Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
September 23, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Started off. I'll call the meeting to order. We'll do the pledge of allegiance. We'll start. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States, America, the republic the for which it stands,
the nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank
you. Okay, thank you. So the first item on the agenda is public speak. Do we have anybody who wants to add any public comments? See, we have Nick, he's probably just recording the meeting, but Nick, you're off your course welcome or Barbara or anybody. Okay, hearing none. We'll go on to item number three any additions or deletions to the agenda items. Okay. Hearing none, we can go on to item four, which is the town administrator's report. Eric, it's been about three months since we've actually met.
If you wanna. I know. Amanda, can I share my screen here? You got me disabled. Can you enable me to share? Go ahead now.
Okay. Okay, everybody's looking at the administrators report. Yeah, yeah out of the packet Eric Okay, no, it's not out of the packet What I realized is we put the wrong version of it in the packet. Okay. So this is a completely different than what's in the packet. So I'll just kind of go over it real quick. As most of you know, like a lot of towns, you know, we've had ups and downs with COVID-nineteen. So far we haven't had a positive in, like twelve weeks or something like that. It's been a long time. Our numbers as of today are one higher and so I was like shoot we broke our record and I called the Eastern Highlands Health District and they're like no no it was an accounting error they had one guy that should have been counted in the town it's a twelve week old case. So we're still at the same number that we've always been, it's just they've done their arithmetic a little differently. Most of you know the town's new website
is up and running thanks to to Civic and Amanda and the website committee. It's been very well regarded and it's working awesome. If there's any financial stuff you want to put on there that you don't see on there now please reach out to Amanda and she can make it happen. As a lot of you know that Ed, the director of public works or correction the road crew foreman is still planning on retiring. He keeps waffling on when he's going to retire but at least he's working on his paperwork for social security, know administration and other things so I think he's actually pretty serious about it. There is money in the budget to hire a fourth public works employee but I was kind of waiting I was hoping to wait to shake out the supervisor's position first. I have been employing Richard Bagan, who's been a seasonal help for a number of years here, and I've been basically running him full time as the fourth person in public works who's been working out really well and I think he may end very well end up being our fourth public works employee. Since the last time we have
gotten a bunch of information on the transfer station, the one piece we had kind of outstanding was what it was going to take to pave it. The initial estimates for paving came in pretty high, so I asked the Board of Selectmen for permission to use LOSIP money. For those of you who don't know, LOSIP is basically money that the state puts in a fund for towns. Each town gets a certain allocation based on the number of people that live in the town, and the money accumulates until you have a project that meets your criteria that you can spend it on. And in this case we did spend the money or we did apply to pave the transfer station with LOCIP funds and we got as of yesterday we got capital authorization
to spend that from the state. We're good. So it's a state that approves it and that's designated really for capital improvements.
Yeah, It's basically a capital improvement fund. And there's all these different categories that are eligible for funding under that program. So, you know, in transfer stations and paving projects are both qualified entities. So what's going to happen is we ask for up to $65,000 even though I think we're going to spend a little less than 60. All that means is if we run a little bit over, we're still okay and LOSIP will still pay for the whole thing. So that's in the works. They're supposed to start paving on Monday, or first grinding it all up and then by the end of the week it will be paved and complete. The transfer station project is essentially complete. There's some little things that we're still working on but the vast majority like we're finishing up the railing we have to pave it but the majority of that project is complete. One of the things we ran into a snag on with Public Works and the transfer station is as many of you know our brush pile of the transfer station is really mushroom because we did not do anything with it last year. And I don't think we cut it the year before. So we basically have about three years worth of brush pile accumulated there. And I put out an RFP and we sent it out to I had a list from other public works directors of all the companies in the state we knew that did it. So we sent it out to them directly and put it out on the state bid site and advertised it and did all that. Unfortunately, we only got one bid back and it was quite high. By high, I mean it was like $37,000
which is a lot more money than we want to pay. So we're kind of going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out if there's alternative methods of doing it, either renting a bucket grinder ourselves in an excavator with a grapple, or I don't know. I mean, we asked the fire department whether they would burn it, but they have declined because there's just these days there's too much paperwork with the state to kind of make that happen. I had also sent everybody a transportation infrastructure like summary. Jeff asked me to put it together, just kind of a current snapshot of like what we're spending this year and what we're up against, what are our total likely expenditures. And I think that's included in your packet. So if anybody has any questions, I'm more than happy to answer the questions on that. As you knew, we've submitted to the state, to the federal local bridge program for Bunker Hill Bridge. And I was able to get us into a specific program where the state manages the design, but also pays for all the costs associated with the design. So the first time we have to lay out any money is when we come to actual construction. So that's going well. They assigned it to Close Jensen and Miller, which worked out great for me because the project engineer is somebody I've known for many years. So that project is rolling. It's been accepted into the state program and the federal program. So they're doing the hydrology study right now, and they'll probably be doing test boring in the area in the next three or four months.
One of the reasons I wanted to go for that particular program is because it takes about a year off the normal design build cycle to do that versus have the town manage the whole thing. Plus frankly, it's a whole lot less hassle on my part and it's cheaper for the town. That's Plus you get to hire a consulting herpetologist?
We have a consulting herpetologist. So one of the things you do is anytime you work anywhere with federal money or state money, you have to do a survey for something called the National Diversity Database. That's basically looking for everything endangered, threatened, unhappy. So surprising no one, that area is found to have a turtle population that is threatened. It happens the Hop River, if you don't know, has one of the largest, surviving populations of a particular turtle, in New England. So it's not endangered, but it's threatened. So it's one category down from, you know, so basically anytime you do anything near there, you have to have a consulting herpetologist. And it turns out there's been a bat species identified in that area.
So they're not requiring us to have a bat guru. I don't know what you call a batologist work for the project. But they we do have some limitations on when we can cut things and stuff like that. So we'll have to work around both those things that are identified. Again, it's not any big deal. We expected, you know, we knew we were going to have to deal with the herpetologist. We're very lucky in that Hank Gruner, who's a member of the Conservation Commission, is probably one of the leading herpetologists in the state of Connecticut. And so we just kind of plug him in whenever we have these projects. So that's not really a big deal. Times Farm Bridge. Those of you who don't know, we redid Times Farm Bridge starting in around 2000, finishing in around 2017, which is nuts in and of itself. We still have not closed out the project. I thought we had closed it out or we were going to close it out about September. And then we kind of hit a snag with the state because the state wanted a material inspection form for one of the batches of rebar used in it. And they already had it, they just didn't know they had it. So that took about six months to go through the state system. And the bottom line is the bridge is done.
The state has given us authorization to close it out, but the problem is that the company surveyed it or that was our bridge representative, CME Engineering, they disagree with the contractor on one particular change order from mid-twenty sixteen. There's a difference of about $17,000 We have all the money to pay it, but the problem is that if we just pay it without the company agreeing to it, the state won't sign off on it and the federal government won't reimburse us the 80% of the difference. So the bottom line is, from the town's perspective, this turns out to be about a $3,000 difference, whether the discrepancy is agreed to or not, because we're only on the hook for 20% of the cost of the discrepancy anyway, but it's really annoying that it's been holding up the project for quite some time. I'm semi hopeful that in the next three to four months, we're actually going to close this thing out, but no guarantees. STEEP grant, so I submitted a STEEP grant several months ago, a month ago, something like that, for a paving project. We had originally planned on doing a steep grant for building the community centersenior center, but when they came out with at the last minute, you know, the governor came out with an allocation for a steep fund grant. Very short deadlines to submit it, number one, and number two, it was designed for shovel ready projects with a maximum payout of $128,000 So it was going to be kind of useless for the senior center because we're not far enough along in design to be able to spend the money before we'd have to give it back. So I switched the allocation and submitted a paving project.
I submitted to pave a section of Long Hill Road and a section of Shawty Mill Road, and in both cases we would grind the road up completely and repave, basically start over from the base. Because both of those roads were never, don't have a good underlying base under the road and neither of them have enough pavement that the inexpensive or the less expensive way to do it is grind off an inch or two and then just repave one course. But both of those roads don't really have that much pavement. In fact, in Long Hill, some of the sections of Long Hill don't even have two inches of pavement on it right now. So the only practical way we can do it and get a good long life road is to grind it up and do it again. If we have if we get the STEEP grant, that'll pay for basically half the cost of it, which would be nice. Tree work, as you know, I asked last year for $100,000 for tree work. We ended up settling on $50,000 So I hired a company called Distinctive Tree Care. You might have seen them with the big grapple trucks running around. We hired them basically because their cost per tree removal is incredibly low compared to a bucket truck. You know when I look back at what we've been spending, we've been spending around $800 a tree, which is actually not too bad. With Distinctive we knocked that down to somewhere around,
you know, 125 to $140 a tree depending on exactly how you figure it. So it's a really good deal, you know, and we've just basically put them to work cutting the trees down and grinding everything up. I did exceed the budget by about $7,000 just because we were trying to there were a couple sections that we hadn't gotten to that we really wanted to finish up just to complete a couple areas. So I basically paid for two more days and got them to throw in a bucket truck and some other stuff if I was willing to do that. So we can take that money either out of Town Aid Road or if you agree to the appropriation transfer, I would like to add a little bit more money to that particular line item. And we can discuss that when we get to the actual appropriation transfer. You're talking about pulling money from contingency? Not talking about pulling it from contingency, I'm talking about doing the final close out of last year's budget instead of just letting everything run to the unexpended fund balance actually putting it in the permanent funds that we have.
Okay. Just so we can utilize it. As you know the town hall is open by appointment only but we are fully staffed and fully running. Most of you probably know the assistant finance or the assistant treasurer Maureen resigned as of July and we're sometime in October we're going to be interviewing for applicants for that position and that position will be for an assistant finance officer that's combined between the town and the school. Not the assistant fiance officer. All right spell check led me astray Sorry Mark. PEG Pisha, we applied for a small grant last year to allow us to broadcast or live stream meetings from PURA, the public utility regulatory agency. It's a grant called the PEGPESA grant.
We got the grant, we've spent all the money, and we've closed it out. That was about $16,000 So we have a pretty cool camera system so when we go back to in person meetings we can film and live stream them and hopefully have decent audio quality and great video quality. We've had a number of employee grievances, a lot directly related to COVID-nineteen and making employees come back to work. We've settled them all. It hasn't cost the town any money as far as the grievance, but we have chewed up a fair bit of money in attorney's fees with our labor attorney. So we're still fine on our line item for the attorney's budget but if we run into any more grievances or any more big stuff we would be over. So I'm just kind of giving you a heads up on that. Oops, I think I wrote that twice. And we also are moving forward with adopting Edmunds for the financial software package for the town and the school. We have kind of an intro and kickoff meeting as of this coming Monday. And I know that you know there was some interest in knowing what what CIP was up to.
So I had sent and CIP adopted a new buildings and grounds capital plan. I haven't included that for you guys but I certainly can if you're interested and you all want to see that too. It's not a radical update from the last but we were required to have an updated plan before we could apply to for LOCIP funds, that's one of the things. So they made a formal motion and formally adopted it, whereas before it was just my document. So that's out there and and then the last thing that I think I just want to I've said the CIP but I just want to give you guys the heads up too.
Last year we were talking about what to do about the replacement for our road sweeper and I had originally hoped that we could farm that out and basically just sub that out every spring. But one of the things that's come up is since we've started chip sealing roads, chip sealing roads requires a lot of road sweeping because you got to sweep before you chip seal and then you chip seal and then you go back two weeks later and you sweep it again and then you go back two weeks later and you sweep it again and then you have to sweep it again right before we put down the fog seal. So we're using a sweeper many more hours than we typically do in a year and I think based on the road work we're likely to be doing, we're going to need to do that going forward. And the problem with that is that moves us from one big sweeping event in the spring where we just go out and spend a month and sweep sweep sweep to a big thing in the in the spring, but then you know in June and July you know using it a bunch more days and then using it again in August and then using it again in the fall,
plus potentially storm. So I think we need to start going back and thinking about what we have to do to actually acquire another sweeper because that one's thirty four years old and the cost of maintenance is killing us. Whether we pursue a new one or a used one may depend a little bit on, you know, on input from public works, but we're gonna have to do something regarding that. So that's pretty much what I have from administrators report. Feel free to hammer me with your questions.
I got one real quick on the chip ceiling. If chip ceiling requires all that extra work with the road sweeping, does that change our calculus at all vis a vis how much cheaper chip sealing is than going with other approaches?
It does definitely factor into it. But if you took chip sealing versus paving, paving is you could ballpark it and say it's about five times the cost per mile for chip sealing. Better finish, better quality, but you know much much more expensive. So and the other thing to think about is you know we spent $150,000 on that chipper thirty four years ago so relatively speaking or the sweeper relatively speaking sweepers are cheaper today in today's dollars than they were back then they're still stupidly expensive but if they really have effectively a twenty year lifespan it's not a crazy cost per year you know as part of a roadwork you know plan.
Eric, Okay. Just to back up a little bit on the Edmonds financial software package. I know I haven't been able to make a lot of meetings, especially earlier in the summer, but, I haven't heard anything much about where that went. I know Adrian asked for some clarification on on some of the terms, but, you know, kind of where did where did that where did that come up with the, you know, the committee hasn't really at least I haven't heard about any new meetings or is this is this really going to the board of selectmen at this point or or what's?
So after the committee made their recommendation, it went before both the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen. Right. And both boards, approved using the admins package based on the con, you know, the final version of the contract that we had. We didn't go back and forth three or four times before we kind of agreed on terms of when things were due and what the costs were. Got it. Okay. Thanks.
Part of what the town wanted to do is the town wanted to lock their like service agreement and yearly fees in. Right. So we knew at least for the next three years, we don't have to deal with any yearly price increases, in what it is.
Okay. Any other questions for Eric? All right, thank you. Good update. It's been a crazy summer for you guys, I know, and obviously works getting done. It's a it's a good thing. Okay, we'll move on to the next agenda item treasurer's report. Barbara? Think you're on mute Barbara. Okay. Unmuted. Am I am I on?
Yeah. You're on. And I'm gonna be back in like two seconds. I gotta figure out what all the commotion is in the building. Okay. Sounds
like a party you weren't invited to here. Yeah. You're good, Barbara. Go ahead. Alright, so the reports you have are for this year, they're always run current. So you've got a budget summary, revenue summary par spending. We don't have anything for overexpenditure will be, you know, kind of getting into that as the year goes on, I'm sure. So if you don't have any questions about revenue, expenses as they relate to year to date, which you probably don't, we're only a couple months in, I'll just comment a little bit about this year's audit. And the person who was on-site last year, his name was Nick. He is back and he's spearheading the audit this year. So I'm dealing more with him than I am with Mike. And it's probably a good thing because they finally kind of have some continuity there. They were having some staffing issues. So we've got some good communication continuity, Nick and I have been back and forth quite a bit with emails. He's requested some things that I've been able to provide and I'll be able to provide more things as we go along, especially after this evening after we talk about budget transfers, we'll be able to finish up our expenditure side of our ledger. So I'm planning to, as soon as I can do the appropriation transfers from tonight,
transmit all the reports he needs to kind of get underway. And in the interim, I am working on statements and schedules. That's kind of why I've been bobbing in and out here. I'm kind of multitasking listening to Eric and also working on the audit reports. So any questions about that, about the the audit? We're probably going to be ahead of schedule this year finally. So any questions you have?
Being ahead would be a good thing just in this isn't for you, it'd be more for Eric, I suppose, but do you see the public works overtime expenditures already at 100%? Yeah. But Surprising of that.
No, I mean a lot of that was we chewed up a lot of time with snow room not snow removal but dealing with the aftermath of the storm so that was a big chunk of it you know but even though we're already over with the overtime account because we're not running a fourth full time person right now even though we're running them basically full time is making a lot less money and we're also not paying health benefits yet. So we have the money to absorb that through that within that department. Got it, okay.
Yeah. It'll be the usual shifting around. This is I think perhaps the first year we've actually pulled out OT for highway and tried to track it separate from snow removal IT where in the past, just a big amount of money has been allocated to snow removal and all OT has come out of there. Now we're trying to track roadwork OT separate from snow removal. So there'll be some transferring around as the year goes on at the end of the year. So a little better accounting a little better sense of how the money is being spent.
I see we put our new tanker truck to pretty good use the other day. Oh,
I don't think it was that good to use the house still burned down completely.
Oh, good timing I guess it might have been worse, right? Yeah. I mean considering how dry things have been it could have could have been a really, you know, bigger issue. I had friends texting me. That's not your house is it?
I guess it may be on the news. I just Yeah. Thought Must have been. I had friends from Simsbury texting me. Are you okay? Like, I woke up hours had gone by. I'm like, no. I'm fine. Where was it? It was on Gilead.
Gilead Road. On Gilead Road. That's why they were texting me because I'm on Gilead. Yeah. Oh. Damn. I'll do one. Newer big house. Just two from a picture I saw.
Oh, man. Alright. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. It's too bad. I mean, the picture just looked horrible. Total loss.
Yeah. You could tell. Mean, apparently, their their smoke alarms must not have gone off because the homeowner said they woke up, you know, hearing the snapping and popping. By the time you hear that, it's pretty bad. Yeah. By the time the trooper got there, who was the first one there, you could see the whole garage was up. The, you know, the room attaching the main house was up and that the house was on fire. So there was no saving it. It was it was gone by the time the fire department got there. So Yeah. Yeah. There's Well, that's what insurance is for kids. They cover everything though. I'm the resident insurance guy so I know.
Any questions on that section otherwise we'll go on to the budget transfers the appropriation transfers. I have nothing. Okay. Anybody? No? I'm good. Okay in your packet. Really print.
Small zoom it in. Here we go. Yeah I got it. Control zoom.
Okay. Yes when your packet you've got the creation transfers that were forwarded to the Board of Selectmen in July, they did not meet in August. So the second sheet is the appropriation transfers passed along to them in September. So just some comments, July, they were mostly small items, basically just the kind of the housekeeping items to shore up accounts. Shortages were mostly due to either items being under budgeted from the get go or anticipated expenses being higher than budgeted. So they were mostly housekeeping. I don't know if you have any questions about those, but they're pretty straightforward. It's when we get to September. And the first few items are some large items because there was intentional overspending here, Eric had got approval to work on certain projects. And so the appropriation approval, the appropriation transfer approval came earlier. And they were things like the office, or I'm sorry, town hall. I'm sorry, town wide time clocks, which were installed and that was part of the expense. Transfer station repair, which was dealt with earlier by Eric that was that continuous project was over budget. So some of the money that is requested is to shore up that account. Oh, and then getting down to law enforcement, an unanticipated expense that Eric talked about was the Eric, what is it the road sign the side of the road? Yeah, so what it is, it's basically an electronic speed sign
that, you know, we had been talking about it off and on for a year, and we knew we were going to have enough money overall in the law enforcement budget that we bought it knowing that the supplies budget was gonna go over considerably. Yeah.
Not a big deal because we paid the contractual fee for the resident state trooper, and there was a fairly substantial amount left in that budget as there often is so that was covered. So those were the kinds of things they weren't in the budget, but Eric went ahead and got approval for them. And now we're just shoring them up in these transfers. The bottom part of this report though, shows what I had talked about in an earlier meeting that because of the COVID shutdown, we were gonna be underspent in a lot of budgets. I mentioned specifically elections that all got canceled. So elections registrar was gonna have a lot of money left, senior transportation, another example of something that was going to have a lot of money left. So Eric's plan was to take as much money as we could find in all of these budgets and move them into
funds that would then be transferred out of the general fund into specific funds. So the money doesn't flow into fund balance, it goes into permanent funds. And that's what you see in this spreadsheet. And one of them was the road improvement fund that had been an expense in the twenty twenty fiscal year, but a fund was set up as part of the budget process to be a permanent fund. So we could peel off some of that excess money and put it into that fund. Another one was the on the notes. Equipment. The equipment fund that was an existing fund, we have DPW equipment fund. So Eric wanted to peel off about 50,000 for that and tree removal was a new fund established. So all that money you see 125,000 going transferring out of the general fund into permanent funds not going into fund balance.
And just as an aside, after those transfers are made, the residual expense that's going to go to fund fund balance, I'm estimating to be about 52,000. So kind of the first year you're going to keep your flow into fund balance a little bit controlled. The only thing we can't control for is on the revenue side where there's about right now 165,000 excess and that's way before accounting for tax collections. I haven't done any of the accounting audit work on that. But the education cost sharing was over by about 134,000. And so that goes to fund balance, nothing you can do about it. So you're still going to have a positive flow to fund balance, but mitigated by the transfers done to permanent funds. And by next month, I'm working on as I said, I've been bobbing in and out here, home working on statements multitasking, going to try to buy next month have some preliminary revenue expense
schedules to pass along. So you get kind of a sense of definitely going to be a positive fund balance, but get a sense of ballpark. So any questions about that? Yes, I Just
so I make sure I heard you right. So the proposal here is to take about $125,000 of money we didn't spend because of COVID and put it into various capital funds and whatnot. Correct, exactly. And if we do that, we still have 50 some odd thousand that's gonna flow into unassigned fund balance. Yeah. Plus the excess revenue. I'm not even talking about Right. Plus quarter.
Plus the school money, plus the whatever. Right. Know what? The school money is not gonna be much.
Right. And we may need it for whatever. Yeah. I'm just thinking, so in a sense, what we really have here is about $175,000 of money with what when we have to make a decision what to do with and you guys are proposing to take 125
of that. Yeah, because I haven't shored up the tax stuff at all. I still have to do that now that the year is closed out. Okay.
Okay, just so I'm clear on what we're doing. And
the reason we came up with those three is because I looked at two things. I looked at what did we short the most last year when we swapped to the kind of COVID budget and said what can we backfill? I also looked as we start going through the season, you know, the construction season, where are we the shortest? And you know, two places where the shortest is really road improvement money, tree removal money and I'm kind of anticipating we're going to end up back having to fund a what do you call it, fund the sweeper. And basically what I'm saying is we're going to have to put off the second roadside mower, the smaller roadside mower and swap and say the next priority is really going to be the sweeper. And now we'll have enough money that we're not trying to knock off the whole nut next year we have a good chunk of it already set aside and it's more likely to pass so that that's kind of where I was going with what the fund transfers were and my kind of my priorities for.
And one follow-up the 7,000 you need for the overage on the tree work we've already done that's not coming from this money that's coming from last year's budget yes? So that would be coming from the capital price.
So if we agree to make those transfers to the capital funds, the extra 7,000 will come out of the 25 we're adding for the tree removal budget. They're not gonna take it out of Town Aid Road because for even though they held up completely the last year our Town Aid Road allotment, they gave us Town Aid Road right when they were supposed to in July this year, surprising everybody. So you know we're okay in that regard and I'm spending over you know on road projects just because I have the the Town Aid Road allotment also to kind of deal with it. Okay.
And just looking at some of these overages, you know, some are obviously COVID related such as the elections for the salary for the elections. We're just over budgeted on the contract for law enforcement. That's just kind of is what it is, right? We're guessing what it's going to be and most of these look like they're just general just kind of over budgeting, not having a lot of certainty about what the costs are gonna be so got excess.
Do you see, board of finance legal on there? Is it we're just not gonna anticipate using that, I guess, because that's our total allotment, isn't it?
No. So we're not taking money. We're not transferring in money from this from the current budget.
We're still transferring money in from the last year's budget. Okay. We didn't use it. Okay. I'm sorry. Sorry. Okay. Got it. Too late, Ben.
I had I had commented to Eric in in my observation, I've only, you know, been here a couple of years and been through the budget cycle, you know, three years. But a lot of individual departments will submit their budgets, kind of based on their previous year, without kind of like, well, what are my actual anticipated needs? Sometimes some of that money never gets spent. And if you go back, you know, one, two, three years, you'll see some things they'll put in that really just kind of they put them in, you know, kind of by convention, without really, you know, like, do I need this and maybe I will need it. And that philosophy is almost like building a little contingency into every little department. That's
why we did the three year rolling average thing to try and make sense of that because if we're not using it, mean granted you still, you have some departments where it'll spike because
things happen. Sometimes not always a good good idea. Well, I haven't used this for two years, but I'm gonna put it in in case I need it. But building Correct. Into little individual department budgets often leaves you with that residual.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it, Barbara. I mean, small amount is not a big deal. But when you end up in the several thousand dollars, we have $125,000 for the extra. I'm that's why we have a contingency fund, right?
Perfectly correct. That's exactly what it is. And so, if you know, going forward, that's just one thing that, you know, I would kind of just look at as Board of Selectmen. Well, I think Eric's going to be more on top of this also, because he's going to be reviewing overall department budgets, probably I don't know, Eric, if you plan, I think at one time, the former first selectman when he was more of a hands on person did actually look at budgets with the departments, go over them. And
sure you kind of have that in your mind also, go through individual budgets with people and say, what is this for? They will let, they'll come because I will tell, ask them and they'll come out and say, I don't know. You know, I didn't use it this year, but I don't want to take it out. So it gets a little you won't have these big these big flows from expenditure into your fund balance and then you're only dealing with the revenue side, which you can't do anything about, the revenue is revenue. So, except maybe try to budget that a little more tightly but that one's a little, state money is a little hard to fine tune sometimes. So that's just a philosophical approach too.
Yeah, I think we'd rather have them tighten those budgets up and then if we need to go to contingency we do and if we decide that we need 75 and contingency into a set of 50 but they have to come to us and talk to us and explain maybe that's better than just having 2,000 here and 3,000 there built into the budget as cushion. Yeah, Eric
and I did, you know, as we went through the budgets, the big ones we knew, you know, we're gonna have a lot of surplus, but we just went through and anything like over, you know, a thousand to 1,500, we just grabbed it. So let's, you know, move this money, it's not used. Okay, so any questions
for me? But I would also say one of the things we have to keep in mind is that if you look at the municipal recommendations for what a contingency fund is for a town, we're at basically less than we're at around 1% of the budget is contingency. And if you really right size all the budgets, 1% contingencies are pretty tough. Yeah, so
I mean, I don't disagree that there's a bunch of areas that we need to tune up and we need to get correct. You know, there's a bunch of groups that have mileage. It's like, well, did you use any mileage? No. You had any mileage last year? No. Well, you know, why are we holding mileage on the books
if you're not gonna claim mileage? You know? Right. Well, that's my point about contingency. If if we go with a much tighter budgeting approach on these items that don't get used consistently, then upping the contingency is also a perfectly rational response. That's totally And then you at your discretion, you know, at a certain level and if it's higher Sure. Comes to us. Sure. That makes me at least, I don't know any of the rest of board members can have their opinions. Yeah.
Totally agree with that approach. I guess what I'm saying is if we truly right sized all the budgets then having a 1% contingency number is pretty low. I agree. You know, but, but and the other thing I think we need to consider and one of the issues with this with all the little appropriation transfers is we're kind of what I call micro budgeting. You know, we're budgeting down with the individual line item you know and doing a lot of transfers between budgets to shore up this budget because we went over in paper clips and you know we went under and you know something else. So maybe at some point we need to have a talk as a board of finance whether we want to start shrinking some of these categories as we readopt a new as we readopt the new financials software. Because I mean like Public Works has I think 52 or 53 different line items just in the main Public Works one. And it's just like, then you're constantly moving a little bit to money. Well, we bought two tires, you know, so we're over our budget and you know, you move a little bit in from oil. We would be better off
using the micro budgeting to come up with the number but then you know having you know essentially having the threshold for when you need to transfer be at the department level If that makes sense. Yeah, Eric, that's a really,
really good point because that would be a charter change instead of having your budget be line item, you would have your budget be department level.
Well, you can still have a line item budget, but not have a separate item line item for hydraulic We can consolidate line items for the long time since You
would still have line items because you still wanna do a budget, but you wouldn't worry about the pluses and minuses as long as your bottom line.
But I would think that even without a charter change, we could collapse some of the line items Collapse. Into larger categories. Know, our overall equipment category for tires, oil, we could talk about doing that. You know, we don't have line items that are $500. Right. I hear that that that makes a certain amount instead of we I don't know how much how many man hours we wanna be spending spinning our wheels, sending a few $100 this way I and that think the three pages That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Three pages of transfer. We might still budget it when we have our spreadsheet to create the budget. But then when we actually put it into action, consolidate.
Having the detail back there is fine and having that as detailed to support a bottom up budgeting process where you really know what's going into that. Yeah. $8,000 instead of having a $1,000 account, you have an $8,000 maintenance account or whatever it is. You can still provide the backup for what's actually going into that spend.
But it's having this I'm sorry, didn't mean to Without having to do this transfer work, I agree with that. And same thing, I mean, if you just had a blanket, department level instead of line by line account level, people could work within their budget, because that is the way it rolls up into the financials. You know, it's just a bottom Department of Public Works, town clerk, tax collector, you know, that's the only reason they want to see the transfer is done is because that's what our charter says, we do. Otherwise, if the bottom line department isn't overspent, it's not an issue. So Okay. A couple of ways to approach it both in how it's budgeted, which we will be looking at as we go to this new software, how we want to set that up and what kind of line items we want to have, but you know something just for future reference. You don't need to micro manage the line items.
Make sense. Okay anything more on this. Mean I think that my personal feeling is that the movie the funds are moving the money to the capital, you know, to those funds is makes sense. I mean, it's a reasonable thing. We all knew we were under budgeted on all of those things, equipment, the sweepers, something new, but.
I mean, I I'm I'm in agreement as well. We made our budget real tight for reasons that were completely understandable at the time. If we've kind of locked into a little money that didn't get spent because there's, you know, an actual upside to COVID in some way. We all know, and Eric's report, you dig into it, has a lot of detail on this. We are years out from conquering our road situation, our tree situation, all this stuff. Right. And if we are aiming at avoiding a situation where we get to a fiscal year where we have to whack the town with a significant tax increase,
the best thing I think we can do is to roll this money over. Yeah. Mitigate that. Awesome. Yeah. Right. You know, we have to smooth this out. We're looking at like a five ten year plan here to get on top of this stuff. So that's my take. I understand if somebody else comes back as well gosh we're over you know we have this extra budget money give it back to the taxpayer or whatever. I disagree with that but it's at least a valid you know it's a valid standpoint but now just based on what we know is coming and all the things we have to do, I'm in agreement we should move that money over. Yeah. Likewise. I agree. Any additional comments there? I'm just gonna say Diane or everybody. No, I'm basically in agreement with everyone. Okay.
What were you saying, Dave? I was saying I agree with that. We hammered the budget so much because of COVID. So, I mean, that's my justification for rolling it over. Yeah. Yeah.
That certainly would an aggressive budget, it would be a different discussion, I think. But we we went with a very different approach. So Off the taxes, something like that. We really didn't do that. Yeah. If we were getting a revenue shortfall, again, we'd be having a different scenario. Yeah. Let's see.
We probably just need a motion to approve the appropriation transfers.
All right I will move that we approve the suggested appropriation transfers as laid out in our packet. Do we have a second? I'll second.
Okay, so Rob moves, Diane's second. Any discussion? Further discussion? Okay, we can go ahead and take a vote. I'll go around the horn. Linda, you're at the top of my screen. That looked like an eye. You're on mute Linda so I raised your hand. Me a thumbs up if it's a yes. Yeah. Yes. That's a yes. That's a yes.
She's just you're muted Linda. I can't. There you go. Yes. Clear in the public knowledge.
I think Amanda muted me so I couldn't do any. Oh, it's her fault. Rob. Hi. Okay, Diane. Hi Dave. Aye.
I also vote aye that passes unanimously. All right, thank you. Okay, any other discussion or anything else from you Barbara?
No, that's all I have. And thank you very much. I'll get these posted and then get the information on to the auditor.
Okay. Thanks, Barbara. Thank you. All right. So move on to item number seven which is old business. The agenda has a couple of items the governor's executive order and the town budget. Eric anything new on the governor's orders that you want to bring to the floor?
No I mean we're still operating it was I was unclear whether we would still be under executive orders by this point but that appears to have gotten extended so the governor's orders still are in effect. I know we had talked about whether we wanted to come back to meeting in person or not. It is allowed to meet in person at this point. The meetings can't exceed 25 people. So, you know, but most of our meetings are well under that. And the meeting room at the town hall can accommodate like 17 people, 18 people and still be meet the six foot distance threshold. We are still technically required to wear masks in a public meeting in a public building. So if you choose as a board that you want to start meeting in public, you have that option. You know, I'll support you either way. I'll either be there in person or be there on Zoom. So it's just it's whatever you want to do. Probably you're not gonna get so many visitors that were above the threshold, the meeting capacity for the room.
We almost never do. You know, unless it's an actual budget meeting, we don't get that kind of attendance. Right. Just speaking for myself, I'm not thrilled about indoor stuff. I'm all about going outdoors and doing things, but when you're inside and, you know, I I don't like wearing a mask any more than anybody does. And the Zoom thing seems to be working. So I'm fine with this format for the time being. If we get public comment that says, you know, we'd really like you guys to show up at the town hall, I'll reconsider. But for now, I'm good with this. Yeah. I'm in the same position
as Rob. Okay.
So I guess we'll continue to schedule them via zoom until such time as you as a board tell us not to do that anymore. I would agree with that. I mean, I don't see any compelling reason to do it in person.
Originally, when we started looking at this, it seemed like there were some barriers and how would the technology work and when people get used to it and it's cumbersome when you have to do things like take a vote which we've learned at the budget meeting. For routine meetings, I see no compelling reason. I think Rob made a good comment though if we if we did have public input that indicated that you know people were having this challenges of this particular technology or methods that we may have to reconsider but you know us you know apart from that I just don't see any compelling reason to start meeting in person. I agree. I think it's our duty really to do things in a manner that's professional and does the best we can to protect the citizens and ourselves. So.
Sure and the other thing I would say is that our overall feedback we've gotten from Zoom meetings is that more people like the Zoom meetings and the fact that they're recorded and they can watch them later. You know I got the the feedback I got on the board of selectman meeting is it's not so bad to watch it if you watch it later and you watch it over like three days you know you know so so I think that system I you know I think long term maybe we really ought to consider do we ever want to give up zoom I mean there's some real advantages to this I think by the time we get back we will have the community room set up so we can film and live stream and do a decent job of publicly doing the meetings in public and broadcasting so people can still get them from home. You know I would like to still figure out how there could be a live component so people could still participate in public speak but I haven't really figured out how that could work yet.
You'd have to have people up on a monitor I would think. I don't know if we have a technology set up for that right now but you'd have to have some you'd have to have a people could call into a Zoom meeting. We'd have it set up in a corner or have you on a on a fairly large flat screen, you know, at
the very least something that gives us audio. Right? Right. Right. And and that's that's kind of where we're going with the meeting room. We're putting in basically a 75 inch flat screen TV on the side of the wall with a soundbar so we'll have decent audio also. I'm jealous. You know? That
was the Pegvisian man. You know, all your, utility, all the money you pay for electricity, you know, that funds PURA, that's what it gets spent on. Flat screen TVs with a community room. Sure some of the panels are doing for me.
I'm sure it's going elsewhere too. Okay. Any other comment on holding the meetings virtually through zoom. Okay, good. Else related to the governor's orders? It looks like things are just moving along and no real changes there so. Correct. Okay, 7B is the fiscal year twenty twenty one, twenty twenty, twenty one town budget. We just kind of went through some of that with the appropriation transfers and the funds. Eric or Barbara, do you have any more input on that? I do not.
No, I think we're okay. I wanna sit down in another week or so when we're done with the first quarter and really start looking hard at the budget and where we are. But I think generally speaking, we're in pretty good shape right now. I don't see anything that's to me really obvious that we're worried about. Okay.
Any other comment on that old business? Okay. We'll go ahead and move on to item eight, which is new business. We've got three things to discuss today. One is item 8A, which is the Board of Education request for unexpected funds, unexpected funds in the school improvement account. In your packet, you've got the letter that we received from the school district from Sally Doyen. She notes in there that there was a motion at the Board of Education meeting to request the Board of Finance place unexpected funds that amount not to exceed 2% of the twenty nineteen-twenty twenty budget as allowed by law, I'll edit that part, which is equivalent to $81,300 be placed in the school improvement non lapsing account. And foreign.
Yeah made by Mr. Foran so that's the extent of the letter. They like us to obviously notify them of our action on this. If you remember last year we had declined this because we really didn't get any particular rationale from them, even though we'd asked for it, how we do it. I guess I'll just say that my personal belief is that this is a odd and unusual and certainly unique year for not just the town but especially for the schools. Is a very, very trying time for them trying to figure this all out. So my inclination would be to allow that permit that additional funding as opposed to just letting it roll into the town's accounts. Anyone else want to make a comment on that?
Can I jump in? Yeah, because when I saw that this evening, when I was scrolling through the packet, I called the business manager and I said, you know, on my side, I only see about 11,000 left in your budget. And she said, since then it's even less. Oh, really? Yeah. When that letter went out, it was kind of a maximum amount that they thought they'd be turning back. Right, right. They've encumbered a lot, including encumbering the cost of the software conversion. So she said, in fact, we have to reconcile our numbers because I said, I see about 11,000. She says she sees about
$80 or something. So she said that was pretty much off the table. She thought, maybe a board of education member was going to be, kind of tuned in or let you know, but she said, kind of strike that there really isn't money to turn back. Yeah, go ahead.
I heard from a member on the board of Ed that it is a very low dollar amount. Yeah.
Now the the letter says not to exceed. Yeah. So we approved it and it's $80. It's still $80. We're not approving $81,000 of money that's not there. Exactly. But
but the business manager was sort of the of the opinion like it's kind of a moot point because they went ahead and just encumbered and they don't anticipate it being approved.
I think part of it was they're doing the same thing the town did in some senses, as they preloaded this budget's expenses on last year's budget, because they could. Yeah. Knowing that this was going to be a sketchy year. So they basically took that the surplus that they had from last year and kind of prepaid down a ton of supplies and a ton of other things that they knew they were likely to be because you know there there's so much uncertainty in their budget.
So just procedurally I mean I understand it may be moot and that there may be basically no money here. It's still before us. I guess my my take here is that if we approve it, there's no real harm done. If they're in fact out of money because it's a dead letter then if they've used it, they've used it that we're not giving them extra money.
Right. About approving it is it generates an accounting journal entry, you know, like and we're kind of, we've closed the year. So if they don't really anticipate it, the only thing about approving it is that we'd have to just kind of fine tune that $80 and actually do a you know kind of a journal entry and a transfer into that fund. So, oh, I see your point. There's just a little more work, there's no, yeah, no kind of diagnostic. Hurry to close the year.
Fairly an automatic process that's gonna happen. Yeah. Well, we have, I think we have two choices. One is we make a motion to place those unexpected funds and unexpended funds in the non lapsing account in any amount up to and including 2% or we just take no action and thereby nothing really occurs there. That's either
way is fine. We just sort of punt and see where it shakes out in the next meeting. Close the loop on it, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. The the business
manager in the conversation we had tonight was basically, yeah. It's just it's not gonna go anywhere. You know, they're okay with
Okay. Mean, if that's true, then yeah, I mean, I guess I'm okay with punting.
My comment on punting, I have no problem with that either. As long as someone could maybe explain why we did it from an accounting point of view so they don't feel like we're against them. I don't want someone to perceive it that you know we're doing because we don't
you know agree with them or we don't trust them. That's all that's my only concern. Know that's a fair point Dave maybe maybe what we can do is I can write a letter, and and just explain that it's our understanding that there there isn't any material funds left for all intents and purposes and that therefore we decline to take action. If that's not the case for some reason or the situation changes to let us know and we'll certainly reconsider because we want to support the district.
Yeah. If that's done, I'm, you know, I'm definitely in favor of it.
That seems like a reasonable response given, you know, just our understanding based on the most recent information is x,
you know, let us know. Right. Yeah, but it's not the case for some reason and you know, please please advise and we'll take action.
I, I got someone in my household on the board events. I'll make sure they know too. Okay. Thanks a
Any further discussion or anybody wanna make a motion on that or we just move on to the next agenda item?
Do we need a motion to take no action? I don't think we do. Don't do that. That's generally
a good idea. So move with item 8B, is which the hiring committee for the assistant finance officer.
So just so that you know, we had a bunch of back and forth between us and Fed because this is a shared position. So in the end what we agreed to was that we would have two members representing the town, two members representing the Board of Education, and one kind of neutral outside person. I lined up the finance director from Columbia Beverly Kerley don't ask me to pronounce her last name I'm terrible with that and I'd feel bad about butchering it. She has agreed to be on that committee and probably on the committee that would ultimately pick the new finance director. She, I thought she would be a good choice because she's been the finance director of multiple towns and the she's a finance director of a combined Board of Education and town office. In other words, are now where we want to be. So the Board of Education has identified two people. The Board of Selectmen has basically said myself and either Adrian Mandeville if he's available and if he's not they asked whether you Diane would be willing to be the rep from the board of finance And Adrian's on you can he's the one that made the motion so I don't know whether we talked to you at the time or not about that but I thought it was. I did not I I did not get a chance to talk to Diane about it.
I depending upon when the meetings are, will depend on whether I can do it or not. I didn't know if you were if it was possible for you to kinda sub in if I can't. I think it's gonna depend on what that group schedule looks like.
I mean, can certainly sub in if Adrian can't make it because I'm retired now. So I have time on my hands. No. You're a very busy retired person. So I didn't want say I know I have a lot of things going on but I'm still retired.
I appreciate that thank you. Apologize for the delay in getting on I just unfortunately got home late tonight so. Missed everything, Adrian. The
world ended while you're away. Wait. Wait. Do you see the minutes? The guy who's not there gets assigned all the duties. Yeah. So Eric, is there any action that we need to take on this or or is this just general in the case then, you know No. That's just general raise to cover, I mean, then then we're good. Okay. No. Eric, the board the board of Ed picked there. So
are we so we probably need to get something together to kind of get that moving at this point, right? Yeah. I'm working on it. I unfortunately,
both Laura's on vacation, who's one of the board of eds pick, and Beverly has they're actually a little farther along in their audit process. So she's got some time blocked out where they're meeting with their auditor to close out this year's books. So should be able to figure out a time, you know, certainly in the next three weeks, three to four weeks, where we can get together and start doing interviews. So we have a pool of applicants already. Oh, we do? Yeah, we do. Okay.
Did we get anyone with a background that looks acceptable? That's always the concern, right?
Honestly, I haven't even looked through them yet. It's got to move until we have a committee and we're a little farther along. And we basically left it open and said we're going to leave the position open until filled. So hopefully we get a few more, and if anybody knows somebody who wants a finance job, in the town, let us know. We'd be more than happy to consider it.
If you could send out a doodle poll for schedules, maybe that's a good start.
Yeah right now I'm just trying to get gross stuff like what weeks work with everybody but yeah yeah it's my intention to do that in the next couple of days. Okay yeah that's fine.
The I I apologize. I came out on the tail end of it. The the request for unexpended funds for board of ed. So did they end up burning through? Because at one point they did have some unexpended funds.
Did they Yeah. It sounds like they're down to almost nothing and they just did basically some moot point.
Okay. Yeah. Because I know at one point they had something like $80 or something left over. Yeah Barbara
was saying she said she checked and it was at eleven at some point and Laura told you it's down to almost nothing now. I
called Laura this evening, Adrian, because I have on my side about 11,000 and she said we need to, you know, kind of shore up our numbers because
she's down to less than that. So were they were they pulling funds for COVID prep? Is that or something? Is that I don't know. The only thing she mentioned was encumbering the whole cost of this software conversion.
Which I thought we budgeted most of that on the town side.
It was actually what I think what ended up happening was we expected a much larger number. So I think we kinda put in like 30 ish and they put in like 30 ish. Right? And so but now we're looking at we're looking at, I think our first year initial is something closer to like 37 or 38. Yeah. So we're over. They encumbered, we budgeted. Somehow we'll figure it out. Okay. We'll
sort it out then. Maybe we should talk to them and see. If they're I think both sides are experiencing issues. I We're dealing with some major tree work, which was kind of expected but unexpected. So I think both sides are kind of getting hit.
Well, you saw the appropriation transfers, right, Adrian? I did. Okay.
So Yeah. But if you okay. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss something major there because I I didn't realize they had spent that much down. So thank you. Yes,
didn't realize. Okay, well I guess we can go on then to the next piece of new business which is HC the transportation infrastructure overview That's in your packet. It's fairly readable. I don't know if you want to just hit the highlights, Eric, and explain.
Tell me how in-depth you want me to go. I mean, we can get into the weeds or I can give you the really big picture. Big picture.
Big big picture, I would say. Yeah. I mean, we can already yeah.
The big picture is the final summary on the last page, and it just breaks out paving and roadwork, bridges, culverts, tree and canopy work, guardrails, and then drainage. And just my best guess what we budgeted this year, what our total current backlog is, and what a five year and fifteen year expenditure would be and then some notes on the specifics.
Okay, and the current budget, you have a current budget and adjusted budget. The adjusted budget includes the additional amounts we talked about with the transfers earlier.
Yeah, and it also adds in the fact that I was not because they were an entire year late with Town Aid Road last year, I was not anticipating the state would actually put in Town Aid Road when they were supposed to this year. So since they put it in, we're going to spend the money that were owed, but we weren't necessarily counting on. So that's really, and the other thing, where the big discrepancy is in paving and roadwork, part of that $600,000 difference is if we get the steep grant, that effectively adds $128,000 to our roadwork budget. So it gives us a big boost if we get it. Okay.
No, I've got the $600,000 difference, you're talking about the $200,000 difference to a $600,000 fee. Right, Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry. I misspoke. Does anybody have specific questions on any of those items?
What how what did you end up clarifying the steep grant? Say that again? The steep grant, like, what exactly did we end up clarifying it as our request?
We requested money to grind up or reclaim and repave the section of Long Hill Road between Route 6 and just past the intersection of Bear Swamp and then Shoddy Mill Road between Route 6 and just past the intersection of Wales. Okay.
And what's the time frame to get an answer on that do we know?
If we were supposed to know September 9 but obviously actually Martin Heft sent out a note saying basically, well, since we extended the grant deadline by two weeks because of the big snowstorm, we're probably gonna extend the deadline we don't know exactly what it is. I would anticipate within the next two weeks we'll know. Okay.
But and yeah those are the those are the big ones. Like I said we're we're cranking away on the design work for Bunker Hill Bridge that's going to be the big one in terms of the the bridge. You know, there's some variability in costs because we're still, you know, it's not even designed yet. So so we have basically not to exceed numbers. But we're assuming that that it will end up being less than the not to exceed numbers. And the culvert numbers are kind of variable. I based them basically on the bids that came back for similarly sized culverts in the town of Lebanon, because discussed that info with a town engineer because they've done a ton of culvert replacements. You know they started a twenty year culvert replacement plan you know about fifteen years ago so they're basically through their culvert replacement schedule and we're just kind of starting. So that's that. Tree canopy, to put it in perspective, when we surveyed the tree canopy last year for dead trees on town roads, we had identified about 130 to 140 dead trees on the Town Road. Obviously, a lot of them were still dying so they appeared to be alive last year when we redid that this year. Our initial count was like four eighty and then you know and that's a drive by survey and then when we started getting to the point where we were running a cutter up the road and looking at everything on foot individually, that number climbed pretty considerably. So I would say, you know, the number currently stands,
you know, in the 800 to 1,000 dead trees before we did the cutting of which we've probably identified and cut about half of total problem, but we're also ignoring the ash that's still alive but not looking healthy. So we're going to have hundreds more dead trees in the next year that we're basically ignoring now because it's still alive And we're trying to take the deadest stuff that we have to go the fastest. And we're also ignoring some of the really hard to get to trees that we will have to address sometime, but are going to cost much more per tree than what we've done so far. And in truth, we're also at some point going to have to go back and start doing canopy work, which is actually opening up the roads and getting a lot of the overhanging branches over our roads that we should have been doing overall all along. But, you know, we haven't, I don't think done a major canopy trim in town since, sometime in the early '90s. So that's become problematic too.
Given the infrastructure work that we know we need to address at some point, and given that we're also talking about a community center, is there anything, whether it's through CCM or, through our bank, that we can talk or set up some type of seminar or something to to maybe bring the board of finance up to speed on financing options, like how funding would affect us, those types of things. So that the Board of Finance, prior to going into the budget next year, instead of dumping all of that on them at once, is it possible to maybe do some of that, say, before the end of the year this year? Like, you know, maybe November, December, or maybe beginning of January before they start having to deal with budget? Maybe January. Try to put something together so that just to get the board of finance up to speed so that they can make some educated decisions. Again, certainly start looking into it. I know
The CCM has those various seminars and stuff. It wouldn't be a bad one for them to host.
Even if we start we're gonna be working with that joint finance director, you know, for this interview process. Maybe we can start picking her brain to see what Columbia has done or Andy Tierney. You know, they just did a bond package.
Sure yeah that was the first thing that came to my mind as I'd reach out to Andy because I know Ian Ram and I think Marlboro all used the same agent for doing their bond packages.
I know Andy at least was pretty happy with them. And maybe even the agent could do something to say, know, this is how it affects you. These are the terms that you could consider. Just kind of walk us through the variables so that as we get into budget next year, we can kind of look at what our long term looks like. Sure.
I mean, I'm not at this point proposing that that's where we go. We we also talked about loaning ourselves the money out of our accounts, you know, kind of paying ourselves back depending upon what the numbers really look like and what the board of finance decides. But I think we need to have everybody educated before we try to make those decisions. So including myself.
Yeah and again I mean I don't want to sound you know like doom and gloom I'm just trying to put it out and say look this is basically what we're facing with. Know this is kind of the bite we're going to have to take year by year to start addressing these and here are the greatest priorities.
I mean I can't speak for anybody else but I can speak myself when I say that I'm extremely happy with the level of work that you've been able to accomplish this year with the budget you were given. I mean, I think residents are genuinely seeing an impact of their dollars. So I think that's huge. So many people have commented just on the transfer station, never mind the tree work, the roads. So we're going in the right direction. I've definitely seen the tree work.
The ash thing is frustrating. It's just a bit unlucky basically. We're dealing with it. We have to deal with it. I had an ash tree in my backyard. I ended up taking down years ago. It cost me a ton because it was on the other side of my fence line. Couldn't get a truck to it, which is kind of what you're talking about Eric with the trees that are hard to get to. You pay so much more per tree if you can't get a truck at it. Well,
have to tell you Eric was able to work with distinctive in our cost per trees.
He gave us that. Yeah, it was great. No question. Wow. What a difference. Yeah, we're the right direction.
Yeah. And we did work really hard at that, honestly. We burned an amazing amount of my time and Eddie's time being incredibly selective and setting everything up so these guys had nothing in their way it could just go go go which has been you know very effective
so yeah I was really pleased with that And they're happy with the relationship as well I would assume so. Yeah
yeah and you know they're they're easy to relatively easy to work with so so that's been good.
I think, you know, all options on the table. I think, you know, that's a good point. We should look at how it makes sense to tackle this over the next five, ten years. And if bonding makes sense, fine. You know, I have this knee jerk reaction against it, but if that's the way we need to go, it's the way we need to go, we should find out what that entails.
Well, I think my impetus for wanting to kind of look down this path is, you know, from having come from your board and now being on the board of Selectmen, the thing that I've seen over the past six years is that every time we get close, whether it's COVID or the state budget issues or whatever, all of a sudden we get a massive hit from Ram, there's always something that derails the town side. And I think that we need to start being proactive and saying the town needs to put itself first a little bit on some of these things. And if we can know that we've encompassed all the majors and and can go to the citizens and say that we have a fixed number that we can expect over the next x number of years, with the exception of a act of God or a flood,
this is what our budget looks like, and this is what our infrastructure repair looks like. I think that will help. I don't know that the town would approve it. I don't know that you guys would approve it. But I don't want us to get into budget season and start having this conversation, and then you guys are overwhelmed with the amount of conversation that ends up happening. So it'd be better to try to do it before you guys have to make, you know, make these decisions. Decisions.
The time to start planning our approach is now. I mean we know it's gonna be a five, ten, fifteen year.
Yeah. That's part of what I'm trying to say is there are no quick fixes here. No.
And I think we're all I think we're all kind of finally acknowledging it.
At least, know, I am and I think our board is so. Okay. Alright. Good. It's a good point, Adrian. A good suggestion. I think we need to start thinking about it. Yeah. Alright.
Anything else for infrastructure? Any questions for Eric relative to that? Hearing none, I guess we'll move on to item nine on our agenda, which is the approval of the meeting minutes. We don't have them in front of us or it's not part of the packet, but they're on the town website. Does anybody have any motion relative to the approval of the 06/24/2020 regular meeting minutes? Anybody want a motion to approve. Is everybody on mute. Not anymore. You check.
Not for me. I'll be honest, I didn't have a chance to look at them. So Yeah. I'll trust you guys, but
read them. I'll make a motion to approve them. There you go. I'll second.
Linda makes the motion to approve the meeting minutes from Wednesday, June 24, the regular meeting. Dave seconded. Can we have a vote? Linda? Aye. Yes. Okay. Rob?
I'll abstain because I didn't have a chance. Okay. Diane?
I'm going to abstain because I wasn't even at that meeting.
Dave? Aye. I'll also vote aye and passes unanimously or not unanimously but passes three ayes and two abstentions. Okay, thank you guys. Moving on to agenda item number 10, which is our liaison reports. Already talked briefly about the software committee that's basically in the hands of the selectmen of the Board of Education at this point. I don't know if there's gonna be much further action on that committee.
We're just waiting for Eric, did you ever get that final contract to sign? Yes. Signed, sealed, returned. So
yep. Okay. So we are moving forward on it. The the software we ended up picking was admins. Right. And we renegotiated terms based on everyone's input, and they were amenable to all of those things. So we're just we're going in the right direction.
Yeah. Okay, good. So plans in place and moving forward. Basically it's done good. There was also some input. Linda's on the I'm sorry not Linda. Louise is on the capital improvements planning committee and she made a she said what's your what's your email? About the sweeper? Yeah. She's she just put out a a point about, Erica discussed the option sharing with another town that newer you sweeper and she agreed with that. So she she she's wanted to kind of put in her her her thought that it made sense to sharing with another town. Hebron was suggested at one point, but you know she thought maybe the town was a little smaller and similar to Andover that way it's just kind of a more equitable sharing arrangement. That she's wanted to kind of make that point. We're not obviously obviously taking any action on that today. So I just wanted to just note that she had that input.
I I think if we go to a sharing arrangement, we would wanna do if we go with a bigger town, then it'll be a percentage based on miles of roads or something to that, you know. Yeah. So Yeah. We've got yeah. We got 30 and they have 90 then, you know Yeah. We pay we pay 25%. They pay 75 or something. But Yeah, there's probably some pretty good ways to measure that and make it equitable but you'd have to make sure that was in the agreement. Know that I know this is an outlier but given our still limited staff position, you know, our staffing there, is there any municipal companies that come out and will sweep roads?
So there are, and I actually addressed this earlier, but basically that was where I was going at the beginning of this year. But what's kind of changed my mind is the fact that we're chip sealing a lot. And so we're not just running the sweeper and doing a big run-in the spring. You know, we're doing a big run-in the spring and then we're sweeping all the roads just before chip sealing. We're sweeping them two to three times after chip sealing. And then we just swept them again before we fog sealed. So we've spent a lot more hours on the sweeper than we have in years past.
And that seems like if we're going to continue with the roadwork plan that we need to be on, that's probably going to continue. So I'm not sure it's practical, because I think we'd have to bring them back too many times.
Can we milk hours through simply for that one maintenance task and then farm out the rest?
Maybe. I mean, the concern is that the yearly maintenance involved in that machine. I don't know.
I don't know. Is it possible to rent a machine?
You know I looked last year in the littler machines yes, but that type of machine. I haven't really seen like the local rental companies don't seem to have it. You know, I don't know we would have to look a little further. I mean I'm, I would also say that one of the things we ought to strongly consider is buying a used machine because a lot of the municipalities that use them for sweeping up garbage put an enormous number of hours on them in a relatively short number of years and they tend to sell them relatively inexpensively. So we may be able to pick one up that has a lot of hours on but doesn't have years and years of rust and salt.
This the type of thing that we should look at trying to come up with a budget number to put aside to buy a perk to purchase a used machine to put it aside into a fund? Well, that's
part of what the Public Works Equipment Fund is. And we are going to add the 50,000 to that. So I do think that gives us some options. If we really found a machine we wanted to buy, you know, a used machine we could probably pop right now with the money we have in that account. But I feel like I would need to do a lot more research and, you know I would need somebody I don't know exactly how to approach that I know Eddie and I have talked about it a few times you know we need to put a lot more mental energy into selecting a unit than we have so far certainly but we know I mean the one major thing we know we want is we want one of the ones with the high dump not the low dump like the one we have because the one we have I mean, you want to go take a park, one of the big trucks somewhere, sweep till it's full, back up to the truck, dump it in the truck and keep going. And the unit we have dumps out the bottom. So you basically back up, make a pile, then you got to take the loader, come back with the loader, scoop it up with the loader, then put it in the truck and then drive it away. So it just takes more operations.
So we've kind of refined what we want, but we would have to look very carefully at used ones before we were willing to come back with any kind of proposal, certainly. What about
about looking at a unit that's self driven that you has a dump back if they're rear dump units like an LGN or something like that. What do you mean self driven?
It's got a it has a it's it's a driving unit. So it's basically a vehicle instead of a sweeper vehicle. It's an actual, like, it could be a Mitsubishi body or somebody like that. And then it has a complete sweeper unit built on that frame.
Yeah. I mean, seems like most of those, like the l gens and stuff aren't like the one we have was an actual purpose built sweeper. Everything was built. Most of them seem to be built on some kind of truck frame. Yeah, they are. They are. Yeah.
No, I think we would end up with something like that.
Okay. Yeah. Because I mean, you know, those are probably 25 to 50 depending upon hours. So yeah. You know, a used unit. So
okay. Alright. Any other discussion or input from liaison committees?
No. The only thing I had from Selectman was, you know, wanted to talk to you guys about trying to get some some depth on whether the board would be open to trying to do some type of training or seminar work on financing options. And other than that, Eric's got the bulk of it.
Yeah. Okay. All right. I guess we can go ahead and move on to item 11 on our agenda, which is the board open discussion. Any open discussion, any topics, anybody have any concerns, want to bring anything else before the board? Going once, going twice. Still have time to unmute yourself. Okay, hearing none, I guess we'll go on to item 12, which is our public speak. Do we have any other public speak? Okay, hearing none. Item 13 on the agenda is adjournment. We have a motion for adjournment. So move. Okay, Rob's motion to adjourn. You have a second. I'll second. Diana seconded. All in favor, Linda. Aye. Okay, Rob. Aye. Diane. Aye. Dave. Aye.
I also move to adjourn passions unanimously. Okay, that's it folks. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Everybody take care and stay safe until next month.
Bye everybody. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Good night. Take care.