Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Special Meeting Budget Workshop
March 17, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
You all probably have the agenda in front of you. Call the meeting to order, we'll do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America to the republic for which it stands under God, indivisible. Thank
you. All right. Our first agenda item is public speak. We obviously have members on our meeting today. Just want to remind you that we do want to keep it concise and to the point. Generally, you have a three minute limit, then we'll come back to you. It doesn't look like we're overwhelmed with the public here, probably isn't going be a problem. But Amanda, do you wanna go ahead and and go around?
Sure thing. Okay. So, Sherry Holmes, our new finance director, would you like to participate in public speak?
Not at this time. I'm just glad to be here.
Thank you. So glad you're here. Jerry Creme. Think he's trying to unmute. Name.
Can you hear me? Yes, we can. And now. I'm here to just listen. So I'll do my list. I'll do some listening. Thank you. I don't know. Kathy Palazzi and Mike Palazzi? All set, Amanda.
Thank you. Next we have Shannon Loudon celebrating St. Patrick's Day. Would you like to participate?
All I'll say is thank you very much for your work. I am gonna go celebrate, and so I will leave any questions you have about the board of education budget to the very capable hands of superintendent Bruno and non Irishman, Jerry Cremay. And, I may check back in, but I'm listening to Irish music while we're doing this. So happy Saint Patrick's Day, and I hope we have the luck of the Irish in your consideration of our budget. Thank you. Val, Bruno? All set. Thanks for visiting.
Thank you. And Jerry and Ann Creme, I believe that's your phone number? 798-3815? I just wanted to make sure it wasn't someone else. That's not you? No.
Do we know who that is? If you would like to participate in public speak, you can press 6. Looks like we're connecting. There's a Carol. Yes.
Okay, do you have anything for public speak, Carol? No, I don't. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Okay, is that it?
Looks like it. Yeah looks like okay Thank you folks so you all know why we're here we're focusing primarily on the on the budget. We have some agenda items that are kind of separate out some things. The first item is 1A to review the fiscal year twenty one-twenty two budget. And This was requested be added to the to the agenda I don't do we have this budget Linda was that you that sent us. Now you're mute Linda. You're muted Linda.
I'm trying to push the button. It wasn't working. This is an old computer. Thought I had forwarded it to you. Some time ago with the attachments. But the budget is, well, since they're combining it into one, well, if you want to call it bill or for the town instead of dividing it between the schools in the town, it's going to be $88,684 which is $4,387 less than it was last year. But last year, our line item was something like 48,000 but then partial was paid through the high school and partial was paid for the elementary school. So if you had total them together we are paying less this year because of the, the formula.
Okay, my apologies. I see you did send that you didn't have to include that any kind of packet Did you Amanda. Okay. All right. So it wasn't sent to all the Board of Finance members.
So there was quite a bit of discussion this year with the towns regarding two things. One, the formula used to calculate what each town's relative fraction of the total bill for the Youth Services Bureau. So basically, they tossed around a bunch of different possibilities for formulas. And we settled on one that was fairly simple. It is equally rated between the census data for the town, the last census, in other words, the number of people, total number of residents in town. And the second thing is the total enrollment for pre K through twelfth grade. Since those are kind of the two easy reference points they can have to figure out because the amount of service we need basically scales with our youth. But since pre K through 12 doesn't encompass the students that are or the people because they serve people up to age 26,
I think 25, 26. 26. 26. It was, we kind of decided as a group to use this as a formula. So that's kind of what we're or what's being done going forward. The second decision that was made is they were initially billing multiple entities, you know, ram the town and the school board. And the decision was made that just basically to make it simpler to go back to what used to be done, which is just billing the town directly to make it completely transparent what the whole bill was to the Youth Services Bureau. So that's the total number from my perspective. The overall budget is going up I think around 3%. But because of the changeover to the new formula and the fact that our total pre K through 12 enrollment is lower. Before it was weighted just from the number of students, relative number of students in RAM.
And for us, our pre K through 12 enrollment overall is quite a bit lower than that. So in a sense, what's happened is we as a town have netted out with a lower bill this year, just simply because of demographics in the change of formula, even though the overall spending has increased slightly, our share of it decreases.
I do have those documents and I apologize. Linda had sent them out and requested, I think Amanda and I boarded the Board of Finance and reading that didn't wasn't really was really thinking about in terms of this meeting, but at any rate, I did send it on call to all of you, man, if you give me a second to share my screen. I will share that.
The other thing is also with some of the programs like chores, chores hooks up high school kids with seniors. So they're doing chores for seniors too so really hits a broad spectrum of townspeople, not just school aged.
Right, which is kind of what the point of was the formula. Right. Right. So, if you flip over you should be seeing my screen now this is the formula that Eric was referring to that shows the particular breakout, you know how it's, it's divided between the pre K enrollment and the town census combined average across the three municipalities. The fiscal year total, the last year's total, and then the dollar difference, which is about $4,300 $4,400
And the other thing is if you subtract of the 552,000 that still means is providing $921,836 of services that the towns aren't even paying for that are being paid for through fundraising and grants and what have you. Is that shown on this budget as income.
Yeah, go down if you go to Yeah, you can see what the total income is. Yeah.
So you can see down here in the lower level town agreement fiscal year 2021, 3% increase that was spoken of earlier and then the breakout is the it's on the previous page.
So Eric, so this number, this $88,000 is that divided in half between the town budget and the Board of Ed budget?
So it was initially divided in the past that was, as far as I understand, was shared three ways. Town paid half and the other half was paid. I never got a straight answer from that, whether that was paid by AES or whether that was paid by RAM. From my perspective, originally, ultimately, it's all town tax dollars, regardless of where it's coming from. So it is, it does represent an increase in the town's portion of the budget, but it should be directly showing up as a decrease in either the AES budget or the RAM budget.
Because in the town proposed budget, have $48,862 as a line placement.
Right. And we do need to increase that and put in the correct number. I can show you what the budget looks like with that correct number because I do have an edited version of that. But that hadn't really at the last meeting that hadn't really gone through or fully been approved. And I'm not necessarily sure this budget is completely final anyway at this point, Is, you know, at least Marlborough still has some significant issues with it.
Is the Board of Selectmen reviewed this Eric, you know?
No, not that I know of. We didn't have this data when the board of selectmen completed their budget. Okay.
This is under, I think it's like a social services or public welfare line item. What's the line item? Do you remember? Sure. I'll tell you in just a sec. Or what department, I should say. Well, has their own line item and it's
Oh, there it is. Yeah, it's on line 36 of the original budget document. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. 04/26 is the full budget for it. But since it's really only one line item.
Yeah. So as Diane pointed out, that's $48,862 So this isn't a good way to start a budget meeting we're already $40,000 or so. Meeting. Correct.
I just want to know where all the rest of the money comes from to pay the bill. So I guess.
Mark, there's 50,000 in our budget. You have 50,000 for and the school budget? That because we have the social worker who comes in so that 88,000 that can't possibly include everything for Ram for us and for the town, unless the town has a really tiny tiny percentage that they're paying Because we've been over 40 for a few years because we have Sherry that that comes. She does all of our social work services for the kids for their IEPs. So I know that if you look at the last four years, you couldn't go less than 40,000 in the last four years in our budget with what we've had to pay with our contract with But
is that covered under the local service contracts for or is that separate build item?
That's why I'm surprised that, you know, she's looking at one contract there. This is the first that I've heard that we're going to have one bill. Well, the schools,
if they need more services they do have a contract with the for additional benefit of services. So I'm not sure what that contract and what that bill would be.
Right. So Mark, that 88,000, that doesn't cover everything that we pay in there. So that is
Right. The school has a separate contract. Yes. Above and beyond this. Okay. Of
high 40s every year for the past four years because we have a social worker that comes from and that's our contracted social worker. We don't have a full time social worker. Right. So that's not part of this 88,006
for in which okay just that one. Thought you were saying you thought it might be. My guess is it's in this number I just highlighted which is the $188.06 95 the program revenue.
It looks like it might actually be in those local service contracts that you know, I think the local serve. Oh, you're right. Why? Yeah, I bet you were in the $2.48 there.
We're probably about the 48,000 probably of the two. Yeah. Didn't look at those numbers, but you're right because I I thought that this is not I'm sorry, Linda, but this is not designed well. The the I thought this was the February was a subtotal of the three town contracts. That confused me. Okay. No, you're right. That's probably what it is this local service contract.
Yeah. And then on the right hand side there, if you look what's so that's income on the left. Are they expenditures on the right?
Yeah. It probably comes in the salary wages and benefits in here as well. My guess would be for your social worker. So Yeah. But I'm sure that ours are
$47.20. So those numbers, Linda, the Andover Hebron and Marlborough numbers, they wouldn't necessarily include even for Hebron and Marlborough any additional services that they utilize for like social work and psych services. Right.
We're kind of back to where we are, we were which is that we. We are missing 40,000 somewhere.
Currently current budget does not adequately cover the for the 88,684 that's being requested.
But it has to be paid somewhere else because last year we only paid 46. That's right. Last
year's budget and it's just it's 46 yeah. Either paid by Ram or paid by ES or both.
Believe Mark that that's it is that we paid all of our costs directly and that the town didn't pay for our services.
Okay. I know part of their services and the ES paid for part of the services plus the additional individualized service.
I remember from looking at the old, whatever you want to call them from from being on the board. I think all the elementary schools and all the towns were given a set price and Ram was the Ram formula. And then for the town to come up with 17% or whatever it was that year. They took 17% of the budget came out with a figure subtracted I mean, the elementary school and Ram. And that's what the town line item was. That was the line they could change to, to make the 17%.
Yeah. So grand paid part of it and he asked me a paid part of is what you're saying. Right. Yeah. Okay, so we have to recognize that that changed this year.
We just need to make sure we have it where it needs to be. Yep.
When you think about it, I mean, yes, I'm sure some families do use youth services, but that is, in a sense, the majority of those services go to school age children in some form or another.
Well, I don't think that the my personal feeling is that the funding formula, the way they're allocating it probably just makes it simpler and easier. So you know I would be in. Favor of it because of that you know that reason it just makes sense we've talked about that in prior meetings. So I think we have really two two things to address here as a Board of Finance, one is, I don't know that we necessarily. Approve or disapprove of this budget, I mean isn't it tied in largely to the agreement that was signed between the town and Eric or am I not clear on that?
Well, I'm gonna tell you, I'm not completely clear on that myself. I talked to Steve Fish prior to this meeting, but I need to reach out to Tressa and get that because I was assuming it was very much like Eastern Highlands Health District, which is the health district comes up with a budget and they just charge the towns essentially. The towns have input if one of their members is on the board of directors and sits in on it, but, and I would say since we have pretty strong town representation on you know, I'm not too not overly concerned with it.
So we certainly can review and discuss it. Mean, I don't know because it's not given here I don't know where the 3% increase is coming from. It doesn't seem outrageous. To me. But you know again I'm not familiar with the with the particular budget. So we can certainly discuss it and review it, I don't know whether voting on it one way or the other is any more than a you know affirmation that we think it's reasonable I don't know that it has any legal or other obligation or effect. Not knowing that I'm a little hesitant to do much unless everybody's comfortable with it. So that's thing one that we need to probably
figure out and resolve. The second item is that as Diane pointed out we're $40,000 under budgeted and that's going to have to be added into the into the current budget to take of that, which you said you've already done, Eric, I guess in your version. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I've got a version of the budget with that in there. So we're going to increase
the town of Andover budget to 88,000 from the 48 we have. How did it get paid last year? It had to be close to this amount of money last year. Well, that's just it. I looked up the budget.
Yeah. And I think we had 46 in there. So, granted, I'm looking at a spreadsheet that wasn't necessarily the final, but I'm struggling to remember how this, it used to be split and now it's all under the town. Well, all, but the 88 is under the town. I can't remember how that happened. I don't know if we maybe chose to make that happen, but last year, yeah, it looks like one of the final last budgets that I have that was provisional had it at 46. Okay. Correct. Last year's approved budget was $46,536
Okay, so that's probably the budget we passed. So in the past we'd split it with the school and now it's being put all in the town budget. And I for one cannot recall whether that was something that we had chosen to do. I know in the past when we've gone through line by line some of our budgetary items we have made some kind of accounting choices But I don't specifically recall doing that. The
decision was made years ago by the towns for some reason. It was before I was on the board. Originally it was all one bill. And then I don't know what towns decided it should be divided between the towns and the schools. And now they're going back to one bill.
Apparently. So are we saying last year there was a bill for the elementary school and then there was a bill for the town? And that's so we have to account for that. We have to. And there was
also a bill that went to Ram High School. Right, it's not that AHL's budget is doubling or something. But we had it accounted for differently.
We just got to make sure we keep apples to apples so we're not looking at huge variances.
When yeah, it's apples to apples from the standpoint of the actual cost. It's not apples to apples to the standpoint of where it is in the budget. Right, it's got to be transparent, right?
Right, so what we need to do is we need to get from a listing of last year, entities were we know what the town was built last year, we need to know what was built to the elementary school, what was built to RAM, and say are those subtracted from their budgets so that what's added to our budget equals out. That's pretty much all we got to figure out. Right. Then
the other this is a small amount of money relative to everything else but we should just kind of keep it in mind that if it's all going on the town and last year it was it was split. Whatever the school budget increase is is sort of artificially lowered by that because we're offloading 40,000 off the town.
Right. Yeah, so it'd be interesting to get the information from last year so we can figure out how we should do it.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it doesn't change our overall numbers. Know it's
the same way one way or the other, whether it's in the school budget or in the town budget but it's, yeah,
I do think having a better level of understanding would be helpful.
Well, I would have assumed that the school if they paid a part of it last year they included in your proposed budget this year, based on last year's cost. Yeah. Not if they knew that this was coming. I don't yeah I don't know.
Valerie you have any idea yeah. Valerie Valerie with her hand up. Looks like she locked up. You're frozen Val.
Excellent timing is always to have technical difficulties. I think Rob scared her off. Okay. Oh yeah that was me I totally. The computer gremlins got her always is the case when it's yeah
stop sharing a screen then we can see we can't see anybody. She's just blanked out. Think her computer. You may have it maximized.
But anyway, think we are done with this part. You know looking at the actual budget. I actually have a question.
Are each town like Zandover expected to pay based on their amount over the total of everything, everybody? Is it pro rata or is it based on in proportion to
10? That's what's in this formula right here. This is in that the second. Was sent so this again this what Eric was talking about originally was just based on a pro rata of the school enrollment I believe right Eric. School enrollment.
Broken it out, the mix the allocation between the the enrollment plus the census data. Okay and that's all up to date. As yeah 2019 but okay
yeah I mean at the end of the day it's it is it's an attempt to a finer grain pro rata but it's the same idea is that whatever our ratio of population is. So it says fiscal year 2021 we paid $93,000 Correct. Yeah. Correct. That was the total allocated the town where we are came from the town operationally it was tools as well. Okay. Yeah.
Mark, I do think the Board of Selectmen should be brought up to speed on this to assist us in, you know, figuring this whole thing out. I mean, why should we take the whole wrap for everything?
I think, I think, again, I maybe I'm mistaken, but I think that there is really not any. I'm guessing that you know, we can vote on the Board of Finance all we want and approve the budget this budget, but it doesn't have any force of action until frankly probably until the town residents vote and approve the budget. You know, there is a matter don't know the content of memorandum of understanding I'm sure if that's actually what it is between the board of selectmen and the whether that you know if that dictates how this other bills or invoices are to be paid or how how the what are the where the agreement is as to the costs, I would think that there's something out there that that indicates how these costs are allocated and how they're going to collect for these costs. Right. Just
think that they should have a full accounting of what's going on also even before we do.
Yeah I agree, I like, I think that absolutely they need to have it before we take any firm action and again I don't think we have any firm action for us to take at this point. Right, but I would I would agree with you, Kurt that we probably need to review this comment on it, but it probably needs to go to the board of selectmen also for their input. Sorry, he's back. My guy
died. Don't know why, but I had two things I want to say on that. No, I didn't know that we were going to wind up with one bill so it is in our budget for the whatever it was, the 40 something thousand. However, when they switch to one bill, if I could make a suggestion because although we're not getting anything with the newest round of American relief, there are a lot of funds that have come through that would allow either the town or the school to be able to, with some of this relief funding that's come in, use it on social service type things that we should be prepared for. So for example, the money that is coming in now, the new relief fund for towns,
I think Andover, the town of was supposed to get supposed to, it's not final yet. But like 03/19 and the school's not getting any on this one. But in all of the other municipalities, both municipality and school can use it for social service things. So if more money comes through, we may be able to, in fact, take some of that that's billed to AES, whether it's a bill that goes to the town or to us. If it says that it's via AES, we may be able to do something with that and the town may and RAM also may be able to. So so having a bill that does specify where those costs are in relation to why they're there would be a good thing. So it's, I think, the 3 hundred's in there. Is it in the 3 hundred's? That's where I was trying to see Yeah. If you keep going on there. Hold on. Just keep going. You'll see where this this particular one, it's where go back one. Go back one. On this particular one, it's in and this one, it would be in support staff Because the services that we take from them is for Sherry, our social worker.
But Sherry is above and beyond this $88,000. Correct? That's separate.
We've always Diane, from what I understand we've always gotten our own bill unique to us and that
bill that on an hourly basis because that's not kind of how the budget is structured. I'm concerned that you may be paying for both and I don't want to assume that we are paying
as as that's why do you want me to send you our contract? We are paying a certain fee plus we pay if you keep going, it's got there's another spot where you'll see it. Oh, right there. Yeah. Wait. Wait. Go back. I think it's in the it's $1.10 there. That's where I think it is. Support staff? On the bottom.
Because it's Well, you've got 110 in many different areas. I don't
have mine in front of me for me to see. It's Yeah. Go to this special. Keep going. Hold on. The school you've you've got
There's the administration support staff. Support staff there, but, no, that's Holly. That's the special ed director. I think on this particular comparison by function keep going. I think there's two more pages to this one. Good comment. Right there. Right there. Right there. Right there. See Social work? Social work. Right there. And I know that's the category. Oh, under under Twenty one twenty. Support services. Okay. And I know that's the category, Mark, because do this was the one I think that Diane brought up last time, maybe Luis, as to why the $700 was there for this year. They said, is that all you paid? No. We had prepaid that 43 to AHM. Yes. So see how it went 41, and then all of a sudden 85, it would have been in the forties. This year's in the forties, and the proposed budget because AHM had told us already there was gonna be a rate increase or had told Laura in January, that's why that budget was the 50,200 instead of 48. So we already do have it in our budget. So if they have decided
that they're going to bill something to the town that had normally been billed to us, it would come out of there. So I will get you our current contract and send that to you guys so that'll help you figure out if they're gonna be billing the town now for something instead of us,
then yes. It would be in our budget and yours currently. Yeah. So I think that's right. I mean, looks you you wouldn't have been able to prepay it if it was some kind of hourly invoicing that was done for separate services and clearly that looks like a flat fee, it makes sense to me that that's right where it is, I think that's probably that mystery solved. I'll get the contract to you guys, though. Yeah okay.
Is is is the social worker actually an employee of the town? Or when you say contracted, it's an outside No. Vendor?
She she works for and she has set times that she comes to us. She's contracted for a certain number of days, not hourly. So when they would sign that contract, they would contract, let's say, based on and actually, it should be coming up soon that we have to resign it for next year. That's why I said I'll give you our existing one, and they should be readying our new one soon. So if we say we need Sherry there, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays, let's say, based on the number of hours that we need for social work services, The contract says you get her sixty days or or whatever per year. So I know that that's what the contract states. It's it's not an hourly rate. It's the number of What happens if more is needed
than whatever's in the contract? Let's say it's a bad year and
kids are in need. I don't know because the contract comes up sometime to sign between May and the beginning of July. And I'll be honest with you, I started late July. So I didn't sign that contract. That would have been mister Briely and Sally and Laura, one of the three of them that actually signed it. So, you know, if there was talk of this, and I'm not saying there wasn't talk of this, doing this,
I I personally just didn't know to take out whatever was in there. Yeah. It may well come under the psych psychological services or some other because Lee's got a good point. I mean, you're not going to stop your social work in sixty days if something crazy happens, I'll get that freak out.
Okay. All right, all right, this is this is helpful, I think. So we've probably solved that thing, I think Kirk is right, we probably need to make sure that the Board of Board of selectman surprised and and we probably you know have identified it here Valerie can confirm when she reviews the. The contract and send it sends it on. But that that would make a lot of sense right there.
Mark, correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the Board of Finance. I mean, all agreed to the change service contract, right? Because didn't that presented to the board a couple of months ago? Yes.
Okay, so that that service contract did two things. One, put set in stone the formula for calculating and it also stated there that it was going to be billed just to the towns, to one entity. Correct. A total surprise to the board.
No, it shouldn't be no and you've we've talked about this funding formula, a couple different times absolutely during that contract. And we didn't, we didn't sign the agreement I think that's either you or the Board of Selectmen but we did approve it we agreed that that it made sense. We didn't have a budget at that time but I think the memorandum or the agreement we did approve.
Right, right. We've only really seen a budget from you know, a week ago. Yeah.
Okay. So I think that's that's settled in terms of the funding, and I think that we've found where the offset is in the school budget that seems to be the case. Do any of the board members have any other questions about this particular budget. Linda is there anything particularly driving that increase. I'm
kind of looking at the door, hope my husband walk in. He's president of the board of Ah. It's not.
I'm pretty sure he said because of, well this past year that the services at are have been more heavily needed. Problems with children problems with home. They've had to hire a couple more employees this past year.
But I think somebody made the point that this isn't a huge line item in our town budget, but it is. Wait a minute.
Wait a minute. The President of a. Oh no no no. Just walked in.
The increase the 3% increase. Oh, 3% increase, yeah. Well, I think I heard what you said. Yeah. Yeah. Hi everybody. Hi. Very briefly on that, I don't have everything right in front of me here but I was just talking to our executive director but we do have additional costs that have been incurred this year because of the COVID. Additional, some staffing costs are probably gonna be there that we didn't anticipate. There are the normal increases in benefits and things of that nature. But that was probably the main push. I just heard tonight, I haven't got all the information together right now, but I did hear that there's some additional, some regulations or some things that are coming down from the state that Tressa was talking to me about, Tressa Giordano, our executive director. So that was something else that they had anticipated and that seems to be coming through. So that's kind of what that 3% is all about. And I guess unless you have other questions but I think that's where I'm coming from right now.
I don't I do have one suggestion and I'll leave it to the other board members and that's that it's it's as with other budgets it's helpful to see the differentials in the particular accounts. It just gives everybody a sense of confidence that okay you know we're not bumping the travel budget by 50% or something like that without really understanding where that increase is coming from so that's just a suggestion for next round. That sounds good yep. Joe where the variances are and what the where the differentials are and you know. Inflation happens right, we know that things, certain things tend to cost more, not everything, you know, we're in a period of very low inflation, but it does happen. And
so it doesn't sound unreasonable to me, but Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying, Mark, and that's a very good point. Those are some of the things that actually, again, was just talking with Tressa just about ten minutes ago. Some of the things that we might wanna do going forward from here. We're gonna have a meeting, I'm not sure if it even came up or we do have a, the oversight committee is gonna be meeting next Monday right now with the town leaders and all to go to finalize the municipal line item budget. And so some of those points I think are starting to come out just going through this process right now. I appreciate your comments and certainly would bring that forward. I think the other thing I wanted to mention to you that Teresa did just say to me too, is that the clinical program is being stressed more now because of the
needs that we're finding with the students. There's a lot of things going on. So that clinical program is, we're having a hard time meeting some of that demand. But so just to give you a better scope of what we're dealing with right now with the school population and with the kids. Yeah, totally understandable, especially this year. Yeah. So, you know. So I hope that helps a little bit, but yeah, I do appreciate the idea that we can show those variances in the future for you. So if we see an increase or anything, can point those things out. I think that could actually be provided even before we meet for Monday. That might be something we can bring forward, Eric. Yeah, that would be great. I'll pass that along to Yara Ford, she's our CFO. So we can show that.
It's a pretty significant amount of interest income too. You guys must have a decent endowment or fund.
Yeah, there is. Oh, there is a pretty good interest income there, yeah. Interesting, okay.
Anybody else on the board have any questions relative to this, to this budget at this time? Think we're all agreed we'll probably revisit it and it probably needs to go to the Board of Selectmen also.
The only last thing, Mark, that I'd like to mention, and maybe this has already been brought up, I think I know Eric understands this. It's one of the things I do like to bring up just as this year, or the last two years since I've been president, is the idea that, you know, the total budget for it's about for the towns right now, are, it's 37% of the funds to run the entire operation there comes from the three towns and somewhat from Columbia, but the three towns primarily. The other 63% is grants and fundraising. Yeah, it is. So it's
a heck of a deal. And what I'm saying there too is, we aren't contractors, we're partners with the towns. We really consider ourselves to be almost like a, think of it as a Department. A department of the town. So it's a heck of a deal. So our fundraising efforts are stellar and the grant writing efforts are phenomenal up there that keep us afloat and to provide the services that we provide. So I think it's just important to keep some of that in mind too. That's all. Yep, absolutely. Yep.
Are there any grants possibly out there that would actually come in handy if the student rate has to go up as far as needing extra care, extra help, Yeah, or anything like
Louise, that's a good question. We were on the phone just the other day, about three days ago, with Kathy Austin, who's the co chair of the budget committee, along with Tony Harp. The two of them have been pushing, I'm not sure if you've seen it in the news or not. That's the state. That's with the state, I understand. With the state budget. And one of the things that they're looking at is increasing funding to the nonprofit YSBs, the Youth Service Bureaus, which is a nonprofit YSB. So they're looking at that kind of increase in funding through the state budget. And what they're looking at right now would be the mechanism in which they transfer the funds to the various YSBs,
meaning would it be a grant or something along those lines? And they probably are gonna be some kind of grant. And it's looking pretty good that there might be a good chance that we might have some increase in funding. So we're keeping our fingers crossed on that front that would help us with perhaps additional staff needs or whatever it may be. Okay, that's good news. That's very good news. We'll see what happens. We're just keeping our fingers crossed. Okay.
Any more input or questions from the board on this budget as it stands now? Okay. No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
So, with respect to this budget there's a couple of things we can do, we can entertain a motion. To. Take some type of action here. My personal feeling is that this is, we do not and probably should not take action on this until we have some, some clarification and it's, you know, passed before the board of selecting for their review also. But we could also make a non binding motion and vote on it as well. If no one makes a motion, we'll just move on to our next agenda item. So I'll leave that to the board. All right. Rob? Agreed. Okay. Right. Hearing no motions, then I'm going to go ahead and move on. We'll table that and move it on to the next meeting agenda item or next meeting agenda. So I'm not sure when the Board of Selectmen is meeting next. Regularly scheduled meeting first. Second Monday of April. Yeah, so there will be April 12.
Alright, so Amanda if you could go ahead and put this on his whole business to our March 24 meeting agenda. And we may or may not follow-up with anything there well it kind of happens to where that goes. Will do.
Okay. The next agenda item is three B, which is board and department presentations We haven't requested anything specific. Eric, I don't know if you have any other changes that are any more input that you'd like to make regarding the department budgets. No, not at this time. I don't have any.
Okay. Does anybody have any specific questions for Eric regarding departments? I mean, can talk about that during the last item or the actual discussion of the budget to it might make more sense, but go ahead.
I have one question and I briefly talked before the meeting started with Eric about this, the Ram. Levy that we have, and we have that credit coming back to us of 77,000. So you're gonna just update that number or do we have to wait until the RAM budget gets passed before we update that number?
So there was initial 77,000 that came off of our budget. I have not looked at the RAM budget in the last week or so, but as far as I know, that's currently reflected in the RAM budget because remember the RAM budget has decreased to I'll give you that number. 52940. Correct.
Less 77,600 and whatever dollar, we're going to get credit. When did they when was that decision I looked on the RAM website today and they have an updated budget book out there for March 1. So that's in that March 1 budget book.
You're expecting that this anticipated levy of $5,200,000,940 dollars is going to be reduced by 70,000. Yeah, 77,000.
See, I feel like that was that reduction was built into the 5,200,000.
Because remember, I couldn't tell by looking at the spreadsheet they had out there because it was a separate item at the end. It wasn't, it didn't show as a credit. In the levy part for the percentages for the town so it was very hard to figure that out so that may be a good question to look at.
I'm actually have a conversation tomorrow with Lori Blake scheduled, and I'll ask her that specifically. Not sure she's going to have that answer but we'll ask.
Yeah. So they have a they have out on their website, their budget book, and it has a summary page that just summarizes the budget, the town levies and the town credits for the excess funds coming back to the towns.
Right, but I thought the levy actually included that now, because I couldn't tell how they Yeah,
and I may be wrong on that. I mean, I did converse, I asked for an updated budget real early in March and I got the info from the, I'll try to pull it up and see the letter or the email I got from Scott but I'm pretty sure that number now I had heard later they decided there was an additional allocation that they were considering, you know, coming back to the town that would have been about an additional 16,000 off the budget, but not 70,000. I haven't seen an updated budget that reflected that.
Yeah, the last one I saw out there was March 1. Yeah. Let me just look real quick.
If you go out there, they just have one document out there. That's like four pages long that just gives a high level summary of the budget and all those calculations are on there.
You talking about that updated proposal budget book for March 1. Yeah. Yeah. It looks separate to me, but it could be included like Eric says I don't know. Yeah I can almost tell you just by looking at this that it would be almost unless you sat here and total all the numbers by hand, it would almost be impossible to tell.
Yeah, so they show an offset credit to the town of $77,851.74 Right. You know, on the audited surplus. Right, that's what I'm talking about. But that number,
as far as I know, was wrapped back into the The sum of Right. The sum of our lovely levy for the
school budget and the capital budget, the operation. Right, so it's basically what we owe is the combination of the levy for the capital improvement budget and the levy for, you know,
for that. But it has gross revenue, so there's no credit showing. So you would have you would not know by looking at that. It has the gross expenditures, less the revenues than that capital budget, the total and then our percentage of that.
Right. I mean, could be wrong and I can certainly reach, you know, seek clarification from Scott Leslie on what they're actually.
Yeah, just want to make sure we have the right number. 77,000 would be nice to find. Sure. Agreed.
All right. We probably, I don't know, Diane did you answer your question I mean is we don't really know I guess is the we can't tell from this spreadsheet because you don't know. I mean, didn't add up the whole column, but I'm assuming their subtotals are right. So to me, it's a separate outside of that has the gross, the revenues, less the revenues, and then the levy, and then a credit at the end. Doesn't show a credit for the levy against our bill do.
I'm I'm not it's not clear to me what all these different sections are to the budget appropriation request so you've actually got a broken down between an operating budget, the capital capital budget. And then they've got these expenditures and revenues plus capital, you know, so.
So, this is really the sum of the whole budget.
Correct, but they don't necessarily show you the levy and how that's calculated so you have probably zero up on up on top would take some work. Yeah, so we're 17% right there. Right.
But there is point there's a 30 of the 30.
I know I didn't do the number. I didn't calculate the numbers. If 30.
Yeah. If you look at those numbers, that's $5.02 $0.09 plus Plus fifty one three zero three. One
is, you know, five two six zero. Yet we're showing
We have five two nine forty in our in our book. But is that five to 917% of that 30,000 that number above $30,007.00 8. Because there's two components there's the operating and the capital.
Right, but you're right I mean the number doesn't really add up. Yeah, so we're the so.
So then there's $51,000.51000 plus the 5,200,000 that is like that is 5,000,000 to 60. Yeah.
And then, you know, I'm not even sure why they put this credit in there if it's not gonna apply to that.
So we just flat out have to get from RAM what their current and I mean, they're still holding budget meetings. So, it's not like they've come up with a final budget either. I mean, the bottom line is we know it's going to be about $5,200,000 I mean, plus or minus an unknown number.
Yeah, it's not gonna it's just not clear from that document it's maybe go through over that and it sounds like you've gone through it in fairly close detail Diane but
still I didn't recalculate other numbers like prevented myself from doing that.
You're retired. Mean, what else do have to do to get myself into trouble here? Right. So okay. Nothing prevented me from doing either but it's time for all. Let's it. Anything else on that, Diane? That was your No, that's the only thing I kind of came across today.
Okay. Guess since we're just talking about board and department presentations, I'd like to give Val and any other members of the Board of Education an opportunity if you want to add anything to you know in advance of our discussion before we ask questions. You had submitted some information about the additional. The prepaid amounts that we had we had asked you for some information about for so you know I don't know if everyone's had a chance to digest that Frankly, I hadn't I planned to do it this weekend before that kind of being knocked flat because of my vaccination didn't go well. But there was a fair amount of detail in there. I didn't have really a chance to digest it personally.
Does anybody have any questions for Val or Val, do you have anything you want to add or Jerry?
I'll answer any questions anybody has. Know that when I put that together and sent it to you guys, I tried to take a lot of the numbers that were probably a little bit difficult to understand in the way they were in the work worksheet and add a bit of narrative to it so that you can see from April all the way through kinda why those numbers how they evolve. So if if anybody has any other questions on them,
let me know. I have one question, and I'm looking at that spreadsheet that you broke out the salary percentage increases. You were we had questions on that, and I'm looking at the teacher line item. And you said the teacher increase was 3.17% and a pre K teacher to grade level increase of 5.3% to come up with that eight thirty four. But my question for you, wasn't that pre k teacher and maybe I'm not looking at this right. We had a teacher who retired and that pre k took that teacher's
No. What that what that had to do with in terms of it had to do with few things in there. So number one, know I'm trying to remember how Mark had worded it. He had asked about the teacher contracts. The teacher contract was the 3% increase, but then there were changes to salaries that were no longer gonna be funded through grants and moving those around. It had nothing to do specifically with it's the same number of teachers. We actually saved money from the retired teacher to the teacher that's coming in. We lost in the pair professional position, but it was I forgot. I know Laura had explained one other thing in there, Mark, and I don't know if you recall when she was on. She explained one more thing. And I'm trying to remember how you worded the question to her. Because you had asked, why is it a little bit more than three.
Well, yeah, the contract, the contract was 3.17% increase by the budgeted in the comments in the budget had it at 3.99%. So I was asking why are the salaries going up 3.99% if the contract was only 3.17%.
And it wasn't. I'm going to actually ask Laura now. I'm going to send a message because I can't remember it had to do with that very specific question also had to do with where the funding had come from for staff prior to that. Like the use of title one which we lost for this year. Title one had paid a percentage of salaries for a particular teacher. So salaries weren't originally in that. So when
you had something that was offsetting a salary, a revenue item, you were just putting the net expense in your ledger and not showing the revenue side? That's
they had done it. Yes. Let's not ever do that again. I know. I know. It's a few things we're not going to do again. Sherry's taking notes in her head. I looked it up in the charter. You are supposed to account for revenue in your budget request. Part of the charter with the town. So Well, and and I know that that she always has. It's just as Mark had pointed out last time that it wasn't right there. Mark said he wants it next time right underneath where the offset is. And I told him absolutely we would we would from here going forward do it that way. I don't want make a lot of work, so I'm going to ask this question because to me there's a whole revenue side outside of taxation
that the school has. And trying to figure out some accounting of that for last year or this current year. I'd be happy with this year. So we understand where the revenue is coming in to pay for some. When you look at the expenses, it's not a true expense if it's a net amount. I'm just trying to I'm missing the other side of the coin, I guess. Saying I can make a packet that you guys all got when I presented to you guys,
it is in that PowerPoint. There are specific slides that say, here's our other sources of revenue, title one, title two. What about tuition? They were all in there. But they're just dollar amounts. They're not And it says what was paid for with them.
I don't remember seeing that. I remember seeing just dollar amounts, but not what departments they go against or what line items they go against. What line items are less because they are only showing a net expense and not the It didn't show you the line item number with it. Let's see. I don't think so. But I've been looking at too much stuff. I know.
So let's see. Mark, do you have that PowerPoint that you can because I I just I tried to I just went to pull it up on my screen, and I realized we were on Zoom. Sorry. I saw you pulled it up a few minutes ago. Do you have that in the packet? Nope. That one's Ram's. At the beginning of that whole pack yeah. Yeah. Keep going. Yep. Yep. Yep. We missed it. Sorry. Keep going. Okay. Stop. Wait. Go back one. Go back one slide. There you go. So the the the one with the yellow, the next slide. There you go. So these were and this is where if you want it side by side. So these were for preschool, for example. The school readiness grant, the school readiness grant was used to pay the part of one paraprofessional
and the one teacher's salary. These this was just the the the one revenue source. The smart start, the 65,000 paid for second teacher salary and part of the second paraprofessional. The quality enhancement money that comes in of $38.81, that has an earmark, and that can only be used for professional development. So then all of the other costs go through the 90 But this is just preschool. Right. Right. So go to the next page. The next there you go. So these were the other sources of revenue that we had gotten. We won't for 2021, but 16,245 comes came in for 2020 in title one, $36.28 in title two, $4.00 6 in title three, and 10,000 in title four. And I believe it's the next slide, Mark, that said that's what we did with them. So the roughly 20,000 for title one and twenty two, that went to pay part of the salary for the remedial reading professional, which was missus Caraboni. She's obviously still the reading specialist. We lost title one. So that meant that that 16,000, Diane, that we had gotten in 2020 that we didn't get in 2021 for title one that had to be absorbed into the salary spot. The $500 that we get for title three that goes to our our consortium that and then the title four that 10,000 there partially funded missus Fraser's role as she's tech and she does the remedial math. So we are getting title for this year.
But next year what we won't because it alternates. If you lose title one one year, you lose title four the next year. So But we planned ahead for that. Right? We have planned ahead now that we know. Like, we know Sherry and I actually just had this conversation. It's like, okay. This year, we didn't get title one. Next year, we know we're not gonna get title four. Right. So we've got a plan for that.
What about non resident tuition? We have a non resident tuition revenue?
We have only one child right now that just started in kindergarten this year that is non resident.
Okay. So we should account for that revenue too. So
Well, we're not sure that right now they actually have petitioned to the board of ed to make some accommodation. We're not sure if the accommodation's not made, if they will continue because it's an issue they're building. And it's an issue whether or not they are gonna be a non resident once the house is built. So if that house goes up quick, then next year there wouldn't be any revenue because they wouldn't be considered a non resident. So we can't plan for that because completely past a few months from now, they are paying this year, but we next year they could be an Andover resident. And if that's the case, then we wouldn't have revenue because they'd be residents.
But there's only one family. Alright. So let's make sure going forward that we have some revenue, true expenses and true revenues, not netting expenses by revenues Because Yep, I'll do that from here. It makes it really hard to follow. I'm just having a very hard time following numbers. So there's no other revenue that we have other than that. No. Mark, you're muted, so I can't hear you.
And then so I have another thing. Didn't we get some money this year from the state for
I'm gonna say COVID, but that may not be the right word that we used pay for That was in your too. Things like that? Yep. Mark, if you go, it was after this, it said where the COVID money came in.
What did we use it for? Right there. We had We don't know what we used it against. So that's a piece I'm missing. I know we got this money, but what did it pay for?
We we had 18,700 and then round two, 25,000. And the SR funds of 13, we received a total of 57. Right. So
This was this was a list, although it's not itemized, but this is the list of the areas where expenditures were
This is not planned, but I don't know if we actually use that money to pay for that stuff. Right? Because it gets earmarked, Diane, for specific things. You get a list of stuff that you can pay for with it and stuff that you can't pay for with it. So Right. So what I'm looking for is when I see a big expense item in the budget, let's say, your computers, okay, your Chromebooks or whatever. And if we use that money to pay for those, we say we had a $40,000 expense, but we had $20,000 that came in from the state. I just wanted to see that kind of relationship between what it was used for.
That might be a little hard in this. That's too hard. I mean, I don't want to go through totally agree with Diane, though, that we should never ever be budgeting any kind of net amount. There should be clear, you know clear. You know income and revenue versus versus expenditures because otherwise you can't do an apples to apples comparison and be it looks like you know you're trying to hide salary costs or something which you know. Don't want to say that's what happened what's happening, but it just it's that's not clear it makes it hard for people to understand it, so I think dan's point is well taken, I think next year with the new. With the new structured accounting and account system that we'll have because we're going to have a common accounting system between the school district and the town. Think it's just gonna become a lot more clear. And this is something Sherri will have the pleasure of working on over the next.
And I don't know how it's gonna roll up when we implementing this new system. Is it gonna start with the twenty one-twenty two budget year or we're in a phase in time? I just want to make sure as we start the new fiscal year, whether we have that system up or not, that we're doing it apples to apples. Do know what I mean? And not having it. You have one finance director so that's
going to help and certainly something we can monitor going forward but confidence that it'll be a little more clear to everybody probably you know as we start with the system, we all learn it together. Sherry, go ahead. I could.
Our hope is that we start July 1. That's our hope, you know, and that would be the ideal time to implement something like that. I have several different ideas of exactly what you're looking for in the details. I think with the new software system that will provide us with the details. Phoenix, the drawback of Phoenix Financial's software system, it never provided us with the details we needed in using the system. You just had to delve deep into it. And then you had to produce a lot of Excel spreadsheets to get to what you're looking for. I think with the new software system, we'll be able to do just that. And we'll be able to show you what our grant salaries are and what our regular salaries are. And there's ways of, you know, tracking that thing so it's crystal clear to everybody that's looking at a document in front of them. So I do have a lot of very good ideas and ones that I've used in my past district. And that I had a board similar ask those kinds of questions. So I'm hoping to implement that and maybe, you know, take your suggestions certainly tonight. And we'll definitely have the details that you are looking for moving forward.
Perfect. Thank you so much, Sherry. I'll shut up now so other people can ask questions. Thank you.
Are other questions related or for Valerie or just kind of while we're on That topic and some of the updates she provided. Okay, I guess, I understand why that why that salary number didn't make sense and. I it's unfortunate, but it kind of is what it is, because again it makes it impossible to really compare apples to apples are kind of knowing what the actual expenditures were. But it is where we are right now so let's I guess. Done talking about that for now. Any members of the board anything else for Valerie.
Mark, I would like to say Valerie answered my questions from our last meeting. She sent me a bunch of documentation today, which was much, much appreciated. And it it shed a lot of light on on on basically what I was talking about last meeting. So I do wanna I'm big banker for that and share or Excuse me? Anything specific you can share or is it just more I'll I'll actually I'll I'll send it I'll send it to all the members and they can they can look at it too because it just it did answer my questions and,
you know, and I'm more than satisfied with it. Okay. Alright. Thanks again, Val.
Well, there's nothing anything else specific to the. To the school or town budgets, you know that we want to hit up while we're here. I mean, it's really a segue I think at this point on to the item three C on the agenda, is discussed and act upon the proposed 2122 budget. I think we have some questions I want to say just point out that we've we've already cut some money out of the budget. I don't know if anybody was paying attention but since the school had budgeted 50,200 and the actual additional cost is only around 40,000 I think we're actually about $10,000
or so ahead so we'll take it where we can get it. But we are going to need to get updated numbers. You know I don't know Valerie if you're going to go back to the board or work with Laura to try to or cherry to try to you know modify that budget amount, but it seems to me that we could remove that amount for that was budgeted from the school budget without any harm. That make sense to you.
If in fact they are billing you guys for what we had already put in the budget that absolutely makes sense.
Okay. So we'll want to plug that. Eric will have to answer the question about the RAM offset. And again, I'm talking to Laura Blake tomorrow.
Yeah, and have a quick meeting so I'll ask her that specific question. Yeah while you were talking to Val I emailed the superintendent and asked him for that because what's I just pulled up the March 1 budget that they have and that doesn't match what he sent me on March 1. But what I'm wondering was is that he sent it to me in the morning and they had a budget meeting and then produce something else after that. So I suspect what's online is more current than what I have. It looks like that's that budget that's posted online. If that really is, if the 77,000 is not taken off of there, then that would be a further reduction of right around $20,000 from the budget number that's posted for RAM. Okay,
When you say the budgets that's on there, there's a proposed budget, proposed admin budget adjustments file and a proposed budget report. Is it one of those two that you're talking about versus the budget book?
So I had asked him just to send me what our levy is. And he sent me the information. He just gave me basically, you know, here's your final levy for this, here's your final levy for that. And I just added them up and that's what's reflected in our budget. But that doesn't really match up to the operating and capital budget, thing that the Region 8 budget that's posted. So, I don't know. I mean, what I would say is that the board, the RAM board is still going through their budget. And I think that the budget we have from them isn't final at this point anyway. Right. But I mean, we can get a guess of where a snapshot of where they are today,
but ultimately, we're a ways away from having any kind of approved or budget that they're willing to go to send a referendum because they haven't had their public hearing yet either. Okay.
So again, outstanding questions. We just don't have the information on where Ram is gonna end up. Right,
And on the town side, there is a potential for, you know, we're looking at potentially combining a couple of positions right now. If we did that, that would result in a fairly significant savings. But it's still got to go through the whole union negotiation process. So we're a long way to come from coming to any final conclusion on that.
How long do you think that process is going to take?
Anybody's guess, I can't tell you. We could ram it through, but
we've got to present a budget to the town. I don't know if it's something that's going to be realistic to put in there. And maybe you don't know that either. Don't need to answer the question if we don't know. So just Yeah, I'm just telling you that
there's a potential there, but we're nowhere near the point where we have a firm number on that. All right, thanks, fair enough. Are
there still specific questions with the budget as presented that's there. Does anybody have any questions about what's there on the town end that I can answer for you?
Yeah, I'd like to know about the In the past, we have supplemented the the expenditures of the town from the. You know, from the general fund, if you will. Correct and the decision was made at the Board of Selectmen's meeting to not do that, there was some discussion over possibly allocating $100,000 from the fund to offset the taxation increase and that $100,000 figure I believe came from a calculation of what a 10% fund level would be which is kind of the target fund level is that correct? Or am I correct on that? So that is correct.
Last year's budget, they chose to, we had, you know, based on the results of the audit, roughly 500,000 in excess funds from the unexpended fund balance. The Board of Select then made a decision to spend $4.20 out of that 500,000. So there was about $80,000 left that was excess over our capital reserve essentially. Targeted about, yeah. So there is that, and we know just because revenues last year were slightly ahead of projections and expenses we were under budget even with the money we transferred into the permanent or into the capital funds last year. So, I mean, I think we can safe, you could safely transfer or count on about a $100,000. It may be a little bit more, but that would be, I would really want the audit results before I
counted on more than 100,000 of that. I think you could safely count on 100,000 though.
Got it, okay. Just want to make sure I understood where that number was and where that ended up coming from.
One of the other things that I was kind of looking at today, I was looking at a lot of different towns budgets and things like that. And a lot of the towns are really tracking their COVID expenses very detailed and very separately. So they can actually see what percentage of their budget is being allocated to that. And I don't see us doing anything like that. And to me, I think that's a really important number for me to know. You know, when I see things like, you know, cleaning supplies, well, is that just normal stuff or is there increased stuff because of COVID or things like that? I think that detail is going to become important going forward, especially when we start getting all this money and we have to justify what we did. And I think it's really, I need to know when I look at this, what is a temporary expense and what's a long term expense?
Right, so I can tell you on the town's perspective, all total, realistically, when we added up what we actually expended for COVID related expenses, it was somewhere around 7,000 or $8,000 total. It was a pretty small value. But part of that is, you know, we just elected, you know, on the town's basis, if you think about what we really needed to do, we didn't increase any personnel costs by any means. I hand built all the plexiglass shielding for the town kind of in my spare time. Most of the PPE we got came directly from the state, from DEMS. So we had very little expense for that. So if you look at the expense that you could say is really directly related to COVID, the biggest single thing is probably the money spent by the registrars directly related to voting. And so we are going to probably be over in the registrar's budget this year. And we're probably gonna be over in the poll worker, the fund we pay poll workers and stuff like that out of. But it's not gonna be a big amount. I mean, I would say we've been pretty frugal and my guess is the town is gonna get away with about $15,000 in extra spending because of COVID. On the other hand, there's an awful lot of expenses we haven't had because of COVID,
and they basically balance out. Like for instance, we haven't really been able to do any senior programming. We haven't sent, normally we would be sending a bunch of employees would have been going to training. And a lot of that was reined in because it's just not offered. So I think net net, the town's about even. COVID was neither a cost savings nor a cost a big cost adder for the town.
What about the school side? I mean, that would be totally different. Correct. And I guess I would really like to see that we're keeping track of all those COVID items on the school side separate, you know, so we kind of can put our hands on it. So if I see an expense increase in say, you know, cleaning, well, how much is that is regular cleaning or extra cleaning? Do you know what mean? For COVID, you know I mean? Things like that.
I think that might be a possibility. It's gonna be very difficult to tease out of the current account structure.
Right. Unfortunately. For me, it's been hard looking at the budget to look at these increased expenses and what's driving it. I don't know. The details not there. You don't have it. I don't have it. Right. And you know I think hindsight is everything. We probably should make sure that going forward the next fiscal year if we have a lot of COVID-nineteen but that we're keeping track of it and being able to.
I'm really hoping next budget year we're going to have basically zero COVID related expenses. That may be a little optimistic at least on the downs end. Right.
Does anybody have any other specific questions for Eric or for Valerie. Hearing
none I'm going to suggest we move on agenda item, which is the. Here it is. 3C which is just to discuss and act upon the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty one twenty twenty two budget, we've obviously already been doing that. We haven't really gotten to the point where we're I think zeroing in on any particular solution. We, as we all know, we've got a pretty significant increase in the school we've got a significant increase in the town it's it's not it's not it's not huge. Then we have an offset reduction from Ram, although we don't really know how much yet. One of the things that I'm just going to throw this up here for just a general. I guess general review. Is if I have calculated this correctly, which is always. Always open for verification. One of the things that Rob had suggested, I think last time was okay, do we want to pull a target? Do we want to say, we don't think we can get a 7.58% increase tax through it's just a lot to do it's unreasonable the town's people are going to vote it down or worse come after us with pitchforks and torches. Do we have kind of a target that we would need to shoot for I don't like to budget this way. But we also know we're living in reality, one of the things that I kind of worked up earlier today is you know if we did look at various tax increase levels, what does that really mean,
and this is where I think this ended up Eric, this is the based on your version eight of the budget you provided last time. Yep okay So it could have some differentials. We just talked about a couple thousand dollars here and there. We need to understand what the ramp budget is really going to be, but this is kind of where we are. The various mill increase and the that would result in a various percentage increase, along this top this blue shaded line and that might be hard for some of you to see. That blue line is the percent mill increase.
No, that's the percent tax increase. Okay, that's the overall increase in taxes. Okay, if we did that, you know what would the mill rate be, which is kind of what Eric did in his original mill rate calculation was showed it in a similar fashion there's different ways you can look at it. The current proposed budget is here. Where are we yeah so so what that would be you know if you this is proposed, but if we propose that we were going to try to accept let's say a 5%. Increase if we thought we might be able to get that through the town, what would it take for us to get there that equates to a taxation total tax revenue level of 10,149,349. Which means that somewhere in the current budget, we would have to find $250,000 so I thought that just by doing this exercise gave us at least an idea of the scope and scale of what we would need to target in order to try to hit some. Level of increase it's 7.58%.
Various ways we can do that we just talked about the potential and safely. Using the fund balance of $100,000 that's not currently reflected in this budget, that is an option. Board of Selectmen opted not to include that in their budget for understandable reasons. Personally, I'd rather not have to do that. But again, we're facing a significant challenge this year. The school budget we've already talked about there's a significant increase out there. We think we need to make some decisions about what's happening there. What's the impact if we were to reduce the school budget by a certain amount? We obviously know that we have a very high teacher to student ratio or low student to teacher ratio, if you want to look at it that way. And that's one of the things that is appealing and attractive to Andover residents who have children in school. And we all know that,
and this is a year in which it was a challenge if you had more students per school, it would have been tough to keep everybody in. I think we've all been through that quite a bit and I don't know where we go from there. But I think that this at least gives us something to look at and try to understand the scope of the problem if we think that we're going to need to reduce this tax increase proposed. I'll send this to you guys.
I mean, even if you just take that 5%, which I still think is too much of an increase, but for us to find $249,000 without using that $100,000 That's a tough nut. There's no I don't think we can find it. So without some drastic cuts and services. Right. Yeah, or some massive capital cuts Or some massive capital. And we further
kick that can down the road that we've been doing for fifteen years. Yeah, I'll just throw this out there that to the extent that we want to consider using fund balance for anything. In my humble opinion, it should be used for capital, not for operating expenses. Know that may be a distinction without all that much difference but,
you know, well if we were using if we were to use the fund balance and reduce capital expenditures considerably then I think your, your distinction is an important one, you know, for all intents and purposes that's what we'd be doing right. Yeah,
if you if you took 100,000 and you threw it at capital, then you get to 150 in cuts to get to 5%. And by the way, I agree with you, Mark. Budgeting this way is kind of backwards but you know as I said you know kind of reality you know we have to ultimately produce a budget that is passable so you know to me my gut and my gut can lead us astray so don't just listen to that But 5% strikes me as kind of an upper bound level at which we can go to the town and expect it expect to possibly pass something. Going to the town with a 6.5% increase, which is where we stand now is we stand at 7.58. Oh sorry sorry my bad yes. That's a definite no.
I mean that's not even yeah so if you're at five and you get there. Yeah. I mean, five is big. No question. Yeah. In one year to go up five, I mean, it used to be, we used to, you know, we used to kick around one, two. Five in one year, okay But if we could do that, where only a portion, you know, we can we can throw some money at capital fine, you know, I'm, this has been a long running issue. You guys know this. I probably know it better than some that we have been throwing fund balance at capital for some time. We've also been underfunding capital for some time. And so, you know, it's an exercise in hand kicking, but at the same time, you know we somehow have to make this work and so if we really do have about give or take of you know some dollars 100,000 that we could potentially put into capital Part of me thinks that as much as I dislike spending on our fund balance further than where it is, I also dislike letting the town's infrastructure rot another year and then spending more to catch up. Know Eric has a plan that I think is really good to get us current in our you know kind of our infrastructure and the further behind we fall the more expensive it ultimately is.
So I can justify to myself anyway throwing some fund balance at the capital budget but I also think that if we do that we also have to try to find some cuts to get us to again my gut is that the 5% figure is the place where we can target and I grant you all that 5% is still a significant tax increase and it may not pass but we're at seven and a half so you know and we all know how hard it is to cut money out of town budget. If we can cut, guess my feeling is and this is not need based this is just me trying to think of things. How do we get there? Maybe we can take it in and think of it as a ratio. Like the town budget is 20 some odd percent of the total. If we need to cut $150,000
out of it, out of our total budget, you know then maybe that means that we need to cut $40,000 out of the town budget we need to cut we need to ask the board of ed to go back to the Andover education budget and cut x and then we need to go to ram and say guys we need you to work on this and we need you to come in lower you know in a way in such a way we get to fight I don't think that we can get to fud just by cutting our town budget I just don't even think that's possible. How are we gonna fight 150, let alone two fifty? Right. There's no way. No, without eliminating the resident state trooper. Did anybody see the blow
up on Facebook over that? No, that's one of the reasons I left. 100 comments on that thing.
Mean, I I can just tell you I've been there before.
Right. We all said that last week we I know that was probably the one of the first votes I took place in in the town was about the resident state trooper residents made their opinion known very clearly
at that time. It's the third rail and end of our politics. The reality is that that's 150 right there but people don't want to give it up people want to pay for that and so yeah you know that's how it works. Yeah so you know I took a run at that I'll take a run at it again with you guys if you want but I pretty sure I know how it's going to go yeah it was a very emotional posting thing it was very interesting to read through those I can also tell you that when I was on the board the first time we tried this and we went to town meeting obviously it's before COVID we had a packed house in the town hall and the number of people who stood up and spoke you know and it was there were a variety of people it wasn't just one demographic of the town
they had broad support and you know ironically that was the trooper that we had to get rid of but the point is that the trooper program was heavily supported and when it went to a vote I mean it wasn't close.
Feel like I'm doing my job if I didn't at least bring up the issue.
Right, oh we should bring up the issue and we should probably lay it out for the taxpayers again just to point it out like look this we can get you here or we can get you here but you know we took a run at this a few years ago with data not just the budget data but we actually did a deep dive into crime statistics and everything and it had very little impact. So just FYI, I'm there with you guys if you want. I do think that given this sort of budgetary pressure that I would be on board with the rest of you if you wanted to go this route and try cutting it. I'm just saying I'm pretty sure how the town is going to react. That's all I'm done.
Rob I'm just gonna kind of ditto that I remember that well. The only thing if we're gonna go that route is we need to frame it as here's your option town. You wanna pay X, you wanna pay Y and don't hit them with data we already tried that. I think we need to put it in the town's lap, but I think it's our job. I don't think we can sit here and say, Oh, that was a difficult road to go down. We're not going down it again. I think our job is to look at the numbers, look at the budget, whether it's an easy decision or a hard one and just present it to the town.
I agree with you. I feel like that's part of what we did last time and we got our answer. Maybe the answer will change but we should put it out there as a like this is the specific differential I remember actually Dave you may remember this too at town meeting this specific question was asked what exactly is the mill rate difference between trooper and no trooper and when we answered that question because we I think Dan Warren answered the question at the time you know people just shrug you know we're like fine we'll pay for that. It was like $30 wasn't it, it was cheap. It was less than half a mil, I forget what it was. It was less than half a mil yeah. Probably 0.18
mil. Oh yeah, 0.2 mils yeah exactly so I was even high. So you know the problem with it is obviously is that though it is a single large line item for our town budget it's dwarfed by other parts of our overall budget. But, you know, we're trying to make the numbers add up, looms large for us. And I get that and I'm with you, Dave, that we should at least take it to the town as an option. How we frame that, you know, failed spectacularly. Yeah.
They And out of emotional issue it's a financial issue, but I know people will make it emotional. I can't know I'm not responsible for that it's. Yeah
I mean yeah I agree with you, David and ultimately everything is a is an emotional issue, what are we willing to pay for what do we value in our town, what do we think it's worth it, you know I mean there. What's your risk factor what's your tolerance for risk right, so you know I mean you could say the same thing for the schools and for the roads and everything else. I don't know how we present it, I personally am loath to take this back to a town boat, because I think we all know where that's going to go. But we could I mean we could I to me that's that's maybe taking. Some time that we don't necessarily want to spend, but we could. The other thing is, we could present a budget that has it in or has it out with a you know has it in with a high tax increase or has it out with a low tax increase and thereby we are doing the same thing with a referendum,
making the decision a little harder. Because it's packaged within they're making it clear, this is the impact, know that's that's part of what the process really is right. Go ahead Rob. I feel like the thing we have to do is we have to do our level best to get where we need to go before
messing with the trooper line item. And then that's our cherry on top to get to our final number you know option. We have to look at everything else do everything we can and then say we're at 5.5% and that gets us to five okay Then we try for it or it gets us to four and a half, whatever it is. We got to do everything we can before that because obviously if we're going to bring that cut to the town when we know full well that it's a valued thing then we have to, we honestly be able to tell people that we have absolutely gone through everything else, stripped out literally everything else we can that we think is responsible. I mean, not that I think actually stripping anything out of the town budget at this point is responsible, but bear with me.
And then say, okay, we did our level best. This is where we're at. Here we are with the trooper, here we are without the trooper, your call. That makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is to look at it as our first choice.
Agreed. I agree, I think we have to look at the school budget more and other things and then that's like
straw that breaks the camel's back I guess, so to speak. I don't know if it was Dave or Rob somebody mentioned that you know there was broad support for this, it wasn't one demographic was really. That was me. The state trooper you know that wasn't you know that and I, and that was my perception from that vote also. What we are going to not have is broad support for the school budget. So you know we've got to justify whatever we present you know it's got to be it's got to be you know provide a reasonable service to the town and you know and the students and and and yet be responsible also so that that one's going to be that one's going to be an uphill battle. We know that I mean it's we've already heard it we've heard it from residents, you know I think we all have a little concern the board of selectman certainly very expressed a lot of concern. It's been difficult to tease out the actual costs where they're going everything so that I think adds to the kind of the frustration and concern over it. I think very optimistic that we'll get past that going forward, but we are where we are right now. The school budget, I think we're going to have to take a look at it and kind of see where where. What we think I mean there's there's really two approaches to that we can we can look at the general expenditures and say hey we've got to find X amount to reduce we've got to find a way to do that somehow. Or flat flatly we just have to look at the staffing level right, I mean let's just call it as it is the the student teacher ratio is low
and Valerie made some. Clear arguments for by I think that it should be low and then you know she and I had a conversation since kind of outside the meetings just you know for her it's very much a concern about cost avoidance in the future that's the way I would. Characterize it that her concern is because of the situation where we are in some of these classes that we have the potential. To have additional outplacement or additional services they're going to be required, which, as we all know, if you follow us at all we did those those are not optional, it's become part of a order some IEP or whatever that those requirements are. That ends up becoming problematic for us.
Can I just throw something out there? Yeah, first of all, yes, outplacements very expensive. So, you do want to avoid that. A couple of years ago, I can't remember how many years ago, two, three years ago, we were thought we were facing a massive budget crunch. We actually were saved in the end by Deus Ex Machina of a state budget that kicked the can. But at the time we were really terrified that we were going to have a million dollar shortfall and we were scrambling. And then at the time we asked Sally what she could do. And when she came to the board that year, she came with like three scenarios. Know, scenario one was some kind of minor cut, scenario two was a reduction in specials and things like that. Scenario three, it wasn't until you got to the really bad one where you started letting teachers go. And I agreed with that general approach that the last thing I wanna do is fire a teacher,
especially somebody, you know, an experienced good teacher, they're actually not that, you know, easy to find if you need them back you may not get them so there was a sort of staged presentation that Sally gave that year You know if we need to cut this much here's what we could do. If we need to cut this much here's what we could do and here if in the total disaster scenario here's what we could do. And I kind of think maybe that would be a good framework to go at this if we want to ask the board of Ed to revisit their budget. We need to come up with a number we need to ask them for. And then they need to tell us if that's the number, here's how we could get there without know egregiously slashing services to our students.
Or we slash services but this is the decision you make that we're not cut slack. Right, mean we go and we ask them for a million dollars obviously. Correct
here's how it would affect people and you know I'm familiar with this not only from past budget discussions but obviously I have the two kids in school so but that's sort of important information it's also important information for the board and the board of both boards board of finance and board selectmen you know when we take this to the town then have to explain to them why we arrived at where we arrived at. Well we looked at these scenarios, you want a lower tax rate that means firing two teachers or something like that. That's important information to know so that we can give people that and say look that's the choice. This isn't because the school is buying some whiz bang thing or we're
building a new athletic field or something like that. We're talking about literally educating students and here's where the money goes. So that's my gut is that that framework that our passive superintendent used to bring to us and say here's our levels, this is where we could go, If you absolutely need these cuts, this is where we can do it. We don't want to do this, but this is how we could do it if we had to, might be valuable. Just my thought.
I think we have to back into a number, a percentage number of what we think is a response increase in the school budget, and then come up with a dollar amount and let them find the cost savings, however they can find it, and let them make the decision. I mean, there's no way we're going get around with this without reducing the school budget. It's too high.
And, Dan, I would also say that if the board's intention is to do that with the town, you you do me the same thing. If you tell me what you need to reduce, you know, I'll take it from somewhere. It'll probably mostly be coming out of capital.
If you I'm not in favor of kicking the can because next year, the budget isn't going to be any easier. Do know I mean? We're going be in the same place.
I mean, we are potentially right now talking about eliminating one more town hall employee, which but again, that's a union fight for that to occur. But that would provide a fairly large cost savings.
The other thing and Valerie you had indicated before that it is pretty clear to you that this would not. We would not remain at the staffing levels for the next budget year is that correct.
That's correct. This year we already have eliminated for this new budget one pair position. And we have replaced that outgoing teacher with a teacher that's at a lower level. And we've already reduced the secretary position from twelve months to ten months. So we we did have staffing level changes going into the new it was just no people lost their job that currently work there. So we did do that. But, yes, I I told you from here going forward that, you know, we'll obviously hope that we don't have an increase in special ed kids or things like that, but it was not my intent after this year to keep both kindergarten and grade three with that that extra class so that yes, that that is correct.
And we're getting ahead of ourselves but you you expect some attrition there. Actually
with, if you looked four years out, within those four years so I don't know if it's going to be two in a row or one and then none and then one there should be two more staff members within the four years leaving. So if the enrollment stayed the same, then that would be those two classes.
All right. So it doesn't change the picture for next year, but I think it does provide a context for of for the future. You just brought that up because Diane said it's not going to get any easier next year. I'm actually hoping it will be.
I'm thinking about building a senior center. That's where I'm thinking it's going to be the next fact. Know it's going to happen next year so. Without a significant increase in taxation that's not going to happen either unless we.
So I mean it's going to be tough with that issue coming up next year so.
And we all like most of us feel pretty strongly that that's something we have to take a hard look at it's another significant issue in this town is having a good Community Center where that you know, it can be a senior Center and provide those other services.
I think market, I think we already put that out in the forefront that it's the it's the number one issue that we have to take care of in this town because they've been put off for forty some odd years. So as far as the senior center goes, I'm kind of leaning towards what Dave Hewitt had said. You know, we need to, as a board, I think we need to reach a spot where we think we should be, figure out what percentage that is, but I think we should also educate the townspeople, you know, put the things out there, you know, do we do we cut do we cut the capital budget? Do we cut the school? Do we cut the resident trooper? Do we cut this or that? Feel the pulse of the of the town first. Think I think we have time to do that. It's going to to happen soon, but somehow between us and the Board of Selectmen come up with some type of survey or whatever. Yeah,
that's the thing I would struggle with. I agree with it. Would love to know, okay, if you could put this to the town today, who's going to vote on this piece? Who's going to vote on that piece? But it's tough to get that information. Not sure how we- Well, I'll tell you, I'm working with the town of Colchester right now
on part of what they're struggling with and what they're looking at, and they send it out early to the townspeople, early meaning probably a month ago. They're looking at a 12 to $14,000,000 senior center that needs to be built right away and they're also looking at close to $5,000,000 worth of fire apparatus. That's why I'm involved in it and they sent a survey out showing the need for those two items on top of their regular operating budget, which shows an increase, which covers the rest of the town of Colchester. But you'd be surprised how the survey was answered by every person in town, pretty much. I mean, there was hundreds and hundreds of answers, most of them were affirmative. They know they have to bite the bullet for these two major expenditures, the number one, take care of the seniors and take care of their first responders.
And that's it was really they did a pretty good mailer or whatever, but it was mailed survey.
Yeah, that's what it looks like. You just hop online with it and answer the questions. But a good portion of the town, the seniors, school supporters, the fire departments, police supporters, everybody else came forward and answered a question. I, what I read, you know, it looks good for both both gonna be able to pass with it probably a tax increase. We need, we need to educate the people right now and, and like, like David said, you know, put them all out there. Here's what we're looking at, you know, do we do we cut do we cut the Eric's budget? Do we cut you know, I mean the fire department capital equipment, know, do we do we cut other capital equipment?
I think you think to make that work you'd have to have a very specific issue. So I can see where that would work for like a senior center funding or or capital for for the emergency services or for a state trooper or
But the question the questions they pose to the people involve the entire budget, the entire Colchester budget not just those two items you know is the is the budget too high you know is do you support the the senior center you know and it would across the board you know school I mean they're they had a thing in there do you think the school budget's too high? And the people answered it and, you know, and they, I think the board of finance there got a good idea of what the people are willing to, to pay for. So
it's great to get that information. Remember those surveys we tried to do last year online? We didn't get a whole lot of good. I mean, we got a basic of remember how we struggled with the increases last year and you know, and I guess it's all, like you said, all in how you word the questions and how you gather the information because it can't be narrative. It's got to be yes, no kind of stuff. You can really tally and do a statistical analysis.
Yeah, their entire survey is online. That's where I saw it. Because I had to follow the You answered the comment that it was all online. Everybody's online and
all the answers are shared online. So that's what I I got. I mean, my only comment to piggyback on that is if we go that route and we want to do something like that, we have to publicize it in some way. A lot of what we always struggle with is participation.
Wasn't Eric working on that? Eric weren't you working on that a couple weeks ago? A letter that you're going to post in the newspaper?
I gave the letter to both you and the Board of Selectmen. The Board of Selectmen asked me, said they wanted to modify it before publication, but they have not actually Because done it
I did suggest on there what you're speaking of to really kind of comprise it up where you have questions at the very end, very specific questions for townspeople to say, Do you feel that we should, for example, reduce the Andover budget, the school budget? Things like that. And then to channel that into the town somehow, so we know ahead of time what
some of the townspeople are thinking. Well, I mean, that in a sense is why we have a budget meeting, you know. People don't come to.
Well, but people don't vote either. Mean, let's Nobody be could come last year from May. There
are a couple ways to address that. First of all, number one, at the town meeting you're right you know not everybody attends but you know you put a 5% tax increase on the board and you'll boost participation. Number two, you know part of our problem is you know this process happens in the spring, people are used to making their big decisions in the fall with our regular you know bigger elections and so we're sort of mismatched mismatched and that's an issue I don't know that's an issue we can get around given the fiscal year. But you know what I would just say is it's useful to a point to have somebody give a yay or nay is the school budget too high too low or just right? But that doesn't that tells you something but it doesn't it's not exactly like you're not putting in front of a voter and this is something you could do at a town meeting
okay if you think it's too high in order to cut it we have to do this not we by the way board of ed but in order to cut that that means you have to reduce this or you have to consolidate classes you do whatever And that's the nitty gritty, you know step two comes into play.
You know you might get your answer that people think the school budgets too high but then you, where you go, think you have to do exactly what you said, Robbie, you need to, you need to phrase the question such that the proposed budget includes this. It's a significant increase, here are two options. You could. You know, we could reduce. You could you could eliminate a teaching position, but the impact is X, Y and Z and your and your net benefit would be approximately $30 per person right, I mean that's how you presented it ultimately for the for the state trooper.
Mark, one thing I would caution you on is the school board, you know makes a decision what they do with the budget, right, obviously have bottom line authority but not, you can't say kind of teacher versus not absolutely but I totally envision anything like this going out is a co
effort of the school board the board of slackman and the Board of Finance. So, would be the kind of thing I think we're Rob would Rob made his point like you say hey for somebody Dave, you know, we would go and say to the okay, you know, Board of Ed and Valerie if we need you to cut 75,000 what's the impact, if we need you to kind of 150,000 what's the impact if we need to cut 250,000 what's the impact, and then we could. We could from that point we can construct something that logically presents those impacts, the town, And we would do the same for the state trooper issue I think that's the golden opportunity to put that before the town without. Having a lot of delays or another boat or some kind of town meeting that we say you know hey we can eliminate the state trooper position this was you know widely popular three years ago but it's it's a single high expense line item in the town that would probably you know may have an impact on the services, you know what however we present it. Can provide you know, would you be in favor of reducing the. Unexpected fund balance in order to to offset a tax increase, despite the fact that this means further down the road. We're still going to have to catch up to the infrastructure, so we could construct questions in that manner that would hopefully not be either leading or you know that would be clear about what the impacts are. I think it could be done.
If we were going to do that, I think that's the kind of thing we would do is make it clear to each in each topic, This is the impact. This is the mill rate impact. This is the dollar impact on average per household. And then people have a context by which they can make a decision.
It's just information we're not going to get everybody responding but it might be a way to do it. And if we do do it, do think we have to pick like two or three things you can overload people, it has to be Yes,
very concise right, it has to be simple. Well, think that's a good point. That's a really good point. I think the way we do that, he is Eric said we go to him and we say, all right, find me $50,000 $100,000 you know we go to the Board of Ed and say find us 50 or $100,000 And then we come up with our three three items, you know, or whatever it is. Right.
We have to come up with the increase and back into it and then throw the numbers back and then see what comes
back out. That's right. Mark, how about how about and I don't think we haven't done it yet. About a letter from the Board of Finance, along with the board of selectmen to each board and commission in town and says, you know, we're looking at this this these major this major tax increase. Do you have any any fat in your budget? And everybody does. Don't tell me they don't, you know, that you can cut for now, you know, or, you know, that in I mean, instead of, like, instead of us painting the painting the hall at the firehouse, it'll put put that off for a year, things like that under building maintenance and you know where where can you help us with savings in your budget and see what see what the board send you back
I mean that hasn't been done yet and we we used to get them all the time with the fire commission You know, it was zero increase this year. So plan it that way. That was even prior to the budget season starting. So, but let's, let's go back to each board and commission and say, hey, you know, we're looking at this. What can you help? How can you help us? You know, in your, in the regular budget. They may come back, you know, I mean, you know, of course, it'd be up to the entire board, but they may come back and says, well, we'll put off this purchase this year, you know, because we can and, and you know, and that would reduce our, you know, even our capital or even our operating budget
per se. So yeah, I think something like that may be of value and one of the things that I think we need to be careful about or where we might be able to gain some traction is that. Departments will often do contingency planning. I don't know if that's the case with with the town departments, I don't know how much of it that's the case ma'am I don't know how much of the case of the board of Ed, but we have a fund right we have a contingency funds that if we needed to tap we could in theory do that right. So we would. I'm throwing this out there so I'm looking for some input, but you know there would be us, we could potentially go to them not only and say, look for things you can put off till next year, but also, you know, don't plan for contingencies. If it turns out you budget very tight and you need to over expend, we'll deal with it then. Not necessarily a bad way to do it.
Basically, let's throw out the 7.5% increase that we're staring at right now and say, commissions? What can you do to help us reduce that? Because you know it's not going to fly. Know, when we go back to drawing boards back then and do we ask them now or do we ask them later after it gets turned down? And and throughout the resident troopers, I mean, you know, that idea of getting rid of them again throughout the, you would really want to chop the school board, you know, amount and things like that. They may have they may have be able to do something within their regular operating budget to to reduce their overall costs, you know, same with the Board of Fire Commissioners, same with the planning and zoning and everybody else in town. I think every we need to reach out to every board and commission
first to ask how can you help? A one of us that can't go through the budget again and see where we may be okay. We can start with ourselves. We've got a $4,200
line item for the Board of Finance. There you go. Three years, four years, right? Right, there you go.
Guys, quick question of Eric. I think that should be done sooner than later.
Contingency, we just brought up the contingency. Remind me contingency for the town is usually what $50.75 something like that $50,000
so and how much do we use represents about 1.4% of the budget what did we use this year
We not this this year we're not well, we're probably not going to need to tap contingency this year. We didn't
I feel like we used some last year. Tap last year, the year before.
We didn't, but we didn't because we went back for supplemental appropriation for a couple of different, for three things. Actually, last two years, we've gone back to the town for supplemental appropriation, one for IT, and the year before for the emergency truck replacement and the replacement of the old backhoe with the loader. So the last few years, we did it by we didn't use contingency, but we burned a supplemental appropriation from the unexpended fund balance. Okay.
And I would say too that you know one of the things I thought we ought to consider and it wouldn't do us any good this year but we ought to set the contingency up as a permanent fund so if you don't use contingency and you maintain that contingency money you use it from subsequent budgets. You just roll it. Right essentially. Yeah.
You have a target percentage amount you just work with. Yeah, budget goes down, we got lucky we get rid of Okay.
Yeah, I mean, the things that you know in terms of large expenses that are very hard to predict. I mean the biggest thing from the town's perspective is what your winter snow removal costs are going to be which that that budget the snow removal alone is $100,000 budget, but then it also adds a lot to your maintenance. So it's really, you can think of snow removal as about $125,000 expense to the town, but that's highly variable. It's been, I think it was three or four years ago, we went way over in snow removal. The winter before this one, you know, was very mild and we went way under and we plowed that basically into purchasing capital equipment because we had it. This year, we're in really good shape right now. The only thing that's really problematic is that the state has basically thrown one of the two major salt distributors in the state off
the New Haven or the New London Pier. So salt costs in the last month have gone from around $63 a ton, which is what we're locked into, to a lot of towns right now are paying over $100 and trucking it themselves. So that's one of the things that's Nobody really knows. That's one of my concerns for next next year is if we really were stuck with paying $100 a ton and we had a winter even the same as this year, we would be way over in salt. Now we're going to spend the rest of this year's SALT budget and we're gonna pack away as much as we can in the shed to give us a little bit of slack on that next year. But that's one I'm nervous about.
A perfect example of where having a contingency fund helps level that out. Absolutely, absolutely. You budgeted at what you know $100,000 every year, you've got 50,000 sitting in a contingency fund, maybe not earmarked for that but under you know, giving you the question, and then, you only spend a boom, maybe that extra 20 goes into that contingency fund. Or if it's fully funded we you know we move it to a capital somewhere improvements or something okay. Yeah.
So I think that's something, that is something I wanted to bring up to the board, not necessarily at this meeting, but I think the board ought to explore eventually going to a capital foot, putting contingency in a capital fund so that once it's funded then you don't have to put more money into it just like right now we're putting money in this year into the employee retirement payout fund basically because way the contracts or the union contracts are if you retire and you've got a ton of sick days you can cash in a quarter of them. We haven't put money in that in quite a while, but the last two years, we've depleted a fair amount of money from that. So this year, we're going to have to put money into it. And that's just a permanent fund that's sitting out there. I would consider doing the same thing with contingency. It will not help us this year, but it can potentially help us in future years.
It's a good idea. It's definitely worth exploring. Well, I think we've got some good ideas, although we haven't made any decisions Kurt, I like your idea of just going back to the boards and various things and just making clear what our situation is and seeing if we can get any movement. You know, personally I look at the Board of Finance line item that's primarily I think for legal opinion backup. Know we haven't spent much over the last couple of years, could we could cut that by $3,000 probably off the drop of a hat, the risk is we might need to use it, but you know what we we find a way to get it happen. You know, to get it done and to make it happen if we if we did need it. It was a debate whether even needed it for our budget so so you know my view, I think what Kurt suggesting is makes sense, I still think we might want to consider finding a way to take the town's. Overall, if we can get some type of consensus on where they are and what on each of these particular line items. But that probably should follow if we do what Kurt's suggesting.
I think the letters should come from yourself, Jeff McGuire and Eric to all the boards and commissions. And Shannon. Shannon too. Yep.
That's fine. That's fine. And maybe we'll break them from the RAM Board of Ed, but we're have less control there.
Right. Let's start with the in town boards and commissions and see we can get out of that. Other thoughts and suggestions?
So if we do the letter, then meanwhile, we have to really kind of then work on what the backwards, but I call it backwards, but what number is a doable number and
come up with $1 amount of what we need to find. Right, correct. I think that that makes sense, you know again Eric if you can send the updated budget spreadsheet that you have will answer the question about the ram reimburse reimbursement whatever it's called. Make sure that we have that data correct and try to have some reasonable estimates of what the ram expenditures are going to be. And you know I'll update what I just did here if you guys find that helpful to show hey if we have a, these are different tax increase levels, you know this is, this is what we've got to cut from that current thing I think it just kind of provides a little bit of a scope, you know context for it, see how hard do we really have to go at this. And we know I'll distribute that to everybody, but I think you're right we get we have to think about that diane's you know as Robin suggested originally a couple meetings ago you know use use find a target number that we think might be workable and then we'll work we'll work from that and see see if we can get somewhere with it. So there's really multiple prongs one is looking at the budget exactly you know from that perspective, two is going back to the back to the departments of the boards and then three is concurrently coming up with a mechanism try to. Gauge the town's residents perspective on each of these key items, because there are I think you're right, there are going to probably be two or three key items that are going to be hot button items that schools, obviously one you know, we know the state trooper is a very.
Topical issue or hot emotional issue, but I think it's incumbent upon us is I think what Dave and others said, to maybe have to it's our job to put it out there. And let me people understand what the what the impacts are so there's probably multiple these three approaches we work on all three All three things simultaneously and then hopefully we can come back and things may start to gel work work, are we getting close. And we're going have to make some hard decisions at some point, but I think if we think if we start from those three points and move ourselves down the road will be in a better position to kind of really know where we are. What more work we have to do that that would be my take on it.
Think we need lots of budget workshops. Need quite a few more meetings. Is gonna be a tough one. Yeah, yeah. And I think this is harder than last year. So,
yeah, actually have to go back to the public, you know, you were able to just do it. Right. Well, well,
that was the reason it was easier last year, these last year was easier because none of us wanted to take, we were planning for a hard budget year. Weren't willing to do that to the residents in a covert environment in the pandemic environment so. And now we're having to pay that price a little bit, but it was the right thing to do, I think. Yeah.
So yeah, as a board we have to kind of come to a meeting of the minds for what our target is. That's really where we need to go in my opinion. We gotta pick a number.
Yeah. I think we, I'll put my little thing out because I think five is, like you said, it's at the top. I think we gotta look at four and five. I mean, I think four may be hard, but I don't know if we went under four if we can ever find the money so that's the whole thing.
I agree I'm in that same space you know that 5% it was my gut level target you know and we take it to the town if that fails we have to go back to the drawing board but we shoot for five and see if we can get to five let's see if we can get to five and then bring it to the town and say we got to five by doing all these things if you want more we got to cut more and what do you want to do? So that's my take that's my gut that's still a huge you know in the context of what this town has done in the last ten years there's still a big number but it's
know it's not seven and a half. Right. So can we find two and a half or 2.6% in this budget? That's my take.
Well, I mean, the first thing is, I would suggest you I mean, me personally, I would suggest what I suggested to the first electman and the chair of the board of finance already, which is go to RAM and be very blunt and say, you guys are out of control. You need to cut your budget significantly. And if you don't, the town is gonna be forced to pursue breaking the RAM charter, which is not in any of our best interests. So you're gonna have to bring it down. I would have done that a couple of months ago at the beginning of their budget process.
So right now the RAM budget increases 2% in the March 1 packet I think is what I read.
Yeah I mean the budget to Andover is basically flat.
Right. But their overall budget increases 2%. Right. It's a little compact here, our little levy that's killing us.
Well, actually the levy got better this year. Right. Last year was, we went up some $300,000 with the level budget because our portion of it jumped. So we've come down slightly from that and it's helped, but it's not ideal. But they face the same challenges as everybody. Education is expensive. Life's expensive. Nobody wants to pay taxes. I don't.
I still don't follow how they're aren't they going down 70 students or something and they still really didn't cut any
position? I think that's Eric's main point. In. Yeah, we, and I know Adrian and others have brought that up at different points is that, you know, enrollment has dropped and it's we haven't seen a decrease in the costs. And we all know it's not always that simple. It's not going to be a one to one ratio. We all know that but no, there needs to be a recognition and a movement towards it or darn good reason why it isn't happening.
Anybody know just off the top of your head if Ram came in at 1% to do what that saves us.
Well, it depends on what the levy number is but our levy is from Ram appears to be. 17.13%.
Yeah it's well it's yeah but it's $5,200,000 So if they dropped it 1%. 52,000. Right.
Well, percent, I'm saying like a 1% increase as opposed to 2% increase. Right, right, Decrease in the toll budget. I don't know if that's the same number. Budgets like $30,000,000
their budget somewhere. Okay, so if the increase. Net expenditure is $603,000 so it's basically 20% of that so it's it's you know 150,000. Okay. Yeah there's your trooper. We won't get $200,000 out of that. No but
you know what I'm saying is like like a 2% increase on its face. It's a $100,000 space. Yeah it doesn't sound crazy but it's in the context it's enrollment but.
Oh no, I take that back it would be about 50,000. 52,000. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. That's not a lot. I guess the other question is what do we want from him?
I'd like to see him stay flat but I mean that's just off the seat of my pants I haven't looked at the
last year was flat right there. Budget was zero last year I thought was it flat. I thought it was However,
ours went up Yeah, because of our levy went up. So That's right. Now they're going up and their levy's flat, but they're a lot, I mean, they're still losing 90 students. Right.
And they're increasing their budget. That's what I, and they've been doing that consistently. And at one point they did trim fairly good trim of staff, but then it leveled out, you know. And to me, it just, you know, it's the same thing. If you look at their cost, you know, the cost basis to the town for education, it's really up there. You know, and, you know, again, RAM provides a really good education, You know, it's a really cool bling bling building. It'd be a nice building to work in, no question. It's just simply a question of does the town want to keep can the town afford to keep paying for that? That's not, that's the voters. That's, you know, the education budget, that's not my bailiwick. The only thing I have to say about is the town budget, is the town spending.
Is the RAM referendum voting before our referendum or is it like the same week in May?
Before ours, but it's not a lot before ours. Okay.
Do we anticipate any more money is coming from the, especially what's going on right now, talking about more funds coming through?
So, there, if you look at the number that came from Crogg, the town of Andover looks like it's gonna get 3 and $19,050 spread over two fiscal years. $160,000 However, you cannot use that to offset taxation. The only infrastructure spending they authorized was water sewer and telecommunications. It does us zero flipping good. You know, I was looking at that and I was wondering what we could actually even potentially spend the money on. It's actually kind of annoying because from the town's perspective it's
can't spend the money on anything because we haven't had any loss of revenue because of COVID. It's really tied to that. That is part of our problem. Yeah. We can't lose any revenue.
Can it be channeled to the schools? They have to show that there's been a loss? No? No. Okay.
It could be channeled, I think if because we had more social services expense, maybe?
That was the one area I was wondering But you whether have we could keep records. The record keeping is gonna be pretty tough.
Yeah, I was kind of wondering whether we could expend that money against And I also But I know. Mean, you know, the devil's in the details and we don't know any details at this point. Maybe with maybe for the outplacement,
if they anticipate that coming up? Because that's social security But you have to a cause by COVID. It can't be and you have to prove it. Have to be able prove it. Do know what I mean? You can't just say, Well, I think this is why.
I mean, that would be on the social worker's plate to prove it. And I think something like that could be proven based on what a a lot of kids are going through right now. So I'm just wondering if that would be maybe something that they could possibly use.
I can't remember if social services was included. It was all seemed to be tied to loss of revenue, loss of funding due to COVID.
Acceptable use of funds to respond to the public health emergency or its negative economic impacts, including assistance to households, small businesses, nonprofits, or to aid impacted industries hospitality, to respond to workers performing essential work during the COVID, you know, public health emergency crisis by providing premium paid eligible workers that are performing such essential work or to provide grants to eligible employers that have eligible workers for the provision of government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such local government due to the COVID-nineteen public health emergency relative to its revenues collected in the fiscal year prior to the emergency or to make investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure. I mean, honestly, this is the stupidest freaking thing I've seen in terms of
the first time I read that, I'm like, we're getting money. Well, let's go, we're giving you money, but you can't spend it.
And then what do you actually spend it on? Well,
would think first responders if there's any something in there.
I wonder if we can get more clarification on that. Is there like a I mean, can we turn Can we go again eventually?
But I this is the big picture bill. The devil will come out in the details produced by committee at some point and there'll be clarification. So, I mean, we've only known this for a couple of days. So I don't know what, you know, who knows.
It's going to be tough to factor that into this budget process probably it's a very clear clarification on it. Right. So, Eric, agree with you about the ramp budget we probably need to look at that, you know, just taking a run through it. Most of the. It appears that a lot of the increases is a significant increase in salary costs and part of this contractual they did sign a new contract. Of its benefits there's a significant impact and benefits we know that that happens, but they're both certified and non certified staff and administration costs have gone up, and when you have a reduced student population that that I think needs to be explained. So anyway, that's just kind of my, You know first overview of some of that I think it's worth asking those questions. Okay, any other questions or specific comments, ideas approaches?
So do you have, I mean, what I guess the question is, you know, what do you want from me? I mean, if you want to look at different reduction levels in the town and say, where would that come from and what you would want, I can put that together for You know, you just tell me, you know, what dollar values you're looking to recapture potentially. And I will give you what I think the best mechanism for achieving that, if you have to and then talk about what we won't do as a result. And I'm more than happy to do that if that's where you want to go with this. Similar to what we did last year when I showed you what you know kind of a you know a minimally reduced a medium reduced in a wicked reduced budget would look like.
So the current increase you have in your overall budget is 72,477. So, yeah, we took it to zero increase, you have to find 72,000
Oh, 72. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I think you said 42. Was. The
Prince is very small here. I was tempted to say, can we ask you to find 50? You know.
Because you find 50 there and you find 100 somewhere else and we take 100 from fund balance, we throw it at capital. We're at $2.50. That gets us to our 5%. Right. That's kind of where I was going with it. Can you find 50 Eric? I mean sure I could find 500,000 it's
a question shut down the transfer station and close everything
We just don't plow the roads next year. No, That's Eisner's brand right there. For everybody in the town hall don't have a town clerk or anything. No, mean, I get it. It's an ugly budget year. We all make no bones about that. And if you tell me that, you know, what you think is responsible is looking at trimming the overall town budget by 50,000, you know, or whatever that number you decide, I will bring you back a budget that accomplishes that. And then we can talk about what has to happen to do that. That's all I can do. I mean, if you tell me that's what you want, that's what you'll get back.
Well, think every, again, every board and commission should look at that, not just have the, right out of your budget, 50,000 or whatever. Let's see what comes back from each board and commission first on what they can live with for the next upcoming year. Without really cutting services, I mean, Fire Commission has a zero increased budget this year, that doesn't mean we can't put some things off that we had planned to do with our zero increased budget. I'm sure they can, you know, between the five of us, we can find some some savings for the year just to try to help out and I think every board commission should be asked that you know not put the whole you know everything everything on top of you Eric or you know I mean just just see that there's gotta there's gotta be you you gotta get something back so you know, it of sounds like we're deciding on the 5% increase to send to the town. So let's try to strive for that. First and foremost, though, let's see what we get back from the different boards and commissions. I mean, remember though, there are most of the boards
and commissions don't control much in the way of budget.
You know, like, I mean, beautification has a couple thousand dollars. Oh, no, I'm not talking about that. Talking about this with larger boards and commissions in general. That's all.
Right. Yeah, I think that Curt is right. And I think the 5% is probably a reasonable target for us to do as a board overall. I'm a little hesitant to prejudice any particular group. By saying hey give this 5% see if you can find it because, honestly, you tell them look for 10 you know I mean maybe it's not realistic, but you know, maybe, maybe they can find six or eight and there may be departments that you know you look and say. Yeah I I don't know what you want from me, know you're going to do this or we're not we have to do this job so so there's that possibility. If we're looking at a 5% increase or I'm sorry a limit of limit our tax increase to 5%. Leaving aside the fund balance right now and proportionally allocating that it's about 100,000 to ram it's about 80,000 to a yes and it's about 70,000 to the town. So that might be reasonable targets to try to try to get to. Or to suggest let's see what we can do and see what the impact is. That might be one way to approach it, but I do think that we need to go back to.
We need to go back through it and just say look eliminate contingency will take care of a contingency through another mechanism if if if we need to write that's we have a balances balances that we can handle will find that way to happen. But. I think with the with the Board of Ed we probably need to try to provide a target and that's an aggressive target of at K, but I think and we're probably not going to get the 100 K on a Ram, but I think we need to push them as Eric said. You know and Eric's going to have a tough time finding 70 ks without. Capital improvements challenges, but you know. I think it's worthwhile doing what Kurt suggested, which is going out there and saying look you know we've we've got to find a couple 100 our budget is way beyond what we can what we're going to submit so. You try to find it to help us out let's work together, try to get this reduction in place, because otherwise what's going to happen is the board is going to make those decisions, You know, so I'd rather have it happen at you know at the at the superintendent's level and I'd rather have it happen at Eric's level and that's even more at the department level
say look you know I can give you another you know 2% here or something and that helps or whatever you know but. Ultimately, we're going to have to make that decision. And we'll get input from the town for it, but I think that's that's where we're going to end up it's much, much better to give people some guidance. And see what they can do.
And then we need to know that before we go to fund balance if we're going to look at.
Yeah none of us wants to use fund balance it's it's.
That's the last that's that's the Rubicon that's the last thing yeah.
And I mean I think to stay away from fund balance we got to ask the school for at least 180 is not going to cut it. Your race is still gonna be too much.
Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't wanna hit AS too hard. I like the idea of going at what Mark laid out there was sort of proportional. I like the idea of here's our target we're asking for proportional custody or budget. We're not trying to beat up one entity more than another. Know, and I grant you that we have the least control over RAM and that's going to be the hardest hurdle. Right. But I'm a little hesitant and especially with AES having come in with steady or cut budgets for I don't know recent memory basically. I don't know, kind of like the idea of that seventy, eighty, 100 breakdown personally. I think that's a good starting point to ask. Obviously look we don't have control over the Ed budgets, we can only ask. Direct control over the. That's what I mean, we don't have direct control. Can ask Eric
to give you a zero budget increase.
We're gonna ask him to do his best in that regard. I think he asked the school to do a little bit more. But he could come back and say look I can get you 70,000 in cuts but here's what it means and we can balk at that we can look at that and say that's that's not okay we can we're kicking the can too much.
This approach does have the downside that if we think one budget came in very lean and another budget came in heavy. You know Ram and or you know we think yes might be a little heavy you know it doesn't adequately or it doesn't allocate evenly necessarily the pain that's a matter of opinion about where those budgets come in. I'm just pointing out that fact. That's true. We're assuming that they're all evenly painted spread evenly. Presented.
So the presented budgets are all reasonable and therefore we're asking for proportional cuts. Know what you're saying, I get it.
I mean, what's hard for me is not having the detail, asking me to make a decision based on I'm going to guess. Because, you know, I'm pretty comfortable with the town numbers. I think they're tight. Do you know what mean? But I can't say that about the school budget. Because I can't see it. I think there's some things in the school budget that can be done.
It's it's true I mean it's it's not true for everybody it's depends on what the impact is. And it's kind of, you know, absent of information, it's hard to make decisions that are.
It certainly been, you know, we can certainly set as a target, we can certainly ask. A yes to to give us some impacts, and you know it doesn't have to be find us $150,000 or $100,000 it can be tell us what the impact is if you lose 75 tell us what the impact is if you lose 125 tells what the impact is if it's 150 you know so so that's part of what you know we were kind of where we were for.
Because I guess I just don't want to like I agree with that I like the impact thing because throwing out one number only lets you know we only work towards that one number, but we should be working back. Let's make it as tight as we can get it because it's going to be hard to get there.
Yeah. And ultimately, people that decide are going to be the resident, right?
It's gonna be tight to get to 5% and I don't even know 5% is going to pass referendum but well at least can put out a good budget. Right, and we give people the opportunity to vote on it. Right.
So I guess that you know we can I don't know we can even need to necessarily take a voter necessarily on it, but I think that as an action item you know I'll take the action of working with probably Jeff? Know and Shannon and you know we can we can construct that letter we talked about earlier and Eric saying look, we need to you know, we want to. We need to go back and revisit the budget and look for anything that you think can be put off or a contingency that you might have had padded slightly just in case take that out, so we can we'll address it if you need it later, so that I think we can go ahead and do. Far as the. So we'll ask for that from the town, I think Valerie probably needs some guidance from from from us in terms of what we think we want, what are the levels that we think we want them to target. You know, like I said, at 81,000 is roughly the proportional amount. But if we want to say, you know, give us the impacts for $75,000 reduction for, you know, dollars 100,000 and $150,000 That's, those are ways we can do that.
Well, I guess, look at it this way. Do you want to put one number out there and they do all their work and then comes back and that doesn't do it, we go back. I'd rather I like the three scenario options, give you some options and it's all done at once and we can kind of work with it. My business all the time, know is right let's find out what the real opportunities are if volumes
increase or something like that, you know, but sometimes things surprise her and and. Know, there might be a sweet spot where we think it's, it's acceptable. But we don't want to go beyond that, because it's just not going to be a good scenario. Right.
And that brings me back to the you know Sally presentation years ago you know here's what we can do without cutting a teacher here's what we can do you know what if you ask us for this much it means all of a sudden now we're in the staff reduction. And I for one and I think the board at the time was united in this. We really didn't wanna go there. I don't wanna cut teachers and most people don't. I think even most town members who think budget is high don't want to do that. So we look at what we can look at and if we can find if we can get partway there even it's still helpful it's still useful. Time.
I mean and the flip side of the coin is it's not just expense reduction try and find revenue. Is there a way to increase the tuition for pre k? We, I mean do we you know paper just increased their pre k tuition this year.
Mean I think if they thought about that stuff they probably put
it in there but it's a little, I don't know if it's late at this point to put it in but when I put my kids through the end of a pre k you know we did pay but I think the fees may have changed since then it's been a while my youngest is seven now so there is some tuition but you also it's scaled because you're dealing you know you're trying to service a need and if memory serves it was income based and so you can't just blanketly say well we'll crank up the fees
because it's a need based issue. And again, I think that we're probably going to we're just spinning our wheels if we talk too much about the details. This is really the domain of the Board of Education and the superintendent, the administration to kind of work this how they would. Effectively do it and provide the services that they want to the. That need to be happened to the Community, but they think is appropriate, so I don't think we should get too much into the details, but I do think that it would probably help them. To provide some guidance, you know what do we think are the target numbers, you know for me I go seventy five one hundred and one hundred and fifty and then, and then you know see what they can come back with. And maybe Valerie said, I can't you know 75 this isn't fit but I'll tell you what I can give you 60, but this is the impact, know and that's fine I think it doesn't have to be exactly 75,000 or something like that is something like that makes sense those levels, I mean what do you what do you guys think.
Valerie have any input here.
Well a lot can change, obviously, between now and referendum time but Diane, you had mentioned other revenue sources. I'm always looking for other revenue sources, but I would urge this board to look at the revenue sources that are coming in to the town, to the fire department, to a lot of other places because to ram because I know that those numbers that have come in so far, they've been decent in some of those areas with a couple of the relief packages and AES didn't get anything with this last relief package. So to look at percentages, I think we also have to kind of look at how much revenues come in during the twenty twenty to twenty twenty one year in all these different departments, I feel like we're not talking enough about that.
I will speak for the fire department. There was absolutely nothing for us based on what
would increase with us with COVID was the amount of calls that we had. No. No. Mean, the new, Kurt, if I wasn't clear, I'm sorry. I mean, the new Biden money that's coming in, that new American relief funding money.
That's gonna go through this the state. Right? And then and the governor disperses it, basically? Yes.
The and and the The formula I I was reading this morning, most of us going to New Haven, Hartford, and Bridge Port.
I know I know there is a list out that town that's where Eric had gotten his number from his 319, but there is a list out to tell everybody what they get from municipalities what they get for fire what they get for school boards, non educational. We
asked that of the chief our last meeting and basically he has seen or heard of nothing coming to our little volunteer
department here in Andover. I think the point is taken, we need to look at all sources. That's really what I was looking for Valerie is, are we not being provided any, is this enough guidance that you kind of understand what we're trying to approach,
you know, because you're you're gonna need to take it back. I will eventually give us a number and it won't be an option one day or another. It'll either go to, you know, referendum and it'll pass or you guys will tell us what we're getting. As Eric mentioned before, I mean, when it comes to that it's, you know, what we have to do.
I think the key here is we just want to make sure that we have the information about what the impacts would be to present to the public so that they can make an informed decision.
Right. If the budget had to be cut by x, what would that mean. We can't force that we don't have that control, but we're trying to lay it out for you. So, if we needed $80.00 from or whatever it is from AES, what would that do? What would that look like? That's what we're trying to ask for. Yeah.
And that would be something that I would have to talk to the board about. Absolutely.
It's not something you can answer. No. Yeah. Oh, agreed. Absolutely. We're not asking you now. We're saying that's sort of the direction we're looking at.
Yep so guess that would be what I would recommend is that we ask Valerie and Jerry's on the call also to you know to kind of take that back to the board and say you know look, we may, we may need to present something where you know. We've got to cut this budget by $7,500,150,000 you know what would. Would we get to those various levels and what would the impact be so we can let the town. Vote the same way we would on whether we keep the resident state trooper what's the impact we can save $150.175000 by not having state trooper. But is it worth it to you know for $30 a household or whatever the number is to have them to have it there to keep it where it is keep those services in place that's what we want to kind of try to do. So you know to me I think that makes it makes sense to ask the Board of Ed to go do that we need to look at it for the town you know and and we'll see what we can get.
Okay, so your request for me is basically what would we have to do? What impact and what cuts would we make to get down to basically remove $70,000 from the town's portion of the budget, am I correct.
I would say yes, but I wouldn't limit yourself to that number, you know so, in other words if I'm not saying you just need to go higher. Let's use that as a target, but you may say look for 70,000 I can save 70,000 it's going take this this this and this out of your services. And this is reduce your capital your capital spending here, but if I do 40,000 which might be a midpoint you know the it's really only this chunk of it, you know that we could we could probably put that off for a year, but the impact is going to you know I'm saying offer scenarios, if you can. Sure, and maybe that'll flow naturally from that number, you know here's thirty years twenty years 10.
Yeah. Sure. Okay. I will do what I can to provide you options where the impact will be the lowest and how that would look. I can certainly do that. Does the commission want to, I know you don't technically set the fees, it's the Board of Selectmen that sets fees. Do you want to, and there's probably some good reason not to increase the transfer station fees right now, simply because we're probably going to get hammered in roughly twelve months when they close the trash to energy plant because that looks like that's going to really increase our trucking costs because there will not be any place in the state of Connecticut that will accept you know large scale municipal trash. But do you want to consider an increase
in transfer station stickers? I think we talked about this in one of the other meetings and you know as I pointed out that and I'll point out again it's just another form of taxation so to me. Totally not I'm not sure that that really gets us anywhere unless it's a significant. You know, we really want to to tap, you know, it's not like people are paying by weight. If that was the case, then you'd feel like there's some equitability in there, you know, but.
And when that hit comes when that plant closes, I think we can revisit that. Yeah but you know even those of us like I pay for pickup I rarely use the dump but the fact is most of the town does I think and you know so it is at the end of day whether you're getting it in taxes or fees it's still coming out of residents pockets so I wouldn't go there now because I mean frankly the fee increase that we put through was only a few years ago and it was a significant thing and it made people pissed.
Sure but I don't think it would be unreasonable but it you know give it some time to settle and then you know look if the plant closes and the tipping fees or whatever trucking fees go way up then we have a basis to go back to the town and say
hey you know we got to increase those fees. Rob the only thing I would point out is that we currently recoup you know a little less than or somewhere around 20% of the total operating costs of that facility just, you know, so we're actually, you know, we're definitely not, you know, we're certainly not overcharging for its use. Let's put it that way. Yeah. The vast majority of the costs associated with that still come from taxation.
Okay, that's good to know. It's an important data point. Yeah, agreed. Okay, I know what I need to do.
Okay. You know, and you know we can reach out to the Board of Ed separately between Valerie and Jerry they kind of have a sense of where we're trying to get to here. Hopefully. And we'll we'll also continue to look at what it would take to ultimately put together a questionnaire and online survey for the town to maybe find out who was commentary that did that Kirk. Colchester sorry. Kind of see how they manage that maybe there's a way to you know kind of. Mimic their success if indeed they deemed it was. Excuse me, a success. So we've got these avenues to start working on. Anybody else. Before we start talking about scheduling additional budget workshops, because we enjoy them so much. Okay hearing no more I think I think let's we've got some some progress we got a lot of work to do, obviously, but let's let's move on to agenda item three d which is to schedule additional budget workshops, we have been working Thank you, Amanda.
We have been working on Wednesday afternoons we have our regular meeting next week I'm going to suggest, can you flip over to April. Probably can't show both. Alright, so thank you. A couple of options here. If we skip the 30, we could move on to the April 7. The following week is fine with me also the fourteenth, but that is the school break week, I believe.
So Mark, maybe you ought to consider working backwards. We probably, you should probably be going to hearing on the budget around April 21. Somewhere in that timeframe, because
that gives you one meeting one week afterward to revise and still get it in time for a public meeting, a town budget meeting on I think May 6 is what we're looking at. So whatever happens, you would have to be done, you would have to be ready to present at a public hearing you know on the twenty first the week of the twenty first sometime in that period.
So should we just book the thirty first seventh and fourteenth just to cover ourselves. We may not need them all, but I rather get them scheduled and.
Works for me. Yeah it's probably wise. Know if not everyone can attend them all it's you know that's we'll just move forward, we need to keep it moving forward that's a good point that. Would you like to make a motion.
I make a motion to have the next budget workshops being March 31 April 7 and April 14. Yeah, can
clarify that 7PM the regular time. Any discussion. All in favor. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Okay, the motion passes, thank you. Any other discussion on additional meetings. Thank you, Eric for your you're pointing out that we're going to need to hit that that date. Okay hearing none we'll move on to agenda item number four which is public speak, is there a second opportunity for the public to speak commanded you want to invite public. Yes, so first up we have Jerry Creme.
Okay, can you hear me. Yes. I want to thank you for this budget meeting. The Board of Finance has a monumental job. And I've come to understand how much you really care about the residents, and what they're willing to buy and what they're willing to pay for and what they're willing to give up. I remember the budget meeting we went to what it involved the state trooper last time. And I remember the, the amount of people that showed up for that. I think anytime you do something to get public input, you're kind of stacking the deck in your favor. I know that it's really important because I as a taxpayer and a resident, there's certain things I wouldn't be willing to pay for. And there's certain things I might think I wouldn't need to pay for, But to try to find out ahead of time is a great idea of what residents are looking for and what it's going to cost them. So if a certain amount of money is a certain percentage is stuck in the budget. What's it costing me. What's the price of that item that we're cutting, maybe I want to pay for that item. The more information you gather from your taxpayers and your residents ahead of time. I think it puts you at a much better advantages, actually getting your budget fast. And I think the idea of a survey I think Kirk mentioned Colchester. And I think having a survey and getting people to participate. Anybody who doesn't participate was their own fault. I don't know how many people from the public were here tonight,
but I think that you're providing an important service to the residents of this town. And I want to thank you and tell you how much I appreciate all the conversation and everything I learned, I learned more by keeping my mouth shut and listening than by speaking. And I just want to say thank you and I really applaud your efforts and trying to listen to the residents and doing the best you can to read their minds, because that's not an easy thing to do. And thank you. Thank you again for this meeting tonight, and for your work on our budget. Thank you, Jerry. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jerry. Val Bruno.
I think Jerry just said it all for the board event. But again, between now and and the other meetings, I won't be able to be on all of those meetings because they do coincide with a couple of our board of ed meetings. But if there's any other questions that you guys have ahead of time, please let me know and I will, as Eric said, work on work on with the board on scenarios. Thanks, Val. Thank you. Sherry Holmes. I think I'm good right now. Thank you. Thank you. Joanne Hebert.
I just want to echo what Jerry said and commend the board for all the hard work that they always put in. I agree with the ideas of going back to the boards and the commissions or whatever and coming up with some suggestions. I like that. I think the hard job that you all have to face because it's very evident that it's going be hard for the schools to come forward and offer some suggestions unless you give them a set amount. I mean, just it goes within their nature. Eric came forward, he's willing to come up with some things. It's a hard job, but that's why Graham and AES are where they are, a little bit high as we've all talked about, we've emailed about different things when compared to enrollment. So it's hard to do, but if we don't take a stand now and just give them an amount to get them reasonable, I'm saying, you know, they have to be comparable to others, just kind of get them more in line like everybody's talked about. So hopefully that going forward.
And then everyone knows that I've been this point I want to bring home because it's, you know, everyone knows that I've tried to keep educational spending in line. But I do want to say I've heard at two meetings that's been brought up that possibly breaking away from RAM. RAM is such a good school for this town. As much as I think they're way overpriced, way overpriced, I wish I got involved a lot sooner. It's one of the draws to Andover. People only come to Andover because of the school system it's going to represent, you know, went there. I don't think we got anything extra out of it really. I had kids that pretty much were self motivated, but just having that name on their college apps and everything along with, you know, everything else they did
made a good college application, it So I want to stand behind. You take RAM away from Andover, I don't know if we're gonna have people moving in truthfully. So I just wanted to say that, but they're so high. They also get you to pay to play, pay to park, pay to join a good activity club. I mean, they're just a high school that asks for a lot of funding, where my kids didn't really get much out of it. They went to school, they went to their classes, and the reputation was great. So I just want to drive that home. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you, Joanne. Thank you, I believe that's it.
Okay, it looks like it. Okay, the next item on our agenda is adjournment. Anybody like to make a motion to adjourn?
I'll make a motion to adjourn. Okay, Louise motions to adjourn. Second.
I got Kirk seconding that one okay any discussion. Okay, all in favor aye. Aye. Any opposed. Abstentions. Hearing none the motion passes the meeting is adjourned Thank you everybody, we appreciate your patience, your your effort, your time during a tough time. So a lot of good input. Think we moved the ball. We got some work to do but I think we're moving a little further down the road. Thanks everybody. Thank you all. Thanks Valerie.