Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
February 24, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I will start with the pledge of allegiance. So I pledge allegiance to the flag Flag. Of The United States Of America America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation Under invisible with liberty and justice for all. Justice for for all. Thank you. Okay. So before we start today, I would like to just make a few comments just about our meeting today and how we're going to proceed. We have a lot to cover so we're going to want to move pretty efficiently and stay on task as much as possible. Do have some public participation rules. We've established these last year we usually don't have to deal with them too much but just because obviously budget is a matter of special interest. We have a lot of people who may want to speak, so I just want to kind of revisit them very quickly. The main thing is just to observe meeting decorum, We want to be polite, respectful, and to keep order. The chair manages the meeting. Call on you generally to be a manager in the public speech. She'll do a round robin and then we'll ask him again at the end if anybody has anything to add. We only allow public speaking and comment during the agenda items for public speaking. So that's important to remember, as I mentioned a little bit earlier before we started the meeting, have two different spots in the agenda where we allow public speaking. So you can speak either or both of those. Generally, we do try to observe about a two minute time limit. If there's going to be a lot of people
try to keep your comments succinct, but we want everybody to be able to express themselves if there's, you know, we'll try to observe a reasonable time limit. If you run it a little long I might ask you to give somebody else an opportunity to speak and we'll come back to you during that session. I don't want every anybody to be cut off unnecessarily but we do want to make sure that everybody has a chance when we move this along. Okay. In the interest of efficiency, try to avoid restating something that somebody's already said. We've heard it in meetings before and it's important that you state your position, but if you can do it by saying hey I really support what that person said about the budget this budget aspect something like that that just helps everybody without spending a lot of extra time.
So I think that's really about it in terms of kind of the public participation rules. That's just common sense for the most part. The second thing I'd like to kind of talk about is really about the purpose of this meeting. We have our regular it's a regular meeting regular Board of Finance meeting. We have our agenda it's been published, hopefully all have it or been able to see it. We have a lot to cover in addition to just having a presentation of the. Andover elementary school school budget, which is kind of the highlight and and it's going to kick off this budget season for us on the board of finance.
Okay, so the purpose of this presentation and today's meeting this agenda item is really to learn about this proposed budget. We want to understand the philosophy and approach of the administration and the Board of Education and for the Board of Finance to members to ask questions and and really learn more about this. Nothing is going to be decided here tonight, this is mainly fact finding at this time, so we just want to make sure that everybody's clear on that, and we just want to treat that as such, we'll keep an open mind on how we're going to approach this. And Again, we're early in this process. We still have plenty of work to do on this, so we may well have to come back for more information,
more clarification, some suggestions, whatever. So just wanted to make that point that we got a long way to go and this is just the start. Okay, so that being said, I'd like to go ahead and open the meeting to public speak. Agenda item number two. Amanda, do you want to go around?
Totally. So we are going to go one by one and we will kick it off with Celeste Willard. And as you are called on to speak, just unmute yourself and then re mute yourself after. Thank you. Thanks Amanda.
Thank you board of finance and thank you everybody, for joining. My name is Celeste Willard and I am the Andover Elementary School Parent Teacher Association Co President. And I'm here tonight to fully support on behalf of the PTA and families in the community, I would like to offer our full support of the proposed budget from our superintendent, Ms. Bruno. As you know, the elementary school has not saw a budget increase in the last six years. And in doing so, the school is functioning in a bare bones capacity, specifically in staff and in other resources. We recognize that the enrollment may not be increasing, but costs for providing a quality education are. If we have learned nothing else during this past year, we have seen how critical a well functioning school system is for our children, for our families, and for our communities. We applaud our school community for working very hard to determine a responsible budget that is fit to properly operate a quality school for our community. The following families echo this statement and those families are if I may, the Blake family, the Rickert family, the Marino family,
the Foran family, the Wilson family, the Kelquist family, the Soloway family, the Warner family, the Gold family, the Godwin family, the Allard family, the Glowacki family, the Lewis family, the Charfont family, the Martell family, the Clay family, the Morse family, the Klasewski family, the Patrice family, the McCarthy family, the Landry family, and last but not least, the Willard family. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Celeste.
Thank you, Celeste. And also as we go on, want to point out something that's a little different with doing Zoom is that you don't have the opportunity to physically hand in your public speak if you so choose. If you'd like, I just wanted to offer for anyone to submit it via email, to me during the meeting. My email is adminassistantAndoverCT and I will also write it in the chat. Okay. Next up, we have Dan Foran.
Hello everyone. Dan Foran, 68 Stanley Drive. Thank you Board of Finance. So as a member of the Andover community, I'm proud to support the budget that the Board of Education has put forth. As a Board of Education member, I was more than happy to vote in a favor and move this budget forward. More importantly, taxpayer and a parent, fully support this budget. This was a difficult budget to work on taking consideration of the financial impact that pandemic has put on our tax payers and the effect that the pandemic has on our educational system. A lot of work was done behind the scenes about the added expenses of what could be cut and what was unnecessary
to properly educate our children. I think what is important to realize is that we listen to the experts as in everything you have to look at facts and trends, studies and opinions of the experts. Superintendent Bruno, Principal Variety and our educators are those experts. They know what is required to properly educate our children and operate a school. This is a budget that is a fiscally responsible but more importantly puts our children's education and future at the forefront. In a normal non pandemic year, we have always invested in our children's education and have always done what's right for Andover Elementary School. This shows in our test scores from years past. Andover is one of the highest performing schools in the state. Now we are in our second year of a pandemic. Last year our children's school
was cut short by almost half a year. The administration at that time scrambled like other school districts to come up with distance learning. They did their best they could with what they had during an unprecedented time. It was a struggle for all from the administration to our teachers, parents and our status of all our children. Children continue to struggle academically and emotionally. Thankfully, Andover Elementary School has done a great job at getting our kids back to school in person safely from day one of this academic year. Thankfully, have a superintendent who specializes in a special education. So she recognizes how learning gaps can affect our children in the future. This brings me to one of the controversial issues which in my opinion should be controversial in kindergarten class size. Kindergarten and third grade are very important years in early childhood education. There's a very high possibility that some of these children coming into kindergarten are behind and or have not had any pre kindergarten education. The pandemic has set children back socially and academically. It's important to get these children caught up and recognized any learning disabilities. It is important to recognize these needs early so that it does not cost us more in the future. This brings me to another point of investment. I know there's a concern in town about the failure to invest in infrastructure from years past. Now that has caught up with us. We have a lot crumbling on bridges, roads and other infrastructure.
Though it is more costly now to play catch up at least we have the ability to repair these things like infrastructure when it comes to education a failure to invest early on results in a failure later. However, unlike infrastructure education cannot be replaced down the road when it fails. These early years are our building blocks to our children's future and the future of our town our country and our world. As a taxpayer and a father of four, hope the Board of Finance supports the Board of Education's budget. Thank you for your time.
Thanks Dan. For those of you that don't know Dan's also on the board of education and we appreciate your input. Thanks Dan. Chris Bernard.
Good evening, Chris Bernard, address is 58 Merritt Valley Road, and I am speaking as a member of the board of education. I support the proposed AES budget, not only because of the hard work of the school administration and my fellow board of education members, but because it's a prudent course of action. For a bit of background on myself, I hold a doctor of education degree in educational leadership. Was on how ideology and pedagogy impact the adoption of technology in the classroom. While my dissertation was centered on technology use, it was of course important to understand the historical past significance of pedagogy, something that we have all experienced.
As we discussed the proposed Board of Education budget, one item I would like everyone to keep in mind is the ever changing role of education in society. Many of us were educated for a very different world than what we live in now. As part of the industrial revolution, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of us were educated in some very formalized and standardized ways that continue to this day, with the primary goal of the education system to be to be creating a standardized worker for factories and labor. This standardized approach to education led to larger class sizes and more efficiencies. But as a targeted the average student, it often failed to serve the vast majority of students in the best way possible.
Those students who did not fit the mold simply never reached their potential. This, of course, includes students both above and below the average. As our nation has changed from an industrial economy to a service and knowledge based economy, so must our education. To do so means we must change how we teach and interact with students, moving from the sage on stage to the guide on the side, especially in the more formative years of schooling. This means increased interaction with students leading to smaller class sizes. We have seen firsthand the impact of not investing in our future. We hear regularly about the ever increasing cost to repair roads and infrastructure that not been maintained over the years. Roads and buildings can be repaired. Our children cannot. Same as Dan said, by the way, we did not coordinate that at all. I understand the concern and recognize challenge trying to meet the needs of all members of our community, a daunting task before the board finance, board selectman and community as a whole, and look forward to working together and meeting the needs of all. Thanks. Thank you.
Thanks, Chris. Next we have Anne Creme and Jerry Creme.
I'd like to thank you for having us share our feelings and our ideas. I give a lot of thought to what I was gonna say. I concur with the people from the board of ed who have already spoken, but I brought this wrote this from a different perspective. I live at 8 Wood Fern Way. This evening I'm speaking as a senior citizen resident of this town and not just as a board of ed member. My wife Anne and I bought our building lot in 2004 built our home in 2005 when we moved in. We had never heard of Andover and most people we spoke with had never heard of Andover either. Generally speaking, people still have never heard of Andover. We love that about this town, rural nature, uncrowded, no traffic. It's a great place to live. We love it here. It all comes with a price. That's become a problem I will address. We had planned to retire, grow old and stay in this town.
There are times I wonder if we will be able to afford it. Ever since we have lived here, there has been an annual problem, argument, discussion, whatever you want to call it. It is the budget. I would like to call it an opportunity. Our town has needs that must be funded in order to operate and function roads, bridges, fire equipment, public works vehicles, residents, state trooper, all employees who work for the town and the list goes on. We also have an exceptional and top performing elementary school that must be funded as well if we are to educate the youngest of our residents and prepare them for our future. Trooper,
As citizens of Andover we have a responsibility as well as an obligation to fund the needs not the wants but the needs of the sound. We cannot continue to the can down the street and not fund the things that need to be funded. I've lived in Wethersfield, Newington and West Hartford. I owned a business in West Hartford for eighteen years and worked as a teacher in South Windsor for seventeen years. I've never experienced the arguments and disagreements over budget that I've seen in Andover year after year. No one anywhere wants to pay higher taxes. As a senior citizen on a fixed income, paying more becomes more difficult for us. But as a resident, I know that I have a responsibility to my town and its residents. My daughter went through the West Hartford public school system k to 12. We moved to West Hartford because it had an outstanding school district. It had all the services and amenities as well. Katherine received the top rated education that has served her well as an adult. I'm thankful to the residents of West Hartford
who paid taxes to support our education and all the amenities that the town had to offer. Whenever there was a school budget referendum, residents including my family always voted yes to support the school district. I taught in South Windsor for seventeen years. We had an awesome school district that was always at the forefront in terms of curriculum teaching and learning. As a teacher in South Windsor, we were given all that we needed to provide the best possible education for our students. The residents of South Windsor voted in favor of a remodeled high school and middle school. They are finishing up the building of four new elementary schools. People in South Windsor placed a premium value on education.
In Andover, we do not have tennis courts, golf courses, swimming pools, ice skating rinks, crash collection, parks, the list goes on. One of the greatest value that we do have in Andover is our school, Andover Elementary School. When one teacher from South Windsor heard that we were moving to Andover, our first words were Andover has a school to die for. It is the crown jewel of our rural town. How do all of these other towns do all of this and keep their taxes reasonable? In order to have enough revenue, you have to be able to pay for education and all the other needs of the town. You really have only two choices. One, raise taxes on the residents. Two, encourage commercial development and growth the business and industry. West Hartford and South Windsor have made an art form of commercial development. Why can't Andover at least try to compete? We have all of Route 6, but all the commercial development is down on Route 44 bypasses us. It is obvious but not easy. We're going to have to actively pursue commercial development in Andover. We can't keep with our keep up with our town needs and our Andover elementary school needs by just raising mill rates. We can't keep putting off that which needs to be done. We have to support our town and our school. Costs will continue to rise. As taxpayers, we have to take care of our small town and our Andover elementary school. How are we going to continue fund our future needs? It's my hope that commercial development is at the top of our list to increase revenue. We can't keep putting all of the responsibility on the residents and taxpayers
of Andover. Until we bring business and industry to Andover, our residents will have to sole responsibility of funding our town and school budgets. My sincere thank you to the Board of Finance, Board of Selectmen and Board of Education for all of your hard work and contribution to the town of Andover. Thank you for being good stewards of our revenue and resources. I also want to thank all of the town and school employees for all you do to make Andover the community that it is. Please know that we do appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you, Jerry appreciate it. We're going to have to keep the comments to a little less time everyone I don't mean disrespect to anybody, but we can't we just don't have the time to allow for five or six minutes for everybody so I'm going to have to you know Jerry. Dan everyone does the board of finance that I'm giving a little leeway here, I understand the Board of Education rather Members, I appreciate the input, I think it's important, but I will have to ask most people to keep to a shorter limit case we can move on. Amanda. Thank you Jerry, appreciate the work that you guys do as well. Thanks Jerry. Ann, did you want to participate? Okay, thank you. Jenny Morell?
Nothing for me. Thank you. Thank you. Shannon Loudon?
Well, of course. So first of all, thank you very much to the Board of Finance for the opportunity to to speak tonight. I will try to get it in under two minutes, Mark. Real quickly, as the chair of the board of Andover Board of Education, I'm speaking in support of our budget with which it will be presented tonight by superintendent Bruno. In addition to all that I said in my letter to you from last Friday, I want you to know the following. I concur with Jerry Creme and believe that Andover Elementary School is Andover's greatest asset, and I have worked for five and a half years to help keep it that way. Expenses increase every year, and it therefore costs more simply to maintain what we already have in our personnel and our facility. 75% of our total budget is to pay for our dedicated employees whose tremendous efforts, along with the support of parents and families, have given our students the gift of twenty five straight weeks of face to face learning since September, other than seven preplanned remote learning days around Thanksgiving that helped to keep COVID out of our school building. This is the first time during my tenure on the Board of Education that we've requested a budget increase, and I can assure you that the Board of Education thoroughly scrutinized the budget that you are being presented with this evening, and we cut $74,000 from what Superintendent Bruno initially proposed to us in January. We only can assess our budgetary requirements based upon what our expert, Superintendent Bruno, tells us are Andover Elementary School's needs,
and not in comparison to what other towns spend on their students. It simply costs more per student to educate a smaller student population. Andover Elementary School is in the top 10% of schools in Connecticut, and we want to keep it that way. I hope that the Board of Finance will support the Board of Education's proposed budget as it has been submitted to you this evening. Thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you, Shannon. Thanks Shannon. Paula King. I just listening to everybody's thoughts tonight. Thank you.
Thank you, Scott. Scott, you have a purple screen there, would you like to participate in public speak. No, thank you, Amanda.
Oh, Scott Persson, thank you. Next up we have Boris iPad. If you could just state your first and last name.
Hi, Erin Boris Dogwood Drive. I just want to be short and sweet, but I do fully support Superintendent Bruno's budget. I just also like to highlight the fact that our school was recently featured on a local news channel for the exemplary work being done to mitigate risk while keeping our children in school. Wouldn't it be wonderful really for Andover Elementary to continue to get the accolades it deserves and be an example to surrounding communities of how we take care of our students and our teachers and staff. My hope is that the budget will be supported by the board. Thank you. Thank you. Melissa Liteska.
Yes, hi, my name is Melissa Liteska. I am a teacher at Andover Elementary School, and I am going to speak on behalf of the Andover Education Association. We would like to speak in support of Ms. Bruno's budget for Andover Elementary School for the twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two school year. We all know that the previous twelve months have been tough for everyone especially our students. COVID-nineteen has pushed teachers to totally reinvent the ways that we teach and reach our students not only meet their needs but often the needs of their families. This school year has been turbulent for our students. Some have moved back and forth between remote and in person learning, some are just returning after ten months of being home, and there are some who still haven't even entered our building since March 2020. Remote learning is not ideal. It presents our administration and staff with many challenges. It lacks structure and routine, social interaction with peers, direct instruction from a teacher, and real time support as students encounter challenges with learning. We know that there are students who will continue to need the service of remote instruction next school year. We also need to consider the new students that are off our radar and will enter AES for the first time in the fall. Ms. Bruno's budget prioritizes students and aligns resources where they're needed most. She is cognizant of the needs our students will present next school year. Her budget will support the school staff to meet the demands the pandemic has put
on everyone. And on a personal note my husband and I purchased property in Andover just this past July. We weighed the pros and cons of purchasing a home in other towns but it was the school and the strong sense of community that drew us into making the final decision to build our home here and raise our family in this town. I've taught in Andover for almost fifteen years and the school has allowed for me to connect with many people. It has become the hub and the unofficial community center and I've heard the sentiment we picked Andover because of the school many times so we did too. Okay Thank you, Melissa.
Thank you. Jamie Weber? I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Ed Smith?
Greetings, everybody. I just had surgery yesterday, so I'm going to be really brief. I'm here to support the budget. I'm also here because there's an opening on the Board of Education that I'm interested in. I feel my skill set is much more appropriate for that than my service to the Inland Wetlands and Water Commission. And I'm here to listen and learn. Thank you very much. Thanks Thanks Ed. Sheila Patrice.
Hi, I'm Sheila Patrice 327 Lake Road. I just support what Celeste said. She had our name in that list, so we're good there. Thank
you. Carrie, if you could state your first and last name. Carrie Gilbert, and I'm all set. Thank you.
Thank you. Jeff Murray? Jeff Murray? Oh, there you are. I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Lucy Wilson? Hi, everybody. Lucy Wilson, 428 Lake Road. Just came on to support the budget for AES as co president of the PTA and a resident with two children that have gone through the school system and a daughter still in. Just showing our support for the budget tonight. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, Katie Marino.
We're just here in support of the budget as well. Thank you. Joanne Hubbard.
Amanda, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. This speaker doesn't always work. I'll be very brief. I just wanted to say hello and listen in tonight. It's no secret that I advocate for a fair budget and I also agree with everyone else that I want to see quality high education continue for Andover Elementary School I think that's what we all want I've witnessed in the last year a lot of emotion from parents I'm in my own particular life I'm past the emotional state because my three children have graduated and gone on to great things so I get that if I was speaking with them still in school I'd probably be very emotional as well but I also happen to believe that a great quality education is a partnership between parents home life direction that we give them there you know we guide them to do well and our great teachers and staff that work with them during the day not necessarily
my family so while I say that you know I just propose that we you know offer a fair amount of money towards our school and look at it that way I don't want parents to always think that money equates with a great education It's really a home and school partnership. Together we work hard. So again, we have to have faith in ourselves as parents to do a good job and try not to bring emotion into it. So thank you. Thank you. Principal John Brady.
Yes, thank you. No real comments. Just great to see so many town residents, residents staff members board members on this meeting tonight so. Thank you very much, and thank you to the board of finance for all your efforts. Thank you john. Thanks john. Brian Briggs.
No, I'm sorry. I just got here. So no, I don't really have anything to say. Sorry. Thank you.
Okay, the last person I believe is a phone number (860) 462-8344. If you want to unmute yourself press 6. And it looks like we have everyone else covered.
Okay so we're all set. All right thank you everybody for your comments. We all know how important it is that the residents get involved in the processes running the town. That's what we're here about. So it's all about here. It's important. We appreciate the effort and also thank you for your support. As you know, is a difficult task for all of us. Moving on to item agenda item number three is additions and deletions of the agenda item. Does anybody on the board have any proposed additions or deletions to the agenda? Hello. Yep we've moved on if you could hold it pulled up we're we're moved on to from the public speak portion. But you are on your listening so. And there'll be another opportunity.
Yeah, there'll be another opportunity at the end of the meeting so. Okay, hearing no additions or deletions of the agenda items will move on to item number four, which is the Todd Administrators Report. We have most of this in our packet. Eric, do you want to go ahead and guide us through this?
Sure. So let me just share my screen here real quick, Assuming I get the right one. Haven't done this enough, Eric. No, I'm tired. Can't imagine why.
Okay, you should see a highlight showing my administrator's report. I'm not going to go over everything. I'm going go over just the highlights since this is a long meeting. As you all know, COVID is still an issue in the town of Andover. We're well below our peak. We peaked at somewhere around eighty infections or cases per day per 100,000 for a fourteen day rolling average. At the moment, we're down between twenty and thirty, so that's pretty good. But we're certainly not out of the woods yet. I want to talk a little bit about the legal settlement. The Board of Selectmen agreed to a legal settlement with Donna Doiker, who was the old tax collector in the town. She had sued the town over sexual harassment by one of the previous town employees slash Board of Selectmen slash board of education members. So we've agreed to our settlement. It will be paid by insurance company Kerma. Should actually have fairly minimal effect on the cost basis for the town because overall, we've been running a pretty low, you know, overall we've been a good risk as a town. So, you know, we can deal with one fairly large settlement. I also want to point out that the governor released his proposed two year budget. If you look at the effect on the town of Andover, that's basically level funded the town of Andover compared to last year. The only thing that really changed is his budget projects
about $29,000 in additional coronavirus relief funding, but that's directed to the school, not the town. Building department, we're upping the fee schedule fairly dramatically. So that should increase our revenues annually somewhere around $20,000 just so you know. We lost our resident state trooper Darryl. Darryl was reassigned to the town of Hebron. We have a resident state trooper that's covering Andover. His name is Chris Ferrara. So he's available. If you need to get ahold of him, you certainly can. We don't know when we're going to get a full time resident state trooper. And that obviously has a pretty good impact on our budget because depending on how senior an officer that gets assigned to us, it'll make a fairly dramatic difference in what our cost basis is for them. As you know, we were without a burning official for a while. We did appoint Scott Yeomans or I appointed Scott Yeomans as the burning official for the town. The basic plan is we're going to charge people for burning permits. It's going to be $30. And basically every dime the town brings in, we're going to pay to Scott because he's going to be the one administrating it and dealing with it. So the goal is to make it cost neutral to the town. We used to make the public works director do it, but that chews up a bunch of his time. So it wasn't worth it. As you know, last month you all approved the purchase of the sweeper. We went ahead and bought a used Pelican sweeper because we frankly just couldn't afford to buy a new one. So we bought a ten year old unit, it's in reasonably good shape considering the number of hours that we put on it as a town, we should be able to deal with a used machine.
I also included a bunch of information in your packet about the replacement of one of the town small pickup trucks, medium sized pickup trucks. We blew an engine on one of the public works pickup trucks, and there's a proposal later in the packet on replacing that and how we could pull off doing that by rating a couple of other funds. So I'm not going to go through the rest of that. And the other big budget we run into in the winter is the snow plow budget. We're doing reasonably well on that. We've expended right around $45,000 in salt. We were fortunate that last year wasn't a bad year. So we started the year with a stockpile somewhere around $25,000 worth of salt in the shed. So even though we're probably going to spend the whole $60,000 or maybe a little bit more, or go through $60,000
plus worth of salt, we can do it without actually exceeding the budget this year because last year was not a heavy use year. In terms of overtime, it looks like we're somewhere around $15,000 expended in overtime. So barring a really snowy March, we should be okay for the year snow budget. And I also had a bunch of a long meeting with CME Engineering. We're still trying to do the close out for the Times Farm Bridge, which has been hanging over our heads for the last three years. We finally got an agreement between our engineering team and the contractor as to what the final bill is, which is somewhere around $21,000 But of that, we will get back about 80% from the state. So we're still, you know, we're not going to be out all that much money for that. We will still have some expenses to settle our final bills with the engineering firm also. So, but we're overall in good shape and it's actually moving forward. So I'm happy with that. And still working on paperwork for the STEEP grant for roadwork. We got the STEEP grant, but there's an awful lot of hoops
to jump over before they give us any money. We're still held up on the connectivity grant because the state DOT won't release Basically, they won't release a letter saying we can start because the other DOT project that's going on at the same time is running eight months behind. So the state's kind of screwing us on getting that done. And revaluation, we finished all the data collection for reval. So that's going pretty well. And the grand list was up about 2% this year. So that also was pretty good. And Mark, you should have gotten, I think I sent you the letter, the official grand list notification letter. And
that's it for me unless you have questions for me.
Anybody have any questions for Eric? Okay, hearing none, finance department report. Have you given this one, Eric?
Yeah, I guess so, because we don't have a budget director yet, so guess I'll give that one also. So I'm just going to go through the highlights of the budget summary. There's a few things I want to talk about. Let me, so the first thing is the legal line item that we have. It looks like we're probably going to over expend the general legal budget for the town considering, you know, we've got four months, four and a half months to go and we're pretty close to overexpending it now and we're about to go into union negotiations. So I would anticipate we're going to go over in legal. However, with a little luck, we won't get sued and we can tap the assessor legal fund. For those of you know, the town typically gets sued once or twice every year when we redo the grand list. Next year, which is a rebel list, you can expect we'll get sued multiple times and have to run up some significant money in legal budget. But with a little luck, won't this year. So that's legal. There's a few minor overages, which I will account for myself because they're less than $2,000 We're gonna be significantly under on the salary for the assistant town clerk because we ran around two and a half months with no town clerk. So we're going to be significantly under budget on that one. We are likely to go over when we do May elections, depending on what happens and depending on how many budget referendums it takes to get through.
There's been a lot more requirements at the state level for elections. And because of that, it requires a lot more manpower to run elections than it has in years past. I've been kind of in contact with the registrars, so we've been talking it through. And I know I brought it to this board and told you this several months ago, but in all likelihood, we're gonna be over expended on the budget for general government elections. We're currently slightly over budget for telephone. As you know, out of the town budget, we pay for quite a number of phone lines throughout the various buildings the town owns. We have a plan in place. We did subcontract with a company called Granite, which is like a phone aggregator. And it looks like that should be able to knock our overall phone bill down about 20%. So by the end of the year, we should be fairly square with that, even though we're just a little bit over now. We are running a little over budget overall on electricity, but not significantly. And it's not in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big enough budget. We may be over 1,000 or two by the end of the year. So nothing really huge.
We've been running considerably under on health insurance, on what we had budgeted for health insurance for this year. And that's in large part because we've had some significant gaps. It takes a long time after somebody leaves to actually hire their replacements. So that's been part of it. And last year, as we knew we had a bunch of employees turning over, we made some fairly conservative estimates and what healthcare costs were going to be. Because if you're hiring somebody, you don't know whether they're single or married or with kids or whatnot. So overall, we ended up under on that. So we should be in good shape overall. As you know, that's one of our biggest line items. We're also, essentially we haven't spent any money on senior programming just because with COVID right now, we don't really have the option to run trips or do anything. So I would anticipate we're going to basically spend about zero on that this year. We're a little over on mobile phones. We ended up changing contract plans in part because both the public works supervisor and myself need more mobile data because we both use them to,
we both function remotely pretty regularly running off a mobile data plan. We're over in signs and public works. Part of it was the new crosswalk and new stop sign cost us basically a total of five, actually six extra signs. So we've already exceeded that budget. And we're also replacing the sign, the large sign to the transfer station. So we should I think by the end of the year, we're going be about $1,000 overexpended on that. What else? We're doing fine on fuel right now. As you know, for a long period of time it was pretty warm. We've gone through a big cold spell, but we're still under average on heating degree days. And therefore our overall fuel consumption has been a little low compared to the average year. We talked about the brush pile a while back and that's basically those are the big things in terms of the town budget and where we are in terms of budgeting. So at this point, I don't have any requests for over expenditure for you. So there's nothing that's kind of bumped up in that threshold that you need to deal with. We included the town budget summaries, as well as the revenue summaries. If any of you have any questions for that, I'll answer what I can, but probably I would defer to our tax collector on that or our finance person. Anybody have any questions on that? And the other thing that we normally look at include is the Town Aid Road Fund. That balance is actually, we haven't made the journal entry yet to add the latest amount that's put into the Town Aid Road Fund. So that number should be increased by roughly $93,000 But then we also paid for the road
evaluation package, screen scan. So that's about $6,000 So that's really that's why that's unfortunately not up to date. That just requires the finance office to do the correct journal entries. So we don't need any budget transfers at this point. And I'm not, I don't really have any over expenditure requests for you at this point. So that pretty much takes care of the treasurer's report unless you have specific questions of me.
Specific for Eric. Answered a couple of questions already just in your presentation. Going once, going twice. Okay, we'll move on I think to item number six, budget transfers. Eric has already said you have no budget transfer supplemental appropriations or over expenditure requests, correct? Correct. Okay, move on to item seven. Seven is old business, 7A is the COVID-nineteen update. Eric, you already covered that in your town report. Anything more to add? I don't unless but we left that in in case members have questions. Anybody have any questions for Eric? Okay. Item 7B is the finance director position. So we've made some progress on there. You want to kind of update us, Eric, on where we are? Yep. So at this point, we have
hired somebody named Sherri Holmes to be the finance director for the town. Actually the board of ed signed a contract with her a week and a half ago or so. So I believe we're anticipating her start date to be March 8 and looking forward.
Shannon shaking her head. Do you know something Shannon that we don't know? Tenth. Okay, March 10.
Hold on. I thought it was March 15 Valerie. She's got to show up for the board of Ed meeting on the tenth but I thought her start date was March 15 unless she's changed it.
The tenth is the contract date and her first in person date here not remote will be the fifteenth. There we go. Okay, fair enough clarified.
Okay, appreciate as far as far as the other questions on that.
No, personally, I I know it's been a long process. We're all very happy to have somebody on board. This is going to be a big move forward for us, I think in a lot different ways.
I'm looking forward to sloughing off some of the things I've had to do for the last three or four months to somebody that's actually qualified to do that.
Yep. Okay. Any more questions on that? Okay. Hearing none, 7C is the software transition that was essentially on hold until we have the finance director filled.
Eric, anything more on that or is that just where we are? No, that's exactly what we pretty much decided we did not want to move forward with that because the finance director needs to have a lot of input in exactly what both for chart of accounts on the town side and actually to manage the process. And we're fortunate to have somebody who's gone through a software transition before kind of in a leadership role. So again, that's another one of those things I'm happy to punt to somebody that's more qualified than me.
If we have no further questions on that item 7D is the audit status and I think that's also something we were kind of, I don't know if we have any updates but that's really kind of something that's going to be the finance director's
job to kind of move along. Right? Well, so right now the audit is underway. We have basically the town has subcontracted with the AES, the old AES business manager Laura to give us a hand. And we gave the information that we had to the auditor and Mike has sent us back a, you know, request for a series of other pieces of information, both a lot of the stuff with their audit. You know, they asked us to pull, you know, 30 or 35 different items that we purchased or bid or something like that and grabbed all the supporting detail to make sure we're doing it per our policies. So we're in the process right now of preparing that to send back to them. It looks like we have about 85 or 90% of the stuff we need to complete the audit at this point. There probably will be some things the finance director will need to prepare for that. But right now we're trying to cover as much of that as possible by the auditors kind of stepped up and been willing to work on some of the financial statements that normally we do in house.
So with a little luck in the next six weeks or so, we'll have a completed audit. Not ideal, but better than the alternative.
Okay, very good. Any other questions for Eric before we move on to new business? Okay, let's move on to new business. The moment you've all been waiting for. Obviously we're gonna have our presentation. Item 8A is the presentation of 2021 and 2022 Andover Elementary School proposed budget. Superintendent Valerie Bruno is going to be making the presentation. I want to thank you all for coming out tonight and helping us along here. And again, congratulations on keeping the students in school. Know that's a tough thing to do over the last eight months. It's been a last year really. It's been a tough one. Congratulations on that. So I'll turn it over to you, Valerie.
Thanks. So it has been a tough go of things. And I know that Joanne Hebert said, we really don't want to get too emotional when we do things. Before I begin though, do want one just one minute of emotion, because we are 32 adults that are on these screens right now. And all I want you to do is think about the last twelve months. And if there was even one time in the last twelve months that you felt overwhelmed by the pandemic and wanted someone to call and wanted someone to talk to. School's been open now since the start of the school year and these kids are still going through this. And so this budget is very different because as the superintendent, I have to look at finances, but I have to also look and make sure that those needs of our kids are going to be met in this upcoming school year. So that's very important. And I'm sure every one of us, all 32 of us could say, yep, there was that one day I just cried for no reason. So I want everyone to keep that one emotion in mind when we consider what we potentially need going forward. So with that, I'm going to see if I can share my screen here. And does she also have to do that? I think so. Okay. There you go.
Okay. Can everybody see this? Yeah. Yes? I can't really see any of you guys now. It's fine. Thank you so much. So yes, this is the twenty twenty one-twenty two budget for the upcoming school year. I'm going to actually close out my corner here so that I can't see anybody because otherwise I can't see the whole screen. And I know Mark, you and the rest of the board are in receipt of Chairwoman Shannon her transmittal letter that came with this as well. So as we go through here, I'm going to kind of fast forward through a few of these things that we'll get to as we get there. But we have a timeline here and we have already approved and adopted on the board of ed side. What we believe to be a good fiscally responsible budget proposal. We did that in January.
So here we are with the board of finance and this is what we'll see through all the way until June, when budget is approved. I included the mission and the vision because I want people to see the mission statement and the vision statement of the school and the board, because we're looking to make sure that we have a strong curriculum that's challenging and creative for all in a safe environment. Those words take on a new meeting this year when we talk about safe environment amidst COVID. We want to make sure we nurture the kids. We want to make sure that they have values of responsibility, respectfulness, and a desire of learning. We look at the vision statement. We want to make sure again that we have a safe educational environment, not just a physical environment that establishes a foundation for students to become creative, moral and compassionate people. So this vision and mission statement hasn't changed. We move forward to the next school year with this same thing in mind. That's why we do this. Now the who we do it for. I know that this slide has been a bone of contention. I know Mr. Foran had spoken about this. Dan had spoken about this.
I know it's very difficult for some people who are not currently in the school right now to understand why we have the three kindergarten classes. And yes, that is absolutely the elephant in the room. Understand that we are not adding staff. As a matter of fact, when we look at the number of classrooms you can see there it's 14. It's remained 14 from the 2018 school year all the way through till the end of twenty two. We are not adding a classroom. We are not adding any teachers. What we're doing is we are taking the same number of classrooms and although we have a teacher that is retiring this year, we are eliminating a paraprofessional position and taking that person who was working with our preschoolers who is a teacher certified and moving her to that third kindergarten class. So it is still quite a reduction already on our part. It's a reduction of one position, which is a paraprofessional position, and a reduction from a teacher who's at the top of the step to a teacher who will be at the beginning of the ladder. And I do agree with naysayers that in any other year, we would consider making those class sizes in kindergarten and grade three larger. But it is my opinion and my professional opinion that in doing so we could in the long run wind up with extensive
costs related to not addressing the learning gap potential needs of these kids. And I have explained publicly once before that we already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that those 30 kindergarten kids include eight kids that are coming in that we know have not been in preschool through the whole pandemic. We know also that we have three existing preschoolers that are set to move up to kindergarten that have significant needs and they have individual paraprofessional needs. And so taking those 30 kids and placing them fifteen and fifteen in a classroom is not advantageous. I consider this a COVID related expense for us to keep the current staff instead of cutting it. And again, we're not adding any staff members. What we're doing is keeping the existing
staff members there. You'll notice those top three classes are getting bigger. And once we get through this pandemic, then we will see those classes. I'm not opposed to larger class sizes in any other year. That's not something that I have a problem with. I think that what we will see in the coming years is grades three, two, and one significantly increasing the class sizes as the years go on here. Okay. So what's changed? Well, we said COVID-nineteen pandemic from last year to this year. That's really shifted the world to distance learning. So there have been distance learning expenses and there have been some changes that need to take place within the building to accommodate. We're very proud of the fact that at the beginning of the year,
we had about nineteen percent of the kids that originally started on distance learning. Last week, we were down to six percent. And as of next week, we will be down to almost able to count on one hand the number of kids. We need two hands, but we're getting there. The number of students that have returned to school. So that's fantastic. However, we will need to make sure that we're always ready on a moment's notice to go back to distance learning with sickness, with flu, with pandemic, with anything. We'll have to be ready for that in the future. And that's just not something that we had to plan for prior to this year. Obviously, a new superintendent. We had reopening plans that needed to be solidified. We had teacher contracts, which we only get every four years. And unfortunately for the budget, this happens to be one of those years. Our enrollment has remained stagnant. We're right about the same that we've been for the past few years, give or take a couple of kids. No dramatic huge changes there. We signed a teacher MOA, which was an agreement, a memorandum of agreement or understanding as to what the work conditions would be. And that went very well. And the teachers were ready to jump right into action at the beginning of the year.
We have a non cert contract that's just moments away or days away from being finished. And so we have to consider the costs associated with that in this budget as well. And as Eric had mentioned earlier, we have the business offices merging. And on our end, although we're sharing it, we had a part time business manager before. So there will be some difference in cost for us there as well. And then we do have new requirements, recommendations as well as mandates for safety and health that will need to be implemented. If they've already been implemented, they'll need to be maintained. So how will we do this within AES logistically? Well, in terms of staffing, yes, we can't get rid of any staff members that are currently here, but we're also not asking for any new staff. And I know there are other towns that do have to, due to the number of students that they have on distance learning, they've had no choice but to bring in other bodies. And because our dedicated staff has been here the whole time, we've been very lucky that we don't have a need to ask the taxpayers to offer us more staff for that for next year because we're doing pretty well with the distance learning being able to staff that. We'll have the same number of classrooms next year. Again, we're not adding any more. And we'll have to continue with comparable classroom spending and just not add any other initiatives. So when you look at this budget, you won't see
any new initiatives, any new curriculum, any new large scale supplies. We've had to just say that's got to be on hold for now. We're just going to have to steer the ship with the good solid curriculum that we currently have and not look for any more innovative things. We did speak with the teachers union and say, okay, it's budget season. What do you guys need next year? And they said, just need to make sure that we maintain a level of professional development so that we can continue to be ready at all times for distance learning. And we can go with the times and make sure that we're switching over from all of the consumables that we might use to integrating some more technology. I know a lot of people think, you have a computer, there's no costs associated with technology, which there are because there's licenses to be able to use certain tech. So how will we do this? I'm going to take a quick peek as we go through by object area in hopes of being able to assist all of the members of the board as well as the town that are on tonight to understand. Valerie, can you explain what's meant by object? I don't know that that's clear to everybody. It's going be confusing. Yep. So as we go through, you'll see that
there are categories of costs and they're all when they're all related to one another, they all fall under one sub number. So as we go through, I will point those out. So I'm going to start with what revenue we have coming in besides the money from the town. I'll look at preschool first. And again, you'll have you guys will have to if you need me to stop you'll have to shout out because I can't see any of you while I'm sharing my screen. So we do have for preschool, we have money that comes in from the school readiness grant about $100,000 And that's used to pay some salaries and PD. We have money that comes in from smart start grant, and that goes toward our second pair professional salary there. And other grant requirements. I know at one point there was some question about some of the things that we do provide in the program. At one point, I know a parent did ask about things like snacks and things like supplies. Because we're the beneficiaries of these revenue sources, there are specific guidelines. For example, you will see orders that come in of toothpastes and toothbrushes, and people say you're spending your money on toothpaste. Well, we have to because part of the curriculum is to make sure that with hygiene that the kids brush their teeth. We don't pay for that out of our taxpayer dollars. That comes out of the grant. But to get the grant, you have to make sure that you follow suit. The same thing with the snacks. They give you guidelines and things like that. In the quality enhancement grant is only for professional development for the preschool program. So when we look, we bring in tuition costs that on a normal year, we can usually expect to be about 90,000.
Now, I will say that last year with COVID, excuse me, with COVID there was a time period where we weren't bringing in the same revenue. And so that can fluctuate depending on what occurs, the number of children go up or down. So 90 is the average there. So when we look, it is self sufficient with the exception of the benefits to the employees. And I know that a lot of other towns, you look at Hebron, if you look at Marlborough, the benefits are not separated out. They're right in the rest of their budget so that people don't realize that. But we are very transparently saying yes, that is the only cost. The only cost is the benefits to the employees that are that work in that program.
On a normal year we have other revenue sources that come in as well. Valerie, can I back you up just a little bit there so
to this slide? Yes, thank you. So these, these, these grants like you said money from the school readiness grant is that have to be allocated to these particular salaries. Yeah, you're explaining that this grant pays for that directly or you just kind of showing where proportionally it falls, it has to go to preschool. Yes, not necessarily that category.
Correct. So, but there are there are earmarks for each of these grants. And so that's why we do have the liaison. We have our early childhood liaison that helps to prepare these grants. She does this for a number of towns to make sure that we're within those guidelines mark so that we don't lose that money. So they just like with COVID relief money when it came in, it said you must use it on this, this and this. And yes, school readiness grant has the guidelines of which it says the paraprofessional, their professional development goes with that grant requirement. So absolutely. Like I said, the third one, the $3,800 one can only be used for professional development. Can't be used for anything else.
Essentially what we're looking at here is you've got a budget of it's basically a $340,000 cost, 345,000 cost, and about a quarter of that is maybe that's not quite right, maybe a little less is born outside of the grants and the tuition for the preschool? About
So we've got a net cost basically in the preschool of 72,000
basically is what you're saying? Just for the benefits, yes. All right.
Yes. So Mark, let's pretend hypothetically speaking, that all of our four employees that worked in preschool said, we don't need benefits. Our husbands or spouses or significant others had benefits. There wouldn't be a cost. There's only a cost because we provide medical benefits. Employees.
It. Got it. Hey Mark, are we allowed to ask questions during the presentation or do we wait till after. Well I'm doing it so yeah I think.
I think we just don't want to interrupt Valerie too much, I think that we really have to ask the questions.
I do have a question, Valerie. Sure. Are there out of state, out of town students that go to the pre K program?
Well, Louise, there's currently two. And I believe there, if I'm not mistaken, somebody could chime in and correct me there related to us. Are out of towners but they are already attached. John, are you on or Jenny? Yes, that is my understanding.
Other than that, Louise, I think the tough part for us, and I have to tell you, when I was doing this budget, the very first thing that I did in the fall was to actually sit down with our then business manager and say, you know, because we had three classrooms this year, I said sit with me and talk about the costs of two classrooms versus three classrooms. What if we were to get a large number of out of town kids? Would this make us more money or does this hurt us? It actually hurts us in the long run because of the amount of revenue. If we had that if we keep adding classrooms, the revenue doesn't go up to the same capacity that it does right now, the outside revenue, number one. And number two, Hebron has their own preschool, Marlborough has their own preschool and there is a preschool at RAM. So there is competition I guess you could say. There wouldn't be a reason for people out of town to necessarily come here if they don't live here, work here or have their children in school here. Yeah. Do
we receive any additional funds for those other two? Valerie, I just want to comment. This is Shannon Louise. Right. The chair is going to recognize Shannon. Please raise your hand, guys. Let us know. Go ahead. Thank you, Mark. Just real quickly. And I know Valerie knows this, but I'll let her take a drink. One of the reasons that we have admitted out of town children to our preschool program is to qualify for the Smart Start grant, they have to be at an income level that allows us to qualify for that grant. So, in allowing out of towners to come in, we have typically allowed that. And again, there are only two students that we're now providing for, but those two students allow us to have the $65,000 Smart Star grant. Is that because the average?
No no no you have to have a certain number of attendees that meet that benchmark of need. And so, if if they don't meet that that benchmark of need. And we don't have that slot filled by a student who meets that need, then your eligibility requirements are not met. Okay. Okay.
Thank you. You're welcome. So moving on to title grant those students pay full tuition, sorry, Or is that covering their tuition? The students that meet there's a number of different thresholds. So there's certain slots that are slated or special education students that don't pay. Then there are a certain number of slots here currently where the students mark. If you'd like I can actually send you the whole printout that has the number of kids that fall into each category and who pays what, and how many students need to fit into each category for us to meet the eligibility requirements.
I'm okay without it as long as there aren't any board members that really want that I just wanted to understand a little bit of how this is financed. You were basically, you know, again, the $73,000 cost of the town. You know, I'm just thinking out loud, is there a way that the you know, the preschool can be self financing, you know, is there how does the tuition work? You know, there's obviously a fair amount of money coming in for tuition. So I'm just kind of curious as to how all of this works together.
Mark, real quickly again, Shannon, we have taken a look at that. And in fact, in the last two years have dramatically increased our tuition costs. So that and also, as Valerie's already pointed out, need to stay competitive with area programs so that Andover students aren't going to pre K and Hebron. Yeah. So two things that are very important about the pre K program. Number one, well, three things. Number one, they're 20% of our student population. So we need the pre K. Number two,
Well, we it's also costing us net. When you say we need the pre K, actually a net cost to the pre K. That's correct. That's I don't know that we need the pre K except that it's Well, here's why we need perspective. Pre It has Here's value.
So Okay. So here's why we need the pre K for two reasons. Number one, we instituted this in about four years ago, now, during my chairmanship. And the reason that we brought it in is because we were losing students to magnet schools for which we have to pay $5,000 per student on average to send a student to a magnet school. And last year, we had 12 students in magnet schools. We have brought that number down, and I don't know what that number now is. But the bottom line is, what we were finding was that parents were taking their kids to where they worked and putting them in pre k where they worked. The students were getting involved in the magnet schools where their parents worked, and then we were losing them from Andover Elementary School. So that's why one of the basic impetus is for us bringing about pre K. The other thing is we have a legal obligation to educate our pre K students. And we have special needs students. So for example, I know of one student who we would be required to bring four specialists for that one preschool student to his house to educate him at the cost of what it will cost us to educate 30 pre K students right now. So I think the taxpayers need to appreciate that we have legal obligations to educate pre K students, and we're choosing to do it to educate twenty and thirty students,
as opposed to two or three special needs students, which we would have a legal obligation to educate and provide for all of the various special needs therapists that would be sent to their homes.
Okay, good information. Thank you. Didn't realize that Rob. Mark, I just throw something in just, you know, not as a board of finance member, but as a parent in the town. As many of you know I have two daughters both of them have been through they're currently in AES both have been through the pre k program although my eldest started somewhere else. I would just say that beyond even if you put aside special needs which you shouldn't, it's a tremendous resource for a working parent. You know, the pre K program is great and you're dealing with if you address issues early, you can potentially head things off that you know would potentially be a problem. Say if you don't years later, then you end up outsourcing something and and spending 100,000 a year to send somebody to a you know somewhere else to deal with their special needs when you could have addressed it in house. So we just throw that out there as like kind of the idea of investment on the ups you know the early going rather than dealing with it on the backside. That's all. Yeah,
I'm not really questioning the value of it because I do believe in the value of it. I'm just want to understand what the real commitment needs to be and what the impact of the town is. You know, so we understand what we're gaining for the investment. That's it. Mark,
sorry, I didn't answer your question. So the high end is $600 per month per student for pre K. And that is the most that we can charge, I think, formulaically. And it's also comparable to what Hebron charges and more than what RAM charges for preschool as or pre k as far as I know. So I just wanted to make sure we have looked and have addressed and actually I've asked principal Variety, we addressed at our last board meeting when we were considering the budget, whether there was any play in charging more tuition for our pre k. And we're at our highest level right now that we could be at as far as I've been told. So sorry to interrupt again.
Really quick, just a point of clarification. I remember when my kids were in pre k that's a while ago now, there was a sliding income scale it was basically you pay it was self reported you know whatever your income was you would pay in a certain range is that still the case?
Okay. It's the same deal. And Robert, the other thing is and Mark and anybody else who has questions on the preschool. You know, you both have alluded to this. I can tell you that six right now of our pre K students are identified with special needs. And so as Shannon said, any one of those kids could cost us if we look at this from a financial point of view, 72,000. That was really the point that I was also trying to make in pointing out the need with eight kids coming in that have no preschool as to what we need to consider with the three kindergartens. Because and that's not adding staff, that's an existing staff member. Because if we have even one of those kids that falls through the cracks next year in kindergarten and is identified as special education with services just so that everybody understands if there is one child that requires a one on one paraprofessional even for one school year, that costs us right there well over $50,000 So it is definitely good business for us this year while we are reevaluating those students coming in, the special education needs of the kids as well as kids that could have potential learning gaps due to COVID, it is well worth it for this next year. We will potentially save thousands, hundreds of thousands if we had a number of kids. And it's not so easy once the student is identified, and this is my special ed background, it's not so easy once they're identified and you offer the services to take them back. I know people say all the time where we have two outplay students, they're like, can't we take them back? Once a student is in an environment where it's meeting their needs, they're thriving,
that's where they stay. And the last thing I'll add with preschool because no one said it yet is it's accredited. We are NIAC accredited 10% of preschools can say that they are accredited under NIACC and we are. So we are considered and I know a lot of people think, just a little old Andover, we are considered a top notch preschool program. And so that mere fact right there may actually be why we've prevented in kindergarten, first and second grade further students being identified, further students falling behind and requiring maybe not special education services, but remediated services and other services that would cost us money. It's definitely an investment that's well worth it, especially in a year of uncertainty like this. So, okay, so I'm going to move on. I'm sorry, I can get long winded. That's fair. We stopped you. I'm sorry, I can get long winded. So we also do receive title grants in 2020. Our title one grant which we had been receiving fairly regularly. And that's a federal formula. We received 16,240 For 2021 since it's a federal formula and it's done based on census, we will not qualify for Title I funding next year, which I do have to tell you means that we can't count on further Esser or Corona money after what just came through. Because a lot of that is going to be based on Title I funding. So if we're lucky, maybe we will get it. I've gotten an email from Jill Courtney's secretary this week about a new round of funding that was coming out in Andover was zero. And I put in a phone call to find out and they said that one is for next year's Title I funding and we know we're not getting any.
So we are losing that money right there. Title II funding, it goes down a bit but we do receive $2,632 for 2021. Title III is $522 and Title IV is $10,000 And I will tell you that historically the $10,000 has gone toward the salary of our remedial teacher Mrs. Caraboni or Mrs. Fraser because it is remediation and helping students. We are at a loss here for some funding. But we've planned for that knowing going forward. So what do we normally use these Title I grants for? As I just said, I and II together, roughly 20,000 for the two years has helped pay the salary of the remedial reading professional, Mrs. Caraboni. Our Title III that small amount goes to a consortium that we have with Eastcon that $500 And the Title IV goes for Mrs. Fraser who we say this out she's tech, but she also does remedial math as well.
So the bottom line for preschool is that it is self sufficient with the exception of the benefits package. As I said, we will take the displaced para and they will become that third kindergarten teacher. So there are some COVID expenses that were not planned for last time around that we did have to take care of this year. We had to take care of PPE. We had to take care of the individualized supplies for students. The dividers for the desks for the teachers as well as the students outdoor changing changes such as parking lot signs and relining. We did a completion during the course of the past year of one to one devices so that everybody has them. They're up there running and they are maintained. We had extra nurse services at the beginning of the year. We had bus monitors at the beginning of the year, remote learning software and additional licenses that need to now be maintained. Extra cleaning supplies and custodial needs, repair and maintenance of HVAC and additional air condition system changes. Other adaptions such as water fountains, the changes so that the children weren't putting their mouth to it. It's the newer ones now where you can actually fill a water bottle. To offset this, we did receive some money. Valerie, do you have a breakdown of what those costs were, the additional costs? So I know Mark, you had asked, somebody else had asked for that too. The problem is I want to be fair. A fair number of those things
were taken care of with this relief money. Some of the other things are now permanent and need to be maintained. And people would say they are no longer a COVID related expense because they are going to be permanent. Like I said, the licenses when we first had to purchase licenses on new software programming that the children used while on remote learning, It immediately was a COVID related expense. But now I don't think it's fair for me to say, oh, that's just a COVID expense. When in reality now that's going to replace some of the consumables and books and things. So for me to give you the total breakdown, I'm not sure that I can split certain things up as used to be like the water fountains. We're not going to take them out once COVID is over. So that initial cost for them came out of this money here that you're looking at. And yeah, we'll have to maintain the water fountains, but it's no longer now a COVID related expense because from here going forward, those are our new water fountains. We've already spent that money too. Right. Right. So, I want to be fair and not mislead and say that there are certain things that are going to continue to be covert related expenses because now they're going be permanent.
Well, the reason I asked is that in a different part of your presentation earlier you kind of mentioned ongoing covert related costs. So I was trying to tease out what What that really
we did do, Mark, with the Board of Ed, when they took the $74,000 out, there had actually been $8,000 in there that were things that someone could say, how do you know at the end of next year you'll still have them as COVID related expenses, PPE, things like that. And we took that out because we figured that that would be funded through this last round of ESSER. And so straight expenses in here where I'm asking for money for masks and things, there isn't any of that in here. It's just things that are going to remain permanent. Okay, so as we go through, and I know that Jerry had alluded to this earlier when he talked about wants and needs and non negotiables. There are no wants in this budget and if someone goes through here they will see. We are not asking for extra programming.
We are not asking for some districts have had to or actually I think Ram even had to put in their money for summer school programming for and that was a COVID related thing for them to avoid gaps, learning gaps. We didn't ask for summer programming. We didn't ask for recreational programming. We didn't ask for new initiatives, outdoor equipment, playground, any of that. None of that is in this budget on purpose because I really felt that there were people that would say, well, you can live without that. That's a watch. Wait until you can get a grant for that. And they're right. And that's why those things are not in here. Because we can live without them. The needs, the things that are in here. I do know that at the last board of selectman meeting someone said, well, they have $50,000 in there for air conditioning. We do not. And I would challenge anyone to find it in our budget. What you will see is that there are just maintenance fees for things that we had to do. We did get some air cooling system work done recently and that was a very difficult to get grant that we got at the end of the year. But we did manage to get $15,000 to go into what is now the preschool room downstairs and make sure that the air cooling system in there was going to be something that could get us through for the next few years. And air conditioning in there. But that was not something that was paid for budgetarily speaking, and there isn't any in this budget as well.
We do in terms of non negotiables, I've mentioned this twice. Have two contracts to consider here. So right off the top, we did have two contracts that were going to be settled for here. We still have two out placed students and we do still continue to have magnet expenses for other students. The two outplay students, I'll show you where they are in the budget, but right there, that's $200,000 almost. So here are the numbers. And this is in the packet. If anyone wants to find it on the website, I know that Amanda had uploaded it. You. Some of these percent changes are very difficult for people to see because it involves an explanation. They're a little bit skewed. If you look at that object 100 across the top, that's the salaries. And although the number of staff remains the same, so it's like, how do we have an increase? We had a negotiated contract this year and so there are increases that come across all four years for teachers as well as non cert.
The benefits as well. What's that percentage each year? Mean, we going be taking a four percent increase? Mean, I know that it's not that, but right what it is. So actually came in lower than the
teachers at RAM because and I want to thank Jenny and Melissa who I know are on here. It was a very fair teachers contract. It was a four year contract and they opted for budgetary purposes to assist us in making sure that the first year this one was going to be the lowest of the three there of the four because there would be other expenses. So it is a 2.5% increase this year and three for the three years that follow. So it is very fair. I think 3.63 was what the RAM contract was. I do give kudos to the teachers here for understanding that, you know, it was fair. They were not I'm sorry, it's 2.53 for this year? 2.5,
it was yeah, because it was three sixty nine there was 11.5 total over four years. And so the way they divided it was two point five three three and three.
And your, but your percent change here is 3.99 and you're losing a lottery teacher to retirement replacing her with a lower teacher.
We also mark have the non certain negotiations. Okay, the non certain negotiations are built into that as well and that's not finalized yet we think we know where it is, but it's it still hasn't been approved. And remember, there's the loss of the title one funding for next year as well that 15,000 that Yeah, that shouldn't be in there. Mean, it's like that No, no, no, But I'm just saying that that was a salary that was covered with that last year or a percentage of it was. We look at benefits. The benefits were all in the same consortium, Hebron, Marlborough, Andover, Ram, the municipalities and the Board of Ed. And so it's an overall 3.2 increase for everybody across the board there. In the 300s when we get to it, and we'll get to the specifics of it in a minute. This is where we have a lot of our contracted services. And I want to be able to explain that to you when we get to that section in just a moment.
The four, the section four is going to involve some explanation because there were some prepaid services that occurred and we will get to that in just a second. So it looks like it is 59% but it really isn't. It was just money that was encumbered for the 1920 school year. And then the same thing with the 6 hundreds. So let me move on. And then if somebody has questions, we'll go back to this because I do have this slide repeated after my explanation. So if we look at this object of the one hundreds, and I know it's hard to see it, I apologize for them, but I didn't realize it was so fuzzy on the top. The increase here would be the costs associated with contract negotiations. And the fact that we had one person that part of their salary was coming out of Title I funds, now has to come out of the salary line item.
So this is not just salary would have been salary plus Title I grants?
No, we had one person, our remedial teacher's salary that because of what she does for the remedial interventions, we were always able to take part of her salary and utilize Title I funding to cover that and that 15,000 or almost 16,000 is gone. So her whole salary now comes out of there. If you look and I highlighted boldly the every four year mark here, because this proposed 2,325,000 is a contract year, and the $17.18 2,600,000 was the last contracted year, just so that you can see, you know, contract to contract there because it's every four years. We really have tried to reduce the staff as much as possible. I'm going to talk about that in just one second when we get to the other
section with the contracts. Are these budgeted numbers or actual expenses for the previous years?
They're the actual expenses. I had to think about which one Laura gave me, except for the proposed obviously here. When we get to the two hundreds, these are the benefits and as I said, you'll see with all of us it's going be about that 3.2% because that is our percent for the insurance consortium increase. And then we have just two employees that were moving to family and that would be the slight difference of the two point of the point two nine instead of the point two. Oh, after the three. We look at the long term changes to the two hundreds, which are the benefits to the employees. Again, the bold are the years that contracts were negotiated. And you'll see that you know, we really are also every time we negotiate a contract, we are trying to be fair to the employees, but make sure that we try to offset the best we can the board's percentage and their percentage so that we don't see very large increases. We try to be as fair as possible, but we make sure that it's in line with other districts that their percentage
for premium doesn't stay stagnant that it goes with the times as well. So this one, I'm going to cover a little bit more here because I know this has had been a bone of contention for some people that I listened to at the board of selectmen meeting. And so I think it involves a very, very brief but detailed explanation so I know that you know it's already eight forty but bear with me on this one you won't be sorry. Take your time. When we talk about professional and contracted services, I know that there is a lot of misinformation from the board of selectmen meeting on the part not only of selectmen but on the part of some of the general population here in Andover to that I hear people talk about shared services a lot, and they keep saying you know well, they need to make sure that they're looking at shared services as an option. And I want to explain this because shared services is fantastic, especially when you are a small town and you have an opportunity to sign a contract with another small town and say, hey, let's go have these on something because then it saves us all money. And this is generally speaking, you know, your first line of defense to start to save money.
You know, I mean, I see Shannon on the screen, so I'll use her as an example. Shannon and I want to both go out to dinner and she's got, you know, money in her pocket, I have money in my pocket and I say, want to go halfsies? You know, we'll go to dinner and we'll split the bill, you know. Sounds like a great idea until you find out that Shannon has $100 in her pocket and I only have $10 so going out to a fine steakhouse is just not going to happen for the two of us because I can't go halfsies with her. I can barely pay for an appetizer. Shared services need to occur when you begin to look at ways to save money. My predecessor in terms of planning a budget was able to and it needed to be done and it was rightfully so but she was able to over the course of five years, do some very significant cutting to staff and services that we're lucky it didn't affect the outcome for children, but it made it so that we work bare bones. So I want to give you an example. We have a special ed director who's thinking maybe next year she's going to retire.
So if Marlboro or Hebron or Columbia or Bolton say, hey Val, we need also to have a special ed director. So, you know, go halfsies with us. I can't go half with them because it would cost me too much money to go halves with them because my special ed director is here one and a half days a week. So if any other town wants me to split a special ed director and sign a contract, it's going to cost me more because I'm not at that half point. We're well below the half point. So it won't save us money. This is the case if you're looking at this screen with our OT person, we pay them to come here to do a job and we pay them hourly by contract and then they leave. And do they work someplace else? They do because they can't survive being a part time OT here. I happen to know that our current OT works in Marlborough. Do we have a shared service contract with Marlborough? No, because it would cost us more to pay half for this person. We don't require their services at a 0.5 percentage of the time and to go to 0.5 would cost us more money. So we're sharing them. We just don't have a signed contract with them because we can't tell our OT person who she can share with us and who she can't. And I equate that to if anyone has a cleaning person that comes to your house on Thursdays. Yeah, they clean other people's houses every other day of the week, but you don't have a shared service contract with other houses
because you don't get to tell that person where else they work. They work for you part time, work for everybody else part time. That's the point we're at. So we are actually below in the special ed area the ability to sign shared contract services. Mean obviously you know I'm part time. Our special ed director is here one and a half days a week. Our OT person is here ten to thirteen hours a week. That's it. Our PT person right now we don't have one because we don't have any services that are needed for our students. So we will call them in on an as needed basis. We do have a contract with for our social work services. So you know we pay just for what we need with our social worker and our school psychologist so everybody is already far below the threshold of us being able to sign a contract when it comes to special ed services with the town. We're below that already. We've already
gone down. We do have shared services for those people who are speaking about shared services. We have a shared food service with Coventry. We share as I've mentioned before, we share our insurance consortium with the Region 8 with Marlborough with Hebron and with the municipalities and So where we can have our shared services, we have shared busing, you know, with Region eight for DATCO, where we can have those shared services we do, but we've already kind of expanded all the other areas and we have the $10 and they don't want to take us out to dinner. So I did want to explain that just because in that respect, you'll see this area, it doesn't go up a lot. But we are as low as we can go here. We can't sign anymore.
Why is it going up at all though? I guess it'd be the question they have to ask.
Well, legal fees are in here and there are certain services that I can tell you for example because I just had the secretary get this for me. When a special education student has the triennial review they determine at that time what their service hours are. So for example, they will say they need thirty minutes twice a week of speech and language services. They will need OT twice a month at thirty minutes. So when we put this budget together I sat down with the special education director and said what are our service needs for those 24 students that we are referring to and those students that have 504s which are also a service that we need to provide. Is a legal document just like an IEP is for services that needs to be provided for students in need. And we have you know other students that are being evaluated as we speak. And so the
contracted increase there does relate to the service needs of the students.
So I have one question. Is Diane Scherkett. Is that the driver of the increase in the professional education services That's increasing like almost $19,000 is which the driver. What you just said this additional services that need to be provided additional time. So, in the object overview there's a breakdown of what's in the 3 hundreds, and I'm looking at a big increase of $18,000 under professional education services, going from $166.08 50 to $185,700. I'm curious is what is driving that big increase.
Well, part of it I mean we'd have to go line item there by line items that we could say which is, for example, our increase which increases, which is specifically OT services or pre K services which are referrals. You know,
is that what you're asking me? How do we bring so under 300 professional technical services you have a line item that says professional education services. Current budget is $166.08 50 proposed budget is 185,700. I'm interested to know what's driving that increase. Well, would be the page 72 of the packet.
It would be it would also include the tech related services to carry out those student services. So I can get the breakdown of exactly if it's not in the one that we're going get to at the end, which of it is tech related for those student services and what is direct services OT time PT time psych time, I don't know the specific breakdown I just know that that would be great because I'm just curious to know what is driving that increase,
we could, we'll probably get there I guess is that. Yeah, the thing. Okay, let me just write that down Diane one second. Okay, thanks.
You're welcome. Okay. Okay, so the long term changes, as you can see to this area, you'll see we're at 254410 Dollars for this particular proposed budget. Now last year would have been slightly less because remember we didn't have all of those services that were administered March, April, May and June. And I will find out the cost savings there as well. We move to the four hundreds. Again, these are contracted maintenance services, not student needs services maintenance services. And this is the one that has that skewed number. And part of that is because if you look we were at 89,000. When you go back to line items there. And if you look at the 142 and now it's an increase of 53,000, part of the issue was that in the spring when we closed, there were certain expenses that Laura, the then business manager, dollars 53,000 worth of expenses in the 2021 school year that Laura then was able to knowing that we were in shutdown, that she was able to pay out of the budget, You know, was there for 2020. So '19 and '20. So the
encumbered expenses there, some of them go back a total of $189,000 of those expenses go back to her using money during the shutdown from that budget to pay ahead of those expenses that we had during the shutdown. So that's what she did was prepay those
So I just want to clarify what's going on here. Understand what what's what you're saying and everything but just for the other board members and thing and just so we understand. So basically there was unspent money from the budget from the twenty nineteen twenty twenty. So, it was spent at the end of that budget year, understanding that it was going to need, you know, they were basically using an unspent funds from the twenty nineteen twenty twenty budget into 20 things that they were going to need in twenty twenty twenty twenty one. So basically it was the extra if you remember we got a request from the superintendent a little over a year ago about running it's roughly $83,000 of unexpended funds they wanted to move it into the
school improvement account. And then it turns out at the end of the year wasn't, they didn't actually have that available. I think this is why because it was spent on items such as this in advance.
And this 4 hundreds right here mark shows you that Laura had $53,000
that was For the first part of it. Year for this particular
object. So if you added that 53 to the 89, it would have actually been 142 and you wouldn't have seen a 59.1% increase. This property services line item here really isn't going up like that. You'll see it went from 142 to 142 to 2, but yes it was. But it still
was budgeted at 89,000 for that year, so it doesn't. We still have to understand why it's gone from 89,000 a year, I understand that we spent more. But we still you know, it was only budgeted 89,000. And why do we end up spending, know, 50,000 more would be the question, you know, as opposed to what was budgeted.
So you want to know of the 53,000 exactly what in the 4 hundreds, it was
Right, why did we have to spend another 53,000 in that account, where did it go to. It's kind of shifting it from one place to another I'm sure you know for for whatever needs so just trying to understand. Drastically under budgeted for that year or where is that coming from. I will get a list of those things for you. Okay, just to understand where that came from.
In the 500s. This other purchased services. This includes the funds for the student tuition, the two out placed students, the bus contract, the telephone services printing binding and software licenses. And so we need to maintain the software licenses, as well as plan for the four buses this year. We were able to reduce one bus during our reopening. And so far this year we have not had to add that bus back. Far, and we're in March we're doing well. But if you look $200,000 alone is contracted for tuition and transportation for the two outplace students. And those costs and increases from the two outplacement facilities. It's a contract so there is it's non negotiable for us on our end.
So, so the budget is really changing because you expect to go back to the full budget requirement for next year. Yes, that the essence of that. Okay.
So you see the long term changes here they really and these include the out placements, they really haven't changed much, but I can tell you that this proposed budget year and last year included the two students. If you go further back, you see a dramatic increase from 2018 to 2019. There were not two outplace students there. So, you know, I'm sorry from yes, in 2018 there weren't two outplace students. When you get to 2020 you do have two outplace students and so that's the significant difference there. But from last year's budget to this year is not as significant the two students remain outplaced. The six hundreds and the eight hundreds here. In terms of the six hundreds, this is instructional supplies textbooks nurses supplies tech items, the heating oil, we do have locked in prices for some of these things. The electricity facility and again, and I will I know because you're going to ask, I will find out the breakdown of that $45,000 but there were $45,000
of expenses that were paid that went back to the 1920. 12 ks and heating oil price increase is also built into this.
Are you expecting heating oil prices to go up I mean they've been at historic lows I would have thought we would have signed a contract that would have provided for less cost next year, maybe not.
From last year's in terms of what they actually spent with the savings of being closed to this year. So, not necessarily that it's an all time high price. It's that we were closed in terms of March, which we still would have been heating. And so again, because I know you're going to ask, I will get the $45,000 expense breakdown for the six hundreds. Okay. So my apologies on that I should have asked.
We've got about a $50,000 difference if you take out the heating oil so yeah.
And in the, and I'll get you the price for lock in as well. And the increase in the diesel fuel for buses because I don't know what our increase was there. So I will get that for you. You can't control that one very much. In
the 800s here, this was one of the areas that the board had decided to take out what was in here, which were the educational field trips. So we wind up then with a deficit there of negative increase of 3.72. And it's just the maintenance of the professional dues and entry fees for students are gone now. The long term changes to the six hundreds, as I said, we'll look at that 45,000 encumbered for the previous year to find out exactly what that is. And this is the area that is most directly benefits the classrooms and it's the most volatile for this year, because potentially there could be losses for outside funding. Although we don't see a huge increase, the classroom supplies and instructional supplies are not generally something that we could say we potentially would get a grant for this year. And so that one thing there is one that always makes me a little bit nervous going forward to make sure that we've budgeted correctly for it to make sure that those are covered. And again, this year we do have in terms of a little bit less in the way of consumables and books and a little bit more in the way of media, technology and licensing. Long term look at the 800s. Again, this number is very comparable to last year because last year the students also did not have the field trips. So in the board taking out that in my original budget, it stays comparable to last year. These years here had the field trip expenses in there. So we go back to this one. And we go back to this one here at the end.
The February increase. I will make sure that I provide the questions that Diane asked about the breakdown in the 3 hundreds and the savings itself, dollars 189,000 that was encumbered for the year before. I will get a breakdown of exactly what that was. And in looking at the the 600s and looking at the heating prices, I will provide that for you as well. So when we look at it in picture view here in pretty view, we're almost done, I promise. As with any budget, we know that when we look at the blue section here, when we look at the green section here of any proposed budget, these really are the salaries and benefits. As Eric had said earlier, so much of a budget is really non negotiable and in a year like this, where we've had a record two contracts
that we've already settled there. That's adds up to about 75.18%. When we take into consideration in terms of our educational budget that the town, I know does not have there when we take into consideration the additional contracts for transportation and tuition, which is this red section here. Now we're up to about 84.35% of the budget. And so the only things really for us to have gone through in terms of fine tooth comb as a board was for us to look at the 300s that we mentioned. Want to look at the breakdown there. The 500s and that added up to us taking a look at about $600,000 and looking at the flexibility there in making sure that we can get the best price in there for everything and make sure things are covered. I know it looks like a significant number when we compare and we just say over 6%. The one thing to consider is that we were very lucky that we did have a business manager that was able to move things around at that time when we didn't have any additional
rainy day funds. I know I think Eric called them before he said we rated a couple of other funds. We didn't have that ability. It was moving around from one line item and object to another. Laura, thank goodness had done a very good job of that. We did not have to ask for additional funding. We were also able to get a small amount of the funding through the Corona relief and ESSER. And we were able to take some of that money that would have been returned to the town at the end of the year, as you said, Mark. And while we were closed and moved that around to cover some of the other expenses. And we were also lucky this year that the health insurance consortium locked us in at 3.2 because we were originally looking at closer to six percent. One of the things I want to point out because I know someone I'm sure is thinking well $255,000 sounds like a lot of money. When we look at these other adopted budgets, all the way back to 2014, our student population has changed. However, if we go back and use a number from 2019 here, we see that we still have roughly the same number of kids in the building that we did have in the eighteen-nineteen
school year. And that adopted budget, if we look is only $3,243 difference overall in the end with what we are going to spend and not get reimbursed for. So I think that it is difficult, it's tough. And I know that we've gone a number of years. I think there's one more slide here. A number of years where we in fact were able to make it through bare bones without asking for the additional expenditures. We just are at that point where we are bare bones at this point in terms of staff. And I do believe going forward, it's a good investment for us to make sure that we service all the needs of our students so that we don't have long term costs. That $189,000 of additional expenses that were incurred, Mark, will get you the exact breakdown of exactly where they were. And if those expenses were added, they potentially would have gone over budget. If school had been open for them. I'm sorry.
So I want to show you the three year object view here. There's two ways of for us to look at it and they are attached on here. The salaries on the top there show the increases from the '19 budget and unaudited actual to the current budget, and then the proposed for the one hundreds, the separation there, the two hundreds and the three hundreds.
So if you can hold on just a second there, Valerie. So well, before we go on to the three hundreds, just looking at the salaries, it looks like support staff, I still don't really understand how we ended up with a 3.99% increase when the contract was only two point something. Again, we're retiring an experienced teacher and moving a less experienced somebody lowering the pay scale into that position. Maybe I'm just not getting it, I didn't really understand that overall.
Mark, because it's not just the teachers contract that's affected in there, it's the non certified employees.
Right. They making 8% more per contract? Pardon? How does that average out to 3.99%? So that's what I don't really care. Because the teachers are 2.5%, and the non certs are another 2.5 to 3%.
Well, depending on how it averages out, so that should average to less than 3% is what I'm saying. I mean, yeah, depends on what the waiting is right, right not necessarily to because it again, we can't speak too much to the contract as you understand mark because it's not finalized yet, but that contract was a 2020 contract on through to 2024. So, we do have to take into consideration that we're already almost at the end of year one, and we'll be moving then into year two with that contract so unlike the teachers that went 2.5 and then three three and three. It may not work that way with the non certs. And again, we're not finalized with it it's not ratified.
So, we may this year have a much more substantial increase for this particular year with them into the second year, and it should be only only another month before we're done with that contract I assure you.
Yeah, and I don't want to be labor is not clear to me so I can take time to look at it more clearly later and we can ask more questions if we need to. Yeah. So
I'm sorry, were there any other questions on the what's the Yeah, then the question Diane was asking earlier is near the bottom under 300 professional and technical services, the third, Well, it's actually a fourth row I guess in the professional educational services so what I think Diane was pointing out is that's the line item, where you're gaining about 19,000 and that thing I think that's what you're trying to point out then Diane is that correct. Correct, I was just trying what's driving that increase.
Yeah. So looks like the, you know, it's the physical therapy OT occupational therapy, social worker special Ed director direct special education services, yes. So you're basically expecting an increase in there. Yes.
Okay, any particular reason I guess would be probably what they was getting at that would be IP related and the newly identified students from preschool that are moving up with their say IEP related IEP related. It related services. Yeah,
I think most people a lot of you probably understand what that is but that's, it's basically an individualized plan that it's contractually required, you know, based on the students needs so. Diane, did you need anything more in there for
No. So make sure I understand that even though we don't have additional students, we have additional students coming in with more needs. Is that correct.
I mean it's not necessarily even new students Diane, it could change from one year to another. So you could have a child for example your own child, and I'll give you this just as an example, that may not have required speech and language services last year and now they do. Every year there's an annual meeting that takes place to determine the needs of the students. And then every three years, there is a triennial review where we test those students and then we establish their needs from there. So it could be the same students, existing students that are here. It is not necessarily just new coming in Diane, it could be the existing students and these are the potential changes to the needs of the students that we currently have. In addition to new. Okay.
Any other questions on that? In addition to I know you want the breakdown, Diane, and I will get that for you. Here
to the 400s, the 500s, the 600s. And these are the easier way, but then we've got the 12 page individualized line item as well. And it tells you what function to refer to.
I have one question when you get to the larger page with the more detail. How do I know when I'm looking at for more breakdown detail with all the general ledger numbers? How do I know which numbers roll up into these objects of four hundred five hundred six hundred. So when you're looking exactly there. So,
so, I'm sorry would Diane asked that question. Yep. Diane, when you're when you're looking at that general fund the long one with the, the individual I think it was like 15 pages. You just. Okay. So just, for example, let's just pick one page. What page would you like middle?
Well, let's just, we can just go to the first page if you want.
Hold on. Well, actually right now we're on my screen, we're looking at four hundreds. So if you look for example at. Trying to look at the GL numbers and trying to equate how to what's the object. Page number Diane, are you is on on this on the bottom now page what of 11? Let's say page two of 11. Okay. So if you're on page two of 11, what you're looking at a whole bunch of numbers there. Yeah. On the left hand side, you see, for example, on the very top of that page, do you see how it says 1,000 and it says instruction? Yep.
Okay. Then underneath that you see that one dash 2 dash 101 dash 1000 dash 0 teachers. Yep. That number right there is if you look up on the screen is right here. Then there's a subsequent because this is more detailed breakdown of that and what you see is preschool teachers, instructional assistants, pre k instructional, what you're looking at is teachers there in that 1,000 down.
So basically, the third set of digits that 101 is indicating that it's part of the 100 object. So anything that's two twenty to thirty to forty would be part of the 200 object.
And it's not until you get to page four that you then see the tail end of all of those individual components of that fund where you then see it ends. On page four it says under the preschool dues and fees, 1,000 instruction and then there are your total costs. So what those two pages did was break down that instruction section.
And then the next section the But but they're they're they're allocated differently in your previous slides by this object category we're using. Right? Because this is just more detailed.
So that's why it's, it's more difficult for someone to look at this sometimes I think than it is for this when they want an overall picture and these are specifics. So for example,
you know, but not all the object one hundreds are grouped together in this detail is what I'm saying. You have to kind of look at them in each different section.
Because these are right because these are more specific this 1,000 is instruction. So it's anything that falls under instruction, the teacher salary instruction the supplies for music that fall under instruction. The supplies for third grade that fall under instruction it's everything that falls under instruction.
Right. Do all the board members kind of understand that structure follow it so I'm not able to identify what detail rolls up into what.
So let me give you a perfect example. One employee that we have here Diane Kane. Diane Kane is the administrative assistant and because she actually gets paid half of her salary out of the special ed budget because she is the special ed administrative assistant, When you look at special ed, there is going to be a line item that has that for her. And then the other half is located in administrative costs. So this one is more difficult because this separates it out into more detail. What
I'm trying to understand, I want to be able to look at, say, let's take the 300 series, and I want to be able to go to the detail and see what items make up the 300 series in the detail. Everything
in that list in those subsequent detail pages that has a third set of digits that starts with a three Right.
Right. So then I have to go to the third set of digits and look through the entire thing to look for the 300. If I had this in Excel spreadsheet I could do it myself. I asked Valerie about that but she didn't.
To that. Well, let's hope let's hope, Mark, after March, when we have our new system that's coming in, that that'll be that'll be easier to do. Okay.
So there actually were two last lines here that I actually had to cut off to the right because it just added things up across in Phoenix. So, but yes, numbers there are more detailed view of what we're looking at when we look at this, which is why I know some people prefer to look at it this way. Some people prefer I'm going to go down to another. Some people prefer to look at it this way, just the whole object here. Some people prefer to look at it this way. So Diane, this one right here would be the one you'd want to look at. Do you see my screen right now? Yeah.
So if you for example, I know you said I want to see what the 300s are, but this one would be I want to see everything that falls under the category of instruction. If it falls under the category of instruction, it could be those top four things in the 100s. It could be the number two for the benefits. It could be the number the two 3s. It could be the 200. All of those things are categorized for instruction. Under special education here, we specifically take out the teachers that fall under special education in that one hundred one secondtion there. Our special ed costs that are not covered by grants for paraprofessionals are here. Substitutes the summer school support staff. So all of these expenses here,
we say in this last column here for the proposed, we say $469,978 is specifically special education costs when you take into consideration outplace students and their expenses when we take into consideration our support staff in the building that's here for special education when we take into consideration. So all of these things right here are solely special education costs to us. When we look here in the two thousand one hundred twenty secondtion just underneath that, this might be kind of what you were asking before. These are the estimated costs for next year specifically for our social work services that we have through that's contracted by the way. And shared service. Our psych services, speech and language, OT and then you will see there is nothing in there currently for PT because we don't have any students whose IEPs require us to have PT right now. So there is where you can get a little indication Diane of where the increase is. In terms of psych services is about a $5,000 increase from last year to this year, this next coming year.
Speech and language, those services are not expected to go up which is why it is at 38,000. On the top by the way, I know social work services is like wait a minute why are you only at 700? That was a contract so that was one of that $189,000 prepaid costs we knew that we had to pay So we pay them between $40,000 a year depending on the services that are required for our students. So the first row showed you that it used to be $41,000 and then last year it didn't go up to $85,000 In fact in the spring we paid both the second and the third column, all with the money from the year before. Now we're anticipating
about 50,000 for next year. So when I look at that, that column that you're talking there when it says current budget 2021, and there's $700 in there, I'm assuming that you budgeted for $20.21 dollars 700.
Nope. Is that accurate? Nope, that was where I showed you in the 3 hundreds at the beginning. What happened was if you can see my cursor, there was $40,000 that was budgeted in there and in the spring when we closed down, that was paid for, that's why this is 85 and that's 41, that was prepaid
with that extra money from the spring. So your header says current budget to write that's what the actual budget should have been 40,000 right you're expecting the cost to be only 700 for this year is that what you're saying, because we're not at the end of the year at the end of the year,
it probably wouldn't say this is where we currently are in the budget we've only, we've only that's year to date spend. Yeah, so that's not budget then that would be. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, that's not really that
189,000 thing, know, was was thrown off a little at the beginning.
And so I'll get that from current budget column means that's what we spent year to date through what? December, January,
what? That's where we are now. It's not that unaudited end of the year actual. When it says actual at the end of the year, it will be different. But for here, it won't change Diane because it was prepaid. $85,000 was an actual payment for the nineteen twenty year, because if you looked at the budget there it was budgeted for 41, but they paid the 41 plus prepaid the contract for this year.
But the actual budget for last year that was approved it by the town was $41,000
Yes, in 2020. That says that's 1920. I'm looking for 2021 numbers. You want to know?
I'm looking when I look at that 2021 column, I'm assuming that that's what we currently budgeted for, for this year. So that's not a true statement then I'm.
No. And that's where it got confusing because the prepayment occurred with that money that was there in the spring. The former business manager said listen, we know the money is here now. We know these are bills that are going to have to get paid. We don't know what's going to happen with the closure of the school. We don't know what's going to happen with any additional revenue funds. So she took that extra amount in the spring and said we're going to pay the bills that we know have to get paid regardless of what happens. And so that's why it was not budgeted for 85,000 it was in the 40s. And the 40s got paid as well as prepayment for this year.
That's why those numbers look skewed in about four places because she prepaid $189,000 worth of bills. This was one of them. Because she knew that wouldn't change because we had a contract and so that amount was going to be the contracted amount that we had to pay.
And so, so really that 2021 current budget column is really the current budget because if you look at the grand total, that's the current budget for this year. It's not year to date spend.
It means that it built into that 85, we paid that contract so this would be over and above what we already paid them prepaid them.
This would just be the only other additional cost for this year. So what we actually did is for that budget year we only budgeted $700 because we paid it from the previous year.
Well, yes and no. Remember the budget would have been presented in January or February, it would have been approved in the spring and then in the end of June or July when she paid this bill, I don't know the date that she paid this bill before I came aboard, that would have been paid with last year's money. So I'll get you the number for what this year's budget actually did say that she paid the bill for.
Well, I'm assuming that's what it is because the grand total is the actual budget number for the current year because I remember I approving that
will get that number for you. That will be consistently in the 40s to 50s.
Excuse me, can I interrupt? Sure, Linda. Go ahead. I just want to mention, you've said it a couple of times, and my husband happens to be president of the Andover Hebron Marlboro Youth Services. It's not a contracted service Andover Hebron Marlboro is our youth service agency. And on top of that, since it's a nonprofit, the three towns Andover Hebron and Marlboro pay when it is divided between the towns they pay less than like 40% of total budget because of their grants and their fundraisers.
I don't understand what you mean we have a person that services the needs of our kids that comes here a certain number of hours a week. Right, Sherry Rivard, so we have a contract to have Sherry Rivard be the one that fulfills our social work. It's not a.
I don't believe there is not a contract with a you there's a billing, but I'm 99% sure there's not a contract because it's our youth service agency.
We do have a contract for Sherry Rivard, but it's
a contracted service right I mean I think we're just getting into semantics here. So you have to pay for her services based on our agreement with the
Correct. We absolutely have that service, you know, contracted, you know, with them based on the number of hours during the course of the year. I don't know if Mr. Briody is on. Hey john is that contract. Month was that contract signed? Are you on?
Yes, I'm here. I'm here. When you say what month was it signed in, you mean last spring? Going for this school year.
We renew the contract every we renew it every spring. I'm not exactly sure when it gets signed off on. We look at the service needs, we look at our student population, and then we come to an agreement in terms of how many days, how many hours that we require. And there's other things that are included in that there's some, some health education that also comes through So, are like three main components of service that we that we receive from in the course of a year. But the primary one is the school social worker.
And I know we haven't, Mark, the reason why I asked for his assistance is I know we haven't received or talked about a contract for me to sign going into next school year yet. I know it has to be in April, May, June or July that that contract is signed for next year. Because it was also put into effect prior to me coming. So I'm not sure which month it is. But you know, that is when it is a contract that is signed. Okay. I thought I was mistaken. Okay. That's okay, Linda. So, yeah, this is the comparison by function and department. And again, those numbers on the left would be the ones that you would track on the 11 pages that we get to here on the bottom. So some people just do, you know, prefer to look at it this way, so that it's all kind of together.
Know, mixed in together here. For example, as I said, you know, there would be some split when you look at particular salaries if they are covered half by special ed and half by administrative or management, they wind up in two separate sections there. So this is just another way to look at it by comparison and function. So if there's any questions, know it's in your packet there. There's any questions on specific ones, please let me know. Okay, thank you very much, Valerie.
And then you're welcome. And then as I said, this one is the one that I know is tougher for people to look at especially because it's little there. But those numbers they are going to equate to as I said instruction right there. And then those particular numbers that you go through, you can find them there. And those and this I actually put this here so that you can see this is the approved 2021 and the adjusted and then this is the proposed for this year. Can you explain the term adjusted budget? Well, there's adjusted budget based on what they actually wound up spending at the end of the year. So like if you looked here, this was actual and adjusted, that's where she's going to have her changes if there were transfers from one section to another and there needed to be an adjustment during the course of the year. Something might have been taken out of one section if they didn't need it and moved to another section. I'll think of an example last year when they knew they weren't going on field trips in the spring. These are internal internal changes to the budget that were made
by Laura, Sally or, or yourself or whoever, based on the failure. So you'd have to give me a specific one here. I'm just saying you had if made changes you have an original approved budget that the board of added approved. And then there's $1 amount and then I don't think it really is that material but then the adjusted budget is at some point you realize you really don't need that much money in this account but you're going be over here you make some adjustments to the.
Right, here's one mark I know for example last year. So I'm trying to find one here for you. Here's one that it was right here approved for 100,000 and adjusted to 185 right here if you look see where it says outplacement and special ed. There was a student that they were at the start of the year when they originally budgeted that particular child they had not budgeted for them to be placed out. The original budget was $100,000 During the course of the year then that student went out to the placement for the trial period. They determined that that was a proper placement and then they had to take that money from someplace else and adjust this line item and put it in there because they needed to have the money to pay for the difference for the rest of the year for that particular student. So that would be an example of where No, I understand the concept. Just
wanted to make sure that that's what we were looking at. There was some internal adjustment made after the original budget was created. It's not necessarily the final numbers or whatever but there were some adjustment made that may be why we're seeing that 700 and that number, whereas the original would have been 40,000 but at some point Laura maybe made that 700 knowing that she'd already prepaid it she took care of it, but that would have happened after the original budget adoption. So, right, here's different ways to approach it some organizations businesses which leave the budget where it is and then you're just going to have variances that you explain. In this case, you know you adjust the budget internally so that you kind of know where you are on target that's okay it's fine to do it that way I just wanted to make sure I understood that's what's happening. This is actually the line that Diane was referring to right here, do you see my cursor.
So last year the approved 2021 budget for social work services was 42,500. And actually it said 500 here and not 700. I would have to find out where the $200 difference is. The total. Right. But if you look now at the 1920 actual, do you see the 1920 budget itself was 40,964 and then the actual here for 1920 jumped up to 85,204. And this is where Laura moved that number from here over to here.
And Val, I know that you said that you're going to provide the detail on the 189. I've desperately been looking back to find all of my old board minute notes and whatnot, and I have not been able to find it. But I do know that another significant payment that we made was to purchase Chromebooks because during the pandemic, we wanted to have a one to one ratio for every student in an in Andover Elementary to have a Chromebook. And that was a significant expense that we moved to last year's budget in preparation for being able to send every student home with a Chromebook during this year. And I know that was I don't know what that expense was but I know that was a major expense from last year. Yeah, I'm sure Laura can come up with it again. That's exactly the kind of detail that kind of helps us understand the differences. Well, that's it. That's the 189 that Valerie is going to provide you with. But I'm trying to recollect in addition to the 53,000 that we've already noted, I know there was a significant expense that was made to provide for Chromebooks for our students. And Val will get you the 189 breakdown. I just wanted to add in that I recall that that was certainly part of the major expense that moved to last year's budget. In addition to paying for in addition to the 53,000
that we've already discussed. Thanks. Sorry. That's okay. No. So we've already identified one of them. But yes, I will certainly get the rest for you. And so yes, so you know when you go, this is our proposed and you can look at the approved, the adjusted, and then if you go back to the actual here, that's where I'm going to pull those numbers from with the help of Laura, to be able to see where those differences were. And there's obviously 11 pages of this that go through all of the particulars there. And I will pull those for you. And that's everything in there. And then it moves on to the next one.
Okay, that's a lot to go through. I know I'm so sorry for everybody. I do not apologize. That's why you're here and we wouldn't have wanted any less. I think. Thank you, Valerie. So board, this is your opportunity to ask any last questions general or specific to Valerie unless we I have a question. Yeah, Louise, go ahead.
Okay, Valerie, going back to the screen that has all the different grade levels and the changes in classes, I noticed for third grade back in October 2020, you only had one class with 18 kids, and you're just making an increase of two more students for 2021, but adding another class. Is that necessary for two additional students? Remember, we're looking at different kids then.
You have to compare. Hold on one second and I'll go back to that slide for you. We have to remember that every year. I'm sorry, is it Louise that's speaking? Yeah, it's Louise. Sorry, Louise. You have to remember that you have to move that up one line item from one year to the other to see the count of kids. So, right.
Hang on one second. It did say 20 kids for the twenty twenty one year.
Hold on. I'm trying to get us to that particular slide. Matter how you bake it unless there's some specific.
Are you looking to involve you went from 17 students in a class to 18 students in the class to 10 students in a class. Hold on one sec. Think that's kind of what Louise is probably looking at this. So, so Louise normally like I said they would move, they would they would just move up. Here we had for first grade we had two classes of 11 kids that's going to know 22 total, that's going to move up to be the third grade class of this year. Right.
And so there is no change from this year to next year. Where we see the change and this is where like I said we are utilizing the same number of teachers. We have currently two classes of fifth grade. We have twenty two fifth graders. The decision had to be made. Do we take two classes for next year because we already have two fifth grade classes and move them up to two classes of sixth grade because that's the normal progression normally. And that's where I made that decision Louise to say nope, 22 in the sixth grade class is fine. Where we need to look at the potential gap, potential learning loss, the potential fact that we had the eight incoming kids and the significant needs in the preschool was not to offer, because this is would be what people would have expected. Well, there's two fifth grade we're just going to have to sixth grade next year and move those kids up. Instead,
I'm, that's why I said I'm not afraid of larger classes, we needed that to be here. Valerie did this move with the students. That's a good question people make that assumption.
Well that's the way you kind of just explained it so didn't really the number I mean the the ratio
of kids. And so I'm certain that the two fifth grades were assuming that they would have two sixth grades. What we plan on doing is like a middle school model, Mark, you know there won't always be 22 kids in a class or eighteen eighteen within the upper grades where we're only going to have one right now. There will be the changing of classes. We're going to utilize those current staff to do some changing of classes where that will help us to address the needs of some of those kids. You know if there's a need for a small math group for example. You're familiar with the middle school model where if they change classes then you can have one, let's say math class that's taking place that's slightly larger than another one based on the need of the students.
So the current fifth grade classes are eleven and eleven. We will be moving to one sixth grade class of 22. For the fourth grade class right now you look and you see hold on one class there of 18 they're going to move up to one class of 18. You see one third grade class of 18 they're going to move up to one class of 18. You follow me.
I get it. Okay, thank you. Think, I think Louise's point though is it is it really makes sense in a third grade to go from one class of 18 to two classes of 20.
So we mentioned earlier and I know I had provided, you know, reading for the board when we had talked about this originally. Third grade for anybody who is not familiar with the curriculum in elementary school. Third grade is that first year that we start standardized testing. Third grade curriculum wise is the year I can stop sharing this now. Third grade is the year that people expect that all your third graders are readers. The curriculum is very intensive one in third grade to make sure that that's that benchmark year for kids that we've got very proficient readers that we make sure that any of the gaps, the learning loss, things like that are to the side and we get into more content area in fourth, fifth, sixth grade and the goal for middle school. That is, I would say kindergarten and third grade are probably those optimal years in elementary school for curriculum and benchmarks. That's why when we give the SBAC and the state assessments nationally, they begin in third grade. And so do I anticipate after next school year that we'll need that? We hopefully won't. Hopefully at that point we won't need that. But those were too tough. I definitely knew that we could do sixth grade with the staff, with the curriculum, with the model that we're going to use with that one class. And again, I don't want anybody to think that I am a proponent solely of looking at very small class sizes. I think there is an advantage to looking at this seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, 22 kids and
I'm all in favor of looking at that. In a normal year, I'm not sure that I would have necessarily looked at third grade and kindergarten and said we've got to make these adjustments this year. They are necessary and they may not be necessary going forward. At that point, I'm certainly in favor of increasing those class sizes. Louise, does that answer your question?
Yes, it does. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Yeah, go ahead, Raul. Yeah, just real quick, as somebody who has somebody in second grade right now who has struggled with online learning and who I am actually vaguely concerned about. I just want to echo that as a parent in that situation like I get it, My second grader is not my fifth grader, I have a second grader and fifth grader. My fifth grader is my cerebral, hinder a book she'll crawl up in the corner and happily read it and whatever. My second grader is a much more difficult challenge and she needs one of the best things that happened to her this year is the fact that AES was open and that she was able to go in person. That was huge. Her online learning was
kind of a joke, didn't work for her at all. So she's back now and that's fantastic but I get to tell you she's, I think her teacher would agree with this. Not that she's behind in a sense of her peers because they're all behind in a lot of ways in reading in particular. So I just want to say from my own experience that I get that you know that that particular grade level that particular cohort of kids may need a little hand holding for a bit to catch them up and I don't think it's crazy for someone to say that they need that. Just I've seen it personally.
You. We don't need it forever. And I am here to tell you we don't need it forever. I will be that first person to say to you, you know what we're good. And one of the indicators that we are going to be able to use to see when we have met that is normally we have the spring benchmark assessments. We have SBAC. We didn't have that last year. And third grade is that first year that they take it. So normally the spring of second grade, the fall of third grade, all the way through until the spring when they take that test again, are doing test prep. They are familiarizing themselves with all of the concepts of reading so that by the end of third grade they all kind of are at that even playing field to head to fourth grade. And so Mr. England, you you have a second grader now. If they were in second grade last year going into third this year, they would have missed all of that. And so I've been looking nationally just to see if it's not just a Connecticut thing. Nationally, there are places that did give some sort of a benchmark assessment. New York City was one of them when the kids returned to school this year. And they all failed the third benchmark assessment. I mean, they just did. And we don't want that to happen to our kids. And so, you know, when we're sitting here next year at this same time, I tell all of you to challenge me on it. Because if we get those scores back and we get the data back and we get the qualitative and quantitative data
that we need from teachers and from the benchmark assessments and it's looking good, there will not be a reason to maintain third grade at those small numbers. There just won't be. But this year, and I'm sure you've all seen it in the news, Governor Lamont says and President Biden says, we will be doing spring assessments. Assessments. So third grade is so important, that and kindergarten. So that's where we chose to push our resources this year to those two grades so that all of your children will wind up not experiencing that COVID gap, that learning gap, that deficit. We'll have a different conversation next year, I assure you, but this year going into the fall, it's definitely something that's needed.
We have further questions for Valerie from the board. I do have one question on your presentation, not that not the presentation itself, but the budget detail breakdown. Where are the grants shown? Where which grants shown? The grants, where are they shown in the financial statements? Typically you would have some kind of incoming, offsetting your expenses.
You want to see like the breakdown of the school readiness grant the breakdown of the smart. Yeah, just basically,
are they are they in there separately separate line items for grants.
There aren't separate line items, but what you'll see is that it's not included in there. So for example, when we had looked at the paraprofessional line item, there is a missing salary in there In the actual budget portion because
that salary was covered through grants for the preschool so it just doesn't you reduce the budget based on that grant. Okay, that's a non standard way of showing it, I'll just say that I would much rather that you show the full amount and maybe the system doesn't allow it so. I don't know system allows it or not it's just the past next year will matter because it's a new system right but typically what you would do is show your expenses show your expense show your expenses then you're offsetting income revenues. You know, we even call revenues in the town, you know, it could be tax revenue could be it could be permit revenue. In your case it's grants the town gets grants also so it's just it's just a way to make very clear
where things are and where it's coming just, just I apologize for that mark I just followed the template that's been used for the past five years so I'm writing a note now that, you know, here's long.
The main thing is to understand it in this case, and I I do think that would probably be a more clear way to show the data in the future.
Which is why when we looked at preschool because the the benefits weren't covered by the grant, we kept it in there. Everything else then that was covered by the grant wasn't in the actual budget itself. Yeah. Thank you. And I will definitely I put a note on here to make sure from here going forward that we do show the offset of revenues. Anybody else?
Anybody else from the board? No. Okay, well, I guess at this point then Valerie, thank you very much. Thank you, Shannon and the rest of the board members. We appreciate the hard work you've done here. Regardless of where this all comes out, we all know there's different opinions and feelings and emotions and challenges. It's not an easy task and I think especially I appreciate your passion for the work you're doing here, all of you. Thank you very much. Okay, so the next item is new business item 8B, which is the town budget discussion. I'm going to post the question to the board members.
Do we want to get into a discussion of this at this point? Do we have specific questions? We do not have a proposed budget yet from the town. We expect that next week if all is on schedule and it sounded like it was. It's obviously getting late into the evening and we've heard a lot of information tonight, ask some questions. It may be best in my humble opinion to let this digest a little bit, give us a chance to absorb it, we may have additional questions for Valerie. Or others asking for clarification, we can always transmit that via by a letter email and discuss it at one of our special meetings. Does anybody have different ideas feel strongly that they want to discuss the budget at this time. Mark, can I get like three minutes
to talk about that? I'll give you two minutes and forty five seconds. How's that Eric? Okay, perfect. Let me just share my screen. Okay. I have of course Keri. I'll give Eric all the time he needs. Sure you are.
No, believe me, it's late for me too. Okay, so I just wanna hit the very highlights. So the Board of Selectmen has essentially released the budget to the Board of Finance. If I had my act together, I would have posted it today on the town website. I apologize for not doing that. They have approved sending it to the Board of Finance. So you will have it post haste. In fact, they'll try to get it to you tomorrow. So it's in your hands. Just real quick, the highlight, the column that you see my cursor on right now, that is the Board of Selectmen approved budget. So that is what they've passed and passed on to you. And I'm going to just so pretty much all the details are here. The thing that is different this year is the Board of Selectmen asked me to pull benefits out of we had previously a column or a section that covered all the benefits for all employees, and they asked us to break that out department by department. So we have changed that this year, and you can see department by department what our salary costs, what our medical costs are, what our retirement costs are. So that's one change in the budget. The second thing is I also, in the budget, I show budget total, which is the town budget, the AES budget and the RAM budget as they are today that I know of. So our total budget we're looking at right now
is 12,836,826. And then below that is the total town budget. That's the portion that's basically everything other than education, which is essentially 27% of the total budget. And then I further broke it down into, I separated out the capital items and just looked at what is the town general budget, what is essentially the operating budget of the town and put that column in so you can also look at that. Not gonna give you any details about that budget sheet. The bottom line is the budget delivered right now. The biggest difference is that we do unexpended fund balance to offset taxation, which we have had and we've spent down the last three years. The result of that is that the estimated, this budget presented is an increase in taxation of basically a million dollars to round it off, which is about a 9.5% increase. However, there was a fairly significant increase in the grand list this year, which means the percent increase in the proposed mill rate is about 7.59%, which
anybody who's gone through budget referendums in the past knows is a very difficult number to get through on a first or second or third referendum. So that's basically where we are right now. If you have any specific methodology you want to use to review the town budget, we can go through it line by line if you so desire, or if there are specific things you want to work with. Mark, if you give me a list of how you want to approach this, I will tailor what I present to you going forward. And I'll also give you a series of budget summaries that kind of summarize the major changes that occur in this budget. Questions? Can you make that bottom number a little smaller? Well.
Yep. It's a little magical powers Eric can you just. If you use that zoom function, know, sometimes that works for you so all right.
Yeah, I mean, what I would say is from the town perspective that the town general budget, we are decreasing the town general budget. We are so, you know, basically we're taking one employee back down to part time that was full time. And we've decided that we're going to give up a standalone senior services person and just continue to assign that task to another town employee. Again, because we just So that's a little bit controversial, but I think we're going to deal with it. The total town budget, we're looking at basically a 2.13% increase in the town's portion of the budget. So, I mean, I think we're, you know, it's more than inflation. But if you look at all that spending, all that spending is basically difference in capital.
And last year we trimmed back to get the mill rate under control. We trimmed back a bunch of capital spending and basically put it off. So now, some of that's coming back in this budget. And that's pretty much where we are in terms of the current budget.
There we go. Okay, thanks Eric. Yeah, I actually like some of the changes the Board of Selections requested. It makes sense to me to see it that way. Board of finance members, do have any other questions for Eric or input?
We still have more meetings to have a go at me. Yes, we do. So I just want to make sure I understand this town general budget slash capital fund. That's just the capital expenses in that number.
So if you look at line 68, that is total budget. The next line down is the total budget minus education. Okay.
And then the line below that is the total budget minus education minus capital funds, capital funding. Okay, okay.
Got it. So essentially what I'm doing is I'm kind of presenting the information and I'll give you summaries that show where capital spending has gone over the last ten years, where our town operating spending has gone over the last ten years. I'll give you summaries of that. It's not wrapped up in the budget, but I'll give you that detail. So you have to look at also. So you can kind of understand where we are historically. Thanks.
Other questions for Eric? Okay, thanks Eric it's to know it's there that yes, this is a version eight at the top of your screen there Okay, so I think I saw through version seven you distributed. Okay. All right, any further discussion on the board for either the presentations. Okay, hearing none, let's move on to the next agenda item HC upcoming budget workshops. I don't think we have any action to take here. A note that we have a special meeting budget workshops set for Wednesday, March 3 and Wednesday, March 17. I think everybody's aware of that. We'll get into some more of the nuts and bolts then. By then we'll have the town budget to look through and I'm sure we'll have questions.
Mark, I just wanted to jump on and let everyone know that we've been working on a page, just as we did last year for the budget. And we are going to launch that like Eric said, hopefully tomorrow
we can get all the information on there regarding the town. Are you talking about like an input gathering a feedback gathering page. Maybe eventually
feedback but more so just like informational right now. Got it okay so special page on the web Tom web page Tom website okay.
I just want to let everyone know that that is here. Just to provide you know the information, and so
the public can understand what's going on. It's in one place, instead of all the agenda packets and everything okay. Got it makes sense good Thank you. Okay. Anything else on those meetings. Hearing none, let's move on to 8D. So CIP requests for the purchase of the F-five 50 pickup. So Eric, this is your presentation here too.
So I would send you the official language from CIP for the motion they made, but Fred has not actually done the minutes for that meeting yet. So I can't give you the exact, but what CIP approved was a recommendation to purchase an F550 Mason dump truck. So it's a moderate sized, it's bigger than a standard consumer pickup truck, but smaller, considerably smaller than a plow truck. So we had a 2004 truck that we were anticipating replacing next year. We blew the engine on that about a week and a half ago. We know that it's part of we have that era of diesel engine has that was some of the first of the pollution
control equipment diesel engine. And it's not an uncommon problem. In fact, most public works departments are getting away from diesel small trucks for that reason, keeping diesels for the bigger ones, getting rid of diesels for the smaller ones. So we looked at a range of options from trying to source and replace a used engine. But, you know, so we had a cost basis for that. We also had a cost basis from the dealer for what it would cost to replace it with a new engine from Ford. And then we looked at a series of options to replace the vehicle. We looked very briefly at other manufacturers, but they tend to be Ford has much better governmental programs than the other manufacturers. Buying the Ford seems to be the most cost effective way. One of the issues we've run into right now is Ford actually isn't doesn't have the production lines running. We really can't get twenty twenty one models. If we order it, we are stuck with waiting till sometime in March till they allow orders again. And then Ford says it's ninety to one hundred and twenty days to get a vehicle and then it has to go to an upfitter. So, and frankly, it's more expensive to order a 2022 than it is to buy one of the 2020s that's still on the lot. There is one remaining that we can purchase. When we started looking last week, there were two. A municipality in New Hampshire drove down and purchased one of the ones off the lot. We are looking at a possibility that the downside of getting this vehicle is it's red. So it doesn't, it's not going to look like any of our other vehicles.
We are looking at, we're, I'm trying to negotiate with a Ford dealer in New York state that has a green one so it would match, but it doesn't look like, but it's not one that was purchased off of their municipal program. So it's probably gonna be enough more expensive that we're not gonna wanna buy it. So what I would like is first answer any of your questions that you have. I know Mark had asked me like basically what we use it for, and then to see whether the Board of Finance would agree to purchase it now as opposed to next year when we had planned on doing it with the capital
and then talk about what funding sources we can use for that. So hey,
Dave, had a couple comments on the truck color. I personally don't care if it's red as as in a resident. Second thing is if it has to be green, have you ever looked in vinyl wrapping it?
Well, I haven't priced it out, but that is one possibility. Honestly, personally, I don't care. Color is not my first concern. I'm more concerned with not having to wait five months to get the vehicle. That's to me, that's much more of a concern. I looked at it and said, if I could match the price we can buy it locally for out of state and just be out the inconvenience of having to go get it, that would be worth it to me to get a green one. But it's not worth it to me to pay a couple thousand dollars extra to get one that's off of their commercial sales as opposed to their municipal sales. If that answers your question. Yep.
Eric, if I may, this green truck never came up at Capital Improvements. Cap improvements voted to recommend purchase of the red one and I don't even know why we're talking about it. Personally, you know, if it's red, it'll still run. This this truck is very important to the town crew because it it plows the school more so than the larger trucks and also the fire station and town hall. It's used quite a bit every snowstorm, especially for those three town buildings. But CAP Improvements did approve the purchase of the red one from Columbia Ford, I think it is. Correct. Just so everybody knows.
This was also discussed extensively at the Board of Selectmen meeting the other day too.
Kurt, part of the reason why I brought up colors that there were several Board of Selectmen members that were encouraging me to continue to look for a green unit. Oh. And I said I would be willing to do that as long as we could actually find one that matched the specs. If if you need to, Dave's got the best idea, wrap it in green. I'm fine with a couple cans of gray spray paint personally, but yeah.
You have a green wrap with flames on the side. Does anybody have any other questions for Eric on this? There was a fairly detailed write up in the package, but I know we got discussed quite a bit at the Board of Cyclone and a lot of questions that came up and so all of mine were answered there. Do we need to take action on this?
Well, there's a couple of things we would need to do. Think Eric and correct me if I'm wrong, but we first of all, we don't have the capital, the money in the capital budget for the public works to actually accommodate this. However, there's some unused capital funds that never got transferred previously that were designated to be transferred so they would need to be transferred correct there. Correct. So we had set around some possible language to do that with the fund numbers. That's what I thought. Okay.
So we probably need to transfer those two funds into the public works capital fund and then we need to take action to authorize Eric to make the purchase. Anything else Eric?
No and Mark I sent you the exact language for the motions you know which lists out the exact L accounts and how much would be taken out of each one. Which was also basically what I put in
the packet also. So you guys have that info. Yeah so I did forward that out of the other board of finance members. Does anybody have any other questions for Eric or anybody care to entertain the motion or enter the motions?
I'm happy to make the motion. Just got to pull up the requirements. Me a sec.
Eric, while he's doing that, I have a question for you. In that municipal program Ford has, do they have any financing options?
They do, but their financing options kind of suck. Sorry, that's not the most politically correct thing to say in the meeting. But the best they do is somewhere around 5.5%. Wow. And to me, right now having to pay 5.5%, when you can come up with the money internally doesn't really make sense. And that even like on a three year term? Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. What other options besides Ford financing that does the town have? Mean, I know rates are just ridiculously low. I was just my thought was if you do it over say a short term three periods and we don't have to maybe move money around we can just fund those accounts a little bit every year.
These are dead accounts anyway dead funds anyway aren't they actually would need to be moved out somewhere?
Well, so the 23,000 already exists in the public works capital equipment fund. That's what's left over from the money we've been funding every year after we bought the used sweeper. The $25,252.35 that fund should have already been transferred into the Public Works Capital Equipment Fund. We had kind of agreed to do that last year. That's unfortunately one of the things and I put in the bottom of my administrator's report, basically a note that Barbara hadn't actually transferred the funds that the Board of Finance agreed to transfer last year. So the difference is really about $12,000 which I'm just suggesting we take out of Town Aid Road. It's not ideal to spend Town Aid Road on that, but you know.
So I mean if the Board of Finance makes a decision that we want to finance it versus purchase it outright, then I will certainly pursue that if that's your desire.
Eric, I had one last question. The meeting, we did discuss that you were talking to Coochie truck sales far as taking the older truck without the motor. Have you reached any agreement with them on the older truck?
Yeah, Coochie said he'd give us $6,500 but I think that's low because it's got a plow that's in pretty good shape and it's got a functional dump body and the town about three years ago or four years ago sandblasted and repainted the body. So, I mean, I think we're going to end up getting somewhere around 10,000 back for it. Our intention is to put it up for, you know, put it up for municipal auction and use one of the municipal auction sites. Okay, so nothing as of yet. Nothing as of yet. Well, we know we can get $6,500 for it tomorrow, but I think we can do better and it's worth us spending the time to try to maximize our return on that. Understand. And the other thing if you chose to we could take the money from that sale. And ordinarily, I would have rolled that money back into the Public Works Capital Equipment Fund. If the Board of Finance prefers, could put that back into Town Aid Road, which would then make it at the end of the day, we probably would only be taking a couple thousand from Town Aid Road if you're more comfortable doing that.
For a second there, thought you were going to say paint it green.
It's always an option. Other questions or comments. Do we have any motions on this topic?
All right, so I pulled up Eric's suggested motion. So I'll make the motion so we can at least discuss it. His suggestion, and I move, to transfer 940 to L-one hundred-zero-three thousand nine hundred forty two-two and close fund L-one hundred-three thousand nine hundred forty -two and further transfer $12,000 from L100-three Thousand 706 DTDF Town Aid Road to L-one Hundred-zero 03900 and 40 Two-two leaving approximately $180,000 rather in town aid road funds. That was his proposed motion and seems okay to me so I so move.
Eric, can you confirm those the right account numbers I think that Rob corrected a repeat of the in the first motion, I think he's got it right but there's in your original write up there's a. The first two accounts are the same in the original motion so just want to make sure we got that covered correctly.
Give me a sec let me pull up the actual It's easy to have your eyes face over with so. A Yeah lot of numbers today. The individual account numbers are like that.
You know and we can also also have the titles of the accounts. Yeah, we can just add
that to the motion, 25,252 and 35¢ are in the DTDF farm equipment. And the $12,000 are in the DT DF Townie Road. All moving, you know, both those amounts moving to the public works capital equipment fund, is apparently LDash100Dash0Dash3949Dash2.
Right. So the original due to due from farm equipment fund was L100-three940. So that first part is correct. And let me pull up the capital. You've got the same account number listed for the capital Right I know which, which means that one's got to be incorrect. Okay.
Right, then yeah and then it's good that we're correct. We do this motion then. We're gonna probably have to. Yeah absolutely. And we just forget what I said. And the Public Works Capital Equipment Fund is L100-three759. Okay. So 370059? Correct.
33759. Alright, so it sounds to me like then robs motion would read that we're going to transfer the fund balance of $25,252.35 in 940. The FDT DF farm equipment to 759 Public Works Capital Equipment Fund. Yes, correct.
And we're going to also transfer $12,000 from L-one hundred-three thousand seven hundred-six. That's a DT BF Towney Road to 0370059 public works capital equipment fund.
So we'll just go back to motions and. Let's just go ahead and correct my motion to that I agree. We have a second. I'll second to exactly what Robin said earlier.
Okay. All All right. Right. Right. Do we have any discussion on this motion? All right, hearing none, I'm going to call for a vote. All those in favor aye. Aye.
Aye. Opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, hearing none, it passes seven zero, thank you. Now we have such so effectively transfer these funds. Anybody want to make a motion regarding the purchase or some other alternative approach to the replacement of the pickup?
So I'll make the motion I'm going to read it from the email here. And motion to authorize the town administrator to purchase a 2024. Oops. F five fifty pickup with a rugby three yard dump body and Fisher v plow specs as outlined in the budget quote expenditure not to exceed $60,000 This will replace the twenty twenty two thousand and '8 F five fifty dump truck that has not cost effective to repair.
Diane. Does anybody want to second that motion? I'll second. Nicely stated, Diane. Thank you, Rob. Second. We have any further discussion on this action? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye.
Aye. We have any opposed? Do you have any abstentions? Okay. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. Very good. All right, if we have nothing else on that and I don't believe we do, let's move on to item nine, which is the approval of the meeting minutes. Actually have two sets of minutes to approve. We have an item 9A, the Wednesday, January 27, to zero to twenty twenty one regular minute meeting minutes anybody want to make a motion to approve those or have any discussion. A motion.
Okay, Kurt motions to approve the minutes. Know I'll second it. Louise seconds, thank you. Any discussion? I know I reviewed them and they looked correct to me. Hearing no discussion. All those in favor of approving the minutes, aye. Aye. Any abstentions? Okay, thank you. Motion passes seven to zero. We're gonna move on to item 9B which is the meeting minutes from Saturday 01/30/2021 special meeting. Anybody want to make a motion to approve those minutes.
I'll make a motion to approve those minutes. Diane, thank you. Anybody second?
I'll second it. Okay, thank you, Louise. Any discussion? Again, I reviewed them and I was there and they looked appropriate to me. Was a quick meeting, the one single purpose, proving the purchaser. All right, all those in favor approving aye. Aye. Opposed. No abstentions any abstentions. Stention because I wasn't there. Rob's abstaining. Okay, so motion passes six zero with one abstention. Thank you. Move on to agenda item number 10, which is liaison reports. Don't know if we've had anybody who wants to report out anything. We already talked about some of the CIP activity. Think Diane, we were going to have another meeting of the senior committee is that did that take place. You're muted. Yeah she tried to get it off.
Unmute. Okay. It's late at night, can't work anything. We had a second meeting. We went over, the initial draft drawings of everything with board of selectmen and gave them the view Adrian shared his screen so we kind of walked through that the next phase now is in our next meeting which will be March 11 is to really come back to everyone to do some conceptual drawings. So we'll be coming back to the board of Selectmen and the board of finance to ask for money for that. We do have some money put aside in that fund already so we should have the money to start that initial thing. And we're going to do conceptual drawings before we go full bore so we can make sure everybody's on board with the concept and what we're going to do before we spend any money.
If I recall correctly, we have hundreds of thousands of dollars in that fund. We have like $450,000 for 50. Yeah. Yeah. Or 47, but close enough. Yeah, that'd be difficult. This
is a tough budget year, let's keep our numbers straight. Good to know you're on top of it, Eric. Okay, thank you, Diane. Any other reports or input?
And for the record, the budget proposal before you has a recommendation to add $50,000 to basically do get a lot of the design costs out of the way without touching what's actually in that fund of the construction funds that are there. You. Whether that survives your final budget, that's up to you. Mark, you're muted.
Sorry, I was trying to cover my cough there. If we have nothing else, we'll move on to the next agenda item, which board open discussion. Does anybody have anything else to discuss before the board bring before?
Are there anything specific that the board of finance members are looking for me for the first budget meeting? Is there, what is it that you want to see from me from for the first meeting? Is there anything in particular?
I would personally like to see how this impacts the multi year plan for capital improvements on the roads and other infrastructure. And you know I obviously haven't looked at the numbers, so you know, we had a plan, we had a plan last year too, of course, things change so just kind of want to understand where this fits in with that.
And I would like to know what funds, we need to expand in the next twelve months for the next bridge that we have to do?
Okay, so I mean I can tell you that we are going to be with a little bit of luck we will be starting construction about fourteen months from right now, if that puts it. So we're not on the hook for any design costs. So our first real expense as a town is when construction starts. And then I would anticipate the all of the town's portion to be expended in the first about six months after that. So by the end of next summer, we will have expended, we will have been on the hook for the full 400,000 with the understanding that we're going to use the fund balance as our reserve because we're gonna be looking at individual bills because basically what has to happen is we, the contractor does the work, we pay the contractor, the federal government rebates us. So at some point during that we will be out
awaiting reimbursement, because it takes more than a month and you can anticipate our individual monthly bills you know are going to be in the 2 to $300,000 range. So we're pretty quickly going to get to the point where you know we've you know spent 6 or $700,000 and just haven't gotten rebated that yet, if that makes sense.
It does to me. It's going to happen. It seems appropriate. Anything else or any input for Eric for his presentation or discussion at the next. Net or the budget meeting social meeting. Maybe
an idea Eric of what grants we're looking to get for the town. Okay. That will help.
Okay, if we hear nothing else, I'm going go ahead and move on to the next agenda item, which is item 12. This is public speak. We have an opportunity for those of you who are persistent and then have the endurance to stay with us for one of our longer meetings. We'll go ahead and open it up to public speaking again.
All right, here we go. So first up we have Shannon Loudon.
Excellent. So I will not prolong it. Thank you very much, Board of Finance, listening to, our wonderful superintendent and all of my Board of Education members in support of our budget. Yes, we've done a lot of work on it and are very passionate about it. And more importantly, our town administrator misspoke. My dear husband is the chair of CIP, and the minutes from our meeting last Thursday have already been posted to the town's website. Mr. Dowling, in fact, moved to approve the expenditure of up to $60,000 for the purchase of a new model year 2020 F-five 50 dump truck blah, blah, blah, blah. There was no color mentioned. And Mr. Surisley seconded it. Thank you very much. And I apologize. I misspoke.
Thanks Shannon. Val? You're good? Okay thank you again. Great job. Jenny Morell.
Yes, before I get to my comment I wanted to offer the services of my preschoolers if you would like a green truck I'd be more than willing to paint it for you they're very good at painting but I wanted to thank all of you who spoke in support of the specific classrooms at our schools specifically the preschool which is the grade where I am teaching. It was very heartwarming to hear all the people who spoke out about the importance of early childhood education so thank you for that. And also seeing the needs that are different this year and going into next year and realizing that our children are likely going to need something different from what we are used to providing them. So thank you very much everyone. Thank you Jack. Thank you. Dan Foran. I'm good, thank you. Thanks. Okay, Jerry Kerme.
I want to thank you for offering us the opportunity to comment. And I hope that we, after you've seen Valerie's presentation that you will support the board of education budget and you'll see how much we really really really really went into it and I appreciate all that you do. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Thanks, Jerry. Joanne Heber.
Thank you, season. It's been a long day and a long week of meetings. So, I'll save some comments for another time. But of course, we all support education. Every all new teachers work so hard. I work amongst you. I mean, the best thing I see every day is priceless actually, no dollars. It's the care and love that all the teachers and staff give to every child that's within their care. So that's one thing we don't have to pay for. So, I support you know just looking for ways to keep the expenses down for living in town so thank you everyone thank you Joanne thanks Joanne Okay, Amy Knox. Carrie Gilbert. I'm all set. Thank you. Thanks. And last but not least, Brian Briggs.
Yeah, I just wanted to say that I'm currently a teacher at in Tallinn at a primary school. And I thought what Valerie said was great. Everything she said was spot on with class sizes, especially during COVID. And I really think that the board should definitely accept the budget that she presented and that the board of education put forward. So I think she did a really good job and everything she said was spot on. So thank you. Thank you, Brian. All right. I guess unless john wants to comment.
Thank you. No, I think it was all said. I appreciate the diligence of the board of finance. And your thorough questioning. And I'm sure that Val will get back to you with any answers to questions that are left open from tonight, but thank you all for for being part of the process.
You. Okay, I think we're all set amanda. Looks like for everybody. That brings us to our final agenda item, which is number 13. Lucky 13 adjournment and anybody like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Eric, you don't have that choice. Try though. I'll make a motion.
Okay, Louise was motioning to adjourn tonight's meeting. Looks like Rob is seconding. You're in mute, Rob. I am muted, sorry. Signals is your second. All those in favor say aye. Opposed or abstain? Hearing none, let us surprise. The motion passes seven to nothing. Thank you everybody for your assistance and help. It is going to be a long season and thanks for staying with us. Lots of work to be done. Lots of work already been done. Appreciate it. Take care everybody. Thanks Mark as usual.