Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
September 22, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
And and do the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag The United States Of America.
To the Republic. For which it stands. One nation. Under God. Indivisible. With liberty and justice for all. Okay.
All right, public speak. Do we have anyone here for public speak? Yes, I had a question if I might. Certainly.
In the June referendum, we had these advisory questions. And one of the questions was concerned with splitting the Andover elementary school budget in the town budget to be voted on each independently. And I was wondering if based on the results of that question. We should expect that to happen next time around.
I do not know the answer that question because that would be for the selectman would have to weigh in. And is that a charter change, Eric, I don't know, that does require a charter change.
Are selectmen asked that question because they were they're anticipating another charter advisory commission to be seated sometime soon. And they wanted that information to give them some direction. Okay, sounds good. That's
all I had. Okay, thanks Jeff. Nobody else public speak? I don't see anybody. All right, let's move. Do we have any additions or deletions that we want to add to the agenda? Does anybody have anything? I have nothing. I apologize
guys, I was online at work until about an hour ago and then I needed to get dinner. But do we have anything on there for tip liaison? For CIP? Yeah.
But we have like 10 liaison reports. Yeah, that will address it then. That works. That's fine. That works? Okay. All right. Thanks, Rob. Go ahead. Ahead, Joanne. Am I allowed to comment on the public speak issue?
If you have a question. Yeah, I mean, I can't say one thing. I just think it would totally complicate our town even worse. I think that somehow we all have to I understand the theory but I'm hoping that last year's situation and things going forward maybe preparing ahead of time just might do better and try to come together as a town to, you know, I just feel like it's gonna be okay, got a 1% over here, we got a 4%, I don't know. It might complicate it, but it's for another, we've got a long time. Thank you. Eric.
Diane, can I suggest that you put under new business affordable housing plan? Okay, that'd be eight H. Yep. Affordable. Yeah. Okay. Can I have a motion for that?
I'll move to add NMH8H affordable housing plan to the agenda. Second. Do I have a second? Second. Court seconds. Any discussion? Nope. All in favor? Aye. Okay.
Unanimous. Okay. Added. All right. Anything else guys you want to add or delete? We're good. I'm good. Okay. Town administrators report. Okay, can I share my screen? Certainly. Amanda, I need the power. Okay.
Hopefully, we're all looking at a shared screen which says administrators report, except it should say Board of Finance, not Board of Selectmen sorry. Okay, so things that are relevant to the Board of Finance. The first is the assessor's office is on track to finalize the rebel in October, which will probably fairly dramatically affect the grand list doesn't increase the amount of money we get it just means the overall grand list will be higher. So the other thing I wanted to make you guys aware of is that the Matea, who was the person who had taken the combined position, Well, was made to take the combined position of the assistant town clerk and the building admin has resigned and taken another municipal job with Coventry. So, the Board of Selectmen at their last meeting, made a decision to split those positions back again, because of all the problems we had had with that office. So, we're advertising for them both separately. And we will go from there.
Permit link is live question before you move on for that. So that has a financial impact to the budget because we have a position that we didn't budget for correct.
That's correct. And well, it's got two implications. The first is Mateo was taking a partial payment in lieu of health care. And since these are both union positions, it is unlikely that we're not going to end up with, a significant change in the amount of benefits associated with these positions. So that's where that's where it becomes a Board of Finance issue.
You know, not Eric are we back to the same hours previous to combining it for each position.
The board is trying to run the, the building department right at twenty hours. So, you know, which is fourteen hours less than it was previously.
And then set hours so that the town people will know right I mean maybe you had that with the combined position to.
Mean, did, but it's, it's been ugly. Frankly, I would not be at all surprised if Bolton refuses to sign another contract to provide building official services, because they're obviously really unhappy with us.
Why is it is it only working in an office is it the amount of work is so huge that one person just can't do it in those amount of hours.
There's a fair amount of work to that office. The other real problem is that when you have a land building and land combined building and land use office, where everyone is part time, the building official part time zoning officials part time wetlands part time fire marshal is a few hours a week, When all those people are barely there, you know, the admin provides the gatekeeper that's always there to answer questions. And now when you say roughly half the time the building is open, there's nobody there to answer questions. Two things happen. One people get frustrated, and they call the Bolton Land Use Office directly, because they know our building official, you know, is in the end, their admin is quite unhappy to spend lots of time dealing with Andover's problems,
which makes everybody in Bolton unhappy. Or they call the building official for questions that really should be addressed by the admin, and the building official shouldn't directly be engaged. And when you only are contracting for five hours a week of building official services, that becomes kind of problematic in and of itself.
As a good administrative assistant in a department, I would have a folder with listed questions for those five hours that you can, you know you got a doc I'm not saying it's a perfect world I totally hear what you're saying I have to deal in my own capacity with people that I might see an hour a week I have that folder I've got it ready But I know what you're saying, that the people want the questions. That's if Matteo or the person was working twenty hours and had all those things lined up, then you go week to week, or maybe the building official or whoever has how many hours dedicated to Andover from Boland? Five. Know that's not a heck of a lot of time to do. I love real estate, so it's not a lot of time to do permits and checking and, you know, what so I imagine a lot of the work is doing that stuff, site work, too. Yeah, I would just hope that I get that it's not easy, but maybe a little organization and having the questions all ready for it so that at least week to week, the most time someone would have to wait for an answer is a week. I don't know if that's reasonable or is that crazy too
in the building world. Well, I mean, there's so many variations on questions that I think it's unreasonable to expect somebody else to cover that position and be able to understand, know, of the questions are and frankly, you know, it's pretty obvious that whoever takes that position, it's going to take them a long time
to get up to speed because there's a there's an enormous amount to know. Yeah. And if you if if you don't like it, like someone like me I'm just saying I get that she can't answer or you know the person can't answer it just have those questions ready for when the skilled person comes in you know you could just go through them get the answers get back to the person I'm not saying it's that's how I organize my time I have like a staff of 150 that come at me and let me tell you teachers with COVID and extra pay for this or this you just have to really get your questions ready get the official that's going to answer them and then get back to the people all week. So that's my world right now with COVID but
thank you. I don't want to stall us.
Yeah, then how many hours will the assistant town clerk be probably twenty six again.
And didn't you already bargain a position in the union to combine it so now it has to be split apart again or no? Well,
one, we never originally, you know, one the union never agreed to it. So, we never did formalize that. We formalize what a combined position would make in terms of hourly wage, but they have never agreed to combine that. We just did it because frankly they weren't, you know, playing ball with us period. So, you know, we're kind of back to where we were other than we're advertising this as a twenty hour a week position instead of a thirty a thirty four hour a week position. Eric?
Yep. Have you, run all this past or through the board of selectmen? Because I think that's an issue that they need to, to deal with.
So I gave the Board of Selectmen a series of options, and Sherry gave them the cost basis for what those options would be and what the cost would be for the town. And what what came out of that? Exactly what I told you. Their decision was to have me split the position, go back to a standalone position for the town clerk and a separate one for the building department. Great.
And benefits for that, is there I forget when you earn benefits, you know, with the whole the retirement and all that. Is it 25 now? Did you up that? Nope. Those positions both will have benefits. So on top of the salary, it'll be the what's the name? I'm sorry, I've had a long day. What's the name of the retirement program the town has again? I talked to it last week. I just can't think of it. The town is in Murph.
Gotcha. So the 14 or 15% that the town on each of those on top. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, mean, one of the issues we've had is as we've cut all this stuff, you know, nobody stays anymore. Yeah. You know, we're on our third, you know, or second admin, both admins have left within a year's timeframe. After the one before that, who had a little better package stayed for twenty something years, and is now back working as for the town temporarily filling in. You know, we haven't been able to keep assistant town clerks any either,
because frankly, everybody else pays them a lot better. So they work for us for a short period of time, gain a little experience and both. And that's exactly what Matea did. Yeah, it's life life situations too. You're going to get a lot of, you know, I cut my hours in half when I was a young mom and had three kids at home. That was my priority it depends it could be great for someone but I get you you're not going to get people that are going to join on and stay forever it's just people's life circumstances that's all yep understood
all right thank you Okay, we are doing tree work. Right now we're doing quite a bit of tree work over on the northern half of the town. We were fortunate that we were able to make a deal with Eversource with the utility company. And they basically agreed to allow us to cut on both sides of the road. And they're paying for the cost of all the tree trimming and removal. So that's allowed us to stretch our dollars a lot more. That's been kind of a long running thing I've been trying to get. You know, and it seems like we finally got to the right people at Eversource, who are willing to consider some things like this. So that's been going fairly fairly well. As you know, we put aside money in the tree work permanent fund. This particular iteration of tree work, we're going to expend somewhere between 35 and $40,000 And the utility company will put in that or maybe even a little bit more than that. So that's been going fairly well.
We only put 50,000 in there for this fiscal year. Correct.
Correct. Well, we have to leave some for emergency stuff. Right. Right. So, there's no real report on snow plowing at this point but we did have an issue with our contract for salt. So there's the Connecticut is going to have a real problem with salt this year, because one of the main distribution points was in New London where they were able to barge the salt in. And New London has closed that facility and turned it over to an offshore wind conglomerate. So salt is either coming in from now New Haven or South Of New Haven, or somewhere in Rhode Island. So there's a lot less supply available. And one company has basically bought out all the distribution kind of in the Northeast.
We did sign a contract very early with in that contract specified that if the croc bid came in lower than what we had locked in at, we would be able to they would honor the croc bid. Unfortunately, they were one of the companies that were bought out the company that bought them out. Apparently bought their salt stockpile and didn't really buy anything else from them. So they have told us they will not honor it. We have been able to get back in on the state bid for salt. So it looks like we're going to be okay, probably. But this is going to be a real issue going forward in years. The good news is we have a really good stockpile of salt. So you know, we may be able to get away with only purchasing say 300 tons this year. You know, if we start having supply issues, not ideal, but you know, that is life. So as you all know, we sent out and got back the RFPs for the community center. The, the committee approved hiring the BSC group for the excavation site work for twenty three thousand dollars and Moser pile on Nelson architects for the architectural for part $6,000 So I sent the details to the town's attorney and asked him to write up a contract.
He got a contract back to me this morning for the excavation site work. And he basically said the architectural bid was a low enough dollar amount, he said just sign the bid document they gave you and you'll be fine. So presuming the Board of Finance has no objection. My plan was to sign that tomorrow and get both of those off and running.
So let me ask that question. Because you sent me that lovely purchasing policy. If it's,
so we don't need a formal contract if it's between 5 and 15,000. That's how I'm reading that. Right. That is correct. Okay. Perfect.
Eric, before we go any further on the salt budget thing. Yep. My question would be, alright, so we signed a contract with somebody for kind of a price protection contract. They get bought out and now we'll honor the contract. What sort of dollar amount are we talking about here? Because I'm just thinking whether there's any purpose here in trying to to enforce something? It's a small amount of money, it's not worth pursuing them.
Know, who knows where salt prices are going to end up? At this point, it seems like we're going to be they will accept us under the state bid contract. So we're going to be paying roughly what we paid. We would have paid had we had a standalone contract, maybe a tiny little bit more, but not enough to worry about. Okay, you know what the company the original agreement was to lock us in at about 70, I think $75 a ton. And the company that bought them, they didn't actually buy them out. According to them, All they did, the only thing they agreed to do was buy their salt stockpile. But since they can essentially prevent the other company from importing salt, because they now no longer have a way to do it, because they control all the importation.
They essentially took over their client or they took over their stuff because the other company has no way to get product.
Yeah, I don't want to belabor this, it doesn't necessarily relieve the seller of its contract. You know, if it's a straight asset purchase and they only purchase the stockpiles, I get that. But then the the company that made the agreement with us still exists, still has assets or whatever. That doesn't necessarily just mean they get to walk away and stiff us. Now, if it's a small amount of money, it doesn't make any sense to to pursue them. I understand that. But I'm a little, I don't want to just hand wave this away because typically when you have like this is this apparently what you're telling me is that this isn't the corporate successorship issue where they actually completely bought out the company. The other company still exists, right? Still a going concern? No. They're done. Mean, they have no product.
Yeah. Okay. So they sold. Hang on. Yeah. Somehow they sold their assets, but not their liabilities. Yeah. I'm not sure that flies, but okay. That bothers me. Sorry. This is the insurance guy in me. I don't love that. But if it's not a huge amount of money and it's not worth pursuing, fine. I just It doesn't strike me as the right answer, but okay. Well,
and Rob, you know this and you know, because contracts are contracts, but if the company was acquired, then they would have to, you know, most contracts aren't assignable, so they're not going to go, you know, so the thing is, we don't know what the legal status is of the company is.
Right. And whether they're actually dissolved or what have. Right. I get what you're saying. That's what I'm bringing up. Now I deal with corporate successorship issues in a very different context. And this is exactly the sort of thing that we get stuck on a fair bit in my job. Who actually has the rights and who actually has the responsibilities? But this is a massive rabbit hole and I don't want to go down any further. So let's move on. Yeah. I'm happy to give you the information if you wanna sue them. Yeah.
I am not legal counsel. So let's just don't listen to me. I I I just bugged me and it struck me as the wrong answer. But hey, again, let's move on. Sure. Okay.
So I'm not going over everything on here. Just so that you know, in the interest of time. So, we got our, our essentially full approval for the steep grant for that will cover the cost half the cost of reclaiming a couple of roads. We're not going to get to it this year because we're way too far behind on drainage work and we got to finish complete the drainage work on Shoddy Mill before we do it because we have to do both roads at once. But the good news is, at least they finally fully approved the, the funding for this deep grant. So we know the money is there when we get around to doing it.
The connectivity grant, we finally got the official notice to proceed from Department of Transportation project authorization list, and they wrote us a check for $297,000 So we have the money. I'm still bugging the, the construction company as to when the actual start date is. But it sounds like it's going to be fairly soon they're trying to wrap up other projects right now. Before they started on it. So hopefully we'll get the significant portion of that completed this fall.
Remind me, Eric, what's included in that connectivity? Is the what what's the work they're going to be doing. Say again, is it sidewalks.
It's part it's a it's a series of connected things. Okay. So, the idea was, we got the dot separately to install a new crosswalk across Long Hill Road at Route 6. And then we're tying it in with sidewalks running down to the bridge towards the ball field, and then improving the other side connecting to the rail trail, making a new trail head there, installing a kiosk, New stairs at the library. New handicapped accessible ramp and railing at the library connection to the in connection to the Andover Church there. So it's basically the goal is to make an easy pedestrian and cycling connection now between, you know, the North Side and the South side at Long Hill between the ball field and the rail trail and other town assets.
I would love them to have a flashing stop ahead sign when you're coming up to Long Hill there because that corner is just the light changes, you don't see it.
Well, we did at least get the DOT to do a lot of cutting there. Yeah. So they did push the brush back a lot. And light is still screwed up there. You know, which is not good because they, the the new crossing and the new traffic lights are keyed on cameras, not on underground sensors, you know, underground magnetic sensors, which is kind of the way they're all going to. But the company that's got that project is a little over a year behind. Mean, was supposed to be completed last. It was supposed to be done by October 1. And they still haven't finished the bloody thing so.
So that's a little annoying. But, you know, that's the state's problem more than it is our problem, because that's not part of our grant that was another project, we got the state to do for us. Okay. So as far as town wide monitoring. As most of you know, we had to switch from monitoring by our talent dispatch center to our own standalone company, not our own company, but a commercial company. So we did that, we made a decision who we went transition took place by July 1. And then we've been going all around and getting all the buildings inspected and then brought back up to code. There were some a number of problems identified. The worst ones were in public works, which we already knew. And then also the town hall had a bunch of things that were pretty bad. Like all the heat sensors in the furnace room and in the attic here were never wired correctly. So they never worked. They all failed the initial tests. They just didn't go off. And then when they went back and traced it, they determined the sensor itself was Okay, but they were incorrectly wired. So the town hall is not that inexpensive a set of fix. And I already cleared that work with the fire marshal to make sure he was okay with what they were doing there.
And then public works, that's going to be about 85 or $8,000 it's less than the Board of Selectmen and you as the Board of Finance agreed to when we when you signed off on the whole proposal back in July. So they were originally saying if they had to replace everything, it was going to be in the 12,000 to $14,000 range. And so what we decided on doing was just inspect everything first, and then let's bring it up to code, and let's replace just what's physically failing or not code compliant. So that's basically what we're doing. Next thing up. We talked a number of times with the Board of Finance about the affordable housing grant. We did get an affordable housing grant from the state HUD, or some other entity of the state. And we did an RFP for that we got three bids back for it. And the planning and zoning commission accepted the bid from Bill Warner,
as the lowest cost acceptable bid. And I think the reason, Bill was able to provide this at a lower cost was because A, he wrote our last plan and conservation and development, and B, he won the bid for the last affordable housing grant that we got about ten years ago. So he was basically starting with a significant fraction of the data. So I'm informing you this. My intention is just to announce the bid acceptance and write a contract with Mr. Warner, unless you all as a board have an issue with it, or want to discuss it in some form or another. I don't have an issue. Anybody have any issue?
No issue. And it's been talked out, talked about for a number of meetings. So yeah, I'm gonna do that. Yep. Okay.
So I think I've already told you this or Sherry already told you this. But we did get our first tranche of the American Recovery Act funding for $470,000 of which you've agreed to spend around $1,200 by writing a check to the health district. But other than that, so you have basically $477,000 of that still in the in the kitty. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about that you're going to see coming up is that we had the the board had already had asked me to instead of directly doing the electrical work that we needed in the town hall to send that to RFP. As soon as I prepared the RFP that set off a little bit of an argument within the board of selectman about scope of work. Partly because there's a fairly significant code violation in our mechanical room. And that when they did the addition for the community room, they ran the fill lines for the new oil tank directly over the electrical panel, which is clearly a code violation. I'm not saying our because what we were going to add to the system would have not been directly under it. We probably could have done it but the Board of Selectmen did not feel comfortable, you know, continuing something that that was that bad a code violation.
The problem is is that that led to mission creep. And if we replace that, then really, there's a couple other things we really ought to do at the same time. Because if we're redoing all the piping, the only way we can do redo the piping is to go through an existing window area that was already turned into a vent. So we're going to have to block that off. And there's going to be a number of other things. So it's, it's gone from a simple project to a complicated, more complicated project that's going to result in us replacing our oil storage tank, our fill pipes, doing a little work on the H vac which we know we've needed to do. You know, and some, you know, some masonry. So the board has also asked me to apply for low SIP funds to pay for that upgrades. And we have plenty of money available in our low SIP account. We should be able to pay for that strictly with the low SIP funds and not touch the building maintenance funds to do that makes it a lot more complicated project with a lot more moving parts. But and it's going to push the time we do it out a little bit. But yeah, that's that's kind of the plan at this point.
Do any of you have any questions about what we're doing or why?
I listened to that meeting, so it was a lively meeting. They usually are.
Also, Eric, ran it through capital improvements last Thursday. And personally, I think the amount of the cost for the entire project is not really crazy or out of the ordinary. And as I think we all stated, know, the town needs to meet code with that upgrade. You might as well complete the upgrade while we're doing it. You have to see some hard facts and figures, think we'll be okay.
Yep, yep, that's what I'm working on providing. Okay, so that's everything I have other than I do have the stuff. And we can go into it. I'll unshare my screen and then share it again. When we get to the discussion for CIP, the excavator and the other stuff. And that's it for me unless you have other questions for me.
Anybody have any other questions for Eric before we go over to Sherry? No? Okay, Sherry, you're up.
Okay. Good evening. In your packet, have several reports. I submitted to you the town budget summary from last fiscal year 2021 and the revenue summary from last fiscal year as well and the TAR spending account in detail. That's where we are at with all three of those reports. I expect that the budget summary report will reflect two more adjustments. We have two things to pay before September 30, and then that should be officially closed out at that time. I'm also working on reconciling the town with the Board of Ed, and coming up with a final total as far as the PO encumbrances that we still need to do and pay out. So I'm working on that and there's some adjustments to that, but it's not gonna be earth shattering and it should be fine.
And the other thing is the second set of reports, well actually one set of reports, is your new report for the software system that we put into place. I am working with the programmer. There's a final column on that report that should be there called percentage used, and it's not there because it places a whole dollar amount in there and not a percentage amount like I want them to have. So they're working with the programmer on that. And a couple of the reporting format issues I want changed, and hopefully I'll have them rectified by the next month. And I can give you a full
report the way it looks like, but pretty much the way you see it now is what it's going to be like. I think it's user friendly. I added all the accounts that you requested, departmental wise, for the benefits. We have those in place. And what I'm adding now is the revenue accounts. And also, I'm setting up other fund accounts.
Have a couple questions. So let's go to the fiscal last fiscal year end report in there. So right now that report was run I think in the middle of July, third week of July, and it shows that there's a $600,000 surplus. So there still are things that have to be paid and everything on that. Yes.
And there's a total amount. I'm trying to get the encumbrances down for the border bed. We're receiving invoices right now. I want to process them so that what I end up with is a total purchase orders that are left to pay. In other words, we're waiting for more invoices to come in. Things are back ordered. There's certain things that are discontinued. I'm trying to get a final number for that to book as far as the board of directors. Then we'll have a final figure.
Okay. So last fiscal year, when do you think we're going to have a basically put that to bed kind of done as an accurate final report?
Some I'm working on to have it finished by September 30, which is next week. Oh, next meeting. Oh, next meeting that you have should be the final report.
Perfect. Diane, can I ask her one question to pay Just back your question? So Sherry, that's unusual with these invoices that are still outstanding. When were those things ordered?
Were prior to June 30. They were ordered in May. Yeah. A lot of the companies because of COVID don't have a full operational staff back in in the building. So there have been a lot of things that have been discontinued or back order. Me a simple, very simple example. We received a kidney table, what is called a kidney table the other day. Yeah, yeah. And four legs are missing. No, no legs. Okay. So we just called the company to kind of rectify that. They're going to they apologize because they're using a third party shipping company. And apparently they forgot them on the truck. So I'm still trying to get that issue rectified hopefully by the end of this week. And then we can put that one to bed. But that's just a very small example of what kind of things that we're dealing with. I
face this as well. So I just want to make sure were these things that were ordered in May, things that were previously budgeted and not just extra money left over to be spent because it was in the right category and then ordered
that late in the year. They were ordered in the right category.
Oh, no. I'm sure. That I just mean it was budgeted at the beginning of the year, and it wasn't we had money left in this account. Let's spend it. Absolutely.
It was budgeted earlier. Okay. Wasn't a lot of spending going on because we were, you know, taking a look at all the numbers and making sure that we were well within our budget. So these were items that were scheduled to be ordered in the spring, And they were ordered and we started receiving all the invoices. Unfortunately,
it's a lot slower than I would like to see happen. So I under yeah, no, thank you so much. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't extra spending and it was already planned spending. No, it was already planned. Thank you. You're welcome.
Now I have a bunch of questions on the new reporting. Okay, so I just want to make sure
I'm understanding that. So, you know, it's a preliminary reporting. So I'm still working till the final draft.
So when I look at this, I see that there's a date at the top corner, 09/03/2021. It looks like that's the date it was run. Current period is 09/01/2021 to 09/3021. Mhmm. So why doesn't this go back to July? Is my first question. July 1.
Current period, you're reporting on the current period, which is September 1. We have closed the month. Sorry. To me we should. Right, but you have current, you if you look on the column, it says expenditure current that gives all the current amounts for September. And then your year to date expended is your cumulative. So this report has July, August, and September.
And it's kind of calculating like, yeah, we move along.
But what you put in is your September because you're reporting on the month of September and the activity that happened in the current column expanded. But it it keeps adding total cumulative for the months that you have. Next month, there'll be October. You'll have you'll see expenditure current column with all the October activities.
Current should be the current month we're in. Yes. Absolutely. Yep. And year to date will include everything since the beginning of It includes July, August, and September, obviously. So it's I a
see that the employee benefit things accounts have been moved into the department areas and there's an adopted budget amount, but there's no expended year to date or expended current amount for those.
Yeah, we just received our bills. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield was late in getting the billing out and we just received all the bills that we had processed. So by the next
We would have Social Security and Medicare in there. Right? We did payroll.
Yeah. We have to do probably Marina needs to do some journal entries.
So I'm thinking this is just a look at that budgeted amount in there, there's no items.
Just remember, she has to do the amounts Social Security. Yeah. Social Security benefits and Medicare. And then I told her she she now has to do an additional entry to break that out departmentalize. So that's what she's working on. Okay. The percentage that she needs to put in all the departments. Well, that'll correct all that. Okay. Yes, it will. Okay. I know she's working on that because she wants it as accurate as it can be. Okay. So those amounts will be reclassified into their respective department. Okay.
So now I'm on page two, and I'm in the tax collector items. And we have negative balance for equipment maintenance. So I'm kinda wanna know what the hell is going on with that. Tax collector equipment maintenance.
So we budgeted 8,800. We expended $14.04, and we have a negative 5,600. So there's an over expense here. Mhmm.
I'll have to take a look at We don't we don't know. Okay. We So don't have I can't tell you right now. I don't have the information. I certainly will take a look at that. Okay. And let me know what that is. It may be that because these accounts are so new and I gave chart of accounts to Marina that, you know, we're just trying to get a feel for where things belong. And I might have to reclassify that particular expense. But I let me take a look at it and I'll let you know. Okay. So let me see my other
my other questions on that. Good question. So now I'm on page four, and I'm looking at let's see what is payroll service. And we budget a $6,500 Do we pay payroll service on an annual basis or is there a monthly amount that we pay for payroll service? There is a quarterly bill that we receive and we pay it. Okay. Because nothing's in there year to date yet. So I'm just No. They haven't. They have not billed us yet and it usually comes in a quarterly. Okay. Bob's bill. So
then if you look at that line item, we budgeted 6,500, but our balance is including an extra dollar 13. So Yeah. It's a big amount, I don't know what That's one of those things I'm working on with the programmer.
Okay, I'm using the reports are not working the way they should be working. And he's calling me tomorrow morning. And we're going to make sure that that's correct.
Oh, so then again, we come into that whole employee benefits thing and I see where the year to date's in here, but not all the budget amounts are in there because we put them at the department level. So that's gotta be cleaned up. Okay. I'm following this now. Right. It's on page five. Let's see. Oh, page seven. Snow removal budget. We have overtime in there for snow removal. It's the summer. We expended year to date 05/1959. I'm assuming that's in the separate post. Okay.
Is that Sorry. That does not look right to me. No.
I don't know if we have a tree work overtime
or not. That must be Right. But this was just in the snow removal account. We have we shouldn't have anything expended in there yet. Yep.
Okay. Okay. Okay, hold on. And then I'll reclassify it.
Have another negative balance on page eight under the fire marshal for $60 I don't know if it's actually because we didn't put the budget amount in or because there's no budget amount there. Right. But I don't know if that's correct or not. Do you know what I mean? So I can't tell.
So there's that. It means there's nothing has been assigned in the budget column. So let me see if I can double check and see what that is.
And I can tell you what that is. And that may be our issue with budgeting. Because when we so we added a burning official. But we didn't budget for him. And the reason we didn't budget for them is what we do is we simply pay the burning official, the exact amount the town collects when we issue a burning permit. In other words, he gets paid a fee every time. So he has to go out and do the inspections, but he gets paid only what the person just directly paid the town. So I mean, technically, we probably should have had an anticipated revenue from the burning official, and then a line item for the burning official, but we did.
So we should account for that revenue, we should know how much we're collecting on burning.
Right. I mean, we do we issue him. We basically pay him whenever, you know, he gives us checks from the people who are requesting burning permits.
But we need some better way so it doesn't look like an overexpenditure all the time to deal with that. No. Proper way. When I'm setting up the revenue, you'll have a revenue
side, which will show all that has been collected in that particular
Okay. So department. Alright. So let's go on to page nine. Top of page nine, there's another negative balance of $686. I have no idea why. I don't know if that's because we have the adopted budget is not correct or the extended date is wrong.
That's the dues and fees, so I'm not sure. Yeah. So that's got to be classified
as well. On that same page, recreation. Programs, recreation, commission. We have a budgeted amount of $5,800 and two expended items, dollars 4,509 thousand $800
And the balance has not even the right balance for those numbers. Correct. And that's what I I told you. I'm working with the programmer. There is a problem.
Okay. We're on this report with that. Alright. So when we get down to the transfer station items, these encumbered PO columns items in here. Is that accurate or that should not be there? Come or PO?
Yeah, because in other words, we have a budgeted amount. We have a year to date.
And then if we have a purchase order And then we're adding those back in. If we encumber no. Actually, it's not working the way it should be. Okay. So it was working the way it should be. This minus should be deducting it from the year to date total. That means we have a purchase order that we're starting to do purchase orders now on the town, just like we do on the board of Ed. Right. So we're starting to cover things and then pay off of them. So that
is one of my areas that I'm having him take a look at. Okay. So this is all messed up. Carrie, has that not been done in the past, the purchase order system
on the town? Not to my knowledge. I have not. I've only been here since March, but I'm told that it hasn't been. So I'm trying to get a system going so that we're doing Checks and balance, yeah. Yeah, exactly what we do on the board of that side where we encumber money.
And then on page 10, under the building department, there's a wages line that we budgeted for, but there is no year to date payments out of that. Do we have paid no wages so far this year into the building? Page 10.
So the wages for the building department, the first line, that is the fee for the shared service for the building official. And again, they we get billed quarterly. So we have not expended anything for that yet. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you. Okay.
Alright. So these reports need a lot of work. Yeah.
I'm a I am absolutely working with the program. I can only do what the the company is working on and trying to get done in a very short period of time because I am beating them up on both sides.
Good. Because I'm just getting concerned because we have a very, very tight budget this year again. And we're coming into an, we're gonna go into a quarter. And we, as a board of finance, we have no real accurate financial reporting yet that we can kind of look at and make our decisions. So I just want to make sure that that's a priority and that we get some good numbers. It's a definite priority,
but I wanted you to have something rather than nothing because I want you to know that it is being set up and the chart of accounts is all in place, and we're working with the software as far as the doing accounts payable. We're getting purchasing installed in a system that we can rely upon. The problem is the reporting is not what it should be, and I will make sure that it is.
Thank you so much Sherry. Anybody else have any questions? Know I took up everybody's time. I had time to look at this today so you know I looked through it all. Okay, that's fine. I just wanted to comment that I think it's really
easy to read. So I like the setup once it gets accurate information that Diane I looked at it also. Just accurate information. I know you're working on it, so that's great. It's new. I like the setup of it, easy to read, having looked at these things before. So yeah, just keep going, and thank you for presenting it so we could see what it looks like. Thank you.
On the flip side, last few months I've been working on reconciling the town bank statement. I can honestly say that it's reconciled through 06/30/2021 for the first time since I've been there. So we will have I will have you, Eric, sign the very last one in June approval, and I will be calling the auditor tomorrow to have him come in and let him know that we've reconciled the bank statement all the way up to June, and we're ready for him to start working on the audit on both sides. Yay. Yeah. I think that's good news. I was excited. Job well done, Sherry, you and your assistant.
Thank you. I appreciate it. We've been working hard. It's not perfect, but
we're getting there. It's nice to have a process with the encumbrances, the POs. I mean, you've got to have that trail. I don't even know how auditors would work in there before if, you know. And one quick question because you mentioned auditors, so I hope I can comment. Last month, he presented a nice PowerPoint presentation. Amanda was going to track it down and share it with us just so that we'd have it. So if he presented and there was no hard copy left over. So thank you. We could get a copy of that. All right. You're welcome.
Okay. So we're onto budget transfers. I have none. Okay. So let me ask a question. Since our financial reporting is a little in a state of flux and everything, how are we managing if there's any over expenditures and where we need to get approvals
by the Board of Finance? Well, we just got started. So I have a feeling a lot of it where it is now is just needs to be reclassified to the right account. So I don't believe we have any major over expenditures where we're gonna have to get approval on them at this point. Okay. I mean, we're up until September. It's only three months. You know, I think we'll we'll be fine. I'll take a look at all those accounts. I'll work with the programmer. I'll see where we're at. If there needs to be something, I'll bring it forward next time around, but I don't foresee that happening right now. Okay. Perfect. Right.
Diane, can I ask her one? Go ahead. Go ahead. Just a quick thing to get the sorry, just because it's going to be so tight this year. And we made a promise that we were going to when I ran, I was questions all along and not just wait till the end. So with those items, Sherri, that were ordered in May for the school side, were they necessary to order for the running of school last year? I mean, know they were planned spending. Yes, they were necessary.
Okay, to be used. So they're used up, whatever A lot of is curriculum. Speaking to the curriculum. Yeah. Very important. I
work in a school, so I do get that. Yeah. And that's why I'm telling you that. So you can understand where I'm coming from. Yeah. So yes, it was absolutely necessary.
So because you said there's like 600,000 outstanding that you'll be paying invoices to.
I didn't say 600,000. Okay, I said there was a sum of money that has been encumbered. It's nowhere near 600,000. It's probably at this point under 75,000. I'm trying very hard to pay it all down so that I have a very small encumbrance leftover, which I have to book on the downside. So it's not going to pull a lot from the bottom line is what I'm telling Okay.
So and it was all necessary, of course, curriculum. Okay, thank you. Yes.
Okay. We are under old business. You kind of gave us a do you have anything else to say about your software transition or anything like that? Mean, said you're kind of working with them to get the report straightened out. No, that's
the only thing that I'm a little upset about is the reporting capability. But I think we'll be able to work through what the program is on that. And I'm sure it's something that the cells of certain expenditures are not working the way they should. So I hope to have that resolved very soon. Other than that, they are very responsive to us. They when we call them for help, they are there helping us every step of the way. They've been more than accommodating. So I just want to let you know that that to me is a big comfort because we're not left alone and lurch without, you know, some support and guidance that we need right now. Once we go through this for a year,
we'll we'll know what's going on and how to do things and should be all the bugs should be worked out of it and we should be fine. Other than that, I think it was a smooth transition. I thought it was very easy to learn the system. I've learned other systems, and it's pretty user friendly. So I'm excited about it. Good. Okay. Item 7B audit status. I'm calling in tomorrow to get them in here.
I wanted to ask one question in here under audit. I'm going back to the last audit that was just completed and the corrective action items. So we had one significant deficiency identified on financial reporting that was a repeat finding, and it was utilizing balance sheet accounts, recording revenue and expenditures, they wanted us to fix that. And we said we were going to fix it with the deployment of this new accounting system. Is that being done? I just want to get a status on that because the other two corrective action items have been completed and this one's outstanding. So I just want to make sure that we're going to see that fixed and it's going to be happening.
That is part of the other part of it is me setting up revenue accounts and expenditure accounts for those liability accounts that were put on the books and they shouldn't be there. Right. So I I met with him and I know exactly what accounts he's expecting us to do. And I will be doing that momentarily.
I'll be working on that. Okay. So I'm going to keep this on the agenda so we just don't lose sight of it. So we know that because I don't want it falling into next year. Well, I have one of the things I have to do is write a corrective
action plan and submit it to the auditor so he could submit it to the state. And that will be all part of my written presentation to him of how we're going to fix these things. And with that being said, I will work on on that to complete so that the audit for 2021 will include those adjustments. And that should go away. That should be fine.
I have the only outstanding corrective item is those accounts to be fixed. So so we already fixed the ACH controls. We already fixed the controls over payroll. Yeah. Yeah. That's the major one. The major one is what you said. And we'll have that fixed. Okay.
Now bear in mind, since we didn't adopt this software, essentially until after the last fiscal year closed, you know, I suspect we might see that audit finding again on the audit that he's starting right now, because I know. Not completed during the
repeats going to be a third time but I want to be able to say when he sees it the third time that we can say it's all fixed with the new system period and we can see it being done. Actually, would think that's the fourth time we've gotten on the I don't want to see it going beyond this fiscal year. I want it to be fixed. Well,
to be honest with you, you had to hire me before.
I know. I mean, you have the past is the past. Got me in March, so it's been seven months. Know,
I think I'm doing One of the issues we have as an organization is no one ever tracked, you know, deficiencies coming out of audit reports and corrective action items to see that they were done. So I'm going to start doing that.
That's good because my reputation is not to have any deficiency And then on it. And I never have. So I'm gonna make sure that goes away. That'll go away. Yippee.
Sherry, you're cleaning up a lot of stuff for sure. I watched it. Not I mean, we all know.
Yeah. Keep it going. It's going good. Yep. One day at a time is what I say. Absolutely.
We already kind of got an update on the community senior center building committee. Because they were kind of targeted. We went to, you know, we've got the contract going on that. So, let's go on to new business. Okay, Eric, ran multiuse turf field project. So, is this the age old question? Are we going to, an organization, a town come out for or against it or.
Well, item is supposed to be. You are the board of finance, right? And this will be a $70,000 per year ongoing expense. If it gets passed. So it's certainly in your domain to comment on this for or against as a board if you so choose, You may not choose to do that. You may choose to be silent. But if you decide as a board you're forward or against it, you probably ought to state that publicly. Since I think people would look for the Board of Finance to provide a little guidance on that.
The last question I have on this is it definitely passed their last meeting to go to referendum. It's officially going on the ballot November 2, think is the date. Correct. There will be a vote on this. Yep. Where I myself personally sit on this, I just think it's a lot of money.
I would say that, you know, if you just think back to the budget cycle we just completed, if we had come to the town with a $70,000 increase, we couldn't get that passed. We all know this. We had to zero out everything to get a budget passed. So, you know, my general take, I'm not always a complete hardliner about these things, but I would find it immensely frustrating if after that we tacked on 70 k a year for how many years? What is it? You know five six years Eric remind me ten years ten years after that battle that we just had to tack on 70 a year like it was nothing No, I personally think it's perfectly fair for this board to point out that this is a bad idea, especially in context with what we've been dealing with, you know, in our Andover budgeting. It's not okay, in my opinion, if we're shorting in comparison, you know, our own school and our own town. I mean, as Erica said repeatedly, we're right to the bone here on the town budget. You know, I think it's a bad idea.
And we also said at the last meeting, it was kind sneaky that it kind of came to be right after the tough budget season, you know, to pull this out, have all these meetings, you know, it just, was so what RAM does, You know, they don't take into consideration any timeline, anything that just happened in all of the towns. You know, again, I know we talked about it a lot last meeting, and nothing's changed for me. It was really a sneaky time when we had that hard budget season to just propose this start having meetings end of the summer so I'm definitely not in favor
We don't know where the board of selectmen land on this yet. Right? They've I've been to all the meetings. They've just talked about it. No one's really come out and officially said yay or nay. Mean
They brought up some counter proposals of possibly doing, you know, digging up. And again, I don't know the technical thing. You know I watch sports but digging up the grass field and maybe doing another thing like that to a tune of maybe 800,000 you know so upper you know so they asked all the right questions but you're right I don't know where they I don't know if they publicly, I didn't get to the end of the tape on the meeting. I don't know if they publicly said yay or nay.
So realistically, you know, it's going to referendum. So end of story, you know, all the discussion is off the table now with this. Our only recourse right now as a town is to write a letter and say, you know, we don't support it. That's about it. Is that something that this board wants to do?
Furthermore, I would just add one of the first thing that we should do is highlight it. This is happening. People need to turn out and vote. You know, even if we don't take a firm position, yeah, or nay, although I actually am supportive on taking a nay position, even if we want didn't want to go that far. The the you know, as Luis said, you know, they they kind of are you in the situation where you're kind of almost sneaking this thing in. It's it's unlikely to be a high turnout election and or referendum rather. And that's my main concern is that you can get this thing passed with terrible verdict voter turnout, and we're stuck with it. Right.
Yeah, judging by past referendums, you know, you might get 100 votes total in the town.
Right, which is absolutely atrocious. And this is my point. We need to, if anything, the the biggest thing we could do is highlight it. I think the average end of our voter, if they were activated and engaged, would look at it and probably see it more or less as we are, not everyone, but, you know, and our position on whether it's a good idea or not, you know, again, I am supportive of taking a position, but the number one thing for me is trying to get people to raise the awareness. Right. If everyone recalls Go
ahead. If everyone recalls, there's a lot of history regarding this field project. They tried this a few years ago and it, it failed and they come right back, as Joanne mentioned, right after the, very hard budget season for all three towns, to tell you the truth. Having, having, gone through the RAM School System myself, my wife, my two sons, and eventually my grandson, it's just it's bad, bad time. It's the same players that, presented last time that now are are charging this thing right through with the help of superintendent Leslie. I personally think the part of finance should take a stand and, you know, as a group and, basically, nix the whole project because we have other things in this town to worry about besides, another $70,000 tax bill to the town every year, till this thing is paid up. Where does it end?
That's my take on the whole thing. Right. Because then we're gonna have to replace it after the. Correct.
And I listened to each presentation, listened to our Board of Selectmen's presentation, their presentation and discussion and everything else. I agree with especially Scott Britton. I mean, the the you can mitigate the drainage issues. And if you look at what the Hebron Public Works has done to those fields, they're they're pristine. The Ram Ram, fields and the Town Of Hebron fields and our soccer field, are are in pristine condition. If you can mitigate the drainage situation at that football field that they wanna make into a, coliseum, fine. But, you know, there's nothing better than it. I I've I've looked at the studies of hurt fields and things like that, and, athletes, especially real good athletes, are prone to injuries, a lot more on a turf field than they are a grass natural field. So, just my thoughts, and
I'm, I'm voting no. So Yeah. I I'm supportive of the board taking a firm position on this if you guys are. I'm with you.
Absolutely. I think we should. I think we I don't think if we try to, we can either write letters to the River East like we do. But I think I'm in favor too. I think we really have to just say what we said here, which makes common sense. Who usually when we do do a letter, who usually drafts that? Is it is there one person? Does it come from Mark as the head? Well.
Yeah, it would it would likely come from the chairman, I would think. Right. But I was just
a letter isn't going to change anything that's still going to rough random. Right. So our issue. We know. So I I don't mind making a stand. Yeah. Is getting the public aware so people come out and vote. Even if Vandover votes it no, if Marlborough doesn't come with us, even if Marlborough does come with us and say no, I don't know if we still have votes to override Hebron. So, you you got two counts. Typically in the- Yeah,
it's huge in Hebron right now. They they're all they're gathering their their votes for sure. Yeah. Right. Typically in the past it's always been that if Andover and Marlboro mobilize
sufficiently we can block Hebron but it it always has to be you know, both towns in agreement. Otherwise Hebron gets what it wants.
Oh, I don't know. So here's what I'm throwing an idea out there. Instead of writing a letter to the RAM Board of Ed, which really won't do anything for us, just put us officially on. Why couldn't we do some kind of flyer from the town to all of our town people, you know, timing it close enough to the election. Do you know what I mean? To say, are you aware?
Please vote. This is important. Right. Great idea. I I I think if we were to send a a flyer around to town, I think we'd have to be neutral on the ultimate question. But the awareness,
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about this Why do we have to be neutral if we're all against it? So the first thing I don't I don't have a reason to be neutral if I'm against it. So I just was wondering.
So the thing you can do is you can put a letter directly in the River East, and it's completely appropriate for the Board of Finance to write a letter to the River East, you know, expressing their desire to not pass this, if that's what you choose. And it's also perfectly fair to post that on the town social media site. You know, that that's, that's an opinion from the finance board of the town of Andover. So you have the right to post that, you know, if you so choose. I suppose if you really wanted to send it to every resident in the town, you could. Why not? It's just a mailing. Okay.
I think you just have to be visible and vocal and more or less involved. I mean, truthfully, that's how I got involved in the town matters and the Board of Finance was just being present, learning, listening. So that's all I was going to say, Robert. I understand the neutral thing. I didn't mean to come on so strong. I just mean, I don't think it's such a bad idea to post some reasons why we don't think it's a good idea. I mean, that's and then asking who drafts it, I have no problem starting to put something together and then passing it over for everyone to look at and add opinions. I wouldn't be able to work on that till October, though. But which is and then so that's I just was wondering procedure.
Tommy, I can't remember any letter ever going out before since I've been involved. So I don't have the history that Rob has and Kurt has, you know,
in this. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I don't know that I can recall us taking that step and my hesitance, you know, may not be really well founded, guys. You know, this might be me being unwilling to take my own side in an argument. I don't know why I'm speechless about it, but that said, no, and and it was for some reason the direct mail idea is the one that that bothered me and the idea of putting a thing in the River East is fine with me and these are not really consistent positions. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say, fine. Let's do that. Let's start working up a draft.
Let's pass it around. You know, Mark's not here tonight, but he, you know, he's gonna need to look at it, right? And but in general, the idea of the Board of Finance flat out saying that this is, we think this is a bad idea for our town. I'm on board. So, forget my quibbles about the process or whatever. Let's work on that. We have a little bit of time. We we're gonna wanna get that out there in advance of the election. You said it's you know, the referendum, which is in the first week of November. So we've got, like, a month, basically, to get this publicized.
Yeah, if I'm gonna work on a draft, it will definitely be in October. I've got some big things coming up and I'm happy to start putting it together and then sharing it with all of you. And then if it's too much, and I mean, yeah, then we should do that. And then maybe, like you said, third week of October would be to start getting it in people's heads, then the voting is at the beginning of November. Yeah. Alright.
Personally, I I feel that I was just taking a stand that we're in favor of the project and advertising that fact either through the River East or an article where every every townspeople sees it, I I really think that's about as far as we can really go, to to draft a letter and everything else. I mean, just you know, we there's a lot of people in town, I'm sure, that are in favor. Those that have two way kids, that that will be using the field and things like that. So, but I I do think that just just taking the stand that we do,
and hopefully the board has slept into the same based on what I've heard, you know, listening to their meetings. Then the townspeople need to make up their own decision when it comes to the referendum. It's a ways off, so, a lot of people will forget, if we were to write something. So that's my thoughts.
Yeah, we want to get that in there, you know, more or less right before the election to get to get people aware and involved in, you know, not have it fade.
If you want a chance of of opposing it, should start now and start doing it vocally. Without doing it, you know, you're going to have to go big if you want a chance of preventing this from happening. That's my sense. Okay. I agree.
Okay. So, all right. So when you say that, what are you thinking? You're thinking multiple letters? Are you thinking we put this in the River East every week? You know, that kind of thing. What you thinking, Aaron?
Yep. Yeah. I'm thinking flying over all three towns with a plane going banner. And wavering. Wait. Wait. Wait. What's the budget on that, buddy? Eric's gonna donate it. Yeah. If and
I think it's right, though, because then you're gonna get one letter out, say, maybe the beginning of October, and then you're going to get the people in favor. So they're going to start writing their letters. Yeah, so it would be interesting. And then hopefully you have people join the not in favor side only because we want our money to go to other things, not because it's a bad thing.
It's just where you're spending the money and what you're gonna use it for. That's all. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, really, my take for what it's worth is that we hammer on the point that we could barely pass a budget this year for our own town. Yeah. Okay. You and I may have a disagreement about our budget priorities or what our budget should have been this year. But putting that completely aside, if $70,000 comes out you know, for the next decade, that makes all those discussions harder.
Well, the other thing I think that's worth thinking about is that thinking about it in terms of the overall mission creep towards athletics. Because remember, this is also a Ram Board of Education that has decided they're not going to charge any student activity fees anymore. So they're not going to recover any of the costs from athletics for the students. And it's also a group that has fairly recently in the last three years decided we couldn't possibly run a high school without a full blown athletic director, you know, all while enrollment is dropping like a rock. Yeah, I mean, personally, I think they're, you know, they're prioritizing athletics, You know, in a very tough budgetary climate. To me that hurts. You know, that hurts the core mission of the school which is education. So I'm certainly not for it, I mean.
Good point, Eric. They're just not, I mean, I think we all know how we feel. It's just not a reasonable budget for the millions of emails and all the stuff that we talked about it's not so hopefully I agree with you I don't I think hope if we have to vote or whatever we have to do but I know we talked a lot last we last meeting it's just not a good use of money right now and you're right thank you for bringing up the enrollment which is almost in half so I mean how much longer you know how many teams and all of that are gonna yeah. Again, I like athletics.
My kids played sports, but I wouldn't be in favor of this. I got two kids that are gonna be going into Ram, and I'm perfectly happy to say no to this, you know, and, you know, my girls play sports, But this is nuts.
Let's let's build up our own recreation athletic department here in Andover.
To the extent that makes sense. Yeah. You know my daughter plays soccer right now. It's in, it's actually in Hebron. You know, we use their fields. They have a great set. They have a wonderful set of fields over at Burnt Hill. That's great. This is, again, we're balancing priorities here. This is what we do. Every budget cycle, we do this. We have a finite amount of funds that we can use for certain things. And if you take 70 ks off the top right off the start, it just it's gonna put pressure on everything else.
Do we wanna make a formal motion to draft a letter and then see where it goes at the next meeting? And obviously I'd like to get some input from Mark and, you know, move it. I was gonna say, I'd like to hear from Mark. I don't know if it needs a form of motion. I don't know if it's just something to say, you know,
put it on the agenda. Why don't we put it on the agenda, Diane? I think that makes sense. Let's just put it on the agenda for the next meeting.
And Joanne, if you, you know, said you wanted to take a stab at a draft and maybe, you know, take October to kind of of before the next meeting and maybe we can kind of have something to have talking points around.
Yeah, I just have a, my son's getting married in the next couple of weeks, so my focus is going to be there. But then beginning of the month, we start drafting it and then sharing it around. Okay. Congratulations to your son. Gonna have a wedding this year so yay!
Yep I hear that like a family wedding coming up in October that's basically almost like a makeup because we had a wedding last year that most of the guest lists had to be struck from so I hear you. Exciting
times, but stressful, you know, but happy, really happy everyone survived the pandemic and all of that. Thank you. So right after, you know, beginning of October, I'll draft something. Okay, thanks. Okay,
just for the record. If you wait to the next meeting, you're already too late. The next meeting is the October 27. The referendum is the second. So you've missed any deadlines for any publications. You've missed any possibility of doing a mailing. So if you're going to do it, you cannot wait till the next meeting, you're going to have to make a decision and work on it, you know, as a group between now and then, or else, you know, you probably just shouldn't bother.
Maybe we should talk about, maybe we should have a try to to schedule a short special meeting early October. By the way, the twenty seventh you said? That's correct. Next Board of Finance meeting is October 27.
Oof, okay. I was thinking the twentieth. All right. Yeah, you're right. That's way too close. Why
don't we just take a vote tonight if somebody wants to make a motion on where we stand on this entire project?
Right. Then wing it from there. But wait, I mean if we're gonna approve a letter, think I agree to you like in terms of our intent, think we're all clear on this point. But approving a letter I think requires I don't know whether we need a meeting or if we can just pass it around.
I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not a big fan of sending out a letter personally. Just said that before when I talked. I think we to take it a board and that will get out that the town of Andover Board of Finance basically, you know, does not support the, you know, the new Ram athletic fields and then just get that out to the voters. Well, how do we get that out then? I'm sure it'll be reported in the River East. That's for sure.
My thought Kirk was not going to be a huge like official letter. Mean, getting our point, you know, something to the something to the effect, I don't want to prompt it into the ground just because I have so much going on, I might not right now, but just a little letter to the editor, blah, blah, blah, pointing out how this all came about. It's kind of unfair after a very busy, tough budget season to have this project just come off and never moving on. I mean, I will make sense. I don't see what's wrong with just drafting something, showing it to all of you, not sending it without any. And then if we like it, and if we feel like it could move, putting it in the rib or niece or whatever we're gonna do, maybe then we could throw them together like the tenth or something. Don't even have a calendar.
Oh, then again, then again, Mark, Mark is our, is our chairman and everything, everything that we do should go come, you know, should come through him. So I would like to get his
his taken. I mean, would have to come up with some kind of quick draft. Right. And then on the phone with Mark in a couple of weeks and see, get his time. Yeah. And then see where it goes from there. Does that work for people? We don't have a lot of time.
Yeah. Well, listen, I'm the busiest lady on the planet. And if I'm willing to draft the letter, not on the planet, sorry. But right now I've got a lot of irons in the fire and working like a ton. But if you all don't want that, then that's fine. I'm willing to put in the effort even in my busy schedule. I'll have a meeting in a couple of weeks then I'll save my time for something else. If Kurt doesn't want to do that. So Well is not on our side. So
Does anybody know when Mark is back? Is he back next week? Or is he still Listen, I have a wedding next week, so I can't do it next week, but I'm willing to be the most Just for me to be able to pick up the phone and call him and give him a heads up what's going on. That's all. I mean, that's that's whatever you all decide.
But, I mean, I would have drafted something after the wedding, show it to all of you, of course, going to Mark. Like, if he doesn't like the idea, you could all tell me, forget it. He's not in. And then I save my time for other stuff. I would never disrespect the chairperson. I just know how these things take time.
Right. And so I'm just looking at the calendar. And if we are willing to circle back for a short meeting on, say, the thirteenth, maybe we could do that a Wednesday earlier in October so we can get this off the ground. If if between now and then, there's a conversation with Mark and Mark's not hot to trot on the idea, then maybe we we nix the whole thing. But maybe we could throw something on the calendar so that we can reconvene and say, we all approve or don't approve of this idea of this draft that, you know, you're proposing that you're going to write, which is awesome. And, you know, instead of waiting to the end of the month, which is too late. So, you know, I don't know that we can, functionally we can do this without getting together again is my point.
I think that's a great idea. And that's all I like to do is have a date in mind because when you're balancing a lot of things as you do too, yeah that's perfect to me. You need a deadline.
I definitely need a deadline. I completely understand this which is why I'm looking at a calendar.
Perfect. Could you think that may be a problem because isn't the thirteenth like the board of select meeting the board of Ed meeting isn't there a bunch of meetings on that date in the town calendar already? Won't know Is
there sorry I'm looking at my phone. I'm not looking at the Because of the holiday because of Columbus Day. I think so. Oh, okay. Thirteenth
is already the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen. Okay. That's not gonna work. Alright. So the Zoom accounts are taken up. Okay, let's, calendar.
There's nothing on the twelfth. That's the Tuesday. You can probably do it on the twelfth. The twentieth is too late. Yeah. You could probably do it on Wednesday the sixth, but that is Nope, that's too early for market. Joanne, right? Yeah, that's too early, but I could definitely do the twelfth.
I just I think, again, we know that we're going to be up against it. It's our one shot, you know. We're going to maybe write that letter, and then you're going to see follow-up letters in the two weeks after that. So I'm for that, I'd be for the twelfth, but it depends There's on who
the twelfth and the fourteenth, there's a meeting building committee, but that's it at seven. So the only thing I'd throw out there is, you know, I can, if we needed to do it on the twelfth, I might be late. I I have right now my daughter has soccer practices on on Tuesday nights and they tend to end at seven in Hebron so
I can try to make it. I can try to chime in in advance. You guys could start without me or something like that. If it has to be the twelfth, the twelfth is fine. I'll I'll make it work. Just. Fourteenth is fine too. I mean, don't know what other what the other members and I hope you guys all know when I said I'll find something else with my time. I didn't mean like leave the board of finance. I just in
my life, you know? No, I knew what you meant. Work or family. You wanna put a tentative meeting on the calendar for October 14 at 7PM? I'm good with that if everyone else is.
I'm good with that. Even though I'm supposed to be in the other meeting, but you know what? Ed can So
Ed can run that meeting without me. And Diane, you're gonna run it by Mark, right? That we would do that. I'll
try and give Mark a call next week. I'm hoping he's back. That sounds like a plan. Yep. Alright.
So let's do that. Can we put a tentative meeting on the calendar, Amanda? The fourteenth at 7PM? Yeah, absolutely. And I will put it on my to do list. Will call Mark next week. I'm I'm assuming he will be back in town. And then if he's against it, then we'll just cancel the meeting. Okay. Did you say at 7PM? Yes. Thank you. All
right. Yay. Okay. Eight B, Board of Ed request letter regarding the non lapsing account putting their surplus in the non lapsing. Let me kind of bring you up to date with where we are. The letter that we got is kind of pretty generic and it says, you know, up to 2%, approximately $50,000 Where I'm sitting on this right now, and I did talk with Valerie Brunel last night as well, I would feel better from a process and transparency point of view. I have no problem personally on my, I'm not going speak for the board. I'm giving surplus into nonmath back to the school. I just want to wait until the school year budget is closed out and everything's accounted for and we have an exact dollar amount. I think we should be making this decision knowing what the exact dollar amount is. Absolutely. We'll move to the next meeting. I agree. I agree. Does everybody have any different opinion on that? With pushing this off until October? There's no urgency right now. You know, the money's not going anywhere.
Right. That seems reasonable enough to me. Agree. What did Val say when you chatted with her, Diane? What did she have any issue with that? No. No. She does. No. I've talked to her as well. Yeah. She doesn't have an issue at all. Right. No. That should be fine though. So I
will go on the record to make a motion to take table this until the next meeting in October.
Do I have a second for that? The just to clarify this, the regular meeting. Yeah. Regular meeting. Yep. Second. Any more discussion on this? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Anonymous. Okay. Excavator.
Alright. I'm gonna share my screen again here real quick. I didn't mean I can do this successfully. Alright, so we went back to the manufacturer and clarified. Okay let me back up and say at this point, both the Board of Selectmen and CIP are in agreement with the purchase of an excavator. So, presuming that you all agree. The question, there's two questions to be answered. Presuming you agree. The first question is whether you want to do it as a sixty month loan, number one, or whether you want to buy it outright in the case of the excavator. And the secondary question is going to be, do you want to the one member of the Board of Selectmen was adamant that you could take this out of town Aid Road. And
the rest didn't really have an opinion on it. So the two questions to answer are where you want the funding source for this to be, And whether you want to do it as a, you know, a five year loan, or whether you want to just purchase the thing outright. So those are really the questions. So, to just to where we are, we've been renting this thing now for about three months. The total cost. So the first two months of rental can be applied 100% due to cost of purchase a machine, the third month of rental 75% of it can be applied to the cost. So the outright purchase cost of the machine was 96,135. There is a rental credit at this point of 11,756, which leaves a residual payment of $84,378.75. And they say we got to pay a document processing fee of $300. So the total is $84,000 And they are not offering. So, this is where it annoys me a little bit because they to me get a little scammy that this purchase cost includes a 12%
additional municipal discount. If they offer 0% interest
loans, but they don't give us the 12% they don't give us the, you know, 12% municipal credit if they do, which is kind of bullshit, but the bottom line is, if we were to use their financing for a sixty month loan interest payment would be 4.05%, would bring the total purchase price to 93,680. So, we would be paying a total of $9,310 interest using their figures. So that's really the question. You know, to me, I don't like paying interest, so I'd opt to purchase it outright, but that's not my decision. That's kind of your decision.
I don't like interest either. Here's my question for you. You mentioned earlier that the Select board talked about where the money can come from. And there was some, I don't know if I could say disagreement, but you know, can are they is the one to select number, right? That it's going to out of town road.
So if your question is, can legally we spend town road money to purchase a piece of equipment that's used for maintaining roads? The answer is yes. So it is, we are perfectly we're not breaking any laws to do that. And if you just to give you both the current balances. The current balances in the town aid road account as of today is 104,145. So that's with them having paid us or on or August installment. The record, you can see before that we had drawn that account all the way down to around $10,000 doing roadwork this year. The problem is is that if you take, you know, 90 something thousand dollars from town aid road, that is $90,000 less you have to spend, you have available for next year's roadwork.
Yep. And we use the balance from this year to fund and do a lot of spring work because oftentimes it's cheaper to hire the contractors before the new fiscal year. You know, so we do a lot of work in May, June, you know, April, May, June with the contractors so I mean we could take it out of town Aid Road. To me, that's the whole reason why we have a public works capital equipment fund is to fund purchase of equipment for public works. But, you know, so the answer to your question is you could take it from that if you so chose,
Or you just, yeah, I see your problem with it and I don't disagree at all. What do we have in our capital budget for equipment? We Put
it in this budget year. Yeah. Added a 100 k, but what do we have for a balance? Our total balance is $113,888 including
the 100 ks we're putting in this year. Oh, I see it now. I'm sorry. It's right at the bottom there. So if we did this, we'd have like 30,000 left. If this is 84, you said 84 and a half, something like that, you'd be at a little less 30. Well, plus 12 for the compactor.
Oh God. Okay. So, all right. So you put, you're spending almost 100 here. Correct. Right. Yep.
So that would more, it would almost wipe that out. We'd be down to, you know, 14,000 or something like that. If off the top of my head. Yep. 15,000. Okay.
Just theoretically if you wanted to split the difference. You could purchase the loader or the excavator from public works equipment and you could purchase the. What do you call it, the compactor from Downey Road, if you thought that was appropriate. Yeah,
but I mean the capital budget exists for a reason. Yeah, I'm really, I'm kind of leaning where you were leaning, which is this is why we have a capital budget.
The price of the compactor is below the dollar threshold, what we call capital equipment. It's 15,000 and up. So it probably should come out of town a road. Okay, I hadn't done it that way, Diane. Only because I read that purchasing policy today that. Serves you right for doing that. Too much information.
Diane, can I comment? Yes. And I'll ask Eric and maybe even Rob. What happened between last Thursday night or at capital improvements meeting versus tonight?
I I think we're gonna get to the process issue later. Would you agree, Eric? Yeah. I I
thought how do you how do you figure that one off?
This I was gonna do that in liaison, but okay. We can bring it up now. We should bring it you know what? Let's just do it now. Please go ahead. Okay, so not to throw a huge wrench in the works, everybody, but we had our CIP meeting and it was brought up to us at that time that this whole purchase plan kind of happened outside of CIP. It was, you know, the the board of selectmen decided this needed to be done and it was not run through CIP. CIP hadn't had a chance to review it. We did talk about it at our meeting and nobody thought it was crazy or anything, but there was a little bit of frustration and concern that it had not gone through what we considered to be kind of proper channels in terms of if you have a capital improvement committee and you're going to make capital purchases, why were they not consulted? We got consulted at the absolute eleventh hour. So although I don't think I've seen it yet, there was a decision made that the chairperson of the capital improvement committee would be sending an email or something along those lines to both the select board and the Board of Finance to
ask for some clarity on the process here and and and just sort of question why this wouldn't hadn't been brought before the CIP before it was brought before everybody else make a final decision. That said, I don't think we had an issue with the substance of the the proposal. In other words, I don't think we sat down there and said that these numbers are unacceptable, that this isn't a reasonable idea. It was all about the process. And I don't think anybody at CIP was really willing to try and hold this thing up on principle. We just wanted to put it out there that going forward we I think CIP should probably be involved. Do you think that's a fair summation Kirk? Because you were there too.
Well, I need to add the fact that this basically goes against our charter, that the charter which states what the CIP's job is, you know, to give recommendations to the Board of Select, the Board of Finance. And it also violates the the person policies that I read, in regards to bids or RFPs. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a very expensive item. There's many companies that, that build this unit. We've we've, we've rented them, you know, before in town for specialized work, which is what they did with this one. But I think it totally it totally. Does it it it goes against the, you know, the Charter and the, and the, what the CIP was was was, you know, was made to do, I. E. The, you know, just just go back in in in the last purchases, the banker truck for $414,000 that went to RFP, and the low the low the low bid was accepted on that. Any anything that the fire fire department, goes out to goes out to an RFP and all, you know, and they CFP requests at least three bids or or three RFPs on each individual item. So this totally goes against everything and for the Board of Selectmen to approve it without any, input from the capital improvements, you know, and also violating basically what the charter states on the amounts, of of different equipment, costs, that needs to go to bid. It's just I don't I don't buy it. And I I made that statement clear at the Capital Improvements meeting the other night. So I just the letter the letter that Fred sent, I'm sure he sent it, but it went to Mark as chairman of the board of finance.
And as you see, Mark, you know, Mark's away. So that's why it didn't get probably, you know, read into tonight's agenda. But, that's just just my thoughts again. You know, it's it's it's basically, totally usurping the entire, capital improvements committee and the, charter.
Let me ask a question. Didn't we get this pricing through a government sourced kind of because there's a carve out for purchasing part to be sufficient to fulfill the bids and the purchasing. Did we get this price through that? You can you can, I don't if the town had gone through the, ct.gov,
the state of Connecticut purchasing, you know, the purchasing, consortium, basically? Sourcewell was used on, on, on our last dump trucks that, that the town purchased. You know, there's, HDAC is another consortium out there that a bunch of municipalities use, but you basically, you get, you get the state, the state bid on any piece of equipment that you're after, whether it be a, an excavator, a fire truck, a police cruiser, you know, a vehicle for the, for the building inspector if you were to buy one, things like that. The state has a, an actual bid list for this, and you can advertise it on the state bid list at no cost. And that gives, that gives a chance for everybody out there that, supplies this type of equipment to submit their bid. There's many, trust me, there's many, many people or, you know, companies that that, that construct excavators. Excavators. We happen to be using this one, it was brand new, because they needed to rent it for the drainage work on Shottie Mill, no question.
But to go and purchase it and have it come through the Board of Selectmen and say, yep, you can take it out of this, take it out of that without the board of, or the Capital Improvements Committee, number one, not even knowing it and basically going against the Charter as it's written right now. It just doesn't cut it far as I'm concerned.
So realistically, we didn't get three bids, public bids on this. No. I mean, we have charged other people for not getting three bids.
So, he did supply multiple bids for equipment with the packet. The one we are selecting that is that is their basically their state bid price is what we're, you know, we're paying. You're right, it did not go to RFP I'm not going to tell you it did because it did not. The question though is that, you know, so so let me go back and say that the first thing that happened is, is we had a discussion with CIP in the spring, about the purchase of a larger size excavator. And the CIP was not interested in, in even really hearing it or discussing it in the spring, which is okay, that's the right. So, we rented the piece of equipment that we rented, because I sent Jay out and I said go find out what all the other towns are using, you know, and go try them out, see whether they'll let you try them. So that's what Jay and Tommy did. We sent Tom because he's our normal equipment operator out.
And they tried a couple different units that other municipalities used. Because the real question is, is can we get one small enough that we can tow it with our existing trucks without buying a new trailer, yet big enough to do most of the drainage work we need to do. So that's really why they settled on the machine they settled on, because it seems to be a fairly common unit in use by other municipalities. And it's the right size. And it's one of the few dual piston units in this size that has the oomph to do it. So they tried it with Mansfield. And then, you know, they first we first demoed it, we had the company drop one off. And they took it out to the pit. And they dug a bunch of holes with it rotated it through all the operators and said, can it do what we expect it to do? And the answer was yes. So they, you know, leased it for the summer for the drainage work. You know, and the, the, you know, because we didn't have approval to buy it before. So, but the problem is, is that, you know, you're sucking up $4,000 a month to rent this thing to use.
So, you know, one of the things we looked at was if we were going to rent it, if we decided that was a machine we wanted, could we recoup that cost if we purchased that machine? And the answer from them was yes, if you buy it within the period that you're leasing it, we will apply most of that cost to the purchase. So that's kind of where how we ended up where we are. You know, we can certainly look at other machines at this point and go back and do an RFP, but we're going to lose, you know, a fairly significant, you know, somewhere in $12,000 worth of rental that we're not going to be able to apply to the purchase. So I think that's why Board of Selectmen was on board with it. Because if you go back and relook at it now, now you have to be looking at a machine in order to equal your cost. You got to get something that's $12,000 cheaper than this, which was unrealistic.
Eric, a quick, just to clarify, at what point do we lose the ability to apply the rental money, that 12,000 or so toward the purchase price of this particular machine?
So we originally had a four month rental on it and we're in month three. We haven't paid for month four yet. So we could go another month if you wanted to make a decision.
Right. But at the end of that fourth month, if we haven't agreed to purchase this machine, we sort of forfeit that discount. Is that correct? Yes.
If we send it back to them and it gets rented out with somebody else, we've lost the ability to to just to piggyback and own it.
So that's the practical consideration. You know, not that anything Kurt said was wrong. I I think he's right. It's just, you know, at the same time you're talking about the practical fact that, you know, unless we got a really good price from somebody else, I mean, we can bid it out. How long would the bid process take?
Months? But if we went through the consortiums that it talks about in the purchasing documents, we wouldn't have to do the public bids. We could go there and eliminate that step.
So so there's two things. One, I apologize, the governing section in the charter is section eight zero seven. If you want, I can bring that up and you can read that, then it refers to this purchasing policy, right, basically, the, the charter says that the Board of Finance needs to come up with a purchasing policy. So it really dates back to the purchasing policy. You know, and you've got to decide whether you want to abide by your own purchasing policy or, you know, you want to do something else I think this does technically meet the requirements of the purchasing policy, because the cost for the machine is established, you know, through the state bid process, or through the original state, municipal, whatever you call that. You know, it's not the one for the other for the compactor is a source well quote, which we also accept or we have in the past anyway.
So I'm going to read this section because it says the use of state of Connecticut or other government cooperative purchasing program shall be considered sufficient to fulfill the requirements of this part. And this is the part of talking about going out to RFP. So if we get through that cooperative and get a price there, we do not have to do the formal bidding process.
Correct? That is correct. Per the policy you have written now.
So if what we have now meets that requirement, I'm okay with not doing all the other stuff because it's within our policy. I'm not in favor of going outside of our policy until we rewrite it because our policy is our policy and what we have now. So I guess
I was hoping I could just say that I our town has gotten in a little bit of trouble through the years since I've been here, fifteen years for not following procedure and process. I just want to state, appreciate Kurt coming forward with that and just talking about proper procedures and processes. Sheri's dealing with it now. Sherry's doing I agree to save money wherever we can, but I feel like month after month at these meetings, are we just gonna justify everything that's done? And I that's hard for me to stand behind too I get saving money and needing the equipment but if we don't and and I'll be I will not talk long on this but the very core is you know following the procedures that's what I do in my job all day is you know in hr and with people and you know in a school is we have to follow the process and the procedure Everyone wants to cut corners. And I don't always think that, Okay, so we save money, so it's Okay. Okay, so next month, this person did this job in two hours, so he didn't have to work a full day. I don't know where we cut the where we stop following process and proceed. I'm not advocating not following our purchasing. No, that's just my point. I just wanted to back up Kurt in this and I really appreciate it. No, no, I get you.
Want to make sure I don't want to continue to rent a machine we need to buy and waste money there. I really don't wanna lose. No, that's the end. I get it. I get it. So I wanna comply with the policy. If So our quote falls into that exemption for these government consortiums, then we don't have to go to public bid and we're done.
Right. I I think what we talked about at CIP was that this is not necessarily technically a violation of our processes, but it's more it's it's a little bit of a gray area and CIP not being involved made us kind of uncomfortable with how this all went down. But my take and I'll repeat it is that I think we should think about the process issues and do better next time. And at the same time, not necessarily hold up something that is ultimately a good deal for the town. That's my ultimate take on this, that we shouldn't just ignore procedure, correct? However, this one, and I think as Eric has explained, it's a little bit, you know, technically this, this can work. It's just maybe not the best way we could have done it. If that's a fair summation, Eric.
Yeah, I would. And the other thing I would say is that when we started renting this, we rented this with the full realization that we might not buy it. And we might just spend $12,000 this summer, you know, on a machine to get the work done that we needed to do. So I mean, you know, it's not like we, the town, You know, we didn't rent the thing. Certain that we were going to then use that as the purchasing decision. Rented it. And then, you know, and then brought it back to the boards to say, well, given how much drainage work we have to do, it doesn't really make financial sense to continue renting this thing every summer, because for what we're renting it, you know, in about five years we can own the thing. So we'd be smarter to buy it rather than to continue to rent it. Oh,
I get the and I agree that everything should go through CIP, but I'm looking for a document that says it has to go to CIP first because this purchasing policy doesn't even say that. Well, is for another discussion we had with Eric. Okay. And the and the traveler says refer to the purchasing
policy. Yeah. So It's a little circular, Diane, is the issue. And, you know, when we first drafted that purchasing, I was on the board when we drafted that thing. Okay. That was our first cut at having any kind of purchasing policy for this town. I think we meant well, but I don't think we nailed everything down. And one thing that Eric brought up at the CIP meeting and I'm complete agreement with this is that maybe we need to tighten it up and specify some some procedures. Our main concern when we drafted that thing was that we weren't bidding out anything necessarily. Right. Right. We had nothing in place that made us bid out anything. And we had had a course of performance in this town of going out and just, know, the first electman thought this was a good deal. And so it happened. And we don't do that anymore. Thank goodness. But at the same time, that purchasing policy could probably be better and more specific about the steps and who does what. I think that's something that we talked about CIP, and I do agree that the purchasing policy could be reworked and made clearer as to exactly whose role is what. And, know, step one, step two, step three. And I think that's something we should continue to kick around and improve upon. At the same time, we have this thing in front of us.
And if we want if we do think this is a good idea, we have about a month to pull the trigger. That's my take.
I'm in agreement with all of that. I just wanna make sure that going forward, we don't see this in another purchasing thing. Know, a good deal is a good deal, of course, but just kinda tighten it up and not not see the same thing in another meeting for another piece of equipment. We can't just ad hoc this stuff left and right. I completely agree with that.
I don't have a charter in front of me, but I think the charter states it used to be either 2,000 or $2,500 or more. Because I printed it today. Is it it is it up to 5,000 now? $5,000 I think the board of finance set that amount. So eight zero seven says Incorrect.
Purchasing that the Board of Finance in consultation with the CIP and the Board shall establish and maintain written procedures and policies, blah, blah, blah for purchasing. So there is no No set amount. No set amount.
No, it refers to the purchasing policy, does have set amounts.
The purchasing However Capital is $15,000 or more, the loader is the excavator, I mean, is in that way. Correct. But
it's not violating our policy if it meets the requirements of these general requirements on page four that we're getting the price through a cooperative purchasing program, government cooperative purchasing program. And we don't have to do public bid. I just wanna make sure we're following our policy for this decision. I know we need to clean this purchasing.
Diane, what you need to understand is that every major manufacturer of excavators, fire trucks, vehicles, pencils for the school, they they meet the the, you know, the consortium's thing. They're they're they're all members of it. You know, I I I deal with this every day, in in my business of selling fire apparatus. You know, every major manufacturer, my my own included, belong to StorSwell, because, HGAC, there's, there's two or three others out there. Everyone submits that same and follows that same purchasing procedures and pricing, whether it be the state of Connecticut or the state of Texas or the state of, Maine. All the, all 50 states in this country participate in the, in these various consortiums for buying municipal equipment. So, you're you're not I mean, yes, you know, you're buying from a company that uses source well. Well, there's there's probably 50 or 60 other companies
that use source well and are and would be more than willing to submit a RFP or a bid to town of Andover for a brand new excavator of that size. That that's that's the only thing I'm I'm I'm trying the only the only point I'm trying to make is, you know, we've we've done this through the last, half a dozen pieces of equipment that were over $15,000 purchased next to Fort The Fire Station. And I was able to get, you know, at least three, you know, general bids or RFPs on each piece of equipment. So that's that's, I think, part of the procedures. And But our it's no question
has a carve out that you don't have to do public bids if you go through these consortiums.
Yeah. But it's not a public bid. It's an RFP. It's a request for purchase. There's a difference between an RFP and a bid.
Yeah, but there's a carve out that you don't have to do that if you go here.
That's what I'm saying. I'm very confused here. Yeah, but you can do that with any manufacturer.
So it says purchases made outside such brokers shall comply with the following requirements. And then it goes through the public big documents of what the requirements are. But if you're within those consortiums and you're buying through those, you don't have to do all that.
That's how I'm reading it. Yeah. Well, I I still feel if we if we go through this purchase without sending it out to everybody, we're, we're setting a precedent. That's all.
Which is fine. So, Diane, you are in that the current purchasing policy allows us to use any of the cooperative bidding services such as Sourcewell to establish the price instead of going and putting out our own RFP. Because essentially it's just like the the salt bid, you know, for Kroger any of these other organizations, it is a competitive bidding process. We're just, you know, we're just not putting the bid out ourselves, we are putting the bid out, We are using somebody else's bid. Great cooperative buying agreement.
So here's my deal. I do not wanna violate our policy. And I'm just asking for assurances because Kurt's reading this a different way that we should be getting bids. And I'm trying to say, are we fitting within this general requirements exemption
until we clean up the process better. And if we decide later that that exemption is too broad, we can fix it. Right. I guess what I'm saying, I'm
not in favor of violating our policy at all. I just want to make sure we're within it. You are within your purchasing policy as written
to buy this as it feels differently so I guess I'm trying to understand how court is reading Curtis
thinks we could do better. Not that what we're doing doesn't meet our actual policy would be my guess or You're muted, sorry.
No, they're they're they're throwing a bone that they're going to, they're gonna put the rental, the amount of, of money we spend on rental towards the overall purchase. And that doesn't say that any other company, Caterpillar, Kubota, New Holland, there's million different manufacturers of that same size machine. May not be spec exactly. I can't even pronounce the name of Eric, what's the name of this machine? TakaoT or something like that. TakaoT.
I'm questioning that it's not a good machine. It's just the fact that that you've made other boards and commissions go through the process of going through capital improvements, getting their approval first and then moving it on to the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance, you know, for their yes, yes or no, in the in the procedures. We followed it next door at the fire department, and I'm not trying to say that that that, you know, that we wouldn't follow it, but I just think it's setting a precedent when when something comes along and they say, we'll we'll we'll we'll give you we'll give you a but you would have rented it anyway. Whether or not you're gonna purchase it. You know, personally, I think we need more people down there at town hall. I mean, the public works than we do another machine. That that's just my opinion. But, you know, just just, you know, we we had this discussion Thursday night amongst everyone on that was there for the meeting cap improvements, and, it's it's kinda like, you know, gotten off the rails. That's all.
Oh, I I understand the position that things should go through CIP. Okay, so in this case, it didn't do that. Here we are with a decision on a price to purchase an excavator. And I'm trying to determine if it's within our purchasing policy, we're not violating a policy, and we're getting a good price because of this rental credit that we can't get. And I don't know if we can't get any. We haven't rented from anybody else. So nobody's going to give us a rented credit. So. Yeah, that that's kind of where I'm at too. I wanna make a good decision to be within policy.
If this is, if this squares with our policy, technically, even if we have our issues with it, we can proceed and then tighten up the process.
That's my where I've been coming at this all along. I mean, Kurt, do you think that you can get a better price?
That's that's not that's not the point of a different price. You know, I'm I'm all for saving money. Trust me, Diane. I'm not I'm not against saving money. It's just the fact that the the process, the the transparent process that we have in place right now was not followed. And and a board of selectmen, made a decision over the board of finance and the, capital improvements committee that it's okay to purchase this machine and get the get the discounts that we're gonna get. And don't forget, just a few months ago, we we held the school to task on their outdoor classroom for x amount of thousands of dollars and basically said, you know, that- that never went through capital improvements or anything.
The school is not required to go through CIC. I understand that, but they still,
they- they did not- I don't see it being constructed. That's my point, you know, based- based on the the what we went through with them. So it's a basically a point of order. Don't I don't know what you want to call it. It's just, you know, we the procedures were not followed properly as they have been recently in the past so that's and I
agree with that can I ask Eric a question just if I'm gonna vote on this how much work and I think it was said at other meetings how much work do we have lined up that requires this excavator excavator?
I mean, I'll be perfectly honest, you know, we've identified ten or twelve years worth of drainage projects we need to do. Our limitation is strictly manpower and hours we can actually do, because we have so many other things we're obligated to do. I mean, we got we didn't get a lot of drainage issues dealt with this year. Because, you know, we got stuck dealing with storm response. But we also need to clean out all our waterways, that would take us two or three months. And this is the obvious machine for doing that. You know, there's no question, we're going to use this thing. And there's no question, it's a very useful piece of equipment. In the past, we have rented one when we did projects. We did not rent one last summer, but most summers public works ends up renting a machine for at least a period of time every summer.
We've just never pulled the trigger and actually purchased one ourselves before.
That was a good answer. Mean, said you have you just said you have so, you've identified so much work that could be done. I mean, I know what they're used for. I know, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just a year long thing. I mean, clearly it can always be used or you can find use for it. But no. Thank you. You've answered my question if I'm gonna have to vote ultimately. Thank you.
It's I don't I don't have a question on the need. You know? It's it's it's it's there's definite there's definitely a need for the machine. And it's not not the Eric's fault or the public works department fault that the machine sat on the side of road for two weeks due to the due to storms the the storms that we had. You know, the machine literally sat there without being here. I don't know, maybe two weeks. I'm not I'm not positive on that, but that that's you can't help that because the let the the amount of manpower we have in public works is four guys. And and we've been intubated with three or four storms this this past summer and, you know, spring, summer, and fall that have have taken, you know, these guys elsewhere. So while it sits there and and we're still paying rentals on it, you know, they should credit us for that, the time that it sat there, but they're not, but they're going to take it off the price. You know, understand all that too. So it's just the fact that, you know, to actually purchase it for the town of Andover, I think it needs to follow the break procedures. That's all. Not not during a rental. You know, you we're gonna rent it anyways if we need it or not. So
And I understand, Kurt, that you're thinking they didn't follow procedure, but when I'm reading the document, I'm seeing that we are within our procedures, even though we don't like what they are and that somebody went outside of Well, that's fine. And
if I have to stand corrected, I'll stand corrected. But I just know what I've done in in the past couple of couple of three years, you know, through the through the Board of Fire Commissioners. And and I and I I know, you know, I'm I'm comfortable in in the fact that we followed the town's procedures. We fought for these procedures for a long time, and up until this this new administration that we have, nothing was followed up until they come into, you know, they they came into fruition. I'll I'll I'll leave it with I'll leave it at that. You know, it's it's it's up to the board, whatever you wanna do, that's that's fine with me.
Do we want to make a motion or does people want to discuss this more?
I I think we've discussed it enough, so it's you know someone should make a motion. Sat with discussion.
All right. So I'll stick my neck out and I will put forth a motion to approve the purchase of the excavator as priced with the rental discount with the condition that we are not violating our purchasing procedures because we're going in the carve out exemption for cooperative purchasing programs. And with the added caveat that going forward, we will ensure that we're following the CIP process and we will be looking at taking these purchasing policy and procedures and clarifying them better to make it more clear about what the expectations are.
Anybody think we need to add anything else to that? My only question is whether we need to specify where we're taking the money from. You know, are are we agreed that we're taking this out of the capital equipment fund?
I think, and this is my opinion, I think the excavator should come out of capital equipment and the compactor out of Town Aid Road.
Okay, well, you know, I just think if we're doing this, we probably want to have that agreed upon as well. So if that's your motion, then let's proceed on that basis. Do I have a second on that? I'll go ahead and second it.
Any further discussion? Does anybody have anything else they wanna add? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. For me, Kurt. I'm not I'm not an eye. Figured that. We have four yeses and one no. I'm a no. Okay. Fair. Right. Alright, motion passes.
So Amanda, can you read the motion back so we make sure we got the verbiage correct?
It's a little blurry. I'm gonna have to backtrack on that one. I will try and remember what I said. Kind of hard. Okay, I wrote down the time of the recording.
Okay. So the second part of that would be the purchase of the plate compactor. To come out of Town Aid Road.
Were you was that original motion, did that cover both those pieces of equipment? I thought the first motion was just for the
excavator. Was that wrong? I forgot. Well, I meant to include both pieces because that's what the whole thing is for. Right? And then when I asked for clarity,
you know, we were talking about where the money came from and and the clarification was that, you know, the larger piece of equipment was coming out of our capital fund and the smaller piece of equipment was gonna come out of town a road. So I understood it to be a two part motion covering both pieces of machinery. But if if people wanna split it up, we can we could do that.
Okay. Is everyone I meant to include both pieces. Even though I only said excavator I didn't say compactor.
Diane, I think you did say compactor. Oh, did I? I think so. I think you got it, but Okay.
I'm okay with it with the added stipulation of doing better in the future, whatever that wording was.
Okay. And to put us I'm gonna make another motion to put us and keep us all honest. I would like to make a motion that the Board of Finance will be updating the purchasing policy for the town of Andover to add more clarity for the process that should be followed and the steps to be taken. I don't know if anybody wants to make a section a second on that.
Sorry, Diane. I think we do need to revisit our policies.
And I just want to put it on record that we are going to go and update this policy so this doesn't happen again. Agreed with that second. Sounds good. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Kurt, you an eye on updating the purchasing?
Yeah. I'm an eye on that. Yeah. I'm an eye. Alright.
So, Linda, you said aye. Right? Okay. I heard Joanne. Okay. So, all good. All right. Did I do everything right?
Amanda's rewrite recap of motion seem to only have the larger machine in it. So we may need to make a second motion with respect to the smaller machine.
Okay. I'll make a just to clear it, clean it up. I'll make a motion that the purchase of the compactor for the amount submitted, which was a source well bid, correct? Correct. So what was the amount again?
So it was a source well, the source well bid for the new machine was 12,000 I think $500 But they we have we rented basically a used machine because we needed to compact the bridge. It's got about 100 and had about one hundred and forty hours on it. Now it's got about one hundred and sixty hours because we've been using it. That machine, they will sell to us for $9,500 We can purchase a brand new one. But given that we're we can purchase the rental unit with low hours on it for 9,500. You know, we all decided saving extra $3 would be it would be smarter to do that than to then to purchase a new one. Oh, that's a good deal.
Okay. So, so the motion to be amended on the compactor is to purchase the used machine for 9,500. Correct. For it out of Town Aid Road. Okay. Love it. Second it. Let's do it. All in favor? Aye. Nice.
Okay, that's unanimous. Okay. We gotta do the hard stuff in the beginning, not at the end.
So let's get that purchase policy revision thing high on the agenda, Hold on. Haven't got to the road striping yet. Oh, god. Oh, lord.
Alright. I think you can nix the road striping unless you have questions for us about it.
Did they run out of? Yeah, I do have a question. They run out of paint from Lakeview Drive to Route 6. They did run out of paint.
They will be back to finish. Okay, that's all I need to know. There was at least one extremely irate person with us for painting lines, who left left me a pretty astounding expletive labeled, you know, you know, thing on my answering machine about his displeasure
at being woken up by the the roadwork at night. My neighbor down the street was it?
It was too incoherent. Know, you could hear the f bombs, but it was hard to tell what the other words are. All the joys of public service error. His intent was pretty clear that he was unhappy with the night work though. Okay.
Okay. So we did that. We have this item on your credit card purchasing policy. I have no idea what that is.
So there's a copy of that in your packet. So we just tuned up our credit card purchasing policies a little bit, and came up with a couple of new forms. We're just giving you this I don't think the Board of Finance necessarily needs to approve this, But we just had a couple issues with the way things were being done. So we tuned up our procedures internally a little bit as a as a downfall. And I think Sherry could give you more info on that. But I definitely agree with it. Should be in your packet.
We don't need to make any motions on it's just a form it's FYI information only. Correct. Correct. That's fine. Moving on.
Hey. Down here. Okay. We already talked about the purchasing policy made a motion to do that. So how electrical upgrades.
So I talked about that in my report, since the Board of Selectmen has decided to increase the scope. I'm not ready to ask
for anything on that right now. And that's all going through CIP, right?
As far as I'm concerned, that can go through CIP. We already we already sent the CIP last Thursday night. And for the record, the initial town hall electrical upgrades was already approved by CIP. Board of Finance decided that should go to RFP a while back, and I finally got around to drafting the RFP. But then the Board of Selectmen decided they wanted to take care of a bunch of other projects as part of that. So it will go back to CIP and then come back to you. Right. It'll It'll have a larger proposal to deal with that. It'll be over 15,000. Correct? Presumably.
Yep. Yeah. Okay. Still not that what we needed to do. All right, H
affordable housing plan. You talked about that in your report, right? Yeah, I don't think as long as you guys have no objection to me signing for it, we don't need to discuss that further. I added that in case you decided you wanted to make a motion or you wanted input in that.
All right. Okay, now we're down to the approval meeting minutes can I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from Wednesday, August 25? Right, Kurt.
Kurt's muted but yeah, I think he said yes. Okay. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, I make a motion.
Okay. Any second. Second it. Okay, any discussion? Nope. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Liaison reports.
Do we have So we basically dealt with CIP, you know, that that was the the overwhelming bit of the of our CIP meeting last Thursday was the discussion of this, you know buying this this excavator so and the process that's good that's good yeah we went through this and I think made our opinion on it plain and I think that to be continued in that when Mark gets back the letter that no doubt our chairperson provided him will come through but you know it was really about the process That was our main, that's really what we talked about at CIP almost exclusively. We also discussed the town hall project and the mission creep that's going on there. And we didn't make, I don't think any decisions about it. We were informed about the situation. I think that's about all we did, Kurt. You think of anything else? No, sir.
We've talked about the senior community center building project that we're going to contract for the site engineering preliminary architectural drawings. So that is on its way that's kind of where we're set up that. Next meeting what's going to happen with the senior set of community is we're going to start identifying the services we want to provide the needs we have for those services to be able to help with the architectural drawings. And we are going to do site visits for local senior centers to see what works, what doesn't work, what other towns did, and things like that as a group, and bring that. So that's kind of where we're sitting on that. Sounds good.
Anything else anybody wants to talk about? It was a crappy summer with the weather. It's on record and it's still raining. It was wet. That's for sure. Oh, tell you. Mosquitoes will carry you away now. Good morning. On the other day out of court. On fire.
Yeah. So can we send some of the rain to California? I know. Just
had relatives who were evacuated. I think they got back into their house but they live by they have a house at Tahoe and their house was in the danger zone. They had to evacuate for a week or two. So yeah, I think all things considered, I like living in a place where it rains.
Yeah, I was there. I was evacuated. Oh God. Visiting my son and his family.
Were you in the Tahoe area or another? South Lake Tahoe. Yep. Oh, that's scary. Yeah.
Between that and the other what ten years ago when they had a grizzly bear knocked on their door and tear apart all their stuff while they were away, you know, pass. I'm good with Connecticut, thanks.
Do we have anybody that for public speak? I don't see anybody. Is everything good there?
We're good with that. I think we're down to who you see. As
always, I want to thank everybody for all your participation. I think we all bring good things to the table and everybody has good opinions. Keep them coming. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you everybody. Good evening. Thanks for stepping in as usual.