Meeting transcript
Town Meeting
May 2, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
So my name is Mark McCrack, Chairman of the Board of Finance and most of the former are in attendance with us tonight. A couple of couldn't be. We've all worked very hard on this. I know there's been a lot of people providing input and detail. Tonight. And then also just as the no point of interest, May 2 is also the RAM budget. So just as a point of interest, most of you probably realize this, but the RAM school budget is not part of Okay, just a quick view of the budget breakdown by entity. Year, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three fiscal year, which will end at June 30. And so this is an overall spending decrease of about 200 RAM budget, which fortunately for us, it is going down this year. And the only reason it's going down is that we have a lower percentage of handover students at RAM this year, just like last year. So that's a fortunate situation in terms of our finances. That will change over time. The percentage of Andover students is expected to go up in future years, but fortunately right now to 105,000 or about 2.9% increase. Okay, so the twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three budget. RAM budget. So, again, the RAM operating budget is $30,598,002,391. It's a 2.8% increase. That's the overall RAM budget, not
So, Andover's percentage of levy decreased from 16.63% to 14.43% this year. Just the number of Andover students relative to So we have an overall increase to 2,722,661 this year. Let's So major factors increasing the operating budget. So public works, we have increased cost for public works operations. Have increased staffing in the building and land use office. We're adding a part time account planner. If any of you follow the discussions both by the board, it's like coming into the board of finance meetings. There's a very, very compelling case that by adding a part We also have increased usage of the senior transportation as our population ages, so we're doing some things to improve some of the capabilities there. Atomic Capital Legend. So the overall increase is from bit of a breakdown next to talk about that. It also gives us a pretty strong commitment to repairing and replacing the town's infrastructure. We've said it over many years that the roads are very challenged here in town. There has been a real concerted effort in a few years past really to get up to where we should be in terms of maintaining.
We're doing a lot of secondary repairs or band aid think thanks to the work by Eric and others, the Bunker Hill Bridge is now fully grant funded. So we're able to get that off of the poster. So this is an important change. This is one that I think all of you need to understand. So one of the things that we're declaring here at the outset is that we have a real need in town for a new fire vehicle. So we are planning the county intends to enter through a contract to purchase a new So this is just a tabular form, major funds So this is where we are going with the budget for this year in terms of funding our capital requirements. So the fire department equipment fund, we've got a $125,000 going into there. We've got public works equipment capital and for the operation. What about revenues? There's multiple sources of revenues. I'm not going to go through every one because there's a lot of line items there. They're they're they're aren't all that large except for the a lot of the state grants. Educational cost sharing is a big one.
We do give money for permits and fees. In fact, was a pretty good source of revenue during the pandemic, and if we were building houses and doing renovations, we've got stapered off quite a bit. And our overall revenues are down about $32,000 for about a month of like 3%. So those are the revenues aside from taxation. So the money that we have come again from the state and from other sources. So where does that make you? So this is a vital summary. We've got multiple years there so you can compare them, and that's also listed in your printed document if you choose to take a look at it. So again, Andover Elementary at the top is about a 4.5 balance. So it's kind of our contingency fund. And we were over what the state generally requires or recommends for a child to have. They don't have a strict requirement. But that could get us to the problems and in fact it was too high. All of the property in town that is taxed. Vehicles, property taxes all go into there. Using that number, we calculate basically a mill simple. And then that gives us an estimated mill rate of 31.33. Okay? So that's actually a decrease from last year. It's almost a 2% decrease in your mill rate from last year. So what that means is that if your house is valued at the same amount, you'll actually be paying less next year. Okay, so what's next? So this is just the town charter. This is section eight zero three, which covers the annual budget meeting, which is where we are tonight.
So we have a forum, I think. So what we can do is we can make amendments to the proposed budget, provided, however, that the combination of only have the power to reduce or modify, but not increase the budget
I just would like to know if there's anybody for their first meeting tonight, new to Andover. Welcome. And
everybody else, senior guiding force with the town. I actually have one question about the town budget and one about the school budget. I'm chairman of the board of assessment appeal. My name is Shoja Conrad. I live on Lakeside Drive. I've been struggling for three years to get us paid because all the treasury people have been changing. We still haven't been paid for 2022, and I see that the $680 salary is zeroed out in this year's budget. I don't know how you're gonna reconcile that. We need to be paid for 2022. And I have documentation. I know you can to the senior center community center. You repeat again?
Yeah. Can you repeat the question? Are you good? I'm not gonna get to the question. So the question was, was in the school budget, is there any provision for legal I
have another question to add that Can you state your name? Jeff Ballard, 174 Lake Road.
The front page, there's something that says neglected cemetery grant, and there's $5,000 This is a grant we received from the state, okay, to help refurbish the neglected cemetery. Any
Yeah, a note there in the budget brief, just to clarify, on the budget message brief this is kind of an explanatory summary that you received. There is an error in that first paragraph that says this anticipates level funding except for a decrease in ECS funding of the products that was $63,000 This is a question that Shannon asked. This isn't correct. We did It's a fair question. The budget number in there that's in the spreadsheet and that is stated here, is the top dollar figure. So if the line items add up to more, that doesn't really matter because what the authority of the budget is is just the amount that's on the wall. Good clarification, that's
motion and the meeting is to approve the one by item, and that's what the school has to spend. Alright, hearing no more questions, then