Meeting transcript
BOE Meeting 01.25.23
January 25, 2023 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
110. Got it.
Alright. So I can share my screen. I think this is it. Let's see. Yep. I got it? Got it. Yep. Do. Alright. Let me just make you guys smaller so I can read it. Okay. Alright. January 25 budget workshop. We're rocking and rolling here. Okay. The topic tonight as posted in the paper and on our agendas was salaries, insurance, facilities and maintenance, and fuel costs costs to discuss. Alright. Again, I have to make you little or I can't. There we go. Okay. So when we talk about salaries, we all know this is the largest portion of the budget. This alone makes up about 59% of our current budget, and I know you guys have the budget sheets in front of you, that I had given you guys at the very beginning there. They'll be posted again as they were last week, in the minutes. Well, they will be tomorrow
when that gets fixed. So when we look at this budget and we look at who is it that we have to pay, who makes up the salary line items, between the classroom specials, special education, and the intervention teachers, there's full time 21. Part time teachers, there are four, and they are a variety of amount of part time from one day a week, which is a point two to, four days a week. The paraprofessionals, we have six paraprofessionals, and I didn't put anything there as to regular special education because at one time, we did have, like, building paraprofessionals, but we don't anymore. So they're all just paraprofessionals, who service our special education population. We have 2.5 custodians. It's technically, the point five is a little skewed there, but he's a five hour, the third custodian. And then we have two full time ones. Kitchen, we have one main person in the kitchen and one that works just a few hours a day, assisting with the lunch waves. We have a part time finance manager, a full time principal, a part time superintendent, a part time special ed director,
five part time service providers. We talked about them when we did the special education services like OTPT speech, those people. Two office staff. One is administrative assistant, and one is the school secretary. One nurse. And then who do we pay salary wise out of the budget. We also pay subs. Oops. Okay. When we look at contracts, this is always a huge driving factor in the planning of salaries going forward. We're lucky that we settled those, negotiated those contracts last year in 2122 school year for both the certified and the noncertified staff. Each one has a different percentage in terms of what they opted to take. It was, over three years, 9%, so roughly 3% per year. One, I think, was a point five one year and an even number the other year, but the planning is about 3% a year for both contracts, which I wanted to point out,
it was actually to our favor that it was last year, you know, before the cost of living adjustment, went sky high. According to the Social Security Administration in 2022, that COLA, that cost of living adjustment is 5.9% for 2022, and now coming into 2023, it's 8.7%. And nobody is asking, you know, for more money than the 3%, but just wanted to point out here that that is locked in for the life of the contract on our two contracts that we settled, and we won't begin talks until next year again for renegotiating them. So where would you find the salaries in the line items? All over. They're by category.
So on the paper in front of you, and I know some of you are are new to the board this year, but, they say the salary line item. Most of them are in that first section there, top right of my screen there, very first page of the budget where it has the the one o ones, and then it's 1,000, $1,221.50. The one o ones, there are the salaries on the top. And you'll notice it has obviously, the largest component was the teacher salaries for last year. Well, for this year, the the budget from last year. You'll notice we still have, zero in there for preschool teachers because the preschool teacher budget is infused in the school readiness grant and the smart start grant and the tuition. So we don't put that in the general fund budget. Special education teachers, we did talk briefly about the fact that we have two special education teachers. You'll notice the only other zero in that category is curriculum development. Not really sure why that line stayed in there because what I could see, looking back at the budgets is that there really hasn't been a curriculum person, for a very long time. So I'm not sure that we really do need that line item anymore. The other spot that we'll see salaries is you see underneath those, the substitutes. We're probably going to have to, separate that, based on the board decision this year to, thank you, to increase the, the amount of compensation for subs and the fact that very oftentimes,
there is no differentiation when someone comes in as to, what their job is. We don't any longer have a a certain set rate for a daily sub that's a para and a certain set rate for a daily sub that's a teacher. And so that's worked out well. The only one that would have to continue to stay separated would be for, the preschool and the special education if, in fact, it's for, a special education person because we have to be able to report things for special ed, and we also have to be able to charge the, preschool to the preschool account. On the left there, the section, the three twenties, you see 002Dash320. Those are the ones that we spoke about, when we talked about special education, and that has in there that social worker, the psychologist, the occupational therapist. And we did already discuss the fact that a couple of those, will need to take funds from other special ed line items and place them there because, for example, PT, we had budgeted for $2,700 this year, and our needs are $2,700 a month almost. So we definitely will. Sorry. My dog is drinking right next to me. I'm sorry. On the bottom, you'll see there the line items under the the summer schools. Those aren't the summer school, but under the summer school there on the left of my screen, you see support salaries. You have, the nurse is located in that, particular line item of the budget, and then the custodial salaries, the noncertified admin salaries. Every year, we do notice, and I wanna make sure I point it out so that anybody from the outside who's looking at our budget understands,
the superintendent office salary person and then the special ed admin salary, That's that same person that sits outside of my office there at that desk. And, for budgeting purposes, her salary, because she is the admin assistant and she does both special ed and then superintendent and the board and admin, her her compensation is just divided into two spots in the budget, as to where we categorize it. So on the bottom there, put total was about, 2,400,000 of the $4,000,000 budget. The new budget will reflect the 3% increases and the new subrate approved by the board of ed. So I can tell you that number will be roughly, and Terry's gonna give us the exact numbers on Friday, but the that that should be roughly $72,000. Benefits. So in terms of benefits in this budget, AES is part of an insurance consortium. Our consortium is a self insured consortium. It's Andover Board of Education and Andover the town of, Hebron Board of Education and Hebron the town of, Marlborough, same thing, board of ed and the town of, RAM And Services. So together, we all make up this, health and wellness consortium. We are overseen by Brown and Brown, Chuck Petriconi from Brown and Brown. We have monthly meetings. Faithfully, we make sure that there's officers. There's a quorum that needs to be there just like a board of education, and, everything is shared, shared with us on a monthly basis, which is wonderful. We see all the claims because we're self insured. We see, the accounts. We see all of the transactions, not the individual's transactions. I mean, money in, money out. And so it really has been working very well. It's been together for about a decade, and it's very cost effective,
for us, and it's very efficient. So I'm really happy, with with the way this is is working out for the town for the board of education and the town of Andover. We do have to plan for known and anticipated changes to our staff here at AES. So we, as a unit, our consortium is able to take all the data that's provided to us and figure out at the recommendation of Brown and Brown based on, the the the, amount of services that we've provided in one year, the claims, what a fair number is to, have us put into our budgets. And in September, it starts off with one number based on the claims. And then as we get closer to budget season, we have an a more accurate number that everybody's comfortable with. Last month, I know when we talked about this at the board meeting, we were at 5%. And 5% based on claims was what we thought was a very fair and accurate number to use for budget planning for the towns, the boards of ed, and
RAM. Since then, when we look at now we have another month and a half of claims for us to look at the trend information, and now we are at 3%. So that's good news. So in this budget, we will see a 3% recommended increase for next year so that we could properly plan. But then within the building, Terry and I have to look at, our own needs and what we anticipate as changes that could be occurring. So staff will share those with us. Someone may say, just so that you know, and these are hypothetical. I don't mean them to be assigned to a person. I have a child who's 26, and they're coming off the insurance. So I anticipate being a single person next year instead of a family. Or they may say, I am getting married this year or I just got married, and I will be adding a spouse. They could say, I plan on, having a child this year or adopting a child. So all of their life changes, and we appreciate that because that really helps us to try to plan more efficiently for what's to come. And then when staff are hired, we always have to take that into consideration in this line item. Not for whether we're gonna hire them or not, but for what we should plan to have within the benefits line item. So for example, the former principal versus this principal, one has a family, one doesn't. So we know that we're gonna make changes in the line items to reflect that.
Just so that the board is reminded of kind of the average amount because this kind of shocks people sometimes, and this is completely common normal with with other plans. To have one person on, our plan, and the teachers pay a percentage, of it, and the board pays the rest. The board share of having a person on our plan is about $10,000. So they're paying out of their paycheck a certain amount of money, and then the board contributes about $10,000. If it's a family plan, the board's contribution is roughly $30,000. So, we love our our AES family. We love to keep them insured. We love to make sure that we have the best insurance possible. But when we're planning in that line item, sometimes people say, why are the benefits so high? That is the board's contribution. We do also have, contributions besides the health care. We have contributions for life insurance, for dental, and in some cases, long term disability. So the overall cost in our budget for benefits that are listed here are between about 15 to 17% of the overall budget. We do not and I know someone had brought this up last year, I wanted to reiterate it. For people who don't work in education or in the schools, We do not cover pensions for teachers. Teachers' retirement benefits are called TRB. And I know that sometimes, people think that, maybe perhaps we're making a contribution on their part to TRB, and we don't. The employee, the teacher. Actually, I'm in TRB still. Taylor's in TRB. We pay that out of our paychecks towards our pension because educators do not receive Social Security usually unless they've worked other jobs.
So there we have no contribution to Social Security, but we make our own contribution to TRB. Okay. So facilities and maintenance. This is always a fun one, because, remember, we we only have an operational budget. This is what we have, and, any capital projects or, long term facilities is it's not generally in our regular budget except for kind of the day to day known maintenance things, the yearly contracts, things like that. So sometimes those are things that we have to plan for in advance because we know they're gonna come up the following year. We have talked about, and I know the board will have to revisit this at some point in the future, potentially with the board of finance in terms of whether or not, that's an option. We do have that 2% nonlapsing account,
and that has, some money in there for unex you know, expected costs related to, education and or things like facilities. So we do have that, and that's the one at the end of the year that when we have, last year, I think it was 6,000. When we have a little bit of money left at the end, we, have the board chair write the letter to the board of finance and ask if we could put the money in there because with the 2% nonlapsing account, if it goes in there, we can use that in the future. We have maintained, the grounds. We've maintained everything that is the school's responsibility there. We do the grass and the seeding, mulch, shoveling, salting, of the sidewalks. We do, tick and pest control. We do, our septic and our well costs. We do anything roof related on the inside, anything safety and security, doors and window maintenance during the course of the summer, and then a couple of times during the course of the school year, the waxing, the cleaning, the floors, full school cleaning when that's done,
kitchen and equipment, that's all our responsibility, fire extinguishers, the boiler, hot water heater, generator. I I do have to say the town had refused to assist with those costs in the past, but I'm optimistic this year that we'll get to that point, that as needs arise, we'll be able to talk to them. Electrical oil tanks, waste and trash removal, and really simply everything that's associated, we have to try to plan for. So that I usually meet with the custodian and say, hey. Is there anything that, this is what I know of. Is there anything that you can see coming this year that perhaps we have to pay attention to? And he's great about that saying, well, this will be coming this year. This we have to think about the following year. And, I've been impressed for the past three years with how well this building, even when I got there, how well this building has been maintained because there's that regularity. With maintenance contract, contracts, we have to go through them. And most of the time between November and December,
when we get the new contracts, we will be told then, hey. These are your new costs. We're going up $10 an hour on emergency calls for a vendor that we use. Or, I know that our water, Lafran, last year, they had with their contract just something just have did something different. We had our regular maintenance contract, and then we paid separately for the, mandatory, state and federal water guidelines, and now those tests are within, the same contract. So we really do have to when I get them, when Terry gets them, the previous finance, director got them, we'd have to go through them and make a note, a physical note of the changes so that when we do this planning for the next budget, we know what the expected increases are.
Good news is we've passed every inspection with flying colors, including to the credit of the two ladies that run the kitchen. We do very well, and we have this year when the inspection occurred in the kitchen. As you guys know, we've just agreed to look at solar arrays in the future for the roof. And so when they were there doing that inspection, we did very well with that one as well. That's all good news. The gymnasium, we happily welcome the whole town to use the gymnasium, but we really haven't received funding to keep the facility up. We do pay for the floors to be done every year. They're beautiful. The the company that did them last year, there was a small spot there that needed to be redone, and they came and fixed that. The floors always look beautiful. We do pay the electricity and the heat and and everything related to the gym. The only thing we might have a cost with, and I don't even have a price yet because I'm not there, is we've had some significant damage to the seating. And I know we've spoken about this before to the bleachers, And we just can't maintain that any longer. Nobody is being malicious because we've actually looked and seen, the damage on the weekend. It's not out of maliciousness. I think it's just the quality of design and now the age of the bleachers themselves. But we don't have any money in our budget to fix this, and I and I have tried to see to reach out to see if maybe we could get some assistance from Park Rec.
We really haven't been able to to to do that as of now. So I am looking for a price, and when I get that, I will bring this to the board to see if we may have to, think about removing them altogether. And and, hopefully, then we won't have the cost associated with fixing those seats. But right now, we have about 19 of those seats that are broken broken. And it's, again, it's not due to maliciousness because we have actually looked. And and if someone's standing on it, that's not necessarily malicious. But they're they're just made of that really thick plastic. And so, for that reason, there there's been a lot of damage. So there may be a onetime cost if we look to to remove them. We do have chairs. So when we look at all of those line item sections in this budget and I put them together here and you'll see them on 04/20 002420 mostly and 002430. It it really is we're doing this very effectively and efficiently, and it really is for about 84,000
for everything. Not really up in the past couple of years, which is good. The cleaning services, meaning when they do the summer cleaning, there are some rugs in the building that need to be, shampooed and cleaned. And as I mentioned to you, the the very large summer cleaning that gets done as well, That all adds up to about $5,500. I did speak with the custodian, asked him if he anticipated any new expenses associated with that, and he said no. As long as it stayed status quo, they could still maintain the beauty of the building and keep it as clean as they are now with that line item. Repairs and maintenance, if you add up all of those lines, it's about $61,000. And I pulled out kind of the things just to give you an idea so you're not looking at them individually in there.
That gym floor care is roughly on, about $4,500 a year. And at the start of every school year, it's done, it's cleaned, it's polished, and it's maintained. This year, we had an unexpected roof repair of 2,500. There was where the Popula is in the old little school building there, It there just seems to be every once in a while that as soon as you walked in that door there by the two, three entrance, that, the tile would turn brown. And then, with a lot of rain every once in a while, it would give way to some drops. So Steve and I, had someone come in and take a look, and they said, it's actually a fairly easy fix. What you're looking at was,
flashing that needed to be fixed that hadn't been on there right. And over time, it was allowing for that leak. So we got really lucky that that's all it was, and it was about $2,500. We do maintain, the inspections and the routine maintenance for the elevator, which is also about $2,500 a year. There also has to be we we're trying for the longest time, well, I was anyways, for trying to figure out we had one bill that came in that had two what looked like phone lines, and one of them is that emergency line in the elevator. So that's part of that as well. Routine plumbing, if nothing serious were to happen, it's about 3,500 a year. Willy Waste, which is now Casella,
we are billed monthly, but that total, bill for the year is about 4,800 a year. Pest control is normally only about $23.50 a year for our monthly maintenance. We did have a little problem last summer. I think they were there to welcome Taylor because we know how much she loves little Mickeys mice. But last summer just seemed to be a very popular place at the Andover Elementary School for these families. And so we did have a bill of about 4,000 to address that. It was way more severe than we wanted it to be at the time, but it's it's perfect. We're doing well with it now. We're very happy with the work that had been done to make sure we can maintain that. So, there isn't a need for us to add that 4,000 into next year as long as we maintain the service contract and stay on top of that because they did a good job. I was a little worried about that one because you start to hear those contracts. And for those of you who own homes, you know, sometimes they come in and they're like, well, it could be $10, could be, and you're like, no. But we did we did get pretty lucky there, so I'm really happy with that one. Wonderful, company that we use. The water treatment, again, is monthly billed for a total of about $41.30 for the year. The camera, the fire sprinkler,
related security, all of those things are about 5,000 a year when you look in here. And so there's other costs, but nothing that's as big as these. And so if you were to pull those line items in the 4 twenties and the 4 thirties, and anything under, facility repairs, they're separated in and out, and they add up to about a total of 84,000 for the year. Fuel. We all cringe at this one this year. We had a blessing and a curse because the blessing was with Dime. We were lucky enough to have locked into a contract this year at $2.23 a gallon, which, man, that's definitely not a number that, we were able to get after that lock in. So I say a blessing and a curse because last year with the budget then, we took, an order for 28,000 gallons and multiplied it by $2.23, the lock in price, and that's where you got that exact amount in the budget of $62,440. But we know that oil's not $2.23 anymore. So we are, working with Dime, and they're actually wonderful. She sends me an update on a daily basis. We have not locked in yet.
We will by the fifth because, they're expecting, some changes, some federal changes and relationship changes with vendors. And Eric was great. I spoke with him today about the lock in, and I know he's getting nervous because we lock in with the town. And the number that they watch more than the oil, believe it or not, is the diesel. And so, where we could use 28 to 45,000 gallons of oil, if the winter's really bad, they use the diesel. So, we'll have that locked in, but I know the range. The lowest we've seen it for a blink of an eye, I think I sneezed and we missed it, was $3.00 8, but they were going, $3.25 to $3.50 in the past month and a half. So, we watch it multiple times a day, and by the fifth, we should have a lock in. And, if it's really high, we'll lock in the 28,000 gallons, which is a low trend for us. And if it is a reasonable price, we'll lock in the whole 35,000. And so we do have the option at the end. What happens is and this happened once. We do have an option. Let's say we locked in 28,000, and we used, more than that. We can call the town and say, hey. Where are you with your lock in? And we can work with them. We can go in reverse too since they've traditionally always used roughly the same number of gallons, like 7,000 gallons. If they are at a point where they've used up their 7,000 gallons, they could speak to us and say, how are you guys doing on yours? And we could potentially,
help each other out there. So we are definitely gonna be looking for somewhere between three twenty and three eighty. And so we're probably looking at 27,000 that would need to be in that line item. So when we look at the numbers here, and then, you know, I'll see what you guys have for questions, 15 to 17% of our whole budget is medical, life, dental, those sorts of benefits. 59% about is comprised of the salaries and the employees, the people that we have to pay who work at AES. About two to 3% is designated to the upkeep of the facilities. From last time, 14% or so is designated to special education costs, roughly 4% to electricity, oil, propane, the fuels. So this really only leaves us about 5% of the budget that's not really fixed costs,
and that's where we have to use that to look at the educational opportunities. And as we spoke about and Taylor assisted us when she, really talked about the curriculum and initiatives, is making sure that we're still strong academically and that we have a good sound experience for the kids, and and that's really that only section. So last week, we talked about special ed costs. We do have one less outplacement, but we had a new, what I call, an inplacement because it's a high needs, but we're currently able to service within Andover Elementary School. The costs are comparable, but not in that one line item. And so we'll move the cost needs to the proper line items, to the OT, to the PT. And then whatever difference is there, we will utilize to, assist with some of the costs of those contractual obligations,
the salaries. The other increases that we're going to expect now, obviously, that we just mentioned, the salaries, contractual obligations, oil, and insurance benefits. And then Terry has promised with me that we will have that by Friday to be able to share with the board. And then this is the rest of our conversation, that we had posted. We would complete the proposed budget numbers and share them by the end of the week. The board has the next workshop coming on the first at 07:00, and there will be a presentation of the final proposed numbers that'll be posted ahead of time. Public input, board of ed discussion, and then, as we had posted, it's the expectation that, hopefully, we'll be ready to, vote at the regular board meeting on the eighth. Okay. So how do I unshare now? Taylor, do you where am I? You did it. You're good. I'm good? We're good. Okay. So questions? Poor Mike. This is his first time he's looking at me. Hey, I think Shannon has a question. Her hands up. I do. Val, last week, you had talked about, based on what we now know, really having, I want maybe a significant increase in our special needs budget, for next year given what you know about the current students and potential incoming students. And I just was curious whether in line with that, you had an anticipated need for adding more paraprofessionals, for next year's budget. Well, that's a good question. So we've talked a lot about that. We're looking at the needs. As you guys know, yes, we do anticipate the needs of the kids, but unless we have an IEP that says that somebody does require, for example, a one to one or a two to one para,
we try the best that we can to still plan on having the ones that we have. So I'm not avoiding the question. I think that we also have a number of preschool students and new entries in the early grades that, you know, either are at the start of the referral process or we are using interventions in SRBI now. So the the best answer that I could give you is we are hoping that we've anticipated the needs enough so that we don't have to do that. But, Shannon, you're absolutely right. That could happen based on anybody and it could happen if somebody moved into the district too midyear. So the best that we can plan for now, we don't plan on having to add one, but it's always something that could come up. Did we add one to this budget? No. We didn't. And we'll just hope that that that'll that'll take us through next year. Okay. Thank you.
I figured I'd give everyone else a chance to go first. Watch out, tier.
You know what I was so, one thing I just wanna clarify. I saw the numbers on staff. Physical, like, actual staffing levels are remaining the same. Is that correct?
Yes. But remember that we made a shift. Shush. Remember that we made a shift in in two positions last year. We made sure that we staffed the library slightly differently for the purpose of the the budget. And so Melissa would be slated to move back to the library. And so when we had that last last teacher that left, we didn't fill that position, but we'll be holding off to look at the numbers, Steve, first.
So When you say look at the numbers, looking at the enrollment numbers or looking at the Yes. Because,
with last year's numbers, we had always run the same number of classrooms. We had no reason to have the combination class. And then this year, we had the combination class and needed to move, the librarian over and utilize Para support in there. So, the short answer is we'll go back to the same number of classrooms that we had in our plan, but we would not look at hiring that person that should have been hired last year until we know how we have to split the classes. Same thing with the combination. You know, this year, we had the two three combination. If one's not necessarily, we don't we we wouldn't have one. If one is necessary, it's not necessarily gonna be two three.
So But, I mean, that would be it's a pretty big delta in the budget.
Well no. Because we have to add a certified staff member.
Nope. Because if you notice, the number is 21. So it it's not gonna turn into 22 if that's what you're asking. Yeah. That pretty much Yeah. It's not gonna turn into 22.
And I just wanna make sure when we went to the consortium, that is one that the town is, so that 3% number is going to be the same with the town
will be increasing as well. Correct? Yes. That's actually good you pointed that out. That's 3% across the board for everybody because, yes, we're all in the same consortium, which, again, Steve, that's that's a really low number. And so we're we're in good shape in terms of other consortiums because we're self insured.
On the facilities, I know we had talked in the past. You know, there was a big thing about the parking lot and pushing that off. And, you know, I know we it was being done every other year. We're now, I think, going on year four. What do we have we looked at the status of that? Is that going to cause us bigger issues down the road if we don't do any maintenance on it? What's the latest on that?
Well, I didn't put it in last year, as you guys know, and and I didn't put it in this year so far because it is a capital project. And I feel like putting that expense of a capital project in an operational budget, it just doesn't work because the money has to come from the kids. That was the first reason. The second reason is because we know that there could potentially be construction going on, in the next twelve months between the buildings, and that would mean that our existing parking lot would wind up a staging station, and it would be terrible for us to have a brand new, pavement there. The worst case scenario, Steve, would be that if and currently, there isn't, this danger.
But if during the course of the year, there's a spot in that parking lot that needed immediate attention, I would, call Public Works and see if they could help us out. But other than that, right now, there isn't anything that we could go out there. You're right. We go out there and say, yeah. It looks like you're gonna have to think about this, but there isn't anything where we go out and say, yeah. We're gonna have to put a code on this. This is dangerous. So that's really the best answer I can give you because that is gonna be expensive project, and I think that's gonna be something we have to sit down with the town when their building project is done and say, hey. Let's let's figure this out together because it's my understanding
that, there could be some changes to the parking lot itself.
I think So That was actually gonna be my next point is in regards to that is we should make sure we're con talking with the town because if they are doing modifications to the parking lot, it may be advantageous at that point to fund if they can add in potentially taking care of what we need in our parking lot while they're repaving or doing whatever on the other side, just something to look at. Yeah. I mean and I understand. We we don't wanna take from the kids, but we'll also need to present a budget that takes care of the facility that kids are coming. So if we run into an issue where the parking lot needs to be done,
then we we need to put it in there, and then, you know, the taxpayers will have to decide.
Well, I'm hoping that either they've worked that into their budget or at some point, you know, they'll sit down to the table with us and say, let's tell you what we were thinking. You tell us what you were thinking, and then, hopefully, we can get that done in the end. So I'm hoping that that will happen. Awesome.
And then just also, I didn't end up writing down the exact so we're at 20 I think it was 28,000 gallons or something of anticipated fuel use, but we've gone as high as 40. Yeah. And so when we have our budget amount with dime,
I just wanna we We're doing the middle. Terry and I talked about this today. Right, Terry? What number did we say? She's on mute. Sorry. I I think that we're gonna go with 35,000.
You know why, Steve? Because right now, we are in a an exceptionally warm winter, and Terry went back through. I thank her for this. Terry went back through all of our, data, and I compared that to what I got from Tracy from Dime. And we said, okay. What's the best average for us to use? And what Terry's thoughts were were spot on with what Tracy's thoughts were is that if you are uncertain, you have to expect up to 35,000 gallons. And so like I said, I should have,
I should have an exact price with her in the next couple of weeks, but we know that very small window of range. So And and the one thing I just wanted to kinda make sure that I understand correctly is if we exceed the amount that we allot, we would then purchase at market rate if the town doesn't have any. Correct? Yes. So had that been this year, that would have been a major financial impact trying to you know, that we didn't anticipate. We were getting $2 a gallon and all of sudden we had to purchase another 10,000 gallons of oil. That could be a very dramatic impact to the budget. So It could. Yep.
The the contract this year, was signed on behalf of both the school and the town by the former business manager and, because they were acting in that capacity. And so we had a little less involvement in exactly if this doesn't work with plan b. And so that's why Terry and I are are really working on making sure because you're right. We have to own that whole thing this year. So that's what we're working on there. So we don't wanna take a chance that if the lowest we've ever had was 28,000, that that's all we're gonna plan for at the the anticipated price, like you said, Steve. But we're also not gonna say, well, let's just build in 40 or 45,000 because we haven't been 45,000 in a while. So that's where we're gonna, you know, kind of be middle of the road, not too conservative, not too liberal. We're gonna say, alright. This is based on what Dime says and what Cherry has in her files. This is this is a fair number, and that's that that'll be the number we go on and hold our breath with the winter's there.
And this is I I have a feeling, and I'm actually, I don't have a feeling. I know it's already being done, but just to say it, you you made a comment about when you were budgeting for the facilities, you know, that you get the contracts, and this was the increase for this year, and we're gonna add that. Obviously, I'm guessing when you get those increases that you look and see if there's maybe somebody else who might be able to provide the state service at a lower price. We don't just accept, okay. Well, they raised our rates 10%.
Let's go with it and just factor it in the budget. So, you know, just wanted to put that out there that we are looking at the contracts, but not just blindly accepting her number.
No. We are. And Terry coming aboard kind of just prior to this was a a a third layer of reminder because we have to go over the contracts. And so then she looks at the last one and the next one. And so the timing actually was probably a little inconvenient for her, but very convenient for the two of us to have to go over these things.
One significant contract, and I I don't know that it factors in this budget, but I'm yeah. I can't remember when it's coming up. When are we looking at the bus contract?
I know that's So that's a good question. So we are in talks right now. The bus contract, as you know, it is, Andover, Hebron, Marlborough, and Ram. I'm actually really glad you brought that up. Thank you. I wouldn't have thought about that. It's not for this year's budget, but, we are in talks, about going out to bid on that. And the business manager at RAM historically has been kind of our spokesperson. So we meet we met last week as a committee, and Terry was on there as well because we do the superintendents and the business managers. And we had invited one particular potential vendor, I guess you could say, and we are looking. But, Steve, this year, just to note for the board, in addition to us looking, at those contracts as to price, the buses, and things of that nature, there are new guidelines, federal guidelines, for what you have to have to to to contract with a bus company. For example, there's a law that's in effect or going into effect that says that, by this date, at least one of the buses in your fleet have to be energy efficient. And so we're realizing that we have to make sure that within that contract that it's spelled out because you not only have to include one of those buses, but you have to take out of service an existing diesel bus. And we wanna know who's gonna pay for that, the taking that one out because you don't just throw it away. The it has to be decommissioned.
So, there's a lot of components, Steve, that are going into the planning, and that's why we're starting early with that. But we have had a total of two meetings so far and one this week with the business managers and the supers. That will be a topic for next year's budget. Absolutely. We also wanna look at, the length of contracts, because some bus companies wanna give you three years, five years, ten years. And so we are looking at that carefully as well. So thanks for bringing that one up.
And I'm sure the negotiations will remind them how pleasant they were to deal with during the COVID.
I did not deal with them then. And so so, it'll be my first time, with Andover as part of a bus contract negotiation. So, that will be during the negotiation time. It'll be something that I definitely bring up at our meetings to keep you guys informed as to who's bid and what we're what we're looking at. Alright. That's all I get.
Anyone else? Alright. So we will email by the end of the week, by Friday. We will email the, numbers that are in there, before we host them for Monday for next week's meeting, for the general public and their input. If, anybody has any questions, if they notice that anything is awry in the draft that we send you, please let us know. Otherwise, we'll be good to go on Monday, and we'll post it for next Wednesday's meeting. When yeah. If you don't mind,
unless anyone here has an objection with it, when you post it, can we send a copy to the town clerk's office? Because I know a lot of people that's where they're gonna go to try and get it. So just make sure she gets that directly.
Think just in person. Correct? Yes. Next week, is it okay. At at the are we doing it in the library? Oh, in the library. Okay. I know last year, we did it in the gym, but okay.
Thanks, Celeste. I was gonna confirm the same thing. So You're welcome, Shannon. Anybody? Alright. That's it. Good job, Val. Thank you. Hillary. Thank you. Thanks, Terry, for being initiated into this. Yes. Thanks, Terry. Thanks, everybody.
Oh, actually, Ted, that when you said Terry, last night, what it do you know what our nonlapsing number is right now? I'm sorry. What was that? The current amount in the nonlapsing. I know it was I had asked Sherry about it before she left, and she was gonna look into it, and then she left.
Oh gosh. I'm sorry. I haven't even had a chance to look at that. No no problem. If maybe some point next week or two just so we know what that is. Tomorrow for you and include that when we email you this. Okay? Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry. That's okay. Alright. You have done everything so far in a week and a half. It's been fun everyone. Alright. Good night.