in in in that sixty day window where you try to get all of your invoices addressed. And I don't think there's any way to move that along. I think it just has to do with their bookkeeping. And I think it probably has a lot to do with just wanting to make sure that they are accounting for all expenses, especially any overtime that may have occurred that they want to include. So I do not, I know Selectmen would like to see that earlier but you can call and you can email and it's just not gonna happen before the end of summer. Anything else that I can provide?
Just couple. I saw you answered a lot of the questions I had based on looking at the revenue and the budgets. So you guys obviously are going through department by department. Some things that are pretty close to being, they're in the 90 plus percent of expenditures. You guys are on top of that to make sure we reallocate as needed. So I don't really see anything there. We'll have to make a decision, I think, later on about whether we meet in July. Think it'll depend on whether anything is really outstanding that we need to address or if there's any unusual changes. I mean, I know typically the Board of Finance hasn't always met in the summer, so it'll probably depend on what's going on. Given that, I would like you to kind of talk a little bit about the audit. I mean, I don't think that there's a lot. I read through briefly, looked at it. I don't think there's a lot to be concerned with. There was one material deficiency. I think it's worth addressing that and talking about how we might rectify that. I presume that with the new accounting system, that type of thing is going to be rectified with the capital Precisely
what we've been waiting for. The audit findings, yes, they're down from, I think, I don't know, three or five when I started working here down to three last year. Yeah, we've been able to address two of the three. And that last one is just simply something we're our new accounting software. We're just waiting for that. And the auditor is fully aware of that. And each year when you have audit findings, you do need to address them in writing, submit it to the auditor who then forwards it to OPM. And so I am working on the, the audit, correct what they call the corrective action plan for that audit finding, but it will be the same as last year and the auditors are well aware of that. Were frustrated the first year they did the audit because there wasn't anyone who was preparing the financial statements and those balance sheet accounts they talk about were difficult to work with. You had to kind of pick through very, very carefully and pick out your revenue and your expenditures. And that's what I would have done for the last two years. And so it's still an issue just because we haven't made that balance sheet problem go away, but it's less of an issue for them to work with because I'm picking through the revenue and expense. So I'm giving them the the data they need
for the audit report. And last year, it worked out very well. He was just able to take all the, you know, the Excel spreadsheet data that I had created and just put it right into the audit. So the data's cleaned up, but they still think it's an issue to bookkeep things in that way. So it will be addressed.
Okay. Thanks. Any other questions for Barbara on the treasurer stuff? Okay. You don't have anything specific to Town Aid Road or over expenditures to talk about? We
don't have any new over expenditure reports. We've kind of like shifted to now appropriation transfers. Were just to the point of in the year where we're just trying to figure out. We know everything that's overspent. Now we're just trying to find out where to take where to shore it up, where to get the money from. So Town Aid Road, that whole grant came in, mentioned that earlier the the spring, the close to 200,000 came in, and you have that report. And Eric, you're still reserving quite a bit of that. That's still has a hefty balance, the Town Aid Road.
Well, does. So we're about to take a chunk out of that because we incurred a bunch of expenses so far for the chip ceiling. And so that will chew up, I think somewhere around 65,000 of that. And then we're spending that down in addition, you know, as a portion of that down as part of of what we're putting into the roads. So that 187,000 I think that we got in in town Aid Road. We're planning on spending roughly 100,000 on pavement related stuff, and then the rest some will be kept in reserve. We've got a bunch of guardrail repair we need to do. We've got a huge backlog of guardrail work we need to do. Then the big question which nobody knows is, I mean, as of July 1, we should be getting our next town aid road because remember that town aid road, we got essentially an entire year late. So doesn't sound like, that was one of the questions we've asked a little bit at CROG and the transportation committee. It doesn't sound like there's any movement whatsoever to fund the next budget cycles Town Aid Road Fund. So again, we might have to nurse this last year's allocation for a while. I just don't know at this point. They owe us in this coming year another $187,000 but whether they'll actually pay it or not, nobody seems to know.
Okay. All right, any more questions for Barbara? Before we move on to the next agenda item? Hearing none, do we have budget transfers and over expenditure requests to deal with?
Nothing this month. We're gonna shore that all up as we close out this year.
Okay. Okay, I guess we move on to item seven, old business, governor's executive order. I don't know if there's anything that's changed pertinent to our operations. Eric, do you care to comment?
The only comment I would make is we have gotten to the point where the state is allowing meetings up to 25 people to occur. So you as a board of finance, if you chose to as a board, you could probably begin meeting in the community room again and meeting in person. The problem would come in as if you had enough people in the audience, it wouldn't take that many audience members right now before you're over capacity and you would have a problem. With the six foot distance restrictions between people, that room can hold around 12 or 13 people total. That's something 12 you in
or 13 being the attendance, from an attendance No. Total. That includes us plus the attendance. Yeah. So that's not No. Whole
It's a pretty low limit. So I wanted to say that option is available to you as a commission if we choose to do it, but that comes with some pretty severe limitations on audience participation. That's all I wanted to say about the governor's executive orders. Other than, you know, we are still operating under the emergency declaration at the state level and at the town level. Although I don't know how much longer the board of selectmen will want to keep operating under an emergency declaration. They may at some point declare that over. Okay.
All right. So if there's nothing else on that, I guess the next item we have is 7B, which is the fiscal year town budget 2021. I don't know if there's anything more to say about that. We established that and voted on it last meeting. I am kinda curious as to whether you've had any additional feedback, Amanda, from the town websites regarding that.
So Mark, what was your question? Do you feel like I need feedback for the website itself?
No, no, no. Have we gotten any more feedback on the budget process? Those mechanisms for gathering feedback, I would imagine are still open. I was just curious as we've whether we had any Actually,
a good question. I've been working on the new website, so I I've been a little distracted with that and editing it. But if we should take down the budget site that we put up, then I can do that?
My feeling about that is we're a month in, right? So to me, it would make sense to collect any final input that's been there and then go ahead and take that down. I don't know if anybody disagrees with that. It's not really serving any useful purpose. It was originally designed for a very specific purpose, and that purpose has come and gone. We allow a little extra time in case somebody wanted to comment on the process further or the decision we made, but it doesn't seem to be pertinent anymore. I'd say let's go ahead and bring it down then. Does that deactivate it? And just on the same subject,
I mentioned I'm working on the new website. I sent Barbara and Maureen the draft of the finance department page, so I'd love to send it to you, Mark, and, you know, if the whole board would like, I can send it to you. And I'm just trying to get feedback from all the chairs and commission members and departments before we go live because that's happening, know, very soon. So I can send that out to you if you'd like.
Sure. I think it'd be great. Yep. What's your ETA for for,
you know, unveiling it there? Our goal is July 8, but I'm honestly hoping we can do it sooner just because the technical difficulties we're having with the current one. Okay. We have our website meeting on Tuesday, the thirtieth, to figure out the final steps.
Okay. Thanks. Anybody have any other questions or comments on the old business 7B, the budget? Okay, I think we can probably drop that from the standing agenda. Hearing nothing, we'll go ahead and move on to new business. We have discussed and act upon the following, which is the tax collector suspense book. So in your meeting packet, there is a suspense book there. It's been provided by the tax collector. This is kind of a new process to me, so it looks like reading the statement there that we're supposed to review this and basically what it says is, So designated writing each tax which it is believed by the Board of Finance to be uncollectible, and then is transferred to the suspense book. So I'm not sure exactly what the process here and what that means to be designated in writing. I would assume that the meeting agenda or the meeting minutes would be enough to do that. Rob or Dave, somebody you guys have been on, Linda, you guys have been on the board for a while. Kurt, is there anything particular process we use to follow that or is this just a review of the line items there? Or Eric, you
know what I'll be perfectly honest, I don't know. I mean, Eileen and I have discussed this because it's, sum totals, a very small amount of money, you know, so she's quite happy that, you know, our expense book is only, you know, 12 or $1,300. Right. And not tens of thousands of dollars. But I honestly don't know what the what has to be done. I know she has to present it to you, but I don't know that you necessarily need to act on it.
You're honest with you, I have no memory of us dealing with this in the past. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I'm just, I have I have no recall on this. It's
new to me as well. Okay. Alright. Thanks. She included a section there which I assume is part of the ordinances. It looks like a state requirement. And what it basically says is the tax collector, they'll summarize the legal language, guess, but the tax collector has to present to the Board of Finance a list of taxes that were overdue and they don't believe they could be recollected, this is including the name of the person, the reason why they believe it's uncollectible, and detailed examination must be made by the Finance Board in such statement, and then after such examination, the finance board shall designate in writing each tax which is believed to be uncollectible.
Thereupon, each tax of designators will be transferred by such to the suspense book, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't mean that you can't collect on it at a future time if you're able to locate those individuals, but that it no longer listed as an asset for the purposes, because it's basically not considered a valid asset any longer. So to me, the process makes sense. I guess what I would suggest is that if you could check into the If you would all look at the very last page of the packet, there's one, two, three, four, five, six accounts there. Three of the accounts say out of state, and it's, not clear what that means exactly. I assume the customer or the person owing the taxes is no longer in state and therefore they're not really willing or responding. There's two unable to locate and there's one bankruptcy. As Eric mentioned, they're all relatively small amounts, three less than $100 one's $576 one's $395 and one's 151 for a total of 1,278.25. I can't imagine most of those bills are even worth trying to track down. Right, yeah. I mean, if they should pop up or something, then you collect the money, you know, you you're only gonna spend so much time doing it. The biggest one there is not even $600.
Right. I don't know what bill collection costs, but I can't imagine that we're gonna make a bunch of money there.
Well, actually the the town does use a bill collection service for things that go past a certain period of time. But at some point, kinda throw in the towel and you say, well, we haven't been able to get them. We can't even find where they live or, you know, we can't identify, you know, we can't match them up with an address to even continue sending bills to. And that's the point at which you say, you know what, we're not gonna consider this as possible potential income anymore because we think this is permanently uncollectible. Would Yeah.
There be a statute of limitations on the suspense items where if it sits for so much time period, you just waive it out?
The way that that statute seemed to be written, you moved it to your suspense book, the asset's basically impaired, right? So you decided it probably has little value, so you move it off the books, but you keep a list of it separate in the suspense book, and if it, by some reason, you would be able to collect it later, it explicitly states that it doesn't mean that the tax debt is some kind of abatement or that it's forgiven, but it's still a debt that's active, and so therefore, it doesn't sound like there's any specific statute of limitations on it. It's kind of how I read it based on non legal expert issue. I guess what I would say go ahead,
No, I was just going to say, I guess our role here is to kind of bless this in some way to say we've received it, we understand it and we're okay with moving it to The suspense. Off our assets.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I was just gonna say what I would suggest is that somebody could make a motion that we review the list of taxes that are deemed uncollectible by the tax collector And we agree that they're likely uncollectible and should be moved to the suspense book and ask the tax collector to do so.
Okay so I'll go ahead and make that motion and I move that the board of finance having reviewed the suspense book has presented to us agree that the items listed therein should be moved to the suspense book by the tax collector, if that makes sense, or move to, sorry, I may not have gotten that quite right.
I think that's essentially correct that they're, we agree that they're uncollectible and should be moved to the suspense book and request the tax collector to do so maybe. Friendly amendment accepted.
Clarification. And Louise, is that a second from you? I'll second that. Okay. All right. Any discussion on the matter? Okay, hearing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Rob and Louise. Okay. I think that concludes the business on the Tax Collector Suspense Book. We can go ahead and, I think, move on to item nine, which is the approval of the meeting minutes. We have two different sets of meeting minutes to approve. Wednesday, 05/06/2020, special meeting minutes, and Wednesday, 05/27/2020, regular meeting minutes. Any discussion on these, or do we have a motion to approve? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.
I'll second it. Okay, Linda makes a motion to approve the minutes and Rob seconds. Any further discussion? Okay. Hearing none, we'll take a vote. All in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Okay.
No opposed. Looks like it passes unanimously again. Thank you. Alright. Leaves us with item 10, which is liaison reports. Don't know, do we have any reports? Go ahead, Linda. I
just want everybody to know that they were selling the thank you signs, and all the food banks received $1,500 from Okay, good. Are they still selling those Linda?
I think they had some left over. You'd have to call or
if you're interested, I could look into it. Okay. They had a link and I kept it, but I just haven't done it yet. Delinquent. I know, right? I didn't tell you that. All right, okay, good. Anything else to report, Linda? That's it.
I'm the liaison on the software committee. I was unable to attend a recent demonstration of QuickBooks. Eric, you were there? No. That hasn't happened yet.
I thought well, they thought she had scheduled that. That didn't occur?
That was the twenty ninth. At least as far as I know, that's what I have in my calendar.
Alright. Well, I stand corrected. Oh, she did she reschedule it? Think there might have been a date and got okay. Alright. So alright. So nothing's occurred. Monday? Is that Monday, twenty ninth?
I think so. I'll have to I'll have to check. Maybe you're right. I I she'd put out some dates and I hadn't had not seen it. I thought the data had already occurred. Alright. I'll have to get back to I hope not. I have it listed as the twenty ninth, so Alright.
I guess I got confused on that one. All right, I'll take a look at it. But nothing to report there on our end then, I guess. Okay, I think that's all for liaison committees. Does anybody have anything Okay, going to agenda item number 11, which discussion. Does anybody have anything they'd like to bring before the board?
Mark, keep your eyes to the sky because I've been watching the small eagle circling right in front of my house here fishing. No kidding. Yeah, what a sight. Cool. It's one of the young ones. Yeah.
Saw them fly over the house a few days ago. I was on a meeting and I wanted to go grab my binoculars, but it's kind of an important meeting. My wife's over by the way. I'm trying to get some more pictures. Cool. Nice.
So I just wanted to confirm that I will post the auditor's report with the annual report and get it on the website.
Correct? Yep. Didn't know. Yep. Your blessing. Not that I guess the audit would change, but No. It wouldn't. No. But it's appropriate now that we've got the audited statements and whatnot to put them on the on the website. The only thing I was gonna bring up, and this is a good time to do it, is I did get a request from somebody, this is a little bit odd, but it was a request from somebody, and I don't know, maybe Barbara or somebody entertained this or got similar requests, from somebody who, I'm gonna butcher the name, Jiaozhu said, PhD student in economics from the University of In California. I
got that. You got that. Working on a research project related to Connecticut public finance issues and needed municipal level finance data for my project. Oh, so he's looking for annual financial statements or audited financial statements. I didn't look at the fiscal year closely, 02/2017. I
got that. Respond to him or send that to him? I haven't yet.
I was going to respond. I don't know. I'm gonna see if I can get them all electronically, but I may not have them all electronically. But I will respond to that, yes, I did get that. Okay.
All right. Once you do, and I'll respond to them and tell them we're working on it maybe, but I would be very curious to see what, learn more about what research he's doing and how that and what that's relevant. If he's trying to map fiscal data to some type of performance of the towns or demographic changes or what he's trying to do, it would be interesting to find out.
Barbara, as you know, I occasionally send you emails that I get. I forward them to Barbara. I get these weird emails demanding information from somebody or an invoice. You know what I'm talking Barbara, right? I've Oh yeah, yep. And I have to this day I have no idea what that's all about. Yeah, we're we have struggled, to track that one down also,
so but keep them coming. Okay, I haven't got one in a little bit so it's all good but, every once in a while every like month or two I get this random email from somebody.
Maureen was looking into that and, it's a struggle. Okay. Get them too, but I get different stuff.
What's that, Eric? I said I get them too, but usually they're legitimate for people who haven't gotten paid yet.
One of the ones can understand. And I was so confused. There was one that looked like it was, you know, hey. I I think your delinquent on a bill. And I was I'm like, why are you saying this to me? Yeah. I said it to Barbara. I'm hoping that it was Yeah, we're getting them and Maureen,
bless her, she has just really struggled. I mean, follows up with emails, follows up with phone calls and all of a sudden, it's just not so urgent on their end. She's If you want my money, you would Yeah. She's she's she's she's been working on that. You would think they'd respond. Yeah. I know. Sometimes these are just phishing emails. Right? I mean, we've got we've got them to work, you know, fair amount. It's something something's broken there.
Yeah. Yeah. It but there are legitimate things. Like, it turned out be we knew we had an excess bill for the for our elevator, you know, burst tests, valve burst tests. And they did the work like six months ago and just never sent us a bill. So we're like, whatever, you know what your money, I mean, we're not going to track you down to pay you. And then lately they got ahold of me and they're kind of irate that we haven't paid. And I said, we haven't sent us a bill. So it turned out they'd been sending a bill to Joe's email address which has not been active in quite some time. So that was a little bit problematic.
Well, you don't have that email address forwarded to you? I do not. You probably should have it or you should have his access to his email. I know my company fired my boss in January and the first thing I did was have his email mailbox put into my account so I can see it. Fun times.
Yeah. I a question in regards to the school and town finance person. Any movement on that? It's a good question. Anybody?
Well, I will tell you that we officially sent the letter to the union stating that we were going to swap the position for that Maureen occupies and essentially redefine that position and salary level at a higher level. We have not gotten a response back from the union, but we've kinda, because that's gonna be a union negotiation of some sort. So started that portion because that's the only thing we can control now because there's not yet really a final agreement in place between the school board and the board of selectmen.
And any movement on the the senior citizen slash community center committee? That seemed to have been stalled.
No. As far as I know, they have not ever met.
Maybe it's the time we light a fire? No fires. Way more fire. We got a tanker now to put one out, but I was gonna say, I mean, right. Practice? I
think it just for the seniors themselves, I mean, it would be nice to see some some movement, you know, from that that committee. Yeah. I concur. I concur.
I'll wait for the I'll wait for the selectors meeting and bring it up there.
That's a good call since there are two select men that are supposed to be spearheading that. Correct. That would be how I press it. I
do have a question. It's it's been it's been on my brain, and I'm just kinda wondering if it is ever has been done in this town or looked into. I know there's been kind of discussion about the lakeside area and the roads around the lake and I was wondering if it ever was looked into to become a scenic road which may open the doors for a certain type of government funding and certain other rules and regulations. I'm just wondering if anyone ever looked into that for this area and if it would be advantageous too.
I think it might have more to do with controlling development that puts additional roadblocks or roadblocks, maybe additional hurdles for certain types of development if you're a scenic road. I know that when I lived in Suffield, was on Main Street. And during the time that I lived there, it was designated a State Scenic Road Highway. But I don't know that it necessarily opened the way for any grants or funding of any sort. But it's an interesting question.
I know South Windsor did it also, it actually Main Street in South Windsor, it actually stopped people from building in back of another person's lot, but I know, and I wasn't on historical society at that time, but I knew there were other advantages. I can check into it and kind of bring it up at the meeting if you want. Certainly couldn't hurt. To know. Sure. Okay, will do.
Any other discussion? It sounded like a gavel in the background. Somebody's ready to adjourn this meeting. Hearing none, I guess we'll move on to item 12, which is our public speech section. Other than Nick, I don't know that we have any other members of the public other than the board.
I would like to make one really quick comment in public speech. Yep.
And that is on the thirtieth, we are having a town meeting to elect a new Ram school board member. Quorum is 25. In the times past occasionally we have struggled to make quorum at public meetings. I don't know how it will play out as a virtual meeting, but feel free to encourage all your fellow citizens to attend the meeting and exercise a little bit of rural democracy.
Good point, glad you brought that up, Eric. I did my part. I saw that Alcoa actually scheduled their semi annual member meeting on the same day, same time, so pointed that out and they rescheduled to the seventh. That's why I got that rescheduling notice. Yeah. It's your fault. Okay. Well,
was surprised that Eric was worried about that. So thank you. Yeah. Right. Just
speaking for myself, Tuesday nights are bad for me but if if it's if you're literally like at twenty four or something somebody text me and I'll put my kids in another room and tell them they have to deal it and I'll get on. I will call you if we need. If it's that close and I can put you on the top I will be there for you. I did send out an email to the boards just as a reminder. Yeah I saw that. Click on it on your phone.
Is that quorum requirement have to be electors of the town? Yes. And how is that? I guess that's a new thing and new new challenge in the in the days of remote meetings. How how we establish that? Guess some of challenges. So
basically what happens is, you know, we establish a waiting room before the meeting opens. Everybody goes into the waiting room and then the registrars identify, like if you're doing a meeting like this, you would hold up your ID card as proof of who you are. And if not, there's a another verification method if you're a call in. We just require you to verify your date of birth. And then you're let into the meeting. And then everybody in the meeting is allowed to vote. Although I suppose we could make some kind of arrangement for Nick Levine so we could,
you know, live stream that. Well, according to FOIA, you can't exclude the public from the meeting regardless of their where they reside. If that's the problem. But
the thing is, you're not actually excluding them from a meeting if you're live streaming the meeting,
are you? Well, you're not giving them the opportunity to participate through commentary stuff. So yeah, I think you are actually. They can participate,
they just wouldn't be able to vote if they're not registered to vote. Okay. I mean, makes sense to me if that's how they set it up. Yeah. But it sounded like you weren't gonna let them in the meeting to participate.
I think with the waiting room, we're just able to verify who's who much easier. Yeah. One by one at time.
Yeah, well, that makes sense to me. Just, yeah, I don't think you'd probably be able to exclude. It's probably not gonna be an issue. And
the other thing, Mark, is one of the things that the executive orders have done when they required you to you do some of these things via virtual meeting. The executive order basically says, try really hard to do it as close to what you would do normally. And we understand that not every little tick box is going to be ticked in the process. Yeah. So I think the town has a lot more leeway than they would if we were not under the governor's executive order. Yeah. And we have worked with the town's attorney to figure out how we could do this legally. So I think we're hopefully recovered.
Alright, good enough. Thanks for bringing that up. I think that's important. Glad you reminded everybody. Any other discussion or comments? Out of public speak, okay. Hearing none, I guess we're at the point of adjournment. Anybody want to make a motion for adjournment? I'll make a motion. Second.
Kurt made the motion, Rob seconded. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's go ahead and vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Glad there are none opposed, passes unanimously. Okay, I just want to make the comment, you mentioned it earlier and I was going to bring it up. So I think we'll just have to monitor the situation. I know in July I have travel plans. I had European travel plans, but they're unfortunately not gonna take place this year, but still probably switching to some other during that period of time. But we'll kind of monitor the situation, see where we are, and if we decide we want to eat, we will. And if it's effective June, we'll turn it off till August or even September. I know that's been done traditionally often, then we'll just take that action. So we'll just play it by ear and see where we get. Okay. All right. Thank you everybody and I guess this meeting is adjourned. Take care, enjoy your summer, stay safe.