Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
March 9, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. Welcome everyone. This is the Wednesday, 03/09/2022 Town of Andover Special Board of Finance meeting to talk about the budget. Start by calling to order and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, if we would. Ready? I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you. The second item on our agenda is public speak, so we would invite members of the public to speak. I do want to add that one of our agenda items tonight is the RAM presentation by Scott Leslie, the Ram Region eight Board of Education budget. Just as a reminder, this budget does not get incorporated into the town's budget. This is a separate issue, so this is more of a courtesy visit I think by my Scott helping inform the town and the the Board of Finance as to their budget approach strategy, etc. So we would be much better if you have comment about the RAM budget to save that for RAM budget meetings separately, I think, but they don't want to prevent anyone from speaking, but I would ask that you keep it on topic and to the point if we do have any comments on that. So that being said, Amanda, do you want to open it up for public speak please?
Sure, okay. So first we have Mr. Shevchenko.
Sorry, I I guess I had accidentally put my put my hand up. I don't have anything.
No. We just usually do a round robin check with everybody. Okay.
Well, thank you. Well, then I'll say that I'm here representing the RIM Board of Ed from the town of Andover. And I am formerly on the end was formerly on the Andover Board of Finance for four budget seasons. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Okay. Next up, Eva Galupe.
Hi. I'm Eva Gallup. I'm the school business manager for Regional School District eight. I'm here to support Mr. Leslie and answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Judy Benson Clark.
Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm also from the Ram Board of Education. Because it's the greater community, I've attended all three Board of Finance meetings, and I reside in Marlborough. Thank you. Okay, we're all set.
Okay, Alright, very good. So it sounds like no further public comment. So I guess at that point, we'll turn it over to, Mr. Leslie. Amanda, can you give him control, so he can do a presentation?
Go ahead, Scott, you're all set. Great. Thank you, Amanda and Mark. Thank you very much. And on behalf of the entire RAM community, thank you for welcoming us this evening and giving us an opportunity to share our budget process where it is. And you've already met, but we have Eva Gallup here who is our business manager and she and I will be happy to answer any questions. I'm very pleased also to have Eric Shevchenko representing Andover and Judy Benson Clark from Marlboro. So welcome our two grand board members. The one thing I want to stress before I begin the presentation is to highlight the fact that this is still a work in progress. So this is the budget has not been adopted by the Ram Board of Education.
They still have at least two meetings, in which they will have an opportunity to continue to review and possibly modify the budget that you'll be seeing this evening. If you go on the RAM website, You'll see that there are a series of budget books, and what I've been doing is updating the budget book each time the Ram board has made any modifications to the budget and and certainly what I'm presenting to you this evening will reflect all the latest updates. And again, we'd be happy to answer any questions that you have, so I'll start sharing my screen.
I have shared this presentation Scott sent it to me this morning. Long work day but I sent it on to the other members of Board of Finance as well. Great. Amanda I didn't send it to you but I'm happy to do so. Get it from Scott.
Great. And again, if you go to the RAM website, there's a budget icon on any of the three websites, the district website or either the middle of the high school, and that includes all of our budget documents as well. So hopefully everything is is easily accessible for for everybody. So I I those of you that have seen any of my presentations you've you've seen this slide. Eric and Judy and Eva have certainly seen it many, many, many, many times, and I included just to focus on the concept that before we even start building the budget, we certainly reference our district, our district strategic plan, and we want to make sure that the budget that I'm presenting to the board for consideration reflects our mission, our vision, and our theory of action. Some of the the more specific items within that plan, developing a fiscally efficient and accountable budget that maximizes resources, providing a welcoming, accepting, well maintained, accessible, and safe facilities school, offering a globally competitive world class education for all of our students, hiring, training, and retaining high quality professional staff, and engaging the community through active outreach and ongoing communication. In terms of the the goals that, our budget reflects, all students in Region 8 will have access to and actively engage in a variety of learning opportunities, experiencing growth, developments developing skills, companies, and dispositions developing a professional staff to promote our positive school climate develop budgets that address the declining enrollment of the district and that are fiscally responsible and responsive to the needs of the school towns in the state
Develop and implement strategies to enhance and further develop a culture of safety, acceptance, pride, and support with students, families, staff, and community members, and enhance our facilities in order to support innovative and fully accessible teaching, learning, and extracurricular opportunities. The timeline for, where we have have been and where we still have to go, as you can see, I, actually, what's not on this list is I provided the board with a overview of what I would be presenting at our December 20 board meeting, but then did my formal presentation of my proposed budget at our January 24 Board of Ed meeting. We've had, as you can see, a number of budget workshops. We held a pudge a public budget forum at our last regular board meeting on February 28, followed by our regular board meeting. Looking forward, the RAM board is meeting on March 21 for their regular board meeting. So they will have an opportunity to continue to review the budget at that meeting. And then on April 4, we'll hold another public budget hearing followed by a special board of Ed meeting where the board will have one last chance to
make any modifications to the budget. And it's the April 4 evening that the Ram board will adopt the formally adopt the budget, and it will now be the Ram Board's budget, and we need to hit that date so that we've met all the legal requirements to go to the budget referendum on May 3. As you can see, we've presented to the Marlboro Board of Finance in February. Last night, we presented to the Hebron Board of Finance. We're happy to be joining Andover this evening, and Marlboro has reached out to us. And because we met with them so early in the process, they've asked us to return to give them an update of where the budget is at this point. One of them I'm I'm sure many of you have seen this this slide and I think it's it's most useful as as a comparison piece the state of Connecticut calculates a per pupil cost for East District. These represent the eight secondary regional districts within the state. And as you can see, Region 8 has the lowest per pupil cost of all of those districts. And I think with that, I I I use this slide to show that I I believe that our community is is getting a very strong return on the investment that they make
in the Ram schools. In terms of enrollment,
sorry to interrupt you. Could you just clarify what the rank is there? Is it rank per pupil spending just to be clear? Correct, yes, that's cost per pupil. So we're ninety fourth out of 166 Thank you. Wanted to make sure I understood that.
Terms of our enrollment projections, we we do use the New England School Development Council or nest deck to provide our predictive enrollment data. We anticipate that the district will be seeing 161 fewer students over the next five years. Looking moving from this current school year into the the 02/2003 school year, this is the one year where we have a a more modest decrease. We're anticipating five fewer students at the middle school next year and 21 at the high school. I do want to point out though that we are seeing a steady increase of students returning from technical VOAG and magnet schools since the beginning of this school year. We had 13 students who have returned to RAM from,
one of those schools. And then this gives you a an overview of what the prediction for enrollment changes are over the next few years. If you look at the middle school, the middle school will continue to decrease for the next three years. So they'll have a after next year going into twenty two-twenty three, they'll have a decrease of 20 students, then a decrease of 13 students in 2526. It levels out pretty much. They're only seeing a decrease of one student, and then they start to build enrollment, beginning in 2627. The high school is on a different time frame, as you can see, and, we anticipate that the high school will be seeing a reduction enrollment, at least through 2728, and that reduction is going to be on the average of about 30 students a year in 2829, they'll start to see a recovery. But as you can see for particularly at the high school, there is a continued,
decrease in enrollment. And you're referring to columns that are seven dash eight and then nine dash 12 on the right side. Yes,
so seven dash eight is references the grades. So that's the middle school and nine through 12 would be the high school. The that middle column seven through 12 represents both schools together. But I, you know, I hear a good example of where it's important to look at at each school separately here, because while the high school is still decreasing enrollment, you know the middle school will start to see a bit of a rebound. Beforehand. And to you know, think it's important that the communities understand that we have been responsive to the decrease in enrollment and since 2018
we've eliminated 16 teaching positions as we reshuffle our teaching staff to better meet the needs of the lower, enrollments that we're facing. We were up at at the highest a few years. We were at 1,200 students. You know, at this point, we're in the 800, so we certainly have seen a decrease. And that's reflective of that in terms of our staffing numbers. Some of the proposed improvements, and then I'll focus on some of the reductions that I'm proposing. We have, I've got a point for health PE teacher now point four is out of a full time so point four would be little less than a half time teacher. And the reason for adding this to the budget is the fact that we're seeing, an significant increase in interest in the wellness area from our students. And
I I we all believe that at least partly that's due to the pandemic and the need to focus on on some positive, some things that students can do to to kind of increase their own positivity. Also, the state has mandated new graduation requirements which require additional credits in PE and health. So there's a there are more students that have to take those courses in order to graduate. The next two bullets, the seven periods of academic labs at the middle school and the one period of academic labs at the high school. These are not full positions. Those are seven periods, so these would be stipends of about $1,000 apiece that essentially allow us to assign a teacher a much more structured study hall. So we're in a study hall, teachers simply monitor the 20 or so students that have that period in an academic lab. We're looking at a much smaller number of students, and they're receiving very specific assistance from the teachers. The teachers contact you are in contact with the students parents, and these are obviously for students that are struggling a bit more academically than others. And we have found that as we, are coming out of the pandemic. We were we have found a greater need for more intensive academic support for our students, and so that's why those are there. You'll notice there's seven in the middle school, not only one in the high school. The reason for that is we have had academic labs at the high school for a number of years where we haven't had them at the middle school.
So we're we're actually kind of adding one academic lab per period at the middle school where at the high school we're just supplementing what we already have. The two study hall monitors at the high school, go hand in hand with those academic labs in that in order to free up teachers to oversee those academic labs, we have to take them out of what is the most typical duty for a high school teacher, which is monitoring a study hall. So by hiring some monitors just to oversee the study halls, it frees up those teachers so they can focus on the academic labs. Those four bullets, those first four bullets I just described, those up through this year have been supported by our Esser grant. I am proposing to the board that these be moved into the operating budget since our Esser grant has run out and we've utilized all the grants that we received.
I would anticipate that the point for health teacher would probably go for more than just next year, whereas the academic labs and the study hall monitors, I would anticipate would just be a one year, investment. And then as we are one more year out of the pandemic, there'll be less need for those, more intensive academic assistance. The three paraprofessionals at the high school are specific to special education needs, and are there because we have identified students that require additional support. The, these next two, the nurses administrative assistants. Again, this is not a full time position. A point six seven FTE is just a little bit more than a half time, administrative assistant. This was actually a position that we budgeted in our operating budget, through the end of last year, and we're anticipating
that we were going to be able to eliminate it moving forward. However, as you can imagine, throughout the pandemic, the nurse's office has become one of the busiest hubs within our building, particularly this year. And, we found that we really needed that position to help manage the traffic coming in and out of the nurse's offices. So we did. Fund it this year through the ESSER grants as well. I'm proposing that we fund it for one additional year, next year through the operating budget. Again, partly because we're not exactly sure what we're going to be looking at next year, but we do anticipate that the nurses office will continue to be a busier spot, and then we're hopeful that the following year we'd be able to to finally eliminate it altogether. The school counseling team leadership stipend. Again, is not a full time position. This is a. A small stipend that allows one of our school counselors in the middle school to take on a leadership role to help organize and focus the counseling support that we offer to our middle school students. We have two counselors that serve as department coordinators, but they're both
seated in the high school, and so we really felt we needed somebody to help coordinate the services that we're providing to our students at the middle school a little more closely. In terms of two positions that I'm proposing we remove, one is we have a a half time, a point five district technology service technician that has been in the budget for a couple of years. We simply have not been able to fill it. We haven't had, any qualified candidates to fill that position. We have an IT, a full time IT director. We do have a full time district technology technician, and we've been able to free up one of our teachers
a couple of periods each day who has extensive tech, and a sense of technology background, and we are confident that we can meet the technology needs of our schools without that position. So combining the fact that we really cannot we we haven't been able to fill it and we're getting by just fine without it. I'm suggesting that we eliminate it. The English teacher, as you see, I I've got it indicated that it's grant funded. This was a position that I cut from the budget last year. Here again, when the pandemic hit, we realized that our students had taken a hit on some of the writing and and reading skills that we felt had fallen a little behind for some of our students.
We wanted to provide some smaller class sizes for those students with the greatest need, and so we did use the ESSER grant to fund this position. We are eliminating it going into next year. So this is not a reduction from the operating budget. It's not coming out of the operating budget being that it's grant funded, but I did wanna highlight that it is a position that we are eliminating, and won't be returned to the operating budget. In terms of some of the driving factors for the, budget, in the area of technology, the, we have a number of software packages that, and as you can see, these do a variety of tasks for us. So example, the SmartNotes is an instructional tool, for our math department, whereas Jamf is a, centralized platform that helps us manage the Apple products in the building, and that's primarily the Apple computers in the arts area of our programming.
The Duo MFA is a firewall add on which is a security, program, that is you can imagine with such a large wireless system, we you know, security is is really key for us. Schoology is a instructional platform that allows teachers to organize their classes because, you know, certainly, we were digitally based prior to the pandemic. Any teacher that that hadn't moved into that realm before the pandemic certainly has now. So, you know, the vast majority of the organization of our instructional tools are digitally based. So that's a a platform to support teachers in their instruction. And then Google Enterprise as well supports instruction. In terms of the hardware, if you take a look at the the budget book, you'll notice that I I've got, highlighted our leasing agreements for, for a number of years. And what it shows is that about five years ago, the Ram board embarked on a plan to to hit a set amount each year for our leasing responsibility so that those costs didn't jump and fall each year. And the what we what we the goal was to hit 60,000 a year because that's that covers all that we need. So if you look at our budget, you'd see that the 2122 lease amount was 40,000, whereas the other years have been 60. This is the last year of moving that up, and so, we anticipate moving forward that that number, that 60,000 number wouldn't change from year to year at this point.
Some of the what that's funding this this coming year, the 2223, is we do need to replace the seventh and tenth grade Chromebooks. Those are due for replacement. And when we moved into the building in 2003, each of our classrooms was fitted with a smart board and a projector which provided an interactive board at the front of the room. 2022, many of those smart boards have failed or the the projectors have failed or we can't find bulbs for the projectors. And so we're replacing those with interactive LCD panels, which are less expensive overall and, certainly much more efficient. In the area of special ed, we have we we do have some increases in our magnet school tuition in terms of having to cover the magnet school tuition for some of our special needs students. In the second bullet, we highlight the specific students that we are aware of that will either be entering our district or that will be experiencing a change in programming that will move them into a more costly program. And then the third bullet, we've had an increase to our assessment supplies for special education and what we found with as a as a result of the pandemic, we have more students that had been referred to special Ed, and so we're finding that we're doing a greater number of assessments. And so this is, there to support our special ed staff as they move through that. In terms of our facilities, we will. We do have, I think, many of you know, a separate capital budget In terms of the operating budget, we have an HVAC repair and maintenance software upgrade
that we're we're due for, and that's covered in here for about the $12,000. Eversource is is telling us we should be planning for an increase of approximately $95,000 for our electric delivery, fee increase. We do have some maintenance equipment that needs to be replaced. The washer and dryer in the middle school PE department and acid flame cabinet for the high school science department, soundboard in the auditorium, and outdoor AED enclosures for athletics. Have. We have a number of AED cabinets within our building and we have AEDs that are specific for our field areas. The problem is is that we don't have the encasements to to protect them and so that they tend to be placed into supply boxes that are not accessible to the general public or easily accessible if there's an emergency outside. So we're proposing the addition of three outside AED enclosures that would allow us to make sure that AEDs are available both inside and outside of the Building 20 Fourseven. We're anticipating a $5,000 increase in our natural gas supply. And the last one, the security repair and maintenance. This is adding a remote door access to one of the the main corridors within the building. If you if you're coming into RAM through the main entrance of the high school, not the auditorium entrance, but the entrance on the Wall Street side of the facility,
right on the outside next to the library is a entrance way into the English hallway and the math stairway that doesn't have a a key fob to allow access. And what we find is that, particularly over the last couple of years, we have a lot of classes that are moving outside in the spring and the fall, and we really wanna avoid anybody propping a door open or being enticed to prop a door open. And so the additional key fob would allow us to enhance the security and make sure that teachers are able to use that entrance throughout the school day without compromising, our security and and allows us to continue to keep our doors locked at all times.
Kind of curious about the electric, budget. Just what what percentage of increases that reflect? That 95 ks, do you know? Eva, do you know that answer to that?
Not off the top of my head, but let me look in while you keep going there.
And we have another slide that catches up, so maybe even I will come together when that slide comes in a little bit. In terms of the the so I I think most of you know that that RAM the RAM's budget is now bifurcated. We have the operating budget and the capital budget as a separate budget. The capital budget last year was $299,500. The RAM board has you know, the goal has been to, very much like our leasing payments, find a an amount for the capital budget that would remain static and wouldn't change from year to year so you wouldn't see big increases or either or big decreases in it. And the 500,000 mark was the the number they were shooting for. What we have in this year's capital budget is the replacement of the vinyl sheeting flooring in our kitchen, serves both the high school and the middle school. Unfortunately, that vinyl sheet flooring is coming up at the seams and creating both the tripping hazard and a safety hazard with food getting caught underneath there. Kind of in conjunction with that, some of our walk in coolers and freezers, The seals are are are breaking. They've got sagging ceiling panels, and they really need to be replaced as well. You really need to do those together because you need to remove the walk in coolers, put the floors in, and then put the new walk in coolers on top of that. When we do our health,
when the health department does their inspections each year, we we get by with flying colors. The only two areas that we get dinged on are the the floor and the condition of the coolers. The next two items are recaulking of the joints along the foundation and the control joints and then the foundation and window caulking for both of the buildings. They're both due for this to make sure that we're, you know, preventing any moisture from seeping into the building. You'll notice that even though the middle school is smaller, it has a higher cost. The high school comes in at 57,000, whereas the middle school comes in at 67,000. The reason for that is some of the caulking in the middle school is from the original structure from 1983, and they're concerned that there may be PCBs in the caulk, so there's going to be some mitigation efforts required for that job that aren't that will not be required at the high school.
The Retention Pond. This is the Retention Pond which sits just below the middle school baseball field. Kind of between the middle school baseball field and Route 85. This is the pond that all the water from the high school athletic fields and the parking lots in that section of the the facility empties into. And then there's a spillway which prevents silt from going into Jeremy Brook, which is just behind us. The retention pond has has overgrown and and really needs to be cleaned out at this point. And the spillway has has shifted so that it's it no longer does an adequate job of filter of filtering the silt out from Jeremy Brooks. So so both of those need to be attended to. And, unfortunately, I think any of you that have seen RAM budgets before, you've you've seen sidewalk repair and curbing repairs in each budget. We do we've done a lot of work here, but we still have some concrete around the facility that needs to be replaced, And so that covers that. So that's the that's the items that I'm proposing are covered in this year's capital budget.
So I have the answer to that question. It's almost about 20% increase it's just a little over 19. Okay, thanks very much.
In terms of the budget overview, I'm gonna, I have separate slides for a number of these items, but I think, you know, probably the the most important ones to look at on this particular slide, if you look at the second to last row where it says other eight hundreds, this reflects the decrease in the the bond payments, the principal and interest for the high school and middle school building project. We are experiencing a $1,400,000 reduction in our bond payments this year. It will it will remain static at about $1,000,000 for the next two years. It'll drop another $600,000 three years from now, and then we'll stay at 400,000 for three years, at which point it will be paid off. But, you know, there is a significant decrease there. If you look up at the salary line item, you'll see that there's a significant increase there. And that wasn't done by accident. The RAM board purposely wanted to coordinate some of the initial expenses that we knew that we were going to have. And what we, one of the, well, we negotiated most of our contracts this year. For the RAM teachers, the we negotiated a three year contract, and, you know, I I I think it's kind of a remarkable contract in when I tell you that there was no percentage increase given to the teachers. So if you look at the the RAM contract, from this year and over the next three years, you'll see that there's no increases in the amount, appointed to each of those steps. With the exception of those teachers who are at the top step,
step 13, they'll receive a 1.5% increase each year. And the logic of that was that one of the things we found that was dramatically different with the RAM contracts, say, compared to Andover, Marlborough, Hebron and surrounding schools is that one, RAM teachers, you know, tended to be paid less than our surrounding districts. Any comparisons, the RAM was was in the lower part of that. One of the challenges that we have, though, is whereas, particularly Marlboro and Hebron, the vast majority of their teaching staff is at the top of the salary step. So they have very little step increase each year, whereas the RAM staff tends to be much younger. So there's a significant step increase each year. And so, one of the things that the RAM board had done in previous years was freeze teachers at a particular step. So there would be a percentage increase
awarded each year, but many teachers would be frozen at a particular step for a number of years. And what that resulted in was even though, say, compared to Hebron, Hebron has 13 steps and Ram has 13 steps, because Hebron has never frozen their contract, it takes thirteen years for a Hebron teacher to make it to the top step. Whereas at RAM, it takes on average twenty years to make it to the top step because of all the frozen steps. The RAM board also, in the last contract negotiations, collapsed the number of steps in the RAM contract from 18 to 13. Most districts have anywhere from 10 to 13 steps. 18 was extreme. And so, by collapsing those districts, it it did increase the, amount, you know, moving from one step to another.
So although it's it's you know, for the first year was a hefty amount, we did not add any percentage increase. We're just simply making sure that we're moving each teacher up the steps for the next three years. The non certified staff, which includes our custodians, our paraprofessionals, our secretaries, they unfortunately also were really at the the very lowest end of the pay scale compared to all of the the districts that we compared to, including the local districts. And this is the first year of that contract. That bargaining unit received a two and a half percent increase, but they also received a 50¢ per hour differential. Next year, they'll receive a two and a half percent I'm sorry, 2% increase 2% increase, but they'll receive a dollar differential per hour. And then in the third year, there's no differential paid. They just have a two and a half percent increase. But we we wanted to coordinate some of those increases with next year, knowing that we we had the decrease in the principal and interest. Gonna move to the next slide because I'll I'll talk about some of those other line items in a little more detail. So for our. You know, a lot of this is showing where we've been able to, experience some savings. Our
purchase services, transportation, which includes getting students to and from school, our special ed transportation or transportation to the VOAG schools, our athletics transportation, our printing and binding, electric, repair and maintenance, and custodial temps, we're able to reduce that portion of our budget by $76,000. Most of that savings came from our three custodial temps. We've had three custodial temps budgeted for the last couple of years, and those have been critical during the pandemic when, as you can imagine, we've had, you know, high absences. And so that allowed us to to make sure that we had enough custodial staff to ensure the cleanliness of the building. Now that we're,
you know, beyond the pandemic, we no longer need those so that, we've removed those three custodial temps, from the budget. We did increase one, add one custodian to the, crew, but we did re re eliminate the three custodial temps. In terms of the tuition that we're paying in most of this is special ed, but also some tour of OAG tuition, we're able to, experience a savings of about $367,000 For supplies, you know, unfortunately, this is an increase, and, electricity, as you can see, is is the the most significant driving factor here. Diesel fuel as well. We have, both Andover and Marlborough locked in. So we're with you on on that locked in amount. One of the towns has not locked in, so, we did increase the amount that we budgeted for that to make sure that we're we're covered in that area. Our career and technical education department, which includes manufacturing, engineering, computer tech, you know, we we we haven't been as hands on over the last couple of years. So we haven't had to buy as much wood, as much metal. Moving into next year when we're fully back hands on, you know, we we did need to supplement some of the supplies that they a little more than they would typically buy to refresh those supplies. In terms of property, we've held off on the purchase of equipment in art, science, PE and CTE. Those are the departments that tend to have the heaviest equipment budgets. In our security area, our tech, IT department and furniture,
you know, we we we we have what we need. We're not cutting anything that's essential, but we we didn't feel that we needed to add anything in those areas. So there's a reduction in there. And then, as I indicated earlier, the principal and interest from the school bonding sees the significant decrease. The, as I indicated the budget is still a work in progress, and at the February 28 board meeting. The RAM board did vote to add a new position of full time family and consumer science teacher, which would cover foods and early childhood education. This reflects the anticipated cost of what a hiring a full time teacher would be and the cost for supplies and equipment, repairs and maintenance, should say, for that program. We even I also worked with the board to look at some items that we could remove from the proposed budget and prepurchase with current funds. So for example, in our kitchen, we have a steamer that was original with a with a building, and we have portable refrigerators that were original with the building. The steamer has failed and is is not repairable at this point. That needs to be replaced in in a modern school kitchen. The steamer is is one of the key tools they need. The portable refrigerators, we have a number of them, and our goal is to replace, at least one at one each year, as they are beginning to fail. And then we have the labor. So we're we're
purchasing at the amount of $40,900 those items from the current budget. And then from our capital budget, we reduced it by $17,490. In our fire damper inspection, there were 24 fire damper actuators that were found to be not working, and so we're we're replacing those now with current funds. So we're able to take that out of the capital budget. This, this gives you an overview of the operating budget. If we look at the operating budget on its own, it equates to a decrease of 1.47%. When we calculate in our anticipated revenue, which includes excess cost, from the state and then, you know, tuition or parking fee that students pay, this sort of thing,
the the decrease ends up being a negative 1.35. I'm gonna skip the town levies. I know that's the one thing you probably wanna look at the most, but I have slides dedicated to that. So we'll look at that in in some more detail in a few slides. With the capital budget, as I indicated, we had gone from the $299,500 to the 504,000, which is an increase of, little over 68%. And then when you put both of those budgets together, it equates to a, decrease of a negative point 67%. And we'll look at the the town levy. So for for Andover, if we just look at the operating budget, you'd have a decrease of $219,871 dollars. So we indicated there is an increase in the capital improvement budget, which chips away $32,614 from that, which at the end of the day results in a levy payment of a reduction of a $187,257 compared to last year's last year's budget or levy payments. In addition, the auditors provided the the RAM board at the February 28 meeting with an overview of the, surplus from 2021, and I'll talk about that, the the entire surplus in just a little bit. But the surplus in excess of two percent came to $46,230. So Andover will be receiving 800 $8,016, returned from from that portion of the surplus. In looking at the rest of the surplus, but also, some additional capital budget items, one of the things that, you'll notice I haven't talked about or haven't mentioned is any of the repairs to the athletic fields. The capital budget I'm proposing really is focusing on critical just building
capital projects that, need to be completed. Right now, this slide kind of lays out all of the potential capital money that the board has at its disposal. The $504.06 19 reflects the proposed capital budget for next year. The board currently has $229,235 in their capital fund balance. 108,000 of that is in the capital improvement plan balance, and 120 is in the capital nonrecurring balance. Most of these funds resulted from, previous capital projects that were completed at less than, what we had budgeted for, And a significant amount of this was, representing projects, field projects, athletic field projects that were put on hold when the board decided to go to referendum for the turf field. So that is capital funds that are are currently available for the board to use. The 2% carryover from 2021 of the audited surplus equates to $612,385. The, 40,000 that I mentioned in the previous slide, that's the money above and beyond, which which has to go back to the towns. Now, obviously, the board has some decisions to make. And as I indicated, their work is is not done on this. So in terms of of, you know, the the options that I've provided to the board
is for the proposed capital budget that the 504,000 that that I proposed and the existing capital funds. There are a number of things that they could certainly do with that. They could fund some of the capital projects in my proposed budget with the existing capital accounts they have to reduce the capital budget. They could fund, fully fund my proposed capital budget and decide to fund additional capital projects that I did not include in my proposal. They could also use that, that is particularly the 200,000 that they have in their capital accounts. They could use that to fund some of the necessary athletic field repairs. In terms of the audited surplus, I think as as most of you probably know that that money cannot be used to supplement our operating budget. It really can only be used either to return to the towns or to fund capital projects. So I think the options that the board has for that are to fund
the necessary field repairs. They could create a capital nonrecurring line item to offset future bonding that we know is coming down the pike. So I I would anticipate that when the current bonding expires, the board's going to be at the point where they're at least going to need to be considering, projects for the roof replacement, the boilers, and chiller replacements. That's still five to seven years off, but nonetheless, you know, that that they could use some of that money if they chose to to begin to create a savings account for that. And they could certainly return money to the three towns as well. So the board hasn't had that discussion yet, but that's, you know, obviously a discussion they're gonna have to have between now and and that April 4 date. And then just to to an overview of the increases and decreases of the RAM budget over the last six years. You can see the, you know, the the the height of an increase of 2.89% and, this year's, decrease of a negative point 67%. And that brings my presentation to an end. Eve and I are are happy to answer any questions.
K. Thanks, Scott. Board of finance members, I'll open it up if anybody has any questions they haven't asked already. It was fairly clearly presented. I mean, there may be more questions during the follow-up meetings of the RAM. Anybody? Okay, hearing none. Well, think I'm fine for now.
Thank you for your presentation. And anyone's welcome to email us questions or you know the Ram board is meeting again on March 21. That's the next board meeting. So any questions or comments before then? Certainly we'll be happy to share. Go ahead.
Yeah, I just wanted to thank Scott for coming. I know your schedule's been really busy. It'll take a little time to digest it all. Clearly, all I was going to say, and sorry, was muting and unmuting is, you you would hope with significant enrollment decreases that we could see, you know, a tangible decrease eventually in one of these budgets and understanding that there's always capital improvements and and wish lists and things to get done and things that have to get done. So, you know, just trying to digest it all and study it a little bit more. Have your other, you know, forums been asking similar things? I don't want to keep you longer. You do this all the time, but I imagine the other towns kind of ask the same thing when when we're gonna see a significant decrease.
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I would hope and it's easy for me to say this because this will be the last budget off, be doing but, but our hope is that by setting some of those items at a fixed rate. When we do reduce staff, those will be real reductions finance, you know, financial reductions to the budget. That we're, you know, I would be hopeful that this budget would just be the beginning but that we'd be able to experience some reductions. Think what are the biggest challenge I think the RAM board has right now is, is that long term planning for how do we maintain programming in the face of decreasing enrollment? And what does that look like? You know, I would, I would certainly love, you know, I have a hand in just about every program that RAM offers now. So certainly I have, would love to see them all continue and flourish. But, you know, even over the last few years, we have seen, the loss of some programming, partly due to lack of student interest, partly due to changes in, where students are going and what their interest is in the classes they're choosing. But you know, think for the RAM board, that's probably going to be the number one challenge that they're going to have over the next year or two as they plan their budgets with decreasing enrollment. You know, how do you manage your staff while being able to preserve as many programs as possible.
And because certainly the communities are going to want to see I think you're right to end they're going to want to see a real reduction as the number of students, you know reduces as well.
Still keep the quality. And then one final question as I was looking at my notes sorry just the academic labs that the teachers, you know you do that's great idea of course and needed and just for the from the teacher perspective, and this is just a small part of it. Do they would that have been during one of that is their duty? Correct, They get a stipend for it, so they still teach their same number of classes that they're contracted to. Exactly.
Yep. So we have we have an eight period day so a teacher teaches five classes. They have one preparation period they have one duty, and then they have lunch. The. And actually their lunch is, you know they used to be traditionally a twenty minute lunch for teachers. Now they have a full period for lunch but what that allows us to do is they have you know twenty minutes to eat but then the rest of that period is available for student support and so students can go to them during their lunch periods and get help, or the teachers have an opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues, you know if they're co teaching a class or teaching the same subject area, they can do some collaboration during that time, but the, the academic labs are
unique in that they involve planning, they involve, you know, a much higher degree of engagement than monitoring a study hall or something along those lines. Thank you. Okay.
Eric Shevchenko here. Would like to just extend to Eric Anderson, my wishes for a rapid and complete recovery. He's a valuable asset to the town of the Andover and I wish him the very best. Also, I see two very familiar names out there. There's Linda Fish and Robert England, both of which I served with on Board of Finance a number of years ago. My hat is off to you that you are still hanging in there. And also, I would like to just extend my thanks to Amanda Gibson who has helped me out when I have stopped in at the town hall. So thank you guys all very much and of course, thanks to the, the balance of the members of the Andover Board of Finance. Thank you. Good to see you.
Right. Well, again, thank you for your presentation and support tonight, guys. We appreciate it and good luck with the remainder of the budget season. Great. We all need
Great. Thanks. Appreciate it. Good luck as well. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Eva.
Okay. Being done with the presentation on the Region A Board of Edge budget takes us back to our normal agenda for this time of year, which is the budget workshop for the fiscal year twenty twenty two twenty twenty three. So we we went through it pretty good detail last time without going line by line, we asked some questions, I think we got some answers, Erica provided some stuff also. We had gotten the cross reference also from Sherry, so I think we've got some of that. I don't particularly have any method proceed or if we need to proceed or take this much further. We obviously have a presentation next week for the Andover Board of Ed budget, which I think is obviously something that's much more topical and actionable on our part. It's part of our town budget that we affect,
and we'll have to act on at that point. I did see some good back and forth about how to capture input from from the public. Do have that. I think Amanda pointed out we do have that that budget email address. I think having that up and up and in effect is is good. There's some discussion about who should monitor and access it. I mean, personally, I I wouldn't want to have to be responsible for for accessing it, and I want to. I think personally, I think it probably makes sense to have one or two people monitor and control it otherwise there's too much chance of something getting lost or you know misfiled or deleted accidentally or anything like that. Don't know how likely that is but I personally would like to see a coalition of any input provided through that or more traditional correspondences. You know just in advance of the meetings. I don't know if that's something that Amanda can put together if it's not, you know tons of work but you know something like that in a day or so before the meeting starts I think would be would be valuable for those board members who are not going to monitor it online.
I personally don't really have the time to keep on top of it in that way But you know kind of seeing a running list or else having an email to us forwarded and you know compiled into a document I think would be helpful. Anybody have any input on that or other ideas?
I think we should also advertise out to the public where this is going to be housed and all that. I have quite a few people asking me questions and I'm saying okay that's what kind of prompted me to check into it. So if we can put that way as soon as we decide that's what we're going to do, if we can advertise
that so people have that avenue of questions they can answer, they can ask. So by advertising it by Louise you'd be thinking like the know the town Facebook account Eric's email distribution or something like that? Yeah also maybe in the paper as well.
That costs money, but certainly, unless we can get an article written, which is free. I
think we could do it as a press release and get it without paying.
Is there a way to make a, you know, on the main town website page, is there a place for us to put an announcement, you know, to bring easier time so you don't have to go find the budget page to find it? Do you know what I mean? Can we have a a highlight or something saying budget questions? Make sure you go here and put it That's a great idea.
I just want to jump in. We do have it listed under news and announcements. There's three headers, so it's there, but we can make it more specific to include you know the email and you know there's also the the red alert message on the top if you want to go big and and put it right in people's faces.
That might be a little much. That's what I was gonna say. It might be better to retain that for unexpected closures or something like that.
I was just gonna say that I don't think we need a press release. Maybe just have it there for people that are interested and constantly looking for budget information on the budget page like I used to do or things. Yeah, I don't think we need to send it out, but if people are interested, they're gonna look for it up on the web page, you know which is the natural place to look on the website and then just have if you have any questions boom you know something like that maybe amanda would be good I mean that's my thought if mark and whoever agrees
Just think as long as it's easily found. Somebody Yeah.
I mean, think I know what Jenny is trying say here. It's just so that it is for a casual user who goes to the website who isn't maybe necessarily familiar with drilling down into the sub menus and whatever, that there's a really easy pathway to it because that then helps people who, you know, may be coming in for the first time or whatever to look at this stuff. It helps them out. I'm generally in favor of trying to increase people's participation. I'm on board with that. I mean, do think that things the way they are are not even, they're not going to criticize at all. Think that if you are, if you go to the town webpage and you are intending to search for budget stuff, you can pretty easily find it. But I have no objection to trying to make that even easier and easy is good. I mean I also note that you know thus far we've had very little public engagement with this budget process. It's early yet. But
our meetings are out there and, you know, you our public comment tonight was literally the people from RAMP. So, you know, there's only so much you can do. Think it's gonna come when they're ready. So it's
I I think it early. Don't get me wrong. I mean, usually things, you know, as this process goes along, maybe see some more.
I'm going to suggest that we empower Amanda to find a make a selection maybe working if Eric wants to work with it to provide some guidance and just find a way to make that as as successful as possible without, you know, without using the go big red banner at the come up with some way just to make it. Are you guys okay with that? You want to make it explicit how we think we ought to go? Mean, I don't have any specific things, but I do think some kind of link from the from the front page would be would be value something that says, you know, boom, provide your input here or something.
Yeah, I mean, now it is the proposed budget is sitting right at the top of the screen to anybody that, you know under current news. I mean we can change the message if you want something I don't know.
Think we're talking about a way to provide input right so specifically where would somebody to go if they wanted to provide some written input to the budget
per question? Right, right. So I guess my question is, you want that under on the front page or do you want them to drill down to a budget page which is what there is now and then have you know I don't know a banner here saying you know we'd have to look back at what we've done in years past when we had a budget message there.
I'd be okay with having it on the budget page as long as it's, you know, there's a lot on here, which is great, but I would say it should probably be in that header, you know, up there to say, you know, you know, stay up to date. That's great. And maybe we, you know, we even have a link right below that or something that says, you know, provide your, you know, input questions about the budget here.
Here. My question is, if memory serves and unfortunately my memory is shockingly fuzzy, but during the height of the pandemic, you know, we definitely had people submitting commentary online because everything was online right and we couldn't do meetings and people weren't even able to go to town hall and whatnot and can you remind me how we facilitated that?
Basically just what we talked about you know we put something prominent on the budget page saying for feedback on the budget you know please click here that leads you to the you know budget@andoverct.com email address and then we kind of go from there. I think that's fine. That gives people a good way to provide that information.
Yeah, that works for me. I think it worked well, honestly. So think it's just simple
banner that says click here to ask questions about the budget or provide feedback about the budget or something. Just some just simple like that.
Well, the only thing I I I wouldn't say to ask questions because if you say to ask questions and somebody has to, you know, respond to all of those and provide them the information.
It's a good point and it may not be sufficient or expected that you know if you we respond to it in the Board of Finance meeting that may not be what they expect and they then kind of experiences that they didn't get the answer to the question.
I think yeah feedback might be the better word to use.
Yeah. Now the last couple of years as the administrator, I have on the town's Facebook page, you know, basically, you know, asked for budget questions and answered what I could there. Also, at some point during the budget process. I'm not sure we're there yet because I think you guys haven't had enough of a crack at changing the budget for that to be be in other words, I don't think we're developed enough to be asked to be doing that yet, but I would do that at some point.
I I agree. I mean, this is still pretty preliminary. We're still getting our presentations in from the various you know, we've gotten the town stuff. We've gotten RAM. We're gonna get a yes, which is a major component, obviously. And then we have to we're gonna do our line by line at some point. And I think after that cut is when it makes sense. You guys agree? Do you think that makes sense? I do. Yeah, think so.
Because I mean, the budget as it stands now really doesn't have any we haven't taken any action as of yet. Right, it's just compiling what others have given up. We're in the gathering the information phase, Right, exactly right.
I was just gonna add that I loved as a, you know, a townsperson, just checking that. I think, like, were all were talking about, it was just a running commentary of questions. Right? Different things. I don't know. I actually don't remember how we did it the last think it was an Excel sheet, and there was just, you know, the question dark, and I think we just
collated. We kinda categorized them and addressed them broadly. Like, I don't know that we did a I don't think there was answers.
So It was more like, you know, broad categories of, alright, a bunch of people asked a question about this. We're gonna kind of address that holistically. It was definitely later than now.
So yeah. Oh, agreed. I think it was. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Can I add something? Yeah. Think it's
also important to add it to whatever articles are gonna be publicized in the paper, just at the bottom saying, you know, any feedback, any feedback just direct it to such and such. So those people that don't normally go online, they will still they will still see it in the paper. Yeah. No. Good. Good reminder. I agree.
So I just have one other thing I wanted to say and that one of the questions you all had for me was why did between the department proposed budget and what the board of selectmen approved, There was the public works like equipment maintenance line item. There was a $30,000 difference and that was due to the original the public works foreman had suggested two things he thought would be appropriate to do this year that he felt were appropriate under maintenance. One was replace the direct main drive belt on the sweeper. That's about a $10,000 repair. And the second one was replace the flail head for the mower. Since it doesn't look like we're gonna buy a new mower anytime soon, We have two old flail heads. We have one rough flail head and we have one kind of finish flail head. And the finish flail head, which is the one we use like 90% of the time
is really it's going to need to be replaced. Now the board of selectmen did feel those were more appropriate as capital expenses rather than maintenance expenses and took them out of that line item of the budget, which Diane was, as you pointed out, 30,000 difference. That's what that change was. So did that get added to the capital request? It did not.
So that came out. Is that the sweeper? And I would also We just bought last fall.
Yeah, except remember we bought a used one. That's right. Yeah, used, right? Yeah. Right. And we did a bunch of repairs to it but we knew the main drive belt. We knew we could get a year or two out of it but but that was going to be we just didn't wanna do it last year because that's a fairly big ticket item.
Eric, is this the the piece of machinery that we got, like, a really good deal on? Like, we went out to, like, Virginia or something and grabbed it. Was that Exactly.
Exactly. We bought it for about a third of its retail value.
Right. So at the end of the day, you're gonna put a little more maintenance to do it by the nature of it. Yeah. Absolutely. A ton of money up front buying that. Right. Yep.
K. Correct. So does that mean, I guess I'm gonna ask a question, that you feel what we have, what is currently in the budget request for capital expense is sufficient to cover those repairs if we need to do them this year?
Maybe. And the reason I say baby is because I don't know that we're going to be able to get the skid steer this year anyway, because if we're not ordering it right now and we're waiting till a July budget year we're not getting it you know we're not getting it until the next time they open up orders you know which may be you know maybe sometime early about this time next year so you know we're not we're not even going to be able to order it this year.
I just want to make sure that if we know they have to be replaced in this budget cycle that we make accommodations for that somewhere.
Well, the flail head doesn't absolutely have to be replaced right now. Know, it's part of part of the question is just know, we're going to replace the bearings in it again and repair the existing one and limp it along a little bit longer or we're going to replace it. But what I would say is we know it's not going to last the length of time between now and when we replace the whole tractor and mower. You know, so we know we're going to end up buying one at some point over the life of that piece of equipment, whether we buy it this year or next year or two years down the road. But it doesn't necessarily mean we have to buy it this year, you know, but if we don't buy it this year, we're going to spend some money fixing up the existing one. So, but what I would rather do is I would rather have the public works foreman talk to you directly about that because he's got a better feel for, you know, their day to day equipment needs than I do. And I think he can better answer your questions than I can.
I just feel like however we come out of this year, the budget may be very tight this year. And I don't wanna halfway through next budget year trying to find money somewhere because something needs to be done and we didn't account for it. If it does if it's like an urgent need, we should plan it in the budget. If it's not, then we've got more wiggle room to so Yep. You're on mute, Mark.
Thank you. Any other questions for Eric or Eric, do have anything else for the board? Joanne?
I was just curious if Sherry's had a chance to work on the whole personnel document that we were asking about unless I missed it in an email today. I checked maybe at 03:00.
As far as I know, I have not seen an updated version of that. Okay. Yep. So, hopefully, next week maybe.
Yeah. I I think she was thinking she had a little bit of a break since the focus of this meeting and the next meeting was this plus AES. So I know she's been working on a bunch of other stuff right now. We do have the auditor is we did do a a one more extension with the auditor. They are having their personnel that are going to be well, we have to because it's the ninth. So if we had, the state would be on our case already because we obviously didn't get the audit completed by March 1. So they are gonna have their personnel on-site supposedly this coming week.
My question to you is just so I understand. Is the reason the audit is late because they have lack of resources on their side, the auditing firm, and we got them all the information they needed in a timely manner and they just haven't done anything with it? Or were they waiting on us a little bit and it's a combination of the two things? Just wanna know why this far down. They were waiting on us initially,
but we had them the information they needed you know in the September you know time frame. You know to be perfectly honest in previous years they haven't even started thinking about our audit you know till after January 1. This was the first year and we kind of got led into this thinking that we were going to get it done on time because they actually started working on it in like September and October. Thank It never happened to us before.
But they wanted to get it back on track. So, I was looking forward to this year kind of being a normalized year. I mean, yeah,
I mean, you know, I think we know we're at the end of their pecking list, you know, and, you know, I'm, we had certainly I
did some research on this what other towns are paying for their audits, and we're paying them for this our size town. We're paying them a good chunk of change. If memory serves the last couple times we've bid this out or we've sought out bids for this, were getting a good deal.
Nobody wanted to do our audit, basically. Yeah, I think that was also the thing. I'm sure for any audit, the same work needs to be done whether you're you know, you're a little out of 50,000 or a town of ten ten thousand. But unfortunately,
there's certainly going to be more work to do. Those transactions they have to test. I mean, don't have a huge amount of transactions.
Of a sudden, we used to get, routinely, we'd get three bids and we actually would, if memory serves, Eric, correct me if I'm misremembering this, but couple times, I I feel like we even struggled to get a third bid, and we'd get wildly higher ones than the one that we ended up going. So I don't know that there's much to be saved there, unfortunately. I wish there was, but
I don't think they're actually getting killed Columbia and Bolton, and they play less than what we do
for their audit. Well, maybe we can figure that out. But So, you know, but that's probably
a discussion for another day. Right. But I think it is relevant to the performance aspect that I think Diane is getting that we just have to be, you know, aware of it.
I just wanna make sure if it's if we didn't get the information in a timely manner and scan stuff over to them what they needed, you know, in a timely fashion, that's one thing versus them not getting it done on time. Do you know what I mean? And I'm okay with, you know, an extension, going for another I mean, I'm sure it's what goes at thirty days at a clip. So we're now we're another thirty days out. I really would like this audit put to bed by the actuals before we have to make a decision on this budget. Yeah. So would we all, I mean, We have to do something in April. I think we should be communicating that to them and saying, look, we really wanna know the numbers in April. Yeah.
It's not you know, we're the client. I you know?
I have no disagreement with that. I completely agree with that part. So,
you know, just because we're the ugly stepchild doesn't mean we have to be treated that way. Joanne?
Yeah, just to follow-up with my question. So I understand Eric with Sherry, you know, whatever she's busy. The only the only reason kind of what you said is having the information so that as we get to these meetings and if we have things we can discuss or questions to ask they might come up then so I understand she has a lot on her plate so as things filter in or as the things we request you know because I can't always cram a little bit right before the meeting so I kind of stagger out my looking yeah that's all so just a reminder that when she can that or whatever else we're waiting on thank you.
I spent some time putting together a spreadsheet for myself because I have all these pieces of information that I want to look at. And then I have all these questions that I want to ask, and I'm starting to create that because I can't remember anything anymore. So if it's easier to exchange information back and forth, I'm willing to keep this spreadsheet up and put the information in there, you know, what we want, this is what we're looking for. So it's not going back in pieces of email all over the place, which is really hard to keep track of. So if we wanna do something like that, I'd be willing to keep that up and send that back and forth if everybody wants to do that.
Yeah, that that would be fine from our perspective. I mean, you can give us in writing as to exactly what information you want. I mean, did that. You told me verbally last meeting, and I tried to supply the information that you requested which was, you know, all the budgets, the broken down budgets from public works and there were a couple other things that you had requested. And as far as I know, from my end of things, I gave you what it was you were asking for, had questions about. Was some sherrys.
I've added some stuff to the lesson. Are more sherry stuff, I think, because I'm interested in all those standalone funds that we have for last fiscal year in this fiscal year. What we spent out of those, what went in there, what we spent. And so we have some track record on that stuff and getting that information put together. So I have that on the list. So I can can do that and make sure I copy everybody on that if that works for everybody. If you want to, we can review it in these meetings and we can add to it, then it can be a takeaway document. Whatever you guys wanna do.
Wouldn't be bad to have. Other comments or questions? Stuff we should talk about today. I know we're still, again, as you mentioned, in the information gathering stage, but We've got AES next week,
Yes. Same basic format. We'll have the presentation from Bell first and then follow that with the discussion. Right. I have one more question if I could. Yeah, go ahead.
For the jumping around here. I just figured I'd let me I was curious if this is along the personnel lines too and nothing nothing too big or whatever. I know we have when people are hired in the test they receive a higher letter. Yes. Is that a standard procedure? Everybody that's hired gets a hire letter?
Yeah. Ever since I've been here. Yes. Okay. I was just curious.
Yep. You go find the things on my job too. And I I mean, I know that we have so many less employees in Andover so I was curious on that. Thank you.
Yep, which is not me saying we do a great job of HR because we often don't. I mean, know, we don't have any kind of HR department so, it you kind of randomly falls on myself and Marina and know Sherry to do it.
No understood yeah I just wondered I know like that's just a standard thing. So I was hopeful that we did that in town that when people are hired, they just get a hire letter and they have a file and all that. So that's it. Just a little little thing. Thank you yeah we maintain
a personal file on every employee and the offer letter does go in there and the offer letter is what kick starts you know because the offer letter identifies you know basically working conditions so hourly wage you know and number of hours worked in in those conditions. That's what I thought. Alrighty thank you for that.
We're Yep. Not going to talk about the budget anymore in detail and we don't have any more questions, so I would suggest we move on to the next agenda item. Next item is correspondence we actually did have a couple of things that came in. I did forward to you Scott's presentation to receive this morning there was also a letter from the Board of Education, which I forwarded to everybody. We could probably attach that here. I'm not sure. We need to kind of go through that. Just kind of reviews the budget. Asking the question at the end, please let us know when we would be on the agenda for the Board of Finance meeting is we would like to be able to present not only the document that would be available for any and all questions that I think has been answered.
This kind of concurrently with the request for them to participate in the meeting. Amanda had already coordinated that. And Amanda, I believe you said you'd already advised Valerie that they would be first on the agenda. So similar as today. So I think you guys all have that. Yes, that's all set. Thank you. All right, anybody else have any other correspondence to report? Okay, hearing none, guess we'll move on again to public speak.
Okay, so I believe the only person we have on here is Bill from the public. Bill, would you like to participate in public speak? You're mute if you are, but All right.
Well, I guess we'll go ahead and move on then. You know, hearing none. I guess that's it for tonight then. Fairly short one. We'll have some long ones coming up, I'm sure. Thank you everybody for participation. Anybody would like to make a motion for adjournment? I'll make a motion.
Linda, motions to adjourn the meeting. Seconded. Joanne seconds, thank you. Any discussion? Okay, we'll call for a vote all those in favor of German say Aye. Aye. Any opposed.
Any abstentions. Okay, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Amanda. Thank you, Board. Thanks all. See you next week. Bye.