Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
February 23, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
All right. So 7PM. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. It's the Brown of Andover Board of Finance meeting Wednesday, February 23. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Let's go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for Thank you. All right. We have our first agenda item, which is public speak. Do we have any members of the public who care to speak? I see Nick's on from CBC, Sherry or Amanda, guess you guys would qualify as the public. If you don't have anything, we'll move on. We will go ahead and move on to agenda item three, which is additions and deletions of the agenda items. Do we have any tonight?
Yeah, I would like you guys to add item 8C, CIP requests. There's no expectation that there's gonna be any action on this. I just wanna give you a verbal synopsis of what occurred. Okay.
Yeah. Be me to it. It was an important meeting, I think. Okay.
I saw some activity there through email. So this is item 8c under new business. This is titled what, Eric? CIP? I would just call it CIP requests for the twenty twenty two-twenty three budget year.
Okay. Anybody from the Board of Finance move to add that agenda item? So we really should have a board member make a motion. I will so move.
Okay, so Rob so moves to add a new agenda item 8C, which is CIP requests for the, What was it you said Eric for the budget season?
Yeah, for the twenty twenty two-twenty three budget season. The '23 budget season. Okay.
Thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Okay. Thank you, Louise. Louise seconds. Do we have any discussion on this matter? Okay. We'll call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, motion passes. We'll add item 8C to the agenda as outlined by Rob and Eric. Thank you. Any other additions or deletions or changes? Okay, hearing none, let's move on to Agenda Item four, which is the town administrator's report. Most of you probably saw that Eric did email something earlier.
Yeah, I can give it to you verbally. First of all, I really apologize for sending it out that late. That was not great of me, but I'm kind of a little behind the gun on a lot of projects right now. So first of all, as many of you know, the Board of Finance has scheduled another meeting with the intent of finalizing their version of the budget on Monday, February 28. Board of Selectmen or? Board of Selectmen, sorry. So the budget will be released publicly at that time, along with the revised budget book that addresses this. Some of you have probably seen preliminary copies of the budget book, but it will be updated to reflect the Board of Selectmen's choices. So you should have it in time. You have your first budget workshop scheduled for March 2. And if you all come up with a list of things you want to discuss on that date or what items you wanna cover, if you could give that to me, myself and Sherry ahead of time that would make our lives easier. So we're not prepping to discuss the entire budget, but portions of the budget that you wanna focus on at the first meeting. If you can't do that, know, we'll adjust, but that would make our lives easier. Secondly, I wanted to talk about a couple ongoing financial issues.
The first is we are, as I alluded to a while back, we would likely be. Now we definitely are going to be overspent on the public works snow removal overtime budget. It looks like currently we've expended $16,433 so we're about $1,500 over budget at this point on snow removal and it's supposed to snow again Friday. We've just while we haven't had that many really big snowstorms, we've had a bunch of small ones and a bunch of icing events. So we've actually put down, you know, a whole lot of salt, close to a million pounds of salt already this year. And we've deployed public works quite a bit. So just be aware of that. The good news is because we had a really big stockpile of salt last year, we're going to be able to not expend our whole salt budget and cover a lot of that expense with the excess funds in the salt. The only downside of that is that's going to make us a little more vulnerable next year because given salt prices right now that gives us the ability to purchase roughly 600, six fifty tons of salt next year. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. Salt prices are still pretty problematic because there's been a lot of shrinkage in that industry. So just to let you know that that that's a likely issue to deal with next year. We are still going to need to cover some of the overages for vehicle maintenance from contingency. And that's assuming that we do transfer money in from the, so let me back up a sec. Last year we had anticipated spending money from the capital fund for public works equipment to repair one of the plow trucks
that had a lot of, you know, really badly rusted out. We elected instead of replacing the body to just do a very expensive weld repair and replace a series of sections of the body and then repaint. We kept the costs under $10,000 which was a lot less than we anticipated. However, because it was no longer a capital expense, we took it out of public works maintenance, which there's no way the maintenance budget could absorb an extra 10 single $10,000 expense. We've also had some ongoing serious problems with the other with Tom Pearl's plow truck. We just recently blew a rear seal. And that that needs rear brakes, and a bunch of other maintenance also, although that truck has been a very reliable truck. You know, at this point, it's eight, nine years old and it's starting to get into the more maintenance intensive end of its life cycle. So we're likely to be definitely over in the vehicle maintenance and we'll need to cover that from contingency. I sent to you today updated spreadsheets from Department of Public Works that outline those out of overages.
I don't expect any action tonight because you just got them and I have no expectation
that you're all going to have been able to review them. I So I think we should do that at the next regularly scheduled meeting and start talking about that, which will be good because that will be just before April, when we can begin to make transfers anyway, per the charter. The second issue that I just want to bring to your attention is that we have basically reached the 30% design stage for the Bunker Hill Bridge. And one of the items that happens at the 30% design stage is they update the cost estimates, because now we know what the design type acceptable to the state is what the length of the span is and all the major parameters. So basically the state of Connecticut has an estimating program based on all the bridge contracts that have been let out within the last two years based on type to estimate what the costs will be. So the costs have increased pretty dramatically. Before we were looking at $2,400,000 for the design or for the build portion of it. And they're estimating just over 3,000,000 now. And since we're liable for 20% of that, that means ultimately we need to come up with about $600,000 for that. And the reason I don't want anybody panicking about it right now is we've also probably pushed back the construction timeline to 2024. So we have one more year to get the money. So what we put in for a capital fund this year, I think is okay.
And we'll still be in okay shape. There is some chance that we're going to get additional federal dollars. The state of Connecticut has not revised their rules as to exactly how they're going to do it yet. But there is significant infrastructure money and there's some chance that either bridge projects going forward or past bid bridge projects may be eligible for 100% federal funding. Frankly don't know, or some fraction less than the 20% match which we're required to do right now. So there's a chance that bill will go down and there's a chance that bill will remain at $600,000 At the same time, I started the process to put the Long Hill Bridge in the design phase. Because basically that means what I did was that we would be starting the paperwork roughly three years after we started the paperwork for the Bunker Hill Bridge, which means that puts us somewhere around 2027, 2028, 2029 for the start of construction on that bridge, given today's current, the delays. The reason why I think it's appropriate to start it now is A, that bridge needs to be replaced and B, there's a chance that the federal money will not apply to bridges already in the federal program,
but will be forward looking for bridges that aren't yet in the program. So I want to have one that's starting that process right now. So if there if those are the ones that are going to fund completely, you know, we get one bridge in in that category. Again, don't know, and we're not obligated to go forward, you know all we're doing is the initial submission to get qualified for the federal program once we get qualified for it, then we have to sign up, and that that's kind of a town or a board of selectman decision whether we do or we don't. Right now, you know there's about six months, five months delay in doing the paperwork and submitting it so I'm starting that process. Now, the other thing is that I'm planning on doing the exact same thing for two culvert projects, the first being the culvert on Hutchinson Road, the second being the culvert on Lake Road at the solar. Again there's a pretty good indication that some of the funding available in the structure program will be for culverts and for things that are eligible under the state local bridge program, not the federal local bridge problem project. So the downside of the state local bridge projects is there 50% funding not 80% funding
from the state. So I want to have a couple of those basically in the design phase and shovel ready. So if they do announce that they are eligible for funding, you know, additional funding and better than fiftyfifty we slide them in immediately. So that's where I'm trying to go from that. And we know we're on the state local bridge program. We're obligated to pay for the design phase anyway, in order to qualify them for the program. So we don't lose anything by paying for the design now, and we hopefully speed up the process and get a chance to qualify for more federal or state aid for that. So that's kind of where I'm going with that. The other thing to be aware of is, as most of you know, inflation's kind of crazy right now. We're facing some really large cost increases for equipment. The other thing is that when I'm getting bids back from people, it's none of these ninety day lock on prices. I'm getting bids back where they're guaranteeing the price. Of them I got back they guarantee the price for five days. And one of them they guaranteed the price for ten days. So the prices are so volatile right now that's really affecting us. One of the biggest ticket items out there that we get every five years or should be getting every five years is a plow truck. The last Peterbilt plow truck we got, we paid around 200 or correction around $192,000 for That equivalent truck priced right now is $265,000 That's a more than $70,000 price increase, which is a little over 35% in just over four years. Part of that's due to the cost structural steel is through the roof,
but overall inflation for equipment costs is really going to bite us. And I just want you guys all to be aware that we're going to face that as a headwind going forward. So we'll talk about the CIP recommendation when we get to that. So I'm not going to discuss that we've already talked about the further bridge work, the only other thing I wanted to say is some of you were aware that we've been looking at doing a. What we needed to do originally was electrical work in the town hall, we had a problem with that because. The our boiler room does not meet code currently because of the way the fill pipes are from the oil tank. And we have way too small a tank in the in the town hall because we go through uncold periods, we struggle to go seven days without running out of oil in the town hall, which is not good. We looked into initially just replacing the tanks. It is possible to put two seventy five gallon tanks in and double our capacity by going to a more expensive double walled tallboy tank or tanks, plural. We're also investigating right now that the community center looks like they've settled on using propane for the heat source for that. That maybe now's the time to convert the town hall at the same time. The advantage to that in my from my perspective
is that we could go ahead and bury a couple you know 1,000 gallon tanks right now. And then that wouldn't if we spent it out of monies we have in the building maintenance fund that would a supply the town hall that we'd be big enough to later supply a generator. If we ended up doing a generator for both buildings and got away from the fire department's generator and see you would already have the tanks in place. And so the million dollar limit for the Davis Bacon rules for the community center, that would be separate from that because that would already be paid for, and you would just tie into the existing two tanks.
So I'm looking at that way too early to, to have a full set of costs for that, but I think that's probably where we're going to end up going with the town hall. And that has the advantage of by getting rid of the oil tank, and getting rid of the fill lines, it gives us an awful lot more usable space in the boiler room that we need for the electrical service. So that's pretty much what I wanted to talk about at this point, unless you have questions for me.
Just one question I have. Was looking really quick through the budgets that you set for the public works and the town operating. And I just noticed off the top real quick I didn't get a thorough look at it. Some of the general ledger account numbers don't match what we have on our current budgeting and I'm assuring the legacy ones from last year. Correct. Bring that up. Okay, that's all I just want to make sure.
So I take several and add them together to come up to the same number. Yeah, and Jane I have talked about that eventually we're going to. He's going to have to go through because he developed that last year under the old budget. Right. And it doesn't quite line up with the new with the with all of the new chart of accounts, but it's going to take him quite a bit of time to go through all that and he just hasn't come up with the time to do it yet. Okay.
What I intend to do, just kind of chime in on that, is I'm producing a crosswalk right now for public works in particular. And I will be handing you that along with other budget documents that you'll be getting. So that will make it a little bit easier for both Jay and for the board members to follow along.
So we'll have that before our meeting next Wednesday? Yes. Okay. Thanks, Sherry. That's Right
now I've sent the report and I'm going through and I'm making sure that I have all the crosswalk completed before then.
Okay, thank you. Any other questions for Eric? Again, we'll talk about the CIP requests later on the agenda. All right, thank you, Eric. I guess let's move on to agenda item five, which is our finance department report. 5A is the town budget summary. So Sherry, you got this one? Yes, I do. Okay. At least I think I do.
In your packets are copies of the expenditure reports for January 2022 in detailed format and also in summary format. I apologize for not getting you the revenue summary because with the holiday and all the other meetings that were required from the Board of Selectmen, I lost track of time and before I knew it was time to to get that together. So I definitely will have that for you in detail. Also, with the TAR account in detail as well. So basically, I think that's the only two things that I noticed today that were not sent over. I want to say that both Marina and I are working very hard on bringing everything up to speed. As far as journal entries go, we're trying to get a system going. We're doing two jobs and basically trying to cover everything, which is not easy and it's a bit of a challenge. But it's not perfect, and we know it's not perfect, but we're trying to get there. And so I would appreciate it if you could
just, you know, give us some time to turn this around and make this something that you're going to be happy with. I realize the software, nobody likes the software, nobody likes the reports. I get that. So I'm going to continue to try to include the columns in, Diane, that you have given me, and I will put them into Excel. You can generate the report now, put it in Excel, add the columns. It'll be a little bit more work, but I will certainly try to do that so that we have hopefully a report that you feel comfortable with.
Just from my perspective, when I was looking at the summary report that you sent over, and I can't speak for everybody, but I don't really care about the summary report because it's too high level for me. I just prefer the detail. So I'm okay if you if if everybody else is okay to ditch one report because I really don't look at it. Okay. Alright. Don't how anybody else feels about that.
I can make note of it. And then if I don't provide it and you find that down the road you want it, then it's it's something that I can easily generate at a later date.
So if I'm understanding it, you're not, what you don't, aren't interested in is the summary custom expenditure
report, correct? Right. Because it's just everything rolled up to one number and I really I look at the detail report. Then we add those few other columns we need on the detail report. It will give us a lot more working knowledge of what's going on. I certainly will work towards that.
Can I just follow-up on Diane's question just to make sure too? Is that what it is Sherry? It is the when I'm looking at it it's the last report is it just the total?
Yeah it gives the total of 101 Selectmen, total 102 Town Administrator. Just collapses all those accounts into one. Right. And it totals it for you. Some people like this. I mean, know, other people I'm just trying to look at what my paper Other like the details. So, it's whatever the preference is, and I'll be happy to provide either one or both.
Sorry, I'm just trying to match one up so that I can just prove to my end. We can carry on. I have it all here. I think I got it a little mixed up. I'm with Diane. I prefer the detail too. And if it helps even in a tiny bit for you up to more things that will meet eventually.
Yeah, I'm in agreement with that too. I don't really tend to look at it. I tend to look at the detail and that's really what's come up. Unless somebody else has something different, I would agree we should take the burden off if it's not useful.
Okay. Alright. So that time can be put towards other things that we can work on to get up to speed, which will be very helpful. So I thank you for that. Now, I'd like to also point out that when I'm going to do something different here on in, I'm going to invite Marina to the Board of Finance meeting. The reason why I'm doing that is because a lot of the questions that you've had in the past are things that she deals with on a daily basis. She does the detail. I manage her. I know what's going on. We communicate very well together. I would rather have that question, whatever question you have during the meeting, answered in its entirety at that moment than this back and forth kind of thing, you know.
So I'm trying to make things a little bit more efficient. I'm trying to get you the information that you would like to get. And so by having her on board, she's also a world of knowledge. She does an excellent job at what she does. She's trying just like I am. And we work well together. We work well as a team. I would say that this wouldn't work out at all if I didn't have as good a team member as do Marina. So if you don't mind, I hope that I can invite her when need be to help answer
all your questions as they come up. I think that's a great idea. Have absolutely no objection. I can't imagine any other board members would either.
I think it's a great idea. I just have one question.
Does that come at an extra cost to us on the town because she's an outraged? No, it does not. I asked that she she do this as part of her job. And she agreed.
Even if it did, it probably worth money well spent.
Right. I'm just saying we're going into budget. So, you know, her salary, you know, year to date is over already. It's the right question to ask. I just want to make sure I correctly.
And I will answer that. The reason for that is that initially when I came on board, the place was a mess. I'll be honest with you. It was an out and out mess. There was a lot of things that weren't done. So I needed her to do some of these things, and she worked overtime to get these things done in a timely manner so we could get the audit done, so we could get a lot of the other things caught up, so I could reconcile all of many bank statements that were sitting there waiting for me. So that has all been straightened out. I don't anticipate any of that mushrooming into a lot of hours,
you know, and certainly if come push comes to shove, if that's not something that she wants to do as part of her job, then I will meet with her before the meeting and we'll just go over everything in detail and hope and make sure that I know a lot of the details that you're looking for.
So one other issue with that being over budget and that's on me is that I incorrectly, I did not account for marinas raised last year when I budgeted for that position. Part of the issue with that line going over is the fact that I under budgeted it. Yeah. And that's on me. That's not on, you know, it makes it worse
because if you're on fund on to fund an account, it makes it look like people are collecting all this money. And that's not the case, you know.
We fixed that in the proposed budget, correct? That's all straightened out? Correct. And Joanne, you're muted. You want me to say something?
Yeah, I was just gonna, I'm trying to wave this time instead of just jumping. I work for the town and when I have to go to a night meeting at times because when budgets are tight, maybe I'm allowed to leave. I don't know. I'm not trying to start something, but leave a half an hour early one day, attend the meeting for the portions that I have to go to. Yeah. Things like that. We had
talked about giving her more flexibility. So when she needs it and things are not, you know, taxing and everything's pretty well caught up. So we had talked about that as well. So we'll see how it goes. But I'd like to start that immediately. Matter of fact, she is on. I see. So I think it's good for her to get some exposure as my assistant and a good way of learning what it is that the boards are looking for, you know, firsthand.
And truthfully, the questions I'll go ahead and do it. Sorry, if she's broken, we
have been asking you a lot of questions, Gerri, and I'm glad you brought that to our attention because if, you know, I always call myself the worker bee, I'm the worker bee at work, so like I'm in it all the time, so I do have the answers. But if it is Marina that's dealing with it and doing the journal entries and that makes sense, you know, that you don't always I do some, she does some,
we share a good job. We're two entities, we're not just one. I'm not over there at the Board of Ed handling everything, and she's not over there handling everything at the town. So we have to split our time up amongst two entities. Just keep that in mind. It's a challenge, and there's a lot of districts that don't do this for this reason. But we're trying to do the best we can with it. And hopefully we'll get at a point where things will be run more efficiently and to your liking.
All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Sherry. Anybody else have any additional questions for Sherry on the detail or the reports?
I have a question. Of course. Not that it's anything new for anybody, but I do have a zillion questions from what I looked at on the detail report. But I want to ask a question about process. When these reports are run, do you get a chance to go through them and look for variances of oddballs and a drug? I'm trying to think about how to stop creating all this back and forth, like you said. I would much rather have someone look at these reports before they come to us and eyeball what I do, all the variances and things that are going to go over and have a document that says, well, is what's going on with each one of those. It's kind of what kind of stuff that Eric does when something starts to get over.
Otherwise, it's coming to us and we're putting our eyes on it and then asking all these questions and then going back and forth. So I can do it either way, but I don't know what the most efficient way is. I do overlook the reports before I give them to you.
The problem is that Eric and I haven't really been able to sit down together and work on a lot of that, so that I can tap into his wealth of knowledge on the town side and to see what I should be looking for, actually, in particular ones. Some are easy to point out and others are not so easy to point out. So yes, I do do that, and as time allows, I will try to get to that point since the whole entire report will be put into Excel. I'll make a notes column and go through that and give it a stab at it and see where we go.
I do agree that would be helpful and I think I think we'll find that meeting to meeting, you know the same variances are going to pop up right I mean if you're 107% expended for your year to date. Yeah, this the reason is going to be same next month as is this month. So hopefully, it'd be less work once you can we kind of build that up and we'll just have to explain differentials anything comes up with some of those variances,
Eric and I went over in a two page document that he gave me and said, let's do this, let's do that. This shouldn't be this, this should be that. And so a lot of those journal entries, went back and I looked at all these accounts and I'm like, okay, that means I got to reclassify it. And that's what I did. I reclassified it to the appropriate account. So a lot of times, you know, we have both of us looking at it, then it helps to see some of these things. And what is supposed to be, you know, an expense here and the operating could be an expense in the other accounts on the balance sheet, you know, that we have funds that are in there. So it's just a process of me learning all the different accounts. And truthfully, you have a lot on this side and where the Board of Ed, it's pretty cut and dry. But this is, there's a lot of variances to it. It's part of it is just me learning all of that to get to that point.
I mean, it becomes, you know, if things are in the wrong buckets or there are things posted where they shouldn't, but we need to get it kind of cleaned up in the next few months because we've got all the transfers to do. And I want to make sure that we have a good handle on it. Cause I don't feel like I have a handle right now on some of this stuff because I see the stuff, the same things coming, popping up every month. And I know they're not right and they need to be fixed, but they're not fixed yet. So that's the kind of stuff that I want to make sure that we get a handle on. Could
you perhaps give me a list of those things that you're seeing where we can address them and go through them and,
make sure that we have the- I have a couple of questions. I'm not going to ask my kazillion and one questions. I'm just going to ask some high level questions. I don't want to take up everybody. If anybody else has any other questions before I go, I'm more than happy to let somebody else. Well, you don't have to go. Mean, yeah. So right now, high level, we have an issue with the selectman account where he said it's 90% expense expended and that's based on Marina's input. That's really not true. There's something funky going on there that we need to fix. I just want to make sure we get that done.
Just So had a the problem we have with that is I'm not really sure what the fix is because I'll tell you what happened is that we paid the first selectman as we normally do every year incorrectly because we zeroed out that budget last year but we didn't catch it because the Board of Selectmen just get a twice yearly stipend and we gave the first selectman the first half of his stipend, which he wasn't due. The first selectman didn't really catch it because a he forgot he zeroed out his own budget and b because he doesn't actually get the money. He just has that money paid to the federal government to offset taxes on his earnings. The problem is is that if we had paid him, we could get him to repay us. But how do we get the federal government to repay us for money that we paid in in taxes incorrectly?
I don't the mistake. You have a budget over it. I don't think you can be able to resolve.
Yeah. I think you by that amount for Jeff McGuire.
Here's the other problem. Problem B or two, whatever you want to call it, is that he got a W-two for that amount of money. Which means that that was also reported to IRS.
You're not going to be able to change that. Yeah, not going to be able that at
all. You start adjusting tax returns and you're gonna have a whole
mess on your hands. So the problem is is we take that first selectman general ledger account number, which would probably put it back in to budget. And so we can show that we had an adopted budget of zero, but we paid out x so we know where the money is. Right. Correct. So that would become a transfer, would it not? We'd have to put the money on overage on that. It's gonna be an overage. It's gonna be an unbudgeted item. So and then, eventually, we're gonna have to find the money from somewhere to transfer I don't know what I'm saying. We're gonna have to find that money. But we should put that item back into the budget with a zero budget and an expended year to date or what we pay. You can't put it into the adopted budget. The adopted budget was what was voted on. That can't change. Right. That can't change. The adopted budget is gonna be zero,
but we're gonna have an expended year to date for Jeff. We need to put Jeff's line item. Yeah, the expense line item needs to be recorded somewhere. Yeah. Just, again, this is something I think you'd have in as a variance that the, you know, mistake was made, a payment was made that cannot be easily reversed and we're just gonna accept the overage or whatever.
Right. And that's the way to clean that up. But there's other things going on in that account besides that. Correct. So
those are the things we have to straighten out. We can't fix Jeff McGuire. That's over and done water under the bridge. We just got to deal with it. Correct.
The other thing. That's that question. I just have a question about the payment to the auditor, dollars 22,000. So this year we're paying him on an installment basis, I take it? Yes. Okay. Yes. That's exact question. Do we know when we're going have the audit complete?
Well, he's take the extension till February 28. I'm going to call him tomorrow to see where he's at with it.
I would love to have that before we have to even make a decision on this budget. I want I really wanna see that audit.
Absolutely. I will let him know that you have requested that and see where see, the problem is a lot of it is he's and his staff are working remotely. So they're reluctant to coming in because of COVID. And it's been really difficult because we've had to scan everything to him, which we have, and emailed him. So it's like both our sides. We're trying to get all the information to him that he has so he can put the audit together. It's not an ideal situation by no means. And I've offered to have him come in on like a Friday when, you know, I could make sure that nobody else is here, just him and I, or his worker, and that hasn't happened. But I will definitely call him tomorrow and have a conversation with him. And then Eric, I'll let you know what his response is.
Sure. When you do it Being late on an audit should be over, and we should try and get this one done and get on track next year. I agree.
I, you know, I don't know what to tell you. I would like an audit done sooner than later. Believe me.
Yeah, the other thing that when you speak to the auditor, just ask Mike what the timeframe is for producing. He's also going to produce the document that says where we are with ARP funding and and how much of last year's expense. In other words, how much how much leeway do we have to spend that based on, you know, the the effect of last year's budget. Okay, the cost of provision that he's calculating for.
So he promised he would do that, but he said he couldn't. Had to have a completed audit to do it. Right. And we were hoping to have that already because we really kind of need that for this year's budgeting to know what the flexibility is in the ARP funding.
And I do believe they revised the calculation to to make it easier. It's going to make it easier. Okay. I don't know. Question
for you. I am on the tax collector one, one, one, one and the line item 438 equipment maintenance. Double paid bill thing that doesn't belong to the tax collector was really assessed or When can we get that fixed? Because this is skewing everything here. I've been playing phone with Leo. So
it's been back and forth. He calls me on my town phone when I'm in the school, he'll call me over at the school when I'm on the town. So we've just been playing phone tag, but I think he's pretty much on board of just cutting a check back to the bill that was overpaid.
So if I understand this and I don't think I fully understand it, this equipment maintenance tax collector line item, the description, what is it supposed to go in that budget, in that item? Is that for generating tax bills? The cost of generating And using quality service. Yeah. What is quality service? Taxes. That's essentially the annual fee for QDS.
Quality They generate tax bills for us. Is that what it is?
Yes. They do work for both the tax collector's office as well as the assessor's office. Okay. Mhmm.
Because when we're coming into budget, I have no idea what the proper budgeted amount should be for this account now because I can't. We have it.
We have a letter from him. I know. The assessor and the tax collector. Right. We're 2223.
So we call equipment maintenance is kind of a hard not really equipment maintenance. It's really printing. It's contractual.
You know? It's an outside service, really. It's an outside service. Using their their software.
Right. Well, I mean, you know, in in the line item for the assessor, we call that software assessor. You know, wouldn't be a terrible idea, but it's not just software, right? Because it covers the cost of printing and it covers the cost of a bunch of different things for QDS. So I'm not sure exactly what the correct description for that. But I would agree that the current, which was essentially the same as the old description doesn't really cover
what it actually is. Oh, software assessor is the exact is QDS too?
Partially. Yeah, because the software I think it's Covers not two different software packages that the assessor's office uses. Is QDS a software or is it a service? It is both It's really
a contracted service because it's under the 400s and 400s is classified as contracted services, basically. Anything that's related to the 400 series for object codes.
So, if you want me to change it, I could change it. Well, I don't know what to call it. So, I'm gonna be lost because I don't really know all the things that make up that. Do you know what I mean? Well
You just have to find the term that not equipment maintenance, I think. Right. No. Right.
So maybe maybe you just do it software and service, but I I do think it needs to be changed because it's really, I would find it a little misleading. It would eliminate a lot of these questions. It's been Right. Because Obviously, we have a discrepancy between the object code and the description doesn't really jive, so it makes sense to update it.
Then becomes my question. I know we have this tax cuts or thing, which is the double payment. So as soon as we get that money back, that should make that line item come into line. Correct? Yes. Yes.
So then when we go down to $4.38 account for the assessor, we're at 84%. And I just didn't really know what goes into that number and is that gonna go over? Or is there I
don't think so because We're on how often we're built on this. So I can kind of answer that. So that line for the assessor covers in a normal year it covers kind of three things. It covers QDS, it covers the vision appraisal, annual software subscription, and it covers the every year we should be doing updating to our mapping. Let's say let's I'll take for instance there's a property down the street for me. Actually, my own property was never the subdivision map was never changed in the assessor software package. And it's never been so so it's never been updated on our GIS. So most years we spend about $2,500 updating the GIS information that the assessors mapping uses. So that is the discrepancy. We've paid the bill for QDS for the assessors office. We've paid the bill for vision appraisal. That $2,800 is roughly what we're likely to spend in the next couple months to do the upgrades to the GIS mapping.
Because when I looked at software assessment, I just thought that was the vision because I'm just thinking of that as a software and there's more to it than that, okay. Right, they use both Vision and QDS.
QDS is shared between the assessor's office and the tax collector's office because one has to flow, you know, one has to flow to the other basically.
Okay. All right. Let's see. I'm not going talk about those. I have one question. I want to ask a question about the library. Marina's response back to me was a RP funds that they've got. And I need help understanding that because Hold on. So it's under library dues and fees. It's 1,001 and it's the 800. So, and Marina's explanation to me on that thing, she said they got some funds from America Relief. I don't understand what those funds are and why the library got them. Somebody needs to explain to me what funds they got and why the money's in an expensive grant.
Library received a grant. A grant for what? American relief money.
So, yes, separate from the town's allocation. Yes. Libraries in this country were eligible for a certain amount of funding and they applied for and got that funding, you know, by submitting a list of things they wanted to spend the funding for. So they got money and that money was applied, I presume was applied to their budget as opposed to giving them a standalone fund because, well, maybe it should have Yes. Been a standalone So
my question is it should go into the grants under the funds. I think we have a miscellaneous grant category we could have put it into. Because I don't know what was eligible. So by putting it into here, I don't even know what expenses go into dues and fees. Really don't. Are those eligible expenses that we offset with our grant? I don't know. And with all this focus on auditing grant money and how the town spends it and everything, wanna make sure it's really clean and how we do it. Because I don't know what that grant was for or what the eligible expenses were. You just can't plop it against an expensive account if it wasn't an eligible expense for that grant. And that's my question, is understanding that. Because I do believe we have a miscellaneous grants.
Yeah, I'm just considering moving that over to the revenue. Because I think, you know,
from a town perspective and from a public perspective, we should be able to give them all the information of all the grants we benefit from so they understand how hard we work to get grants. It's an important thing for the public to know. It shouldn't be just
Well, would classify that to a revenue account. And then I will provide you with the documentation of what that entails.
And what what was eligible because I don't I wanna make sure that we just, you know Yeah. I just grant
award letter and details on that. I will try to locate that and then get it to you.
And I'll just, for the board's benefit, just from my perspective, with all this money that towns have gotten, all the press release of people stealing money and cracking down on the county and the auditing side, I think the Board of Finance should be very well on top of the oversight of understanding what grants we're getting and that we're spending them for eligible funds. Should be, and have some oversight into that. Okay. No, I don't think we should, you know, wait till somebody says you did it wrong. And because we know it's a hot ticket and the state has already said they're gonna audit every town for every dime they give you. So I just think we should just
Okay. Well, actually, what they've said is they're gonna make the auditor certify for every town. So
yep. No, you're right. And there is a fair bit of visibility. And I will tell you straight out, we've gotten three FOIA requests now for media outlets, for how we spent not the ARP funds, but that previous round of funding and we've supplied them, you know, our budget details for that. Fortunately, all three FOIA requests were essentially identical. We had the information. So I just cut and pasted it to the second two news outlets that requested the same thing. You're right, that visibility is out there and there's a bunch of media outlets fishing.
You know, no question. I think it's important for the town you know, taxpayers to understand of all the grant money the town receives and what we spent it on, you know, in generality. So everybody understands how hard people work to look for money. You know, we're not always trying to raise tax dollars off of, you know, the taxpayers to get things done. And I think it's a good piece of information that we have. The only other side of the coin I'm gonna have is I'm gonna talk about all these funds. It's an audit item. I'll tell you one of the things I'm going to be looking for from this budget year. I want an accounting of these funds, what we spent in every one of these funds. I don't have that now. It's invisible to me. And we should have that. It's an outstanding trying to. All these funds, equipment funds, fire department, road improvement funds, tree removal fund, Bunker Hill Bridge, bridge and Culvert, building maintenance funds. Oh, you mean the 3,700 accounts? Yeah. The yes. The 13 hundreds. Thirteen o fives. K. These are and it's it's an audit item on our audit, which I'm sure we're gonna get in the next audit because we gotta set these up correctly so we can show
expense side to these. Yeah, right. But unfortunately we we've gotta work with the auditor to do that. Right. You know, and we're trying, you know, the question, the rate limiting step for that is getting the auditor to work with us on that right now. And it has been for quite some time.
And we don't have to identify all of them. And then we don't pay him. What's that? Unless he's doing the service we need him to help us with. Well, I get that, but I have a feeling that we were the, like, the last resort client of his. And that's what I'm getting a feel for. And that's possible. I don't know. I'm just saying that sometimes auditors take on clients and they are so overwhelmed that they can't provide for all. So I will,
I guess I didn't want to go into another year without these funds being set up correctly. I think this is where a lot of our money in this town goes through these funds and we need to really know what's going on. We're the oversight. That's what we're charged with. Correct.
You know? And it's been an audit item for a long I know way before you got here, Shneur, so I know it has nothing to do with you. Yeah. I know. You're part of the fix. He doesn't
want all of them reclassified that way. He only wants a certain amount. So I've been trying to nail down what ones is he referring to as a certain amount of them. I mean, I can see a handful of ones that make perfect sense to me, but I'm not sure that he is on the same page as I am. I really need and I told him that I really need you to help me sort this all out.
Once and for all. Need a mechanism so us so for us to track all the expenses that get booked against these funds. We fund these accounts every year and we spend money out of them every year. We should know what we're spending out of them.
Yeah, I will have to go through each account and develop detailed reports.
Because it's like one third of our town budget. That's all I have. And I guess when I look at the accounts that are over a 100%, we have a bunch of them that are starting to hit there now. Some of them I know Eric has explained.
Yeah. Anything that material though, I would say, I mean, if you're looking over, if you're over an office supplies for the assessor by $50, I don't know that we should spend our time talking about that stuff. But, you know, anything this material over that we haven't really understood why we're maybe off, that probably makes sense to do. This
is not a lot of money, but I just ask a question. Electricity in the old firehouse were 138%. I understand electrical rates went up, but conceptually in my mind, I think of the old firehouse as being vacant. So what is eating the electricity in that building?
So there's two things. One, if you have electricity in the building period, you are paying for a meter fee and those meter fees have increased substantially. Number two, because we still currently store the buses and the vans there, we do provide a minimal amount of heat and we do provide electrical power because we need to be able to run the overhead doors because we can't get in and out without the electricity being on. So those are the two things you know it's strictly vehicle storage I would love to build a standalone Morton building or something, get those things out of there and burn that thing down. But until we actually do, you know, we're kind of stuck with a minimum cost to maintain that.
Okay, so that answers that question because I did not know that.
Okay, and you also, there was also an oddball one for that where it showed there was about a $4 expense or a $2 expense for fuel. And that was correct. They came in, we hadn't actually turned the heating system on and they came in the fall and went to fill the tank and we're only able to put like a little over a gallon in it, which they hence billed us like $4 or whatever. So that was that oddball expense. You know, we find Marina tracked that down and you know it was a legitimate expense. They did you know show up to fill. There just wasn't any oil to be added.
And then the other thing and Marina addresses and explained it to me, but I just wanted to have a discussion point on this under the ground care, the mowing for ground care. I did not know we have this cost for maintaining, and this is a veterans park right down by the public works on Long Hill. The soccer fields is what I'm saying. I did not know we had rental income that's coming in on that. And that's where offsetting an expense with income. I would like to see that income being an income item and keeping expensive. So we truly know what the expenses of maintaining those fields are. I don't think we should, and it's $7,500 It's not a lot of money, but if that money went away, it would be nice for us to know, gee, why is our costs so high for mowing? Oh, because we don't have any rental income, you know, it artificially lowers it. So it looks like the expense for maintaining that field is a lot less than what it is because we don't, I did not know there was income coming off those fields. Okay. So
because I was thinking, why is that so out of kilter? So because when we go to the do the budget, you know, if we look at our year to date expense and it's lower than what it actually is, we don't know how to properly budget. All right, I'm done.
Kerry or Eric on the on the budget line items or the expenditure line item sorry.
I'll do some turn on sheets to reclassify and that's all. Know the amounts that are in there and we'll move them to a revenue account.
If that's going to be repeated, it's probably not a bad idea. And if nobody has anything else, agenda item six is budget transfers, supplemental appropriations, and over expenditure requests. I don't think we have anything here. No, we do not. Correct. Okay. April.
April. Item seven is old business. Sorry, missed this earlier. Both items are 7A, but it should really be 7A and 7B. 7A is the community senior center building committee. Does anybody have anything to report on that?
I'll give you an update on what I know. Because I didn't go to the last meeting, but I kind of been talking about it. We have our last round of revisions for the floor plan. Then it's going to be going through the cost estimator. Our goal is to keep the cost under a million dollars. Period. And, you know, and then our desire is to have the Board of Selectmen, you know, come up with a funding mechanism for that. And then we'll see how that goes.
So presumably right now between what is in the fund currently and what is in the ARP fund if you choose to use the allotment for that you have roughly a million dollars you know sitting there ready to go so presuming the public actually buys off on the plan there's no no reason you can't execute that today or at some point in the next year or two.
Oh, and it's up to the board of select men, I think, when they vote on the budget if they're going to actually take that fund money and move it into the building fund that we have as a transfer for this budget so the town can vote on it as part of the budget process. Because if we're gonna use that money, we would move it into the community instead of building fund as a transfer.
You may not need to, but, yeah, I'm gonna make it clear, I suppose.
Well, if we're gonna allocate the money for there, we should put it there so we have everybody could see.
Anybody have any questions for Diane on that or other comments?
I mean, think the first thing that's going to happen is you're going have a couple of public hearings and you're going to have to gauge feedback, you know and you probably should have you know kind of a public hearing because that would be a municipal improvement you know, and make sure you what you've designed as a committee actually lines up with what the public wants long before you get to the point where, you know, you're spending the money. That's my take on it.
We plan on doing some kind of public meeting, but we have to get the floor plan finalized in order to even conceptually get the final drawings done. Yep. And
then realistically, it's timing wise. Spring is a busy time in this town with budget meetings and public meetings.
Okay, if no more questions for Diane on that, we'll move on to 7B, town hall electrical upgrades. You addressed this a little earlier. Eric, do you want to should we even be keeping this on the agenda as an old business item, or are we moving in Yeah. A different direction
I mean, it's something annoying thing is that the electrical upgrades were what we really wanted to get to. But the problem is there's just a bunch of things that have to come before that. I think you could scratch that from the agenda for now. And then when we're ready to go, because that's the one or one of the things as part of that project that are expensive enough that would probably have to go to rfp prior to doing it. But we've got a bunch of things we've got to do ahead of time. You know, so I don't think we need to keep that on the agenda at this point.
Anybody in the board have a concern about that? Okay, let's strike that from the agenda from old business. We'll pick it back up if we need to. Thank you. Move on to eight, agenda item 8A is the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services update to the town's radio system. Eric, this sounds like yours to handle.
Okay, I didn't actually realize this was going on the agenda, but I'll give you essentially an update up to this point. What has happened is the state of Connecticut has agreed to build a series of towers and build out the capacity for a statewide communication system that towns can adopt and become part of. Now, we've known this was a strong possibility in this area for about three years. Roughly two and a half years ago, I filed a bunch of paperwork with the state that basically said, okay, how many radios potentially and what groups within the town would potentially
utilize this service if it was built out. The state has finally gotten to the point where it's kind of built out and usable. Now we have to sign the first selectman has to sign an agreement. Essentially a usage agreement, stating that we are going to or we want the ability to use this. So he may have already signed that. Know that he was, he and I discussed it in the fire chief discussed it. So the fire department has what they need to adopt the new system. And the question becomes, does the town do other town entities does public works, potentially the buses and whatnot, adopt that same system. Right now we have radio systems that work, there are some dead spots in town. It's far from perfect. The new system would be better. It would allow better communication between the fire department and DPW because their radio systems currently are not compatible, You know, which is kind of annoying, and it would allow communication between DPW, you know, in other state and other town entities or other towns where needed. So there's some real advantages to the system.
The disadvantage is that if we were ever to convert, we would be looking at wholesale replacing all the radios and public works. And that's a big hit. Jay can give you a more accurate number than I can. But I remember when we looked at it, you know, two or three years ago, we were looking at like a 60,000 plus dollar bill to do that. So while we agreed that we wanted the ability to join the system, we were in no way guarantee the state, you know, isn't mandating us to go to this. We're not obligated to make the choice. It would be something we would have to budget for in a future year if we did it. And I think Jay can probably give you a better idea of the utility of the system,
you know, and what the advantages and disadvantages are. Good evening everybody. So,
since the last meeting with the CIP when we discussed this, there was a, like Eric said, there's a basic, well, if we were to do it all at once for the public work side, none of the, I'm not sure what the fire department's cost or possibly the buses, but just public works alone. It's a it's in the area of that $60,000 mark. If we were to jump in all at once, what I have found out since then, was able to talk to the gentleman from the Tollin Fire Dispatch. We can go in a little at a time. And basically we could buy two or three radios a year, a radio, a mobile unit for one of our vehicles, about $2,500. And then, you know, plus install. But just to get started, we would have to have a minimum of a base unit and a mobile unit. And so you're talking, you know, less than $10,000 to get to get in and into it. And then through the base unit, that unit can be patched between our current system and our new system. So it kind of it's like a acts as a repeater. So if somebody talks, it goes to that radio and then it's retransmitted to our other mobile units. So we do have some areas in town where we have bad
reception. That might be an advantage at some point. I don't know if we're ready for it this year planning wise. The other thing I found out and I wasn't too sure of is that the buses themselves can be part of the talk group. They would have their own channels. We currently have communication through a separate radio system with them. So we kind of monitor what's going on with them. So if they have an issue, we hear it or we, you know, they can call us, we can call them. And then if there is a specific bus that has like a special needs transportation that's dedicated just for that, that can have its own channel. As far as the talk group for the school system, because that was a question at one point, like the internals of the school, that's not allowed on the system. But the bus, like I said, the buses can have the system public works fire, and then we have the abilities to talk to each other. So it can it basically, long and short, is it can be done a little at a time. The beginning of the way I understood it was, you know, we'd have to transfer all at one shot,
but that's not the case. You're muted, Mark.
Thank you. Anybody have any questions for Eric or Jay on that? So that's a future thing. It's good to know about, though. Good to know we have that flexibility also. Okay, thank you, Jay. Thank you, Eric. Item 8B on the agenda is the twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three proposed town budget. It's a pretty simple item, We can just go through that. I don't know if we have much to talk about here. We obviously have our schedule. We have our scheduled meeting and we expect the proposed budget next week right Eric you got anything to comment on.
Yeah no I think there's there's not that many changes that were outlined at the last meeting sherry and I sherry's got to produce it Hopefully I'll get that tomorrow. We'll both review it and we'll get it to you as soon as the Board of Selectmen actually agrees. I'm about 90% of the way through completing the budget book And we'll give that to you at the same time because that has a lot of the supporting documentation. And the goal was to produce the Excel spreadsheet with the budget. At the same time, we produce the budget book, which has a lot of supporting details. So that's the that's kind of the goal, which is a lot to get done in the next week.
We're to get the school budget by Wednesday too, the deadline?
Or not? I have no idea. Guess the status is late, Sherry? They're they're voting on it.
There's a special meeting for them to vote on it. Oh, they're so they're gonna be a little late then? A little, I think. Yeah.
They they scheduled a a special meeting, so I won't have it approved yet. What's the date of their special meeting? I wanna say the third.
We're supposed to have a hundred and twenty days prior to fiscal year end. So Before the regular meeting. Looks like it's March second, Second? Okay. Yeah.
There is an agenda posted on the AES website under the Board of Ed section.
I So. Had a question too, is that when we start the process, I'm getting confused because I've been listening into a lot of meetings, but does the superintendent come to one of our meetings to present it to us or did they go to the board a selectman meeting? I'm remembering that from last year when Val was at the BOS meeting and a lot of questions were asked unless we're not doing that. So last year Val presented at both.
However, this year, given that they're not going to have a finalized budget till after the town is due to supply the budget to the Board of Finance, I would think it would be appropriate for Val to make whatever presentation she's going to make directly to the Board of Finance, not necessarily to the Board of Selectmen, cause you're ultimately the group that approves it. And the reality is the board of selectmen, while they can comment on it, doesn't have any statutory authority to modify anything in the school budget anyway.
Thank you. Yeah, I was trying to remember the process because I know Ram presented at meetings and, you know, okay,
I know it's getting started. Got the Ram stuff and isn't Ram having a meeting,
I don't know, budget meeting next week, this week? I don't know. I did look on their website too. I was checking out there. I was looking for that big decrease, you know, but I didn't find it. Still 30,000,000 starting, but whatever. Step by step.
I just have one question. I don't know if anybody has the answers to this yet. I've been following the workshops for the school and the board of selectmen, so trying to keep up with everything. What I see today from that's been done so far on the school side, Sherry, is I don't see the level of detail that we would ask for. So I just didn't know if that was gonna be coming to us once they approve it. And when I say level of detail, I'm talking about last fiscal year expenses proposed, the adopted budget, what the actual unaudited expenses were, what the proposed budget for this year is, the year to date expenses, and then any revenue stuff that we have. And then the proposed. Similar to what our worksheet looks like on the on the spreadsheet.
There will be a spreadsheet that will be updated when they make their decision.
Because we'd be looking for those comparisons from year over year.
So I guess your answer is yes. Okay, good. Thanks.
You're welcome. Other comments or questions on the budget process? Okay, I think we move to our agenda item 8C, which is the CIP request for the budget year upcoming. So Eric how do you want to review these
okay so this will be presented both probably by both Jay and myself I'll give you the one over the world overview right now we have about $30,000 remaining in the public works equipment fund. We have proposed adding $115,000 to that fund in the upcoming budget cycle, which will give us about $145,000 We're at the same time assuming that we're going to take probably between 10 and $15,000 $15,000 to be conservative to prop up the public works vehicle maintenance line item to account for the fact that we took the money from vehicle maintenance instead of capital last year. That we were not into that we were anticipating taking from capital that's ultimately your decision. On what to do and whether you choose to do that that leaves us with roughly $130,000
available next year, so given that $130,000 what CIP has recommended is that we authorize the purchase of a skid steer, which is about $75,000 for public works this year. And then sometime in the next budget cycle, so in the twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three year, authorize the purchase of a plow truck for the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four plow season. And the reason why we have to do it a whole budget cycle ahead is that best case scenario, we have a six to eight month time lag to get it, so we can't wait till the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four budget season. To authorize the purchase of the truck because we won't have it when we need it, So the way it works, if we take out the $75,000 there's just enough remaining in that account to fund the first payment. And because this thing, the truck is going to be, you know, somewhere around a $240,000 Correct me if I'm wrong, Jay, expense. And that's well over, you know, one year's contribution to the Public Works Equipment Fund. We're going to have to finance that over a period of years. And so if you think about, you know, what four years of that looks like, that looks like somewhere around $60,000 which is basically just what we have remaining in that fund. So what I'm saying is we can pull it off. It's going to be tight, but it is doable to do do CIP's recommendations. Obviously, I don't think we're going to ask for any action
tonight because, you know, we don't have the money in the account right now to purchase or agree to purchase anything anyway. And until we have a budget in place, I don't see any way we can do that, but we've given you the information on what the purchases are. Now the big dilemma we have in the problem we're finding across the board is prices are so volatile right now, especially because of, you know, the lack of many things that you know there's no guarantee the prices that we have in those quotes today are going to be valid in five months or six months when we go to trigger. So I just want you all to be aware of that. You know, I'm finding like right now, both the electrician and plumbers, you know, are willing to honor a price estimate they give me for ten days, sometimes five days, because their materials costs are so volatile right now. And you know, for instance, the the cost basis for doing the work at public works increased pretty considerably for when we originally bid it, know, which was five months ago or four months ago to now, just because materials costs are going up so rapidly. So that's what I want. That's the overview. And Jay can give you the details,
which you also got today. You got all the bid docs on that.
Okay. Get into the details. The skid steer 75 ks and you want to fund that out of this year's budget?
Not out of the current budget. I want to fund that out of the twenty twenty two, twenty three budget. Because we couldn't fund it out of the current budget anyway, we don't have the money. I was saying so so you're talking these are both going to be next year events. Correct. They're going to have to be.
Yeah, the the only thing that I could add to that, basically, the just to clarify the skid steer is quote is good till March 2 and the truck is good till March 11 and then basically it would have to be requoted And what Eric was explaining, know, any if funds were available, you know, wouldn't have to be expended until after the twenty twenty two-twenty three budget, but it has to be go through the approval process before we can actually, you know, commit to signing.
So you would sign a purchase contract, it would basically lock in that price and financing, but the actual payments wouldn't occur until next year? Yeah, until until we receive,
you know, set equipment. And then on the truck itself, it's a little less than $2.40. But you know, call it $240,000 five year payment is $51,000 a year.
Okay, Eric is increasing interest rates likely to well, I guess this is the whole deal is that this is good till March 2 or whatever. And then everything's off the table and we just start over on that. Right. So
Yeah, I mean I was looking at it and I think objectively, you know, she couldn't ethically. You can't really pull the trigger on this, because it's funds we don't have currently. Yeah, so it would be ideal to lock it in now and ask for July delivery when we could actually pay for it, but I don't see how we can. Mean, you know, I mean, I suppose we could borrow against a different fund and do that, but that gets that gets a little sketchy and what happens when we get to the budget process and, you know, the, we end up having to trim that account back considerably because we can't get the budget passed. So I It's August and we're still doing budget meetings. Right, right. You know and and ideally we'd like the piece of equipment at the beginning of the construction season, but I just don't see how that's,
you know, legally and legitimately possible at this point. Yeah. Do you have to go back to CIP if these prices significantly change or is the approval the approval conceptually for the equipment? And they have nothing to do with the price. Mean, it's probably proved it.
It's ultimately the Board of Finance's decision on whether to finance a piece of equipment or not, and where to take the money from. CIP just they do. Do we need it? Is it a valid expense? It's a reason.
You know, what recommendations would we have for the specifics of the machine? And what should we buy? You know, but it's really the Board of Finance's purview, whether you finance or not, and you know, whether you approve the expense or not. So that's really on you, not on them. So I don't, I guess that's a long winded way of saying that unless it was a radical price increase, I don't think it would have to go back through CIP. I think the Board of Finance would just have to, you know, agree to the price increase, whatever it was and agree as to how what they wanted to do for financing. The other thing I want to be clear on is that I don't think, you know, although we have some terms of finance listed on the documents, it looks like nobody's willing to set in stone what their finance terms are until the day we're willing to sign a contract basically, you know, because I think everybody's understanding that interest rates are probably going to go up also.
Yeah, there's some anticipation of that probably already in there. All right, so it sounds to me like, and I agree with you, Erica, don't what the mechanism would be by which we would even authorize this even if we did have this information in advance. So it sounds to me like this is primarily advisory at this point, that this is gonna come down the road and we need to consider this for the next budget season, but we really cannot take action on this at this point.
Well, mean, I think you should review the information and it would be nice at the next budget meeting for the Board of Finance to at least make a decision whether they would support this in the next budget. So we put that information in the budget book so it's clear to the public that, you know, we intend to spend for that on those items. Even though it's basically in the budget book now because it's in the capital equipment proposed capital equipment list.
Question for you. And this proposed budget, you're proposing an addition of 115 ks, right? Correct. The capital. So out of that, we're gonna have to pay that whatever the first payment is for that five years. So for the next five years, we buy this truck and we have a payment. That's gonna really impact our contributions to the capital equipment fund. Absolutely What because does that do to us in the next five years? We're gonna buy anything for the next five years or Well, mean, that is the problem, Diane, is that,
you know, over a fifteen year period, up until this latest big inflationary spike, the amount we were putting into it was roughly equivalent to what our fifteen year capital needs are. The only problem was we did we do acknowledge that we had to front load a lot of it because we let our equipment get so far down, you know, deteriorated that we did incur a greater than average expense the first three to four years and we're still in that period now. But you're right that the fact of the matter is, you know, plow trucks are expensive and especially now that we're looking at spending $240, you know, every five years just on a plow truck that takes a really big bite out of the capital funding available for public works. Yeah, no question. And if we could increase that fund, that would be great. But the reality is, You know, we're looking at such a high budget increase. I'm not sure we're going to be able to go up from that, you know, I'm not even guaranteeing, you know, I'd be foolish to say I was guaranteeing we'd even get all the way through the budget season with $115,000 in that fund. I mean, you know, four years ago, we were consistently budgeting somewhere around $20,000
for that fund, which is why we're in the hole we're in now because we under budgeted it for so long, we let everything fall apart. So,
yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, and we have a lot of construction work on our plate for the next
umpty, umpty years that we want to get done. Yeah, no question. But the other thing to consider is that still the most cost effective way to do it is to do work in house that you're capable of doing. So yes, it's it's definitely an added expense, but the cost of subbing it out by and large is greater until you get into very specialized things like bridge work, culvert work. Yeah, you can argue that you're better off to sub that out. And there's a lot of things that are not within our own capability. We don't have our own paving box. You know, we're not doing our own shimming. All that stuff has to be subbed out. But all the work you can do in house, we should be doing in house.
Question on the skids here. We're not replacing equipment currently, right? So what's the purpose of the what's it going to be used for? I mean, I kind of know what they're used for, but I'm curious specifically why the addition of the the skid That's
that would be a new addition to the fleet. It's a multi purpose machine, multi seasonal. We have several attachments attachments that that are are going to be included with that snow blower, auger.
Do you have the trailer and equipment to be able to move it to where you need We don't
have well I shouldn't say we don't have a trailer. The trailer we do have is our 20 ton trailer, which is plenty big enough. It's oversized for it, but we would be looking to get a new trailer at some point, you know, for a smaller it's a smaller piece of equipment and the trailer for that be about $10,000 but we're not looking to do that right at this point. But it'll just make us more efficient. We can do much, you know, smaller work if we got small work, compact areas, can get in, get out, go on to the next job.
Why no DEF? Is it just the engine size or is it gasoline engine?
This particular machine does not require DEF. Bobcat does not go through a region. That's one of the points of this machine that was so attractive. Does not go through a regeneration process and does not have DEF fluid.
Those burn clean enough as is, I guess, or produce it. Yep. Yep. Yeah.
I think it's also size. A small enough machine. The bigger machines seem like they pretty much all have to use the regen and the DEF, but some of the smaller diesel equipment, you know, I don't know whether it's changing different regulations or whatnot, but it seems like not all of them have to. I don't know. Maybe you know more about that than I think. That's just a little bit smaller horsepower,
and it if it goes up in I think it's a matter of three or four horsepower, then it's into that next size, and then it requires the DEF fluid and and regen process. But Bobcat's been able to tune that motor for the pollution controls that it has. It doesn't require it. Yeah.
K. Yeah. I only know the on road stuff, not so much the off road stationary. All right, other questions for Eric and Jay on this topic? We'll clearly take this up at our next meeting, I think.
I just have one quick question Mark maybe it was said at the beginning but how many plows does our town have right now?
So currently we have four plow trucks four primary plow trucks. Well no we have three primary plow trucks and then we have one emergency reserve. Our emergency reserve is a '97 Ford plow truck And basically we have a 2019 a 2014 and a 2004 plow truck. And realistically, our kind of long term goal is to maintain three primary plow trucks that are fifteen years old or less with the emergency spare between fifteen and twenty years old. Because that's fifteen years is basically these things go through a pretty hard life. A lot of municipalities change them out much sooner than fifteen years. Certainly the state does, you know, but I think
doing a good job of maintaining them, especially if we go with the stainless or the hard ox bodies, you know, we can we can keep them. Let me just say beyond fifteen years as a primary plow truck, you start to incur pretty excessive expenses trying to keep the things on the road. So the goal is to keep the three trucks in the reasonable maintenance category where we're not really suffering from accelerated cost of maintenance.
And do all the guys currently on your crew day, do they all have their CDL? Do they all do you have four drivers right now? Yes. Okay. I mean, I I think I've heard that in different meetings. Okay. Thanks.
Great. So basically, that you we all run three primary plow routes and then depending on what's going on, we have one part time helper, Mark Williams, and Jay also plows. So the three primary drivers plow the big main routes and Jay and Mark Williams help out at intersections and parking lots and then fill in. And then if we had a driver of a primary truck, plow truck out, either Jay or Mark Williams would fill in on the primary route. And that's basically how we do it. Thank you. It's necessary. Yep.
Okay. Oh, yeah. Wouldn't be able to keep up otherwise. Yeah. The small store small storms, I can keep up with parking lots and, some intersections. The bigger storms, which if we get into that well, Friday, we'll need Mark, but, you know, all hands on deck. Okay. Thank you.
An another quick point, on the, plow truck current currently, air correct me if I'm wrong the payloader is on a budget cycle or a payment cycle that's coming off. Yes,
the payloader is coming off its its payment. Its last payment is due this month. So and it's already budgeted for in this year's budget.
Yeah. So and these two pieces of equipment will be lucky if we see them by winter time of next year. If if they pass when you know, at at such time.
So what's the backlog on getting the skid steer? That's something we hadn't really discussed. It it's yeah. It's
like I said, we'll be we'd be lucky to see it probably in the fall. I don't think we're gonna be getting it right away. You know, just availability of them, they gotta build it and whatnot. But it would be between early and early fall to beginning of winter is my guesstimate based on the conversations I had. Since the new quote, which I didn't ask the gal in North Dakota, which I could, I could probably get an idea from her. I could email her and get maybe a little closer because the purchase would go through their main branch in North Dakota.
What is Right backlog right now for getting a Freightliner built and then getting the body put on it? Do we have that? I'm told
by Freightliner they have some build slots available right now. Chassis would be end of the summer, well not end of the summer, would be early fall, so maybe beginning of winter, end of winter.
So if we pulled the trigger right now, we could potentially have it. So which is another way of saying that basically sometime, you know, as soon as we're in budget season, you know, or next August, we need to be ordering it for 2324 then. Correct?
Yeah. The, you know, the longer it's the longer it's delayed, the less build slots are available. And it, you know, it's gonna put it out that much further and, you know, costs go up.
Yeah. I know the last time we ordered one, it was basically nine months from order to we had the thing in the garage roughly.
Yeah. They're telling me on the truck six to eight months, more on the eight month side to a year. But it depends on, like I Freightliner has some slots. The way they build, They're allocated each dealership is allocated so many build slots and they're filling them. And as soon as those are gone, there's none left till next cycle, which is next year. So from next year, year, or even that much further out, it'll be, you know, another six months or so because it'll take that much time to get it in and then have it built. Right. Yep, that is the dilemma. Mark, you're on mute.
Other questions on this topic? Supply chain keeps me up at night. That's no fun for anybody if things are going through now. It's tough. Yeah. All right. Well, if we hear no other questions, we'll go ahead and move on to agenda item nine, which is the approval of meeting minutes. Eric and Jay, thanks for your participation. That was helpful. Number nine is approval of meeting minutes. Anybody want to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from last meeting?
I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from 01/26/2022.
Okay, Diane moves to approve the meeting minutes. Anyone else? Do we have a second? I'll second. Linda seconds, thank you. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you guys. Agenda item 10 is the liaison reports. We've already heard about the seniorcommunity center building. Do we have any others? Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to eleven, board open discussion. Does anybody have anything else they'd like to bring before the board tonight?
I'm bummed it's gonna snow on Friday. That's all I have to say. After today, I've got it pumped out. Sorry, winter's not over yet. Oh, I want it to be gone. Not quite. I should say it's right. Not quite. Mark? Yeah. I'll
make it really brief. I know I emailed you earlier today asking about the letter in the non lapsing account that AES, you know, asked to use, but I'll just take a look at the letter. I mean, I've heard things in meetings. My primary refresh me did the letter give us an explanation as to why they were asking us so soon in the year.
They weren't asking us to do anything. This particular letter was mostly advisory and it just said that they had voted to because they had an outplacement. They hadn't voted to or decided to move some deposit into the account let's see blah blah blah blah blah blah. The Board of Ed have voted approved using money from the 2% non lapsing account to cover the costs of the unexpected special education outplacement. So removing money from the two percent from the account that they normally would put that 2% in to cover this unexpected outplacement so it was, it didn't increase or move any money from their within their budget. They just use the money from that non lapsing account to cover that outplacement.
And my only question was, and the way I, just because I know we're going to get so into the budget, the only reason I brought it up is it seems early in the year to dip into that, you know, that was my only, so I'll read the letter. I would think in May, you know, I was waiting for them to see where the budget might lie, see if they might have a little bit of other money that they've moved around in the past. That was where I was going with that. It just seemed strange to hear such a request from a school system in January.
Well, I think that they had kind of warned us that they were concerned about an increased outplacement and it was about $90. Those things are expensive, everybody knows. They felt like they could cover it other ways.
Okay, yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge that tonight because I know I thank you for sending the letter. I'll take a look later.
Okay. Once again, is there anything specific that the board wants from myself and or Sherry prior to the first budget workshop on the second?
Question because I can't remember everything that's in the budget book that you're going to put in there, but I would be wanting to understand what projects we completed last year from the construction road maintenance site and what anticipated for the future. And is that all spelled out in there?
A lot of that's in the budget book. It's certainly not all in the budget book, but the majority of that of what you're asking is in the budget book currently.
I just think the public would wanna know if we're putting what are we asking for $330,000 or something in there? Correct. They would wanna know going towards and what are we where are where state of the union, where are we at? What did we do? What do we need to do kind of thing? Right.
You know, you've done a pretty good job in the past of understanding you know, kind of explaining what the cost per mile for different types of approaches to either remediation or repaving, that may well have gone up over the last two years. I'd be surprised if it didn't, everything else is. Yeah.
So, yeah, I think it's I think it's good to have that background context as much as possible. We don't certainly need it for the next meeting, but as much as we can have is supporting, it's going to help this thing move along smoothly.
Sure. Yeah, and I also get that this is going to be a big ask. It's a big ask. There is a significant budget increase and I get it, you know, and I understand that it's not necessarily all possible. I'm firmly aware of that. So let's work together as best we can. You know, if you as a board decide that there's a specific target you need to hit or you think that's doable with the public, you know, the earlier you can let me know and we can try to figure out what, you know what we could do to accomplish that. This budget basically lays out what the board of selectins priorities are,
but ultimately the the final decision on the budget is yours I'll support you any way I can you tell me what information you want and sharing I'll try to get to you.
And the other piece I don't know, and I know because we're asking for. A part timer, another full timer in public works. Do we have documented in that budget book or some kind of documentation of of the reasons why we need to what what does this get to the tech get to the town? What does it bring to the town by adding these positions? I think, you know, whenever you're talking add to staff, people wanna know, well, what does it get us and why? And I know you guys talk a lot about the board of selectmen, but I'm just thinking from a public perspective information because people focus on that.
Okay, I will try to add that to the budget book. Remember it was only a day or so ago when I knew the board was actually going to include that in the budget so I hesitated to put too much detail in there.
And so, not sure if stands at the Board of Selectment level, the reasons why, but I think the taxpayers don't have that kind of background.
Sure. Thank you. In the interim, I'm sure any of us, we think about something we can, you you can send it to Eric and copy Sherry and let them know, okay, here's something I just thought of. We want to be able to talk to and understand. Right.
And what I would say is that, you know, do you have a feel for what you want to focus the first workshop on yet? I mean, we could one easy one would be if you wanted to review all the capital requests, we could do that first, for instance, because that's, you know, it's not easy, but at least, you know, we could go over that or, you know, just give us direction as to what it is you want to. Do you want to do an overview first? Do you want to look at capital first? What is it that you're wanting from us for the first workshop?
It's a good question. I it always helps to do an overview, right? And as long as we kind of all understand and agree it's just an overview, we're not going to dig into the details, you know, with that initial overview. And then, know, we have our capital expenditures, we expect we have our funding, you know, the funds, we have our departmental budgets. You know, capital expenditures would not be a bad thing to talk about. It's that's that's a big topic, especially if you're including are you including roadwork in that probably? Yeah.
Are we going to collapse those two road funds together, tar and roadwork?
Yeah, we are, but we're not going to do it until we set up the actual standalone funds, which requires the help of the auditor. But yes, I think we are gonna just essentially going forward will roll tar into the roadwork fund. Pierre, you agree that's the approach? Yes. I do.
She didn't look like I wasn't sure she was gonna agree with you on that one. Well, we have a roadwork fund.
To We just put tar into it, really. We don't need. Right? Correct. Okay. Correct.
And there's no most towns do do that. You know, the only thing is that there are things specific to, you know, are some rules that the state applies to town aid road funding. They're pretty broad, But I mean, technically we have more flexibility with other funds because those are strictly your decisions rather than, you know, guidance from the state on how they can be spent. But practically, given what we use the funding for, there's no issues combining the fund and it makes it cleaner because you just have one funding source, you know, you put money into it, you take money out of it, you account for it en masse. So I do agree that that's a better approach, than having two separate funds that you can kind of spend interchangeably. In the past, what we've done historically, before we had a permanent fund, is whatever money was allotted for roadwork in a given year that would be spent first and then they would spend out of town aid road. The reason being town aid road money can accumulate and roll in the old budgeted system, it could not roll. But now that we've changed to a standalone fund for that that can roll from year to year, it makes more sense. And part of the reason it makes more sense is that, you know, to do roadwork economically, you need to really be starting in May. You may be crack sealing and you may have all these initial expenses,
you know, so we're always holding some money over like we still have quite a bit of money left between Town Aid Road and the Roadwork Fund. And it's not because we underspent any last year, it's because we're holding back money to spend before July 1 in the end of this fiscal year. So it always looks a little suspicious that there's quite a bit of money left over in that fund. And that simply because it's much more, it's much smarter to have that money available early in the season. One, so you can do a lot of your work before July 1. And two, a lot of contractors because a lot of towns won't have the funding till July 1, it makes life easy and sometimes there's more flexibility. I know that was a really long winded explanation for a very simple question, so I'm sorry about that.
That makes a lot of sense. Think that actually was helpful explanation.
Can I add one last thing? I know we were looking for what we're going to go over next week and I didn't get to look at what you sent us, Eric. Did you send us just quickly like the budget, the spreadsheet, or you sent us a report?
I haven't sent you. I sent you a report a whole bunch of stuff for CIP and the public works like where we are right now in terms of in forecasting for this year. I have not sent you the actual budget. Normally what we do is as soon as the Board of Selectmen approves it, it will go directly to you and it will be a public document at that point. Up to this point it hasn't been really a document shared with the public. Know, we could Sheri and I could give you a copy today, but there's still some changes to make. For what I was gonna ask right now, I didn't wanna say something if you already Yeah.
So thank you for that. So going forward, you know, I know they're meeting Monday. Once you send it after that, know we're going be meeting weekly, so that's fine. Like Mark said, just kind of an overview of the whole budget. I know that a couple a few of us have tuned in from time to time, so we might have heard a little bit more, but I think it's good for all of us to hear it as a group, like you said. And then when you're talking about the new positions and what Diane mentioned, you know, why, you know, I appreciate hearing that too. I've heard a little bit of it. If we could have the dollar figure, okay, adding the public works full time guy, you know, what the seasonal person's gonna cost, You know, just having those dollar amounts will be helpful. Sure. I know we're gonna be all over the place and then dissecting it section by section, but that's my 2¢ to helpfulness.
One quick question. The updated budget documents you sent over for forecasting where you think you're gonna be with public works, that's through what date? Because the numbers are different than what we have in our current financials. So is that through the end of January?
That would be a Jay question, not an Eric question.
So that extra expenses, the approved expenses are through what months? Then you Yeah. Got a
Do you want me to answer that? So, Eric, I'm assuming you sent everybody the email that I sent you? Correct. With the attachments? Correct. Okay. So, basically, if you you haven't already, you look at each of those attachments. That's the spreadsheet I use that I made up that I brought with me. And I kind of adapted it to your budget line items that were available when I got here. So basically you have the summary page of each budget. I'm going to click on one because I got to look at it the same time I'm speaking.
You got the screen. If you were you could just share that screen so everybody could see what you're talking about. How do I share it? Ask Amanda. Amanda can you let Jay share his screen?
Go ahead. At the bottom of your zoom, you'll see a green little arrow button that says share screen.
Okay. Hang on just a second. You got this, Jay. I'm trying. Give me, all right. I see share screen. Now, will this let me will this let me share the screen that's on my other because I'm looking at it on my other monitor.
Yeah. As long as it's as long as it's part of the same computer, yes. So just click share screen. And it should give you everything that's open. I mean if you're like me you got 18 different things that are open so you got to figure out which document it is then click on it then say share.
Alright. I'm learning I'm, up to learning something every new every day. Whoo. You win. So
did it work? It's it. We're looking at the email.
Looking at the email. Oh, now I gotta alright. Hang on. So now how do I share the Open that document, I think. I see. If
you have one of the documents open, what you have to do is you have to say stop share on this. Yeah. And then you have to stay share on that new document. Click on wherever that document is.
Okay. Here we go. How's that? Hang on a sec. There it is. You got it. You're looking at All right. So you're looking at the operating side. Correct.
And as I'm scrolling, you're seeing that? Yep. You got it. Okay, so we're scrolling down through this is my summary of that account which you'll see at the bottom. It has the total budget, the group approved expenditures, pending and future. All right. And it leaves me with a deficit of 8 and $20.84 That's what I'm predicting to the end of the year as of today. Does that make sense?
Okay. So questions go back, go back. Okay, go ahead. You go back to, hold on, say current, hold on, stop, stop, stop. Oh, I'm sorry. Stop, when you say approved. Right here. Total
approved expenditures like 174. What is that through what date? Is that the number through the end of January? And then pending would be everything that's not posted yet?
Correct. So this is more a real time what I submit to finance. Anything that any bill that I submit to finance invoice statement I put into my system. Okay. So I
track my expenses. Don't know, guess in finance. Okay, your
number should be the most accurate number for what we spent year With to
the items that I have that I oversee these budgets. So as you scroll down, now you get into the individual sections of the budget, like here we are at salary. So basically the last report and I've been talking with Sherry and Marina on these quite a bit. So the last time I talked to her about salary, the finance report, you'll see the last time I asked was in December. And then just so I stay ahead of myself, so it forecasts out my future expense is the balance. So leaves me with a dollar and 44¢. So basically, in my world, I've already spent the money. Does that make sense in wages?
Yeah, you're it's the equivalent of encumbering it in the system. You already know what the expense is going to be. So you forecasted that. So you don't spend more than you have. Right.
Okay. So when we go down to maintenance now, I'll just speak to this quickly. I mean, as you go to the other ones, you'll see it a little bit better, but are you know, at your leisure, but in the maintenance line item, we had 18,500 dedicated to us. We did have some big expenditures this year. We've already expended 24,794 and 68. And as you scroll down, so those are my approved expenditures in the bigger part the stuff that I've already submitted to finance. What I have pending right now is those items that you see totaling 2,600 And then I have a future expenditure which I have an appointment for one of our frontline trucks next week and it's going to be about a $2,600 bill for to replace the springs on that truck. So I forecast it out and for that, so hopefully we don't have any more big expenditures. We've serviced all our equipment.
I mean, if something else breaks along the way between now and the end of the year, if we can't afford to wait, we can't wait. Everything that we have is a frontline unit with the exception of our spare backup plow truck. We can't really afford to be without anything for a long period of time. So yeah, if you just kind of scroll down at your leisure and you can see the different items, I just forecasted out my budget the best way I could and trying not to just doing the best with what I got. Any questions? Want to see the other one? Snow report. Snow report, we have quite a bit of money left. I can back out of this if you want. I think. Stop share, right? Yep. Yeah.
Okay. And then we go go back into this. We want snow budget, and I hit share screen again. Amanda, I'm getting better at this. How's that? We got the snow snow removal? Yep. Yes. Everybody see that? Mhmm. Okay. So, in the snow removal, right now we have a, I have a forecasted surplus of $19,000 give or take. And but we have an over expenditure on our overtime. So by, well, we got another storm coming up so this 16,000 currently that we've spent as of the twenty third today, that's when I put it in because Sherry got me all the what we've spent to this point. So we'll have any other snow events will anything that goes into overtime will add to this. So we had twenty twenty one events, 23 events and 21 events, snow events we actually responded to. Whether we went out and treated and went home or we stayed all night and did two, three applications, four applications. You know, the years of 15 events, you know, light winners, they happen occasionally, but I would consider that you think about areas where we need to make sure we have enough funding because you never know when we're gonna need a little bit more. The SALT in my report, you saw that last year we had a little bit of money's left over in discussion with Eric. Because of the volatile market, I thought it would be a good idea that we planned out and spending some of that money in stockpile salt, which we did, which helped us a lot this year.
As the the market changed and vendors and where we're gonna get it was a became an ordeal, which I don't hopefully we got that ironed out for the for next year and the foreseeable future. But you know that could change too. I only see salt prices increasing. If we have money left over at the end of the season and after everything's been ironed out, if we can continue having a salt pile or a stockpile of some of the salt that we need for the next season, it would be a good idea. I feel just because it gives us a good starting point into the next season. Sometimes when you are salt, you don't get it the next day. It's a week a week later or so, you know, you don't want to run out. So that's the long and short of it unless you have any questions, specific questions.
I have a question Jay. Yeah. It's not on this, but I've been reading some articles about some towns increasing costs of transfer station fees due to the increasing costs of disposing of the trash and all that. Do you see that coming down the pike for Andover?
I can answer that question. That's actually more of an Eric question. So, currently, we are fortunate in that we have a contract with Willie Race that runs through 2024. What I will tell you is that what we're paying now per ton per disposal is not is much less than a current market rate and our cost per per pull is also quite a bit lower than current market rate. You can anticipate in the 2024 cycle, our costs for the transfer station going up a minimum of 25% for our majority expenses, which is the cost of actually hauling and the cost to dispose of materials. Now on the recycling side, we renegotiate those contracts every year. We have those contracts renegotiated now already for the upcoming year. There's a few things that went up a fair bit, but but in the grand scheme of things, those are relatively minor costs. The majority of our cost is the cost to haul bulky waste and household trash and the cost per ton for disposal of those. So presuming our usage doesn't increase dramatically, you can assume our costs are going to go up three to 4% based on our contract for this year and next year and the year after that, you know, we're gonna be looking at a 25 to 40% increase in transfer station costs.
Would that also impact employee, not employees, but the people in town having to pay more?
So, I suggested the Board of Selectmen, they should raise the fee to $60 per household this year, but they've chosen not to do that. Currently, we take in fees for the sticker program roughly it works out to just under a quarter of the total expenses of the transfer station. So the sticker, the fees that people pay are for practical purposes, 25% of the cost of running the station.
Okay. And they can't up the, you're in a contract, so they can't really change the contract? For a couple years?
No, they're locked in through 2024. One of the things that once we get through this budget year, because we're not doing anything on it this budget year, we probably should have a serious conversation with the company that bought out Willie Waste. They've indicated that they would be willing to make a deal with us, if we agree to renegotiate early to kind of spread that expense out. So it's not all a big hit in one year. You know, but overall, it's slightly cheaper over a, say, four year period to renegotiate early than it would be to wait until this contract extends and then deal with one really big jump. But we would be trading off more expense next year for less expense in future years. So if that's something the board wants to consider, we can consider renegotiating that for next year. But, you know, we're not under any obligation to. Okay, thanks.
Okay, any other questions while we're here? All right. Hearing none, let's move on to agenda item number 12, which is public speak. We don't have any members of the public, I think, that are available or anybody wish to speak? Hearing none, we can move on to our last agenda item, which is adjournment. Anybody want to make a motion to adjourn? I'll make the motion.
I'll second. I think that was Louise made the motion to adjourn the meeting and Linda seconded. Do we have any discussion? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No one? No one? Any abstentions? Hearing none, the motion passes. All right, thank you very much. We have a meeting next week, special meeting to discuss the budget. We'll see how things go in the next few days. Again, if anybody has anything specific they'd like to see from Eric and Sherry regarding the budget, please drop them an email and I would suggest you copy the rest of the board members as well. Thank you everybody. Thanks Eric. Thanks Jerry. Thanks Jay. Thanks Amanda. Appreciate it. Hey,
just remember I'm not working in the office, but I am available like normal. You can reach me on my cell phone. You can reach me via email. I'm basically working full time at this point, mostly remotely. I will hopefully be transitioning back to working part of the day in town hall starting next week, at least a couple days a week. You know? But if there's something you need from me, let me know, and I will try to provide it. Alright?
And he knows where to find me too. So And I know where to find Sherry. Yep. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Care. Bye. Bye. Bye.