Meeting transcript
Board of Finance Special Budget Meeting
April 5, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Or were we discussing? I know you sent an email. I've been checking a couple of okay. Thank you. Looks like Yeah, no, was just
chatter and Bill's calling from a hotel room and it kind of went on from there. So welcome everybody. I see Brian's joined us. Looks like we have a whole house here. Thank you. This is the town of Andover Board of Finance special meeting budget meeting Wednesday, 04/05/2023. I'll call the meeting to order and we'll recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. We look for public speak next on our agenda. I don't see any members of the public, Eric.
Correct. There are none. So we will roll right into the budget workshop for the fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four review the proposed town budget. I have a couple things to add from late breaking stuff just that we can talk about tonight some input. First is from the this isn't so late breaking although I did talk to Adrian about it just a little bit ago to the Board of Selectmen would like in this budget so that we designate expenditures from the community center. Money be allocated for furnishings and appliances etc. So they were suggesting I believe it's 150,000 as a not to exceed number. The rationale behind that is that if we don't specifically authorize it, you know for that amount of money. Would have to go to town meeting so it's a little bit maybe Gray, because it is a large number but there's you know the the actual expenditures could be smaller and fit under, but I mean to me it makes sense to do that we know we're going to have to
somehow furnish the Community Center. Adrian was on his way home into the car, but he was going to try to join and give us the opportunity to ask questions about the intent there. Also offered just because we are on the conversation about the various things have been presented to the board. Talk about a little bit of the history of the of the request for the fire apparatus, he says, I know it was kind of new, but you know. For a long time, Kurt was reminding everybody that every year that we're going to have to come to this point, probably in 2023 and. Jimmy: You know when Kurt got sick we didn't necessarily hear from him as regularly. Jimmy: so so really wasn't on our radar screen as well, So that is also something else we can talk about and Adrian can provide some insight there. So hey Adrian, welcome. Then I also got a call from the town clerk who asked if we had any questions or wanted further clarification from her on the salary thing. If we wanted her to appear, I said I would talk to the board about it. I mean, she put together a rationale for her increase in salary that she's requested.
She put it in writing. I don't really have anything further, but we certainly you know can bring her on and ask her for additional input. We'll leave that up to the board. Think that's something we should decide tonight. And also if there's, you know, she's asked to, I guess Wally Barton was asking about the voting, the registrar's salaries and expenses, the elections expenses, you know that we hadn't brought it up with them. My personal view is that if they think the number is too low, they should probably have reached out to us, but I think it would be, personally, this is my personal opinion, I think we'd be remiss if we would not be, it would not be advised to us to lower the number that they have proposed based on just the complete uncertainty on what their requirements are going to be in the election year with their early voting. They just do not know what early voting is going to mean to the town in terms of the requirements. It's going to impact the registrars. It's going to impact the town clerk. You know, their signature verification, there's all kinds of stuff that's just kind of floating up in the air as I understand it, so we have to just be aware of that. But I think we as a board should decide if we want to ask Wally and Linda as the registrars to to come before the board. You know, we certainly could do that, but we should schedule that right away.
Joanne, you got a comment?
Yeah, before we get started, I know you have some last minute things that are coming up and we're going to discuss a lot of the things that you're bringing forward tonight. I have a list of things that I was going to ask questions on so timely. You know, knew we were going to be discussing all those line items that we had brought up in prior meetings and so I appreciate that they all reached out today. You know, but luckily, especially on the town clerk situation, it was great that she provided us with some information already. We had done our own homework and have some research, but yeah, a lot like you said, lot of the line items were ready to address tonight. I just wanted clarification because I know Adrian's gonna get going and and speak in a minute. Did you say we want to allocate money? I just missed what you said from the building maintenance fund, which
Yeah, so the recommendation from the board of selectmen would be to specifically authorize an expenditure from the community building, community center fund to finance the, you know, fitment of the community center. So appliances, furniture, etc.
Right, no, understood. Yeah, because we have no idea. We're still in the planning stages. Thank you, just wanted to get that in.
The only thought I have is, we pulling that, we're going to pull that from the existing fund?
Well, why don't we turn it over to Eric, I'm sorry to Adrian, and Eric was nodding and I saw him nodding. We'll turn it over to Adrian, let him, know, kind of give us his take on it and where the board stands on it and explain that. Adrian all yours.
Yeah so I'm basically once the building is done, and we have a CEO we then in order to occupy the building and make it functional for town meetings, and you know, for the use for all the different commissions and community groups that want to utilize the facilities. We then need all the things that you currently, you know, use in a space, from chairs to, you know, desks. You're going to need a monitor. You're going to need some AV equipment. I mean, literally the list is almost never ending. It's kind of scary. You need rugs in the front foyers. You need draperies, blinds. We'll need signage inside, some extra signage outside. There'll be some kitchen items that we're going to need. And you know, shelving, and literally just a litany of things. And some of them, you know, you can make a list for, and some of them you don't think of until you're in the space.
And the number we were hearing from architect and talking to, you know, other centers is that basically it's about $1,000 per occupancy. So if you have 100 person occupancy, which is where our building falls somewhere in there, it's about $100,000 kitchen. We had looked at doing it through the contractor. But they're adding a substantial markup to these types of things. So a $20 zero kitchen becomes a $40 zero kitchen. So we're going to look at having the contractor put in the complicated thing like the hood and have everything else kind of set and ready to go. And then when we move forward into occupying the building, we can literally just have someone deliver a stove and just it's a quick hookup, that type of thing. We're trying to be frugal about it. This isn't a guaranteed spend. This is just an authorization to spend. We're going to look to try to get some grants. Like for there are some great state grants that we've gotten in the past for the town for storage and recordkeeping. So we may be able to get some storage and recordkeeping stuff out of that. We're going to try to look at everything we can. We're going to look at donations, keeping in mind, though, in the past, the town has had struggled with donations in that a lot of times people say they want to donate something, and then when it comes off the back of the truck, it's just not functional or it's not what you would want someone in a public space to be using. So we're going to try to be thoughtful and accepting of donations. We're going to encourage people to donate dollars rather than equipment or things
that just turns out better in the long run. So we're not looking to spend this money. We're looking to be authorized to spend the money. The other thing to keep in mind is that we really can't spend anything until the building is done. Because if we go over in budget, the one thing that was made clear by all five contractors that we deemed viable was that if we we hit a million and we go into Davis Bacon, the Davis Bacon penalty for us is going to be about $300,000 So we don't have the money and the fund to spend until the building is done and we know we're on budget. Being on budget is going to be a huge deal. And we're really, really we're still working through that to try to make sure we have controls in place to manage budget and to be able to trim if we need to, if we run into a problem, but also just to be extremely aware of what our budget is in each area as we progress. So we're really trying to, you know, be very conscious of this. What we're looking for is that $1,000 per person occupancy. So that would be $100,000 and then 25,000 for the kitchen.
I don't think we come even near that, hopefully. I think, you know, hopefully we'll get lucky and we'll get some grants and we'll get some donations. But this isn't authorized to spend. It needs to be part of the budget message, so it needs to be basically where you say, you know, authorizing 125,000 from the Community fund or Community building fund for fitment of the building. And that's pretty much it for that I had some other things I want to talk to you guys about tonight, that that covers the community center. If you guys want to ask questions about that or have concerns or what have you,
Hey, Adrian, just quickly. I think I I think I know the answer to this is just based on what you said, but I wanted to clarify it. So when we talk about fitting out the building, we're we're talking about appliances. We're talking about, you know, for instance, a stove. You mentioned that. Right? So that's not something that the contractor when they build the building, it's gonna be kind of raw, and then we're going to need to put in things like a stove. Right. So so the gas connection will be there and the electrical plug will be there, but the stove itself will not. Yep. So we're gonna need basic appliances. Right. We're gonna need,
I don't know, You're to need pots and pans to cook on it. You're going to need racking and you're going to need stainless steel tables, work workstations. You're going to need for the for the the meals program, we need locked storage space that's specific to them. We need racking in the storage room that's there for, you know, people to be able to put things up, whether it's rec commission or it's the yoga club or it's the whatever. We need places for them to put things away in an organized manner. We need tables and chairs, but we also need dollies to move those chairs from room to room and back into storage when we need the space opened up. You know, things like that. Mean, just to give you an idea, you know, a good set of tables, chairs, dollies is going to run us in about the $10,
you know, just for tables, chairs, and dollies. It can add up fairly quickly it's it's not as easy as going to Costco. Unfortunately, you know, and even when we talk about storage, we need we need to you know we need. Fireproof lockable cabinets for storage, for any records that we have on-site. So just little things. We need a projector. We need blinds to be able to cover the windows and stuff. And again, these things, we could include them with the contract. But this market is very heavy. We're trying to be extremely budget conscious. All
right. You. Are there questions for Adrienne on this? I have a question. Yeah, I
just want to understand this. The extra stuff is not included in the Mavis Bacon issue.
Is it is not because it's not required for occupancy. And I mean technically it's not required for us to use the building, but it allows the building to be used for a variety of different groups that otherwise wouldn't be able to use it. You know, like we could use the building for meetings, we could use the buildings for yoga and tell everyone to bring their own mats, we could use that we could use it. We could have someone bring in a TV and leave with a TV, you know, to use that space, but it makes more sense as a Community building to fit out that building to make it a little more usable for everybody. Okay. Tables and chairs are probably the biggest thing. And, you know, the kitchen stuff. Just signage, Yeah. You
Does the school have any of those items that we can kind of carry over? Because I know in the auditorium, not the auditorium, the gymnasium, they had some bleachers and items like that.
Well, school's ripping out their bleachers because they're having problems with them. Okay. But but but again, this is a separate building. Alright. And and it's not fair of us to go to school and say we want some of your stuff. The school is the school. They bought it out of school funds. But you know, if and again, if someone approaches the town and says, hey, I'd like to donate the kitchen items. I'd like to pay for that, or I want, or we get, you know, Carol's been looking at grants for storage, secure storage, if we get one of those. We're not definitely spending the money. We're simply asking to be authorized to spend the money so that if we don't get the grant, if we don't get Our hard spend is probably right around 75 or 80. And then the rest is
if we don't get the things that we would like and we don't get the donations that have been we've had a lot of people mention about donations, but you can't count on them until they come in, unfortunately, especially in today's economy. Other questions?
So we're basically just protecting the money, you know, for use with the community building, which makes Specifically
allocating it. Yeah, specifically allocated for that. And whatever, obviously, whatever we don't use would would still be in the fund and and you know you know when the when the building is done, the town is going to have to decide what what to do with those those funds next year.
It makes sense for it Sorry, Rob. Makes sense at this point. It's you know, the building isn't we haven't even broken ground. So it does make sense since it's been collected for that. So are anticipating
to break ground. We're looking to go through the process with planning and zoning and with the health department. We just actually did a perk test for, you know, for the septic and some other things. So everything's kind of lining up so that if we can work out the issues that we have on the table right now, our hope is to be able to break ground when the kids get out of school. Nice. So we do the bulk of the work over the course of the summer, and we're basically have a clean exterior work site and we're working in the building when the kids come back to school, you know, would be the goal so. Does that make sense to everyone?
Rob, you had your hand up too. Did you have anything? I did. And now I've I've lost my train of thought. Sorry, Rob. I didn't mean it's to all good. It happens. You know? It's to the best of us. I'm getting older.
And remember the money that's in the multi use building fund was put there originally with the intention of building a community center. The only reason we're not spending that as the build is we got lucky with getting the ARPA funds, which were repurposed for that.
That was thank you for that helps me remember. What do we did we ever nail down what we got in there right now?
Give or take three, three, three something. It's in the mid threes. I knew it was three something,
but I know it was three twenty five. Yeah. And and
and honestly, we may be in a situation where, god forbid, we run into a problem. Right? Let's say we run into a water problem on the site and it's 60 or $100,000 that will break the budget. And there's not enough room in the budget to pull. You couldn't pull enough stuff out to make it work. We would end up needing the money that's in there to cover the Davis Bacon cost, in which case we wouldn't have the money for this, and we would basically have to go hat in hand and or budget for next year or something. Don't know. I'm hoping, I'm optimistic that we're not there. I'm spending
a lot of time on this right now. It's, like, become a second job most. But, you know, once we break ground, I'll I'll be a lot happier. Let's just say that. Oh, totally understood. I I just wanted to get a sense for
so if we have three twenty five in there, he asked his one twenty five to earmark for this purpose. Right. In theory, if all were to go well, the net's 200 that's left, maybe, hopefully, we think. That's all I was trying to get my arms around.
And just to clarify the way, you know, this is just really a capital authorization. There's no additional line. We'll get into the budget here for this. No. We're not asking you to spend
we're not asking for tax resources that the town has already went to the public, and the public has authorized that to be put in the fund. We're simply asking for authorization to tap that fund for the purpose it was intended, really. Yeah, I just want to make sure that all board members are all clear on that. Yeah, we're not looking at additional line items. This is not a tax implication. It's a spending authorization. It's an earmark from a fund that exists already for this purpose. Right. And the reason we're asking for it now versus waiting till when the building is done is very simple. It would require, because of the amount of money, would require
not just a town meeting, but a referendum, and that would cost us about $6. So why spend $6 if we can do it as part of the budget process? It just makes sense. So we're just trying to be smart about it, I guess.
Any other questions for, Adrian on this topic? Okay, then if the board's okay, I'll also ask Adrian. He had suggested he had some input on to kind of the history and the context for the ask for the fire apparatus. So, Adrian, you want to kind of give us your 2¢ on that?
Yeah. So some of the board members that have been on the board a little longer, you know, Rob, and I think, Bill, you were involved a little bit before too, so you might remember some of it. The fire department had quite a while ago when we actually, when we stepped up and tried to get them a tanker truck and then succeeded in getting the tanker truck, the fire department looked at its apparatus and said, what else can we what's what's next in the cycle? What do we actually want to do? And they've they've been very, you know, they've been very good about looking and saying, what do we actually need? Now that we have the tanker, does it help us in other ways? And so what they did is they did a revised capital plan for themselves, and they presented it to us. And so this has actually been, I actually looked back in my emails and Kurt Dowling brought this to us in like 2020 to the CIP. So this, we know this has been coming for, give or take, three years. It's really, they're on track for their capital plan. This is going to take nearly two years to build. So it's not it's a complicated situation in that you put in for it. You actually don't see the truck for at least eighteen months.
Once the truck is quote unquote purchased, we'll need to actually initially start we'll be making payments on the truck before we actually get it. That is one of the sad things. Kurt and I had done a lot of research on this, and almost every single department in the state that we could find is leasing the trucks. They do a lease purchase program. You can do a once a year payment. You can do quarterly payments. The most popular seems to be yearly, kind of like we did with the bonding for kind of like what we did for the bonding for the gymnasium when it was done. You know, did a once a year payment type thing. And this is very similar to that. Given the cost of this truck, it's going to be near $1,000,000 if not just slightly over. We'd be smartest to look at doing a seven or a ten year lease. The ten year lease leaves us a little more room. The seven is doable. But my suggestion to you as a board and what we had looked at in the past and talking to residents, about onethree of a mill dedicated towards this capital purchase would be would be Okay. I think if you go beyond that, if you try to purchase it much sooner or what have you,
I don't think it's I don't think it's I think then you you start to question whether the town is going to tolerate But this is something we absolutely need. You have a truck that's nearing 30 years old that's going to come out of service that this is going to replace. And then the timing of this, if you did do a 10, the timing of it will be, and this is something that Kurt had kind of worked out, is that if we did this, you would then be able to, if you budget for it, you would then be able to roll into the next purchase, which is scheduled for about ten years. And hopefully, depending upon how it's structured, you might be at the similar number
so that, again, you're not asking for additional resources in ten years. You're simply rolling this into the next capital purchase. And this has been something we've been trying to get to as a town historically for about the last seven or eight years. When I first came on the board, one of the things we looked at was to try to, what's the town missing, and why are we not spending the funds that we need to spend? And part of it is that there just wasn't good controls in place. Now we have a town administrator who's there as a professional every day, evaluating what the town needs and spending the dollars accordingly. And that makes a big difference. That we have, not to say anything against our old public works person, but he grew up into the job. He wasn't somebody that picked it you know, as a career, went to school and did all that type of stuff. Jay is has much more experience, and so he's able to manage those dollars. And so our our goal as a town simply has been to get to the point where we could actually have the money in the budget that we needed to pay for the things that we need to run this town on a daily basis, and not have to keep coming back to the well for emergency situations. So hopefully, we're hopefully, as a board, you know, you guys, you know, the previous board that I was on, and you guys have followed up with that, and that's been great, that you guys have gotten the budget to the place where
we're in a pretty good situation. If you look at surrounding towns, our mill rate is extremely competitive. It leaves just a little bit of room to do something like this that's kind of the last piece of the puzzle to put into the system to be funding our town correctly. And it's super important to the fire department for ways that we can't even fathom. It's not just about putting out a fire. It's not just about having a new piece of apparatus. That new apparatus is also about attracting recruits and retaining recruits. Guys don't want to come in and be wrenching on something or trying to fix something. It's
a recruiting tool, and it's retainment tool. So we have to look at it from that point of view, too. Because And God forbid we ever get to the point where we were not able to recruit. I mean, surrounding towns are struggling with that. And we don't want to be there. We don't want to have to go to a paid system because then the budget's really going to be heard. So everything we can do to support them, and this is one of those things. So it makes sense. I would encourage you to try to look at what options they bring to the table, but I would think my guess is you're going to probably be in the seven or the ten year lease.
And the the other thing to keep in mind is there's been a lot of talk about, well, why don't we put money away for this and save for it? And this is something we originally thought. Well, why aren't we putting money away? Put a big number away every year and save for it. The the problem is when you put that money away, because of the way the state structures the finance departments and what we're allowed to put money into, we get literally no interest. It's like a tenth of a percent on our money. It's absolutely horrid. And there are no options to invest those funds. You can't take them out and put them into a CD or anything. We've looked at it. They're completely restricted. So putting the money away, you literally are losing ground on money you've asked residents to
on a big purchase like this. So it actually makes more sense to do it the way that we're looking at, which is the least.
So I hope that kind of gives go ahead. I think you said something like a third of a mill. Yeah.
So where where is that coming from? What do you because when I'm looking at the proposal, we're looking at ten ten annual payments of $120.
Yeah, so a mil is give or take what about $3.50 right now, $3.57?
Oh, you're talking about mill rate, not million. Yes. Yeah, Oh,
I'm so sorry, Mark. Yeah. No, no, no. It's my head. No. Right. Yeah. So a mil Eric, what is it right now? Is it what? $3.50 ish? A mil is $3.17.
Yeah. Okay. So $3.17. So if you're at you know, if they're what are their what do they think their 10 payments are gonna be annual? $1.20 something? 115
or something? Wasn't it 114 and change? Yeah, you're over the ten year, I thought it was 114 and change. It went up to 117 something, think. That's what it is in the I'm looking at the Oh, I apologize. Yeah, you're right. That was the 114 was at CIP and then they came back with you're right. And that number is not is not. It's not guaranteed. So I
would I would suggest that as a requirement, and this not anything against the fire department. It's simply when we start talking about financing anything and we talk about spending any money, it would make sense to ask them to get more than one competitive rate on that. Are, there are We
did. We asked them to come back to us if and when any of the other manufacturers, they, they were working on it and they hadn't gotten the other manufacturers to get them.
Well, so just so just like when you go and purchase a car, banks will finance this. In fact, would see savings bank was the one that was doing a lot of them. They really like doing this type of lease purchase for towns. So I would require them to at least get a number from Jewett City because we know they do it. That was something that Kurt had brought to the table. There's also a fire equipment specialty company out of Florida that does this type of financing specifically. And then obviously there's manufacturer financing. But I would want to see at least three numbers for this, because it's such a big number. So those are details once we get to the actual budget. Right. But you wanna make it a requirement because to be clear, although the town has a policy, once you authorize the fire department to do something, you don't have control anymore. Good point. And and I'm not Yes. Trying to You do. Because ultimately, all these things get signed by me. Sure.
Sure. But, I mean, but but for reference, we do know that that the only we know that from a statutory but not from statutory, but from a charter point of view, they actually don't report to the board of selectmen. They report to you, the board of finance, and that's in their original charter. So, you know, I would I would require them to have, you know, three three numbers,
you know, for financing and and then go from there. Pick the apparatus and then three quotes for financing. Sounds reasonable. Yeah.
Yep. Yeah. I think I had conflated the three manufacturers they were talking to with the financing options. Good point. Yeah. And again, Jewish City Savings Bank is very aggressive on this stuff.
And I I think there was another bank, and I apologize. I'll have to look and see if I can find my email that Kurt had sent me back in the time about this. But yeah, so there's definitely options for them to do that. And I think it's important to do it. And I want to talk a little bit just to kind of help clarify for the board about how
this would work. So there's going to be a certain annual payment, whatever that's going to be, 120,000, 130,000 that we will need to authorize as the capital expenditure, and as part of the budget would be a recommendation. And in addition, we probably are going to need to bump up the amount that's going into the fire apparatus fund. So we're not technically, I think, authorizing the entire $109,170,000
dollars. So I do have a question that is that the way because I would say that I would
I don't know that If it's an obligation, we probably we probably have to state it as part of that package. Right?
I don't think you need to increase the number going into the fund because that's not where they're drawing this from. This is a is a whole another animal. And they said that they go ahead, Eric. Actually,
would do just the opposite. I would fund this right out of the fire engine fund, by just simply increasing the allotment to the fire engine fund to whatever you think you need to cover payments and whatever initial escrow is in there. You know?
I look at that That was my gut too. I I was gonna just say the same thing. Let's kick that fund up to a hundred thirty eight years. To identify the capital expenditures. Right. And keep in mind, this is a very so because this is going to something specific,
I I guarantee if you talk to the auditor, he's gonna want it on a separate line all onto itself. And and the and the other reason for that being is that as you go forward, the next budget cycle comes around. It's just like a bridge. Right? If you've got an ongoing bridge and you've committed to it, you've gotta you've gotta pay for it. It's not something that you can say, oh, I wanna strike that out of I wanna strike the money going into the fire engine fund, which you could run into if you go to a town meeting. You could get somebody that's I don't wanna take that money out of fire engine fund. You get well, we already we already committed to this three budget cycles ago. So, you need a separate line that commits you to it just like we did with the, you know, just like we did with the with the loader, you know, and and and other things. Get the loader is separate, you wanna do the same thing. So So I have a follow-up question to that. If we do it that way, which that all makes sense to me, fair enough,
can we then stipulate that at least until we draw down to the point where we can't anymore, can we take from the fire equipment fund until such time that, you know, say say we're in year four of the lease. Yeah. And now we've run through the fire equipment fund, and now we need more money. We don't but you don't you you don't have enough money in the fire equipment fund to fund this. You don't have enough money. So you
also need money in the fire equipment fund for fire equipment. So Future purposes. Purposes. As they start you know, they and listen. We've done their capital plan. I know. Right. We've done a ton of stuff for them over the years. They're in pretty good shape. You know, air conditioning and and, you know but one of the things, probably the next big thing coming down the pike is gonna be to replace that generator. Granted, I would as a my preference would be that we replace the generator as part of sanctioning the new community building as a at, you know, you know, as a as a refuge. And so hopefully we get a grant for that. But but beyond that, they're they're gonna need stuff and it could be anything. It could be they need to replace the boat or they need a new trailer or whatever. So I think you want to kind of keep that separate and also, again, so when we talk about budget message, it has to be made very clearly in the budget message exactly, you know, that we're that that the town is looking to authorize the purchase of a firetruck. It needs to be separate in the budget message just like the community authorization is. It needs to be listed separately and clearly
so that there can't be any kickback down the road and and the town is committed to that. The the other thought I have there that is that a lot of times in the past when we would like clockwork try to put a $100,000 a year in that fund. Not that we always got that $100,000, but we would try to. The idea in the past, and I think you you alluded to this earlier, Adrian, was that we would load that fund up enough that we could buy stuff, right, instead of leasing it. Right. So if we're doing this separate Right. Fine. But then should we adjust down? Like, should we be loading in the same amount of money we would normally load into that capital fund? If we're going to fund this over here, which is very much a capital expenditure, but I understand the rationale for having it budgeted out because it's going be a ten year recurring exposure. That makes no sense. But then do we say, well, in recognition of that, we put 50 into the fire department funds at 100. This is just something to think about.
I'm not thinking myself. Just, you know, considering it. I think the fairest person to ask that to is the fire department. You know, I I think you asked Mike, you know, if they what they have on the horizon otherwise, that's I mean, and I say it lightly, a smaller purchase. You know, what else are they looking to do? And would they talk and could they tolerate that for a couple of years? I I I don't know that they could or couldn't. I can't speak to that. I'm not a member of the fire department, and I'm not authorized to do that. I mean, we looked at their capital plan recently.
It was an old version. For instance, the truck that we're now talking about, which the purchase price was at $9.15 or something like that. On that capital plan, it was budgeted at $7.50. Right? So there's an example of And I was in 2020 then. That's the 2021. Yeah. Right. Right. So things have changed. Right? Right. But there were definitely things on there. I know there's the stuff coming down the pike. I'm just saying that I wanna be if we're gonna if we're gonna break this out, we should think about the best way to to to handle that fund then.
Yeah. I I think I think you would wanna talk to them. Talk talk to them directly. That's that's really the best solution. So we need to bring them back.
I would actually do the opposite. If ever me for this budget year, since we're not gonna have to fix, we're not necessarily gonna be making payments in this year, unless we do have to escrow the first payment, which may or may not be the case depending on who we finance
through. I think the standing thing that we saw or that I saw with Kurt when we looked at these is that you needed to make the first payment, in order to start the process. They do not Mark, you're muted.
I think Sean alluded to that also. Go ahead. Joanne, you had a comment or question?
Well, of things. Adrienne, I'm not sure if you are aware we had a really big presentation last week. I was not. Unfortunately, I was- Oh, no. I don't mind that you weren't there, I don't know if you were told. We did have a big presentation last week, you know, and- Okay. Said a lot of the same things you did, which was, yeah, which was good for us to know because it kind of came to us last minute. Sure. And you know, you're reinforcing everything, but one of the things I remembered from the meeting was they did say, and I understand that this will affect the budget going forward. Whatever we decide, you know, he spoke really well, explained this particular vehicle, what it will do. You know, they were pretty clear that we would not have to put aside any funds in this budget, But you know, with that big lease payment, it seemed to be. I know we were going to have our big discussion tonight having a you know, most likely have to lease it. Would think you know, we needed to make a decision because they had to order it. And then it's gonna affect So our budgets going every decision we make and things that we fund or put money aside for in this budget, we're gonna have to know we have that big payment coming up.
Yeah, and I mean, we just got rid of one of these. The addition to the school there for the gym was about the same amount that we just So got rid yeah, it's basically kind of putting something like that back on the books. I get it. But I apologize if I was redundant to their presentation. Oh no, I don't know if you were told. I mean, he really came on and we had a nice half hour presentation. I do appreciate it. I knew,
yeah, it's fine. I mean Yeah, theirs was more technical on the process. They'd gone through the, with the proposals and where they were. Yeah. And Kurt Kurt and I had spent a lot of time on the, on the finance side and, and, and sort of figuring out how this is gonna play out for the town long term. So yeah, no, that's good. And I just do want to say since you brought up Kurt, I so
am so sad that he's not here for this part because he probably would have been in his glory. Know, it was so great having to be with him and seeing this discussion. Just anyways, thank you.
Anybody have any other questions for Adrian on those two topics? Now we can let him go eat dinner.
Yeah, I've been munching like grapes. Just got home. Yeah, if you guys if there's something else that I can address or if you have something else on on something else that's in the town budget, got a couple minutes, but otherwise, I'll hop off. Nothing else?
Cool. Well, listen, I appreciate you giving me a little bit of your time. And again, you know, I give you guys a lot of credit. It's not easy. I've I've been there. I've been on that on on the board and it's but the work that we do as volunteers for the town benefits everybody. So, you know, I appreciate your time and and thanks for listening to me. Have a good night. Thanks, Adrian. Thank you.
Okay, so we can for both of those items. We've kind of had the discussion or at least had the input from Adrian a little bit from Eric. It may be just appropriate to go ahead and address each of those individually. Again, just to clarify so the request for expenditure out of the. It's called the multi use building fund is to authorize the expenditure for the furnishings that will be required for the use that we envision. It does not mean we're adding in line item or additional cost to the budget. It just means that we're authorizing expenditure out of the existing funds. So it doesn't actually change that. It was 125, right? $1.25 was the ask. Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, personally, I'm okay with that.
Seems to make sense to me. I think it's a good idea.
Definitely. You know, the hope would be obviously, as Adrian said, that you get away with $75.80, but Mhmm. We see. But, I mean, it's better to budget for it and put it aside than none. So
Yeah. Just streamline building without everything it's gonna need in there. Just stay safe, secure. Correct. Programs,
whatever racks, whatever they need. Yeah. You'd you'd hope that for a million bucks you could do better. You could have that all included, but so be it. You know? So I mean, if do we need I'll happily make the motion if you want me to at this point. I'm I'm happy to move that we earmark a 125,000 out of the building equipment fund. Sorry. The multi use building fund. My bad. For this purpose, for the furnishing at all of the new community center when that is appropriate.
Bill seconds. To clarify, believe this is line item 305Dash907 at 59020, the Trans Multi Use Building Fund?
Kind of. Okay. So what you see there is the transfer fund. Okay. Not the line item permanent fund, but it will get your point across.
Okay. So we can just call it the multiuse building fund, and I think we we're good then. Yep. Let's not let's not create any technical problems because I wanted to put the government on there. Okay. Rob has moved that we allocate or authorize the expenditure of $125,000 out of the multiuse building fund for furniture and equipment for the community center, multi use building. And Bill has seconded. Do I have that right? That's correct. Okay. Do you have any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Hearing none, that passes. We'll
put that in our capital plan.
So with respect to the fire department, going back to something I I said when Adrian was speaking, you know, we had talked last week about how if we do what we're expecting to do, leasing a truck ten years, The first payment would be in the next budget cycle, not this one, at least as I kind of understood it, but I'm a little I'm still a little unclear because there was the issue of locking in the price. Do we have to make a payment right away? But I'm wondering if the best thing to do for this budget cycle is to bump up what's in the equipment fund so that we can draw down later. Or alternatively, maybe I'm completely wrong, And what we ought to do is leave that equipment fund alone
and accept that incoming budget cycles will have to set aside a 120,000 or whatever it is a year to pay for that lease. I'm still a little unclear as the best way to handle that, and I welcome anybody else who's got a better idea of how to do it. Because my gut my gut, and this is going back to when I joined joined the board originally, I keep thinking of the fire equipment fund as this sort of the savings account that we set aside all this money into so that we can then draw down off of it when we need to buy a piece of equipment. And that was our original plan. Right? Our original plan was we put aside a 100 or whatever it is a year, and then we could buy stuff. But this is not what we're doing.
So now do we need to shift course? If that makes sense, guys. You know, it's I'm I'm trying to reorient a little bit. So talk to me. What do you think? Eric?
So if I think Adrian is right and that at the point when we have signed the document and we have made our first escrow payment, then in the budget that will go in the capital in the 04/09/2000 under capital in the budget. And we can talk about that because maybe we ought to be doing the same thing for the public works plow truck, you know, which was approved at town meeting. Maybe that's legitimately a capital expense and you shouldn't be, we should just decreasing the public works equipment fund and funding that out of instead of funding that out of public works equipment, it should be going in a capital light item. But for right now, prior to when we actually have a contract in place, I think putting it under capital in a lease isn't really appropriate since at this point we don't have, you know, a capital lease line item
that we know exactly what it is, if that makes sense. Yeah. And just to clarify a little further, so I'm looking at document and again, this is just the one quote for financing, we have from Community leasing partners. Jonathan Jonathon But they list the first payment is 08/01/2024 so even on that document Haidt: that was prepared some time ago, I guess that was a play it was actually updated on March 17. It doesn't list that first payment in the budget here, so we have the opportunity to kind of read, you know, set up the account later and that would, I think provide us reasonable, you know, good basis to proceed as kind of Robin suggested, which is to put it into the fund and then set that fund up, you know, we would still probably authorize the expenditure,
maybe in the budget just to make clear to the town this is where this money is going, but not necessarily create a capital account for it. Is that kind of what you're thinking, Eric?
Yeah, I think number one, in your budget message, you make it very clear that the town intends to Arc? Put out a final RFP for a fire department squad vehicle and sign a contract for that, including financing. And that until the final contracting is, we don't have final numbers, we know it's going to be about this and we're putting this money into the public works or the fire department fund for that, but make it very clear that if, if this goes through and we agree with it, that will be an ongoing expense for the next ten years that the town will be. So you're very upfront in the budget message that, yeah, we're putting the money in now, but remember, this is gonna be an ongoing expense that you're agreeing to for the next ten years. So you do it as transparently as possible.
Sorry, I'm a little confused. Eric and I apologize because this conversation is going in a whole different direction than last week and we didn't have any precursor to it. So that's why I'm better when I know things ahead of time. So we're saying, you know, with everything that was presented last week, we know one quote. If I'm in favor of this, I don't have a problem with it. I just want to have the financial side where I understand it. So I thought we put in an order. You're saying we the town has to vote on it, guess, because it's such a big capital item, right? It's part of the budget, yeah.
When we keep saying part of the budget, I thought there was no cost to the town this year. So now are we changing that and we're gonna put well, when Eric says we're gonna put something in, I'm afraid tonight later, we're gonna designate,
like, some kind of big chunk. So So yeah. Okay. So that was my thinking was okay. Technically, according to the bid the the thing that we talked about last week, we wouldn't have our first payment until the next budget cycle. Right. My question at the time and I'm still working through this. Yep. Is whether we ought to adjust our capital funding. Yeah. Accordingly now. Mhmm. To prepare. Which would be a budget expense this year. Right.
Thanks, Rob. That's I know everybody's saying, you know, I thank you for explaining.
That's that was but I don't know if that's the right answer, Joanna. I'm kinda working through it. And what I wanted to throw out there is like, typically, we look to put in a $100,000 a year into the fire equipment fund. Right. Some years, we haven't managed that. We couldn't get a budget pass. We did cuts. Yeah. You know, we put an eight. We have a pretty good budget, it looks like, this year. And so there might be the opportunity to say, well, we know we have this expense coming. Maybe we ought to this year put in $1.20 or $1.50 or something like that to to kinda front load a little bit. That's we
don't have to do that. No, no, and I appreciate because you threw it out to the board and you wanted. Yeah, no, thank you. I appreciate because down the line I want to pre say that this whole meeting went in a different direction, which is fine. And I'm because I will have some ideas later for a couple small cuts, not anything big, but maybe we roll that money into, you know what I mean? Instead of my initial idea that I'm not even gonna present now because we're not talking about something, but I'm thinking on the fly. It's not anyone's, it's something that I think no one would mind and then we could just roll it over there. So it really would in my mind something that I'm gonna bring up later. It would be a wash.
Mean, if we the one thing I would just say just as a to clarify what I'm my thinking. If we did put money into the fund this year, right? But we don't owe the money yet. Right. Nick, when when the lease payments actually hit and we're gonna do a separate line item for ten years for that. Mhmm. We would do what? We wanted to pull some money from the fund, we would do a a transfer. Right? Correct.
So that that could be done. Mhmm. So we could set aside for that this year. Knowing what's coming and then transfer next year. And then from that point forward, you know, as we draw the fund down. Right. We would then say, well, alright. Hang on. This year, we're not drawing for the fund anymore. This year, we need a a you know, this has to be funded by taxation or whatever. Right. That's that's my thinking. That's my gut and we could do it a couple of different ways. There there's no clear path here. We could we could go either way. I I'm just just my general inclination and as a member of this board is if we know we have an expense coming, let's plan for it and let's set aside for it. Yeah. And if we have a budget cycle in which we're taking to the town of flat budget basically,
Now is the time that right, and we haven't even gotten there yet, so I think I I get talking to our about the fire engine, but maybe we decide whether we're gonna go forward, which I have a feeling we will, you know, once things are and then once we do all of our little things, we see where we're at and then decide if we want to put more money in that fund. I mean that are we able to do that Mark? Do we have to make every decision right now? No, we don't have to make every decision right now. I mean, I'm saying tonight, but maybe even later tonight.
Oh yeah, of course. No, we can just come back to that. So I'll just I want to make just a couple of comments is one is an observation is that we already have in the budget $125,000 listed as part of the equipment fund. Have in the last three years the budget has been had $100,000 in it now the apparatus is not the only thing that we. That we have fun out of that thing is is Adrian explained, I guess wasn't really clear from the fund name it says fire engine fund slash tanker but at least in the budget that's in front of you we had 100 have $125,000 in there. That's observation. Secondarily, and this is would be my position just a member of the Board of Finance, I would be very, very hesitant to authorize the town manager or anybody else to sign a ten year lease
on a piece of equipment that the town has not agreed to fund, and the only thing we can have them agree to fund is the first year at this point because we have an annual payment that we need to do. I think we're in a we're in a better we're just it's a very I think a very dicey thing for us to authorize the purchase agreement or purchase order for a ten year commitment in particular for something that we we know we're not going to have to pay for it next year, at least that appears to be the case. But for us to authorize that and yet not provide the funding for it, especially in what's somewhat reasonable budget year, I think is a very problematic. It may also help or hurt, maybe I'll say it the other way, it may hurt our chances in credit if the funding sources find out that the town hasn't actually authorized this purchase. So I think that we may be in a better position both on our credit application and just in terms of our commitment to the purchase if we make some commitment to this now. It doesn't have to be maybe much more or any more than we've currently got going into that fund, but we need to, I think we need to make a commitment somehow to that purchase and make a statement. So maybe we don't need to add a lot more into that fund, but I think that we should state our intention if we so believe as the Board of Finance that we should pursue this purchase.
Eric, any comment? I just want to go over numbers real quick so you have the full picture. Currently, the fire department engine fund has $120,000 $114 as of today. However, the assumption is I I was supposed to send the HVAC upgrades that were were approved by CIP and the Board of Selectmen to RFP last fall. Frankly, I just have not had time to put out the RFP correctly. So, we're assuming that somewhere between 60,000 and $80,000 of that $120,000 is going to be spoken for. Did you say 60,000 to $80,000 Yeah, I'm hoping it's a lot closer to 60,000 end of things, which I think it should be. But given how crazy bids have been coming in,
I think it's reasonable to give that kind of range, which means you're going to have somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 left over in the fund. You know, but there are a series of capital expenses that the fire department can't absorb throughout their normal budget process that will be coming up. So, just wanted to give you that so you all have the actual numbers. How you decide to handle it, that's all on you. The one option you could do if you don't want to bake it if you're not going to bake it into the budget would be to do it at a separate town meeting and go to town meeting separately for approval of the fire truck. That's that's really a decision you guys make whether you think that's appropriate or whether you want to do it as part of the overall budget package.
That's on that's just your call.
It's so hard. Sorry, Mark. And I appreciate all that we do, but these are the reasons why there's so many last minute decisions to be made when we don't know about these things timely, you know, and it is what it is. So there's a lot of very important town decisions to be made. We all volunteer this time we take it in. It wasn't even a thing until last week and now we're expected to and I I I'm just speaking my mind because that's why I was voted in and I want to make the best decision so there's just so many angles you know. We haven't even started talking about the budget. Did we one quick question with funding? Because that's what we're concerned with now when we voted in the dump truck or the new plow truck. Remind me because I know we all made decisions then that is figured into this budget. Mean we took we took the initial payment out of monies from this current year we're in right Eric? Correct I do try to remember everything so we made payment one escrow
this year and that's another truck that won't be coming in for a couple years. So did we put a line item in this current budget we're looking at and working at? Is that designated already?
We did not put a separate capital line item for the public works plow truck. We just assumed we were going to pay for that out of the public works equipment fund, is funded specifically to purchase equipment for public works.
What Eric was saying earlier that maybe we should consider adding a line item under that grouping 4,900 capital to actually spike it out because then it would make it more clear as you were suggesting right Kirk or Eric those are you suggesting.
Yeah, we could do that if you so chose. That that's really your I just wanna make sure we accounted for it. You know? And I don't voted it. You know? We're taking the initial escrow here. I don't want it to stockpile, you know, because everybody We're getting missed. And with their budget. Thank you. Right. Thank you.
Okay, so what Eric, just to kind of circle back to something Eric suggested, so another option for the fire equipment would be to take no action. So we don't add any additional funding to the equipment fund, fire tanker fund, and we do not make a recommendation one way or the other as to, you know, approve the capital expenditure on the tanker even though, you know, we know that it's coming up. And then what would happen is we could take that expenditure to the town meeting, which we have done for other apparatus, other equipment before, have a town a special town meeting, at which point the town would need to authorize the lease purchase of this apparatus. And then we would subsequently have to fund that purchase out of future town budgets. I state that correctly Eric anybody just wanted to kind of clarify that. Yeah you could choose that option
And then the question just becomes, do you have enough, if you are required to escrow immediately to lock in a contract? Is there enough money in that account to make that first payment? Probably if it's a ten year lease, probably not if you opted for a seven year lease.
With that, wait, hey, I'll know. If we simply proceed with the budget as currently constructed, we're adding one twenty five. So we have one twenty ish in there. You'd end up with $2.45. So you would, in fact, have enough.
Minus one Unless you're talking about zeroing out EDK or whatever you're and whatever they're spending Oh, right. Right. Sorry. I apologize. But even if you net it out, I think you'd have enough. The the point is probably do. Right? I mean, that $1.25 should cover that whatever you have left Then you're okay even in that scenario.
Yeah. So, you know, my my personal feeling is that we should leave the 125 ks in there at a minimum, and we should recommend to the town that we authorize the purchase of the vehicle, make it clear that we do not think we'll have to make the payment in this next budget year, but that we will have to shortly thereafter, but we need to show that you know we need to start funding for it and. You know kind of make the case for the vehicle now, But we don't, we don't, that's just my opinion. I think it streamlines the process, you know, it doesn't change the numbers based on the budget that we distributed after our last meeting.
Onest not bringing it up. I feel like we have to not dishonest, but I mean we've had discussions about it. I I would like it to be mentioned the way you stated just now, Mark. Bill, you started to say something?
Yeah, I guess I was just unclear as to there's two things that was talked about and one was going to the town for a referendum to approve the purchase of the fire truck. That seems for something of that size and value, like the right way to do it. Like, are we allowed to just go say, we're gonna spend a million dollars without approval from the public or you just kinda hide it in a line item in the budget? It would seem to me
Well, it's weird. The way In a way, it does get approved at a town meeting because it gets approved at the town budget meeting. Okay. So and the way that this the way that the process works, you know, any anybody at the town meeting, any of the electors of Andover can make a motion to remove that authorization and then we could vote on that, right? So so that that could there isn't it is a package that the town votes on and but that that can be removed at the at the meeting for that matter. Yeah, Rob. The other thing I would say to that is
twofold. One, I don't know what a town meeting cost, but a referendum, I think Adrian mentioned costs a $6,000 a pop at least. So there's the question of whether it's Pennywise and pound foolish. The other question is, you know, you we go to town meeting and we say, here's our plan for this year. The tricky pit bit with this, and the only thing that's throwing me off is the delay. Normally, we have an expenditure we're asking for right now. This situation is we're gonna we're gonna agree to commit to something that isn't even gonna start until next budget season. And it's a little weird. It's this is what's actually been throwing me and actually I actually I'm thankful for your question because it helped clarify in my own mind what the problem was.
Because this is what's bugging me is that normally we would come to the town and we would say, we need x. We need you to approve this much money for this thing now. And that's what we're doing. We're kind of saying, well, the truck's not gonna be built for eighteen months to two years. Our first payment's fourteen months out, whatever. I'm sorry. I made that number up. But the point is it's not immediate, and it it makes it a little funky in that we want to agree to it because we have to lock it in. We have to honestly, like, we have to do this and this truck has to get purchased and we're gonna do it. But the question is how to explain it properly to the town and give them the opportunity
to yay or nay it. So my question becomes is when do we have to make that first when do we have to commit to the fire truck? Because it sounds like we would commit well, I gotta know. Are we gonna commit to buying it before we have approval from the town
with the budget? This is what I'm asking. Well, we don't have to. I mean, and and really until it's approved, I I don't think they really can't commit to anything, you know. Okay. That's my point. So in other words, they're not gonna place the order for the truck before the budget is approved.
That's all I'm trying to say. Yeah, mean, can't think we'd do that. That's Are we allowed to ask an extra question like we've asked in the past? I mean, I know that's what you're saying, but are we allowed to, you know, talk about the budget, the purpose of the meeting? Because remember when Carol had different questions and then give it straight to the town right there? I mean, it's
possible. I mean, I personally don't favor that just because the town meetings always such a complex thing as it is, and a lot of the people are being introduced to concepts and ideas and numbers for the first time. Know, we've been living and breathing it with it for months, but. Right. You know, so if we throw one more complex thing, I think it could be overwhelming and the meetings can get along as it is. You know, I personally would just rather held a separate meeting to make it clear if we go down that path, there's something to be said for that, for the issue that Bill raised and Rob, you know, discussed them. The only reason my personal belief is this is just part of good fiscal planning. We know we're going to need this. We definitely need to play them. Funding it. Let's explain it to the town now and put in the authorization. And and just like Adrian made the point peskin: on furnishing of the Multi use building we don't have to do this, it doesn't commit us we're not signing a purchase order. Once once this budget gets approved,
you know, and maybe we'll get those final quotes and things will end up being a lot higher or being less or changes, you know, I doubt that's going to be the case, but you know, we know it doesn't really commit us to anything. But to me, it's just prudent planning. Know it's going to happen. The CIP has been reviewing it. The Fire Department's been reviewing. You know, it to me it just makes sense and I think we again there's benefit in giving the Fire Department and the town the flexibility to act and if we don't you know, do this now, then we have we have zero flexibility to act. We'd have to go to town meeting.
Yeah, I I completely agree with that. I I know that it in theory that a million dollar purchase is something that we want to take to the town. But I also am very wary of of tying people's hands when things get time sensitive and you can lock in something and then we miss it because we even something that we knew full well was coming, we didn't take the steps. So that's my take. I kinda lean towards Mark's interpretation of that, and I would wanna just authorize it and set money aside in some fashion. My question is what fashion? But in some fashion now, and then make that very clear at the town budget meeting. I think the I don't want anybody surprised. There's there should be this is like at work. Right? No surprises. That's my management's body. Surprise my boss. Don't give me surprises, Rob, right? So no surprises.
Made them clear. I was just gonna, you know, so that we can kind of get moving along because we have talked about this a lot, but I agree. I think that the pluses are that we already have a fund that's established. There's money in it. We can present at the budget, you know, as part of the budget. The planning part of it of is that what you're saying Mark of what it's going towards? Yeah, you know, that's just my suggestion. Mean, we know we're gonna need to do it. Exactly. Just like the plow truck. Yeah, just like the plow truck. If this is when and and we're not. It's gonna be a big chunk, but it's nice that like he said, we're not asking for it this year and it's raising, you know, things. So it gives people time to accept it or know it's part of our process.
So you know, and unless somebody wants to increase the the current line item for the fire engine fund from $125,000 to something larger or wants to suggest we reduce it to something smaller, we don't have to take final action on this tonight. It just sounds like the consensus is that we need to do this moving forward. It's just a question of how we want to present it to the town. Yeah, I'd like to see where we are when we do other suggestions and then we can make that decision. Yep, we can come back to it. Nothing's final until we go to town meeting. We have to have our hearing and etc. We can move on if we talk this one out, absolutely. Before you know I'll go ahead, just because I don't want to forget this but there's. Jonathon But join you had a couple of things, so I don't why don't you well, let me, let me, let me say one thing that brought to my attention today. Also, because I don't know if this will affect what your your thing so it might. I got a call from
discussion based up from about the planner or scheduling person that was suggested by the Board of Selectmen for the Rec Commission. That's part of mine too. Yeah,
so my understanding from the Rec Commission is that they are not in favor of this position. Okay. Can I make just bumping in on that? Thank you. Well, just I just want to say I'll say it so they have a meeting I have something they might be in favor of. I had a little bit of a change too, but I'll listen to what you said. Yeah, so they so they have a apparently have a meeting tomorrow and so rather than they kind of would like us to they're going to make a different recommendation. And so, do I just we hold off on this until they weigh in which I'm okay with personally so. Really all that I have is that I just you know I already talked about the you know whether we want to bring Carol in front of the board to answer more questions about her proposal and then the. Like you know the elections thing So I just wanted to add that last one. That was that was the other thing I just okay. I yeah,
thank you. I'll say my couple things. I had a thought with this whole rec commission thing too, and or the rec scheduler, and I wasn't sure where it was gonna sit with certain people. I wonder and they can have their meeting and come back to us. I'm fine with that. If they're unhappy, then I wanna listen to them, but I know that we have another person in the town hall already that gets like a stipend for doing some additional duties. So I wondered if we wanted to instead of bringing on a whole another person, you know to do this. Maybe they would want to add a stipend for you know. So someone that's already currently a town hall employee who gets benefits already, and this would have to be the stickler because maybe this is why there's unhappiness with us adding someone. Maybe we would have a stipend for someone to take care of what Jeff Murray talked about. You
know, I could throw out a dollar figure out there but something where someone maybe works at it for five hours a week and you know, we'll get some additional pay and then can do all the things that they hoped, you know, at least get it started, get a little brochure going, maybe update the website. I I have no idea why the commission was unhappy, but tonight, one of my ideas was changing that from a person coming in to see if someone's currently working in the town that already, you know, isn't full time, but there are several people I've been in there enough that might want to take those duties on. So you could still list it as a scheduler and you could just because we could just reduce the amount exactly and it would be a stipend to a current employee. Yeah, just so we're showing what intention was for that particular funding.
Eric, what's your thought on that idea?
I mean, I think the only person you could assign that to would be Carol.
Right. And she's currently on the commission, and I would we wouldn't assign it. It would just be a benefit to her if she wanted first dibs at it. So, I mean, I'm willing But but if if you're sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. But if you're saying you're
so it can't be any of the part time employees because you'll put them all over the twenty hour work week. No, it's not that. You do have oh, sorry.
Can't be the tax collector, so that's not gonna work. It can't be a twenty six hour person because that would automatically bump them over 30 and they would now be a full time employee. So we're not going to we're not going to take on that liability. So, it would have to be one of the current employees that is full time if you don't want to incur an additional benefit liability. So, off the top of my head, leaves Carol and the new finance or the new
accounting. What about the assistant? What about, I think your building administrative assistant works twenty hours currently, but I think she might be getting full benefits. I don't know. But she worked and that's that's not neither here nor there. But you have a twenty hour and I was thinking possibly again and I'm not trying to I just thought maybe there was someone currently there. So that one, it could have been the assistant town clerk, correct? The people that I was thinking of, I think already all received benefits, probably to the full extent.
So if you added five hours to the assistant dental clerk, you would make her a time employee. That wouldn't change her benefits. Yeah.
Maybe not because she's getting the fee in lieu of healthcare anyway. So maybe, or maybe she decides it's a great time to put her and her husband on the insurance plan, you know, and we're out an extra $20.
I don't know. And I'm not I'm not trying to be I'm just coming. Thank you. Thank you. But I you know, I wanted to offer it to I would think if there's some kind of unrest or people are unhappy about this situation of bringing on another person to do it, I thought why not offer a stipend which is usually just an additional payment. You know to someone there and I did ask your opinion, so I do appreciate it. So I thought the assist the assistant administrative assistant in the building department works twenty hours. The assistant town clerk and I thought both of them. Already had decisions about their benefits, but you know, so that's that's small. So I don't want to spend a lot of time. Brian, I think you raised your hand.
So no. I'm sorry. We're done, Joanne. No, I just wanted to finish. So, you said that you did receive a call from the commission today,
and they weren't happy about it, so they want us to wait. So, we might have Because you're not necessarily in favor of it. Yeah, they don't think that the need is there for the schedule. They have some other requests,
and but they have a meeting tomorrow, so they would you know, rather than make a formal request at this point, it needs to kinda go through their meeting and be part of their minutes. So they think they're currently handling every and I'm not making a judgment because I have no information. My kids are grown and no. So, we might as well respect that. That just was one of the things on the table that I was going to talk about tonight. Brian,
did you have a question or comment on that? Sorry, Brian. That's okay. A little bit of both. I'm on the rec commission, and we haven't really I'm not at the meeting, I don't know what everybody else is thinking. But yeah, it seems like it's not necessarily needed. So I was going to ask Eric, what exactly are they scheduling? What would they be scheduling?
To be perfectly honest, this was a Board of Selectmen proposal. They were unhappy generally with the level of publicity regarding the various different recreational offices and felt that that was something that the town should consider funding at a higher level, possibly by using one person to be able to increase the overall programming for recreational things in the town. That's what I got out of their request. I don't have details. It wasn't my suggestion. You know, I don't have a person in mind for the position or, you know, really, it's not something I would even start to flesh out until it got through the budget process and then I'd work out the logistics of what we would hire and for what.
Okay. I mean, personally, most of the sports in Andover and things like that are outsourced. The only thing we really handle for, you know, the younger, younger athletes is basketball. So I mean, I don't know if there's that much of a need and, but after tomorrow, we'll discuss it further I guess. That's just my my feeling about it. That's
good insight. I think they also brought up at the BOS, sorry Bill, that their intention is maybe eventually when the community senior center is built, but again, that's a whole another budget item for another year too, bringing on an additional person. That was part of it, but. Bill, did you have something? Yeah.
Just, I agree with Brian. I think let's just wait to see what they come back with. If they're not necessarily asking for it, why even discuss it any further? Let's just wait and see what they come back with and move on. Okay. Alright.
Sorry. Would I have to, I guess since I'm on the board, would I have to refrain from that or from the if we vote on something? I don't think so.
No. No. I mean, I'm on CIP. I don't work here.
It's not like you're having any personal benefit or anything from it. There's no real conflict of interest there that I can see. Yeah, unless you're angling to get hired for that stipend. If you want that stipend then yeah we got a problem. Then you should probably refuse. Okay
alright so sounds like consensus is we wait on that one but we'll just leave that alone unless somebody wants to do otherwise.
Can I ask a quick question? Yeah, go ahead Louise. Is the plan when the community center, after it's built, is there a plan for a like a rec department to be housed there versus in the town hall to make it more like a recreational department for the town?
Yeah, I personally have no idea. I don't know, Eric, if you had done with them. I think long term, what the board is understanding is that at some point, once the building's fully built, that they're probably going to need a staff person to manage. At the same time, at some point, we need to transfer some of the responsibilities that are currently done by volunteers to professional staff. Scheduling for senior transportation, you know, is one thing that I think at some point is going to have to be transferred over to professional staff. And that's a fairly big time suck. Programming for the community center in general, I think would go in that category. So, I think there's a whole series of things that we are going to need to add, you know, along with that building at some point. It's not built into this budget though, to be perfectly blunt with you. I think the the board of selectmen is thinking they're probably going to take some of the excess money or convince the board of finance to allow them to take some of the excess money from the multi use building fund to fund the first year of that person to hire them once the building's up and running and they do. But that's just I know that's been floated, but it's not in any way a concrete proposal at this point.
I think it's an excellent idea to do that and to table this ex excess position that they were thinking about doing the five hours to that time frame. Because yeah, you know, the volunteers shouldn't be doing that. There should be a dedicated rec department person.
That's how I look at it. Okay, so it sounds like there's consensus just leave this alone at least for this meeting cycle. Other input or other line items you want to address Joanne? Yeah,
mean I don't mind opening up the discussion. Mean I know it was a big Push that the town clerk came forward, you know, for her increase this year, and as we've learned and I've learned through that it is our job, guess, to decide on that for a few of the line items in the budget. So I'm glad that we as a board reached out to the current town clerk and were able to get her input. We also consulted as a board with Eric and Mark shared. You know the documents that were forwarded to us from the other towns, you know, as far as salary. It's always tough to talk about a person's salary when you know the person, but it is our job to look at the position. And as I've gotten to know in the last three years that I've been more involved, know it's you know it's a close knit small building so everybody knows everybody so I think it's very important to be fair when discussing wages or anything like that. So we just look at it as a position. So my thoughts on this, know, they first started when I saw the huge increase that was asked for and I get it, know, people are going to look around and and do what they can as far as thinking what they're doing and the the duties that they're doing. I would like to. You know, with with factoring in everything that I looked at different comparisons,
which I thought a lot of the small towns were were kind of comparable. I was actually more surprised than than I was, and I had done some homework on my own in the past in years past being on this board, so. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna raise an idea that I think would be fitting for this year given you know the budget and what was asked for and fitting probably even more than it would make it more than some comparable towns, but I would like to. Talk, do I make a motion first mark or do I open it? I'd like to make a most. Okay, for general discussion. You know if you have a specific recommendation, would go ahead and make a motion and we have discussion with the with the research that I've done and the amount of time I've spent into, I'd like to make a recommendation to raise the town clerk salary line by 6% in the next budget. I don't have a dollar figure on that. So from the 2022
to 2023 budget? From
the current salary that she has now, raising it 6%, understanding that she's looking for something. Yeah, just taking everything into account. Don't want to go on and on, you know. I can I can do the math?
So the recommendation would be to raise the town clerk salary from $52,296 to I had it written somewhere It would be 55,433 Correct. 70
Yes. I mean, keeping in mind when we're comparing these salaries, and I understand they do additional things, but we're looking at the position, The hours that are currently there, which equates to I don't know exactly the hours, but I think it's around a thirty five four hour week. We're not comparing these to forty hour a week employees. Yeah, that's I, you know, I wanna put that out there. Probably more than I initially was gonna put forward, but, know, I that's my motion. K. Just for clarification, what was she asking for?
She was asking for $67,000, which is about a 20 It was a 28% increase. Yeah. I remember 28. I remember that number. Okay. Yeah. Which
Did you hear what I said when I Rob, earlier that I did take the time to look at all the the documents that we had and compare. So yeah. It's tough, know, but we have to, this is the position that we're given and. Yeah. Bill?
Well, I mean, I don't think Carol honestly expects to get a 28% increase. I mean, let's be honest. You look at the position, which she did a good job looking at Joanne. And I actually agree with you. I had a number in my mind of 6%, but I don't have any inclination that she would actually expect to get 28% increase. I mean, would be so far outside of the realm of things. So I think she would probably be very happy at a 6% increase. When I looked at the other towns in the same size and position, they all look to be in that 54 to $567,000 range. So that would put her, I think right smack in the range of a town the same size. And I think it'd be more than fair to give someone a 6% increase in one year. So I just support what Joanne said.
Do you want to second the motion? I will second the motion. Yeah, we don't actually have a second. So we probably should have it before we I will second motion to call for it's that's not me so. Okay. Just, I just want to just point out the numbers again so the current salary is $52,296 The proposed salary is $55,433.76. That's a 6% raise. Assuming a thirty four hour per week schedule that works out to about $31.35 an hour.
I don't think Carol will run again. My suspicion is that sir I'm willing to do it for this and re up next year
you know what whatever and I'm not weighing in that's not what we need to be right about the person. Yeah, because I hate to make it personal. I mean, I've been on both sides of the table, but they continue. That's all I just want to make sure that we don't make it too personal when we're just talking about a position. Yeah, well,
there's one of the reasons. One of the reasons that I calculate the hourly rate is that that's not an insignificant wage, but it. We are also talking about someone who is expected to have a little bit of expertise in a professional position with a fair amount of administrative skills.
We a little low? I would guess we're maybe a little low on that. You know, I wouldn't mind going up a little more, but that's But it might be good to bring her up in increments because I think we've shown this position that we have done that in the past Because I believe that there was a 6% raise rate. Sorry, Bill. So we're incrementally getting her up, and if she's willing to believe in us as a board that we're willing to do that, you know, that's all. Trying to just keep some kind of modicum of what everybody else in the building is gonna think too. Because you know, so. Well, is a different position in character because it's an elected municipal position. So there's a different bill go ahead. Yeah. Well, the only other thing I thought about too was other positions and I
know we have a librarian that's been in town for I think the exact same number of years. As librarian, she has a master's degree to do that job. And what do we pay her? I don't think we pay her that much money. I have to ask Eric if I know it's easy to find out. So someone has a master's degree to do a job has been the same amount of years, think twenty two, twenty three years. You have to start looking at other positions in the town, make sure we're being fair. Does Carol have that kind of education
to warrant that kind of think it's part of the It's not even Carol, I think it's the position. I mean, I think that's it personally, I think that's something we have to look at this is like, does it take to put somebody who's competent into this position? You know, where should they be compensated? It's a tough one because we're not that far off with this number that Joanne proposed to some of the other towns, right? Louise, you raised your hand.
Yes, is there any possibility we could add in a bonus for her?
That thought of? I don't know how you would make a decision on a bonus. You talking about just like a one time? Yes, one year, a yearly this year's bonus
for doing, you know Why would you do that as opposed to raising salary, I guess, would be my question. Because it's a one year thing. And usually Corporations
do that a lot to avoid losing your salary and then having to come out of And then you, your, your benefits and everything key off your salary, not your bonus. That's why they do it. Just thinking, you know, speaking of someone who gets a bonus sometimes.
Yeah. Well, I'm thinking of a raise and a bonus to compensate. I'm not quite sure why she's asking for more outside of in conjunction with other towns, but if there's something more that she did above her normal job duties that would be you know, bonus able. I've seen it in the past.
Yeah, well I think her position is that there have been increases in the duties of the town clerk over time that haven't resulted in compensatory salary increases.
So we can you can debate that certainly you know so yeah. And the thing is I one other thing since I did bring the motion that I gave into thought too. I mean it is unfortunate and Mark brings up a good point. I've made it to a couple people that I've spoken to just on our board quickly. It's this is the day and this is the age we live in now. Know in towns. I'm an employee of a town as well. I have been in my job for twenty two years, but probably I should feel like Carol. Well, no, there I go. That this person feels because in two years someone can come in, you know, and and go up the step in the particular position that I'm in and be at the same rate I am. So I don't think in life at this day and age, you know, that's why we're trying to get positions up to where they go. But yeah, that's sometimes the way it works. So, I could see why people would be unhappy but she's probably steadily grown through the years but it's just now the wages, thank goodness, are, you know, the with the times and
so hopefully we can grow the position into that. That's all.
Louise, did you have more your hands still up in your screen or is that just so? No, sorry forgot to load it. Okay, I think you have to turn on click it. Other discussion? All right, hearing none, guess we'll take a vote on it. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. I'm going vote no. Anyone else? Any abstentions? A little low.
Okay. Motion passes. I think that's not completely unreasonable, so we'll go on. Okay. So right now that's our line item. So the motion was to change the salary figure for the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four proposed budget to 55,433.76, which is the 6% increase. Okay, thank you. Any other line items that anybody would like to discuss? Joanne? I had one more. I
wanted to oh well I'd like to discuss the senior vehicle. You know the senior transportation vehicle too. And that's kind of what I was getting at when. If we hopefully can I know that the Board of Selectmen is hoping to fund it in our current year budget? I've been told they've submitted a couple proposals, maybe in the amount of 30,000. We have it as a line item in this budget that we're working on as 35,000. I wanted to just open discussion to see how everybody felt about possibly taking it out of this budget and counting on it to get funded this year based on the fact that for part of the year we've been I know Eric has no idea yet where we'll be at the end of the year, but a couple of the things I was thinking of. We were down a couple employees at different times during the year, so there might be some salary left over. Just a thought. I wonder what everybody else thought. I'd sort of like to take it out of this year's budget, which would enable us to kind of put.
That's where my line of thinking was. Are you saying buy the vehicle in this in this budget year twenty twenty two, twenty three? When I yes. By We we would have to go to town meeting to do that, I think. No. No. I it's already sorry.
So I thought that conversations we've had in in past budget meetings, It was in emails that it was brought up and Eric concurred in that thing just, you know, in his summation of his things that the Board of Selectmen would like to purchase it this given year. Yes. Not right. And then if we do that because Eric had said something if the Board of Finance feels confident enough that we're going to be able to purchase it, we could take it, take that 35 out of the 2324. Sorry. I'm working on no dinner, so a little slow, but yeah. So, Eric, that would require a town meeting, wouldn't it?
I don't think so. I think since you're in the last quarter of the year that you can legitimately make a motion to transfer money into a fund to purchase that vehicle out of. I think you could you could transfer $35,000 from some place into the senior transportation and buy it out of senior transportation if you so chose legitimately,
without going to senior transportation, which has already been authorized as a budget item, and we're just increasing that as a budget transfer.
Right. And as long as you're not you're not asking for any additional taxation, and you're not taking any money from the unexpended fund balance, which are the two things that would trigger an automatic down meeting. So, you could legitimately do that and, and, you know, and perfectly legally, as far as I understand. The, the two things I would say is one, we're going to have some loss of revenue this year, because money is flowing into the tech, the town clerk's office are down somewhat. And money's coming into the building department are down somewhat. But as I start to look at it, I think that number is only going to be collectively, you know, we're talking about somewhere around a $20,000 loss in revenue. So, which is less than I was expecting when I looked at it three months ago. The other thing is that we did finally get back from the state of Connecticut, the estimate for the resident state trooper cost for the next budget cycle, given our current resident state trooper. Now, those numbers are often fairly inaccurate, but I think it actually can serve as a reasonable guideline to what our expenses this year for the resident state trooper, you know, and based on that, you know, we're probably going to have 30 or $35,000 leftover in that line item, potentially enough to take the whole thing out of the resident state trooper line item. And if we did that, I think the rest of the budget would be under budget, and we would be okay.
So, my gut feeling right now says we could pull it off. But it's a gamble this far out in the budget year. And I just want to be fully fully transparent about that.
And I'm only thinking along these lines because we have all these big pieces of equipment that we're looking to start funding. If it was possible, and I know how strongly the Board of Selectmen was pushing for that too, I just wanted to bring it to this board and see if we could do that because I think in the year that we have, you know, such a decrease with RAM and different things, yeah, to do the best we can with sewing it all up because we're only gonna, you know, we're gonna be spending and spending and spending more things, so if we're able to get it, I'd like to see us get it. That's my thought.
Is this the same? Is this the RAV four that they talked about? That was Yeah, sorry, I got your hands on. Yeah. I'm sorry. And that's the, it would also be used for the school. Is that true?
It would not be used for the school, but what it would allow us to do is it would allow us to meet our senior transportation needs and still do what we need, because currently we use senior transportation vehicles and drivers to help the school out with their special ed students that need transportation. That's what I'm referring It's a lot cheaper than any other method.
That's what I'm referring to. So it does have a dual purpose, though.
Right. I would very much like to get the big, the big bus off. I mean, to give you numbers right now, I'm looking about $6,000 in repair costs over spring break to fix major repairs on that bus. You know, so, and that's going to be that's going to bust that budget a little bit, the vehicle maintenance for that, but we're going to end up using the money we get paid from the school to offset a part of that. So but that's just that thing is a is a blown engine or blown transmission waiting to happen, you know, given the agent's usage.
Bill, is that something else? Is that a school bus, Eric? An actual big yellow school bus, you mean? No, it's not. It's 20 passenger small bus that we use for transporting seniors.
Okay, because we don't own those buses, right? Yellow buses.
No, those are used. We utilize DAT code. That's what I thought. Okay. Thank you.
So I was just looking through the charter and I think Eric may be right. There isn't anything specifically that says, you know, I mean, the appropriations is unless we're even if it's coming out of those those those funds if it's dealt with the top you dealt with in the budget, then we don't we don't need to do, but I, you know. As long as we're not pulling out of those capital in that that non recurring expense fund. As stated in that section of the Charter, we're probably okay.
So glad you know all those rules. I just I'm just looking out for us if there was a chance to fund it in this current budget year because there's funds left over, you know, it would allow us to just move ahead with other items.
So there's a couple ways that I think we could treat this. One is to leave it in where it is, and then as we learn more, you know, when we go to the town, we go to the town hearing, we can decide to drop it. We could take it out now and add it back in if it looks like we're not going to be able to do it this year. You know, it's a little easier to not take action but at some point we need to make a decision on it.
So my only concern is so Eric when you say that your estimate is that we won't use that budget for the state resident trooper. I mean, what happens if we get surprised, I guess is my question.
That's a harder question to answer. One of my frustrations with that is we don't get billed quarterly by the state. We get one bill and we're not going to get it till sometime in August, long after the budget and all our other expenditures are done. And then we get the ta da, here's the bill for the entire last year for the salary plus indirects. And we've been, we've under budgeted by almost 30,000 in the past. And we've over budgeted by more than 50,000 in the past, because the amount we pay goes up and down based on what the state in the end decides they're going to charge towns for the indirect costs. The the good thing we have going for us is Sebastian's a pretty new trooper. So we were going from a trooper that was had a lot more seniority and was much farther up the base scale than Sebastian. So I think we're going to have quite a bit difference compared to what we budgeted before we knew the last time who our trooper was going to be. So I think we have, we're going to be, our bill is going to be significantly less than we budgeted for last year. And if you notice in the budget this year, I've decreased the budget for the resident state trooper from around 170,000 to around 140,000 to account for that. So, you know, that's my best guess, but it's just my best guess.
I feel like we're going to be fine. So I mean, not fine. So I'm going to, so that we don't have to keep talking about it either. I'm gonna go ahead and like Mark said, if we don't feel comfortable as everything comes, can always add it back in. I'd like to make a motion to decrease, take that line out of the current budget for twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four.
Okay, do we have a second? I'll second the motion. So seconds. Any further discussion? Okay, let's take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, we'll take that out for now. Thank you.
Mark, I have a further question and then I'll let other people talk. I promise I just I had. I knew I was coming with some stuff tonight if. Once we do the little things we're doing tonight, the adjustments to the salary and taking this out. It seems this year are you updating the spreadsheet and you'll send it back out to us so we can kind of get a picture? Is that's what Yeah, I'm yeah, I am doing that now. Eric may also be doing it, but we can always
compare notes, make sure we have the same line item. Okay.
We have other line items or other topics that people want to address in terms of the budget? I do. Yep, go ahead Louise. I think I know what you're going bring up.
Yeah, the old cemetery maintenance line 324. Is there a reason why we need to leave the 2,000 in there if we have a $5,000 reward?
So it's what I don't know if you guys caught it in your email or if you got if you saw in the governor's announcement, but there was an announcement released by the governor so there were several grants awarded to various towns for maintaining and restoring old cemeteries, Andover's awarded $5,000 So that is what's relevant here. Louise had asked, hey, you know, how does this affect this line item? It's really how we want to treat it. So the $5,000 is I think it's I don't know if it's earmarked as the right term but there's it's designated to do certain things such as headstone repair I don't remember what else was covered under there Eric so. In my view, if one of the I don't know this and Eric can clarify if I'm wrong, but one of the things that this this $2,000 line item under old cemetery maintenance is really under the ground care. Category, so I assume that means mowing weeding that kind of thing. So Eric you had made some suggestions you had suggested, maybe what we do is increase the amount of expenditure by the $5,000 in there and then do an offsetting revenue line item for the grant for $5,000
so that it would still net out at $2,000 assuming we need to maintain that line item for mowing in there.
Correct. So the question is, so they spend a variable amount depending on, I mean, there's way more than $7,000 worth of gravestone repair that is needed at that facility. What they do is they just whatever they have budgeted and whatever they get in for grant money is what they allocate on a yearly basis towards repairing the old gravestones. And they just keep chunking away at it year after year after year. So your two options are really just to add the grant money to the money in that line item or to say, you know what, we're going to get rid of, or we're going to just have that line item be $5,000 which is the grant, and then put in an offsetting revenue, which would, in a sense, reduce them. So, it's either they have $7,000 to spend or $5,000 to spend. That's the decision.
Would it be harder if you took it out to 2,000 now? Would it be harder to put it back in when the time comes?
What do you mean put it back in when the time comes? For the next budget.
Yeah, the next budget. A lot of times when you pull things out of the budget, you know, people see it gone, and then you have to ask for it again for the next year type of thing. So, it best to
go ahead? So, typically what we do is if we know we have a grant and it's dedicated to something specific, we put that in revenue and then we have the the existing, then we bake it into the expenses somewhere also. So, this case, we would take line two ninety two, which is old cemetery maintenance and just set that to $5,000 and equal that with $5,000 in revenue that we added to the revenue line, which would in effect reduce the overall town budget by $2,000 That's how we would do it. And then next year, we got something different than the grant, we could either add money back in and just reduce the revenue or, you know, however you want to do it, if that's the approach you want to take.
So, you did it if you did it that way, if you took off the $2,000 then the 5,000, some of it would have to go towards the mowing and all that anyway. So basically, you're reducing down the the award down to 3,000 for those extra special things that it's earmarked for. Well, so I'm pretty sure the old cemetery
is part of our normal mowing contract. So I don't think that's just it's just under general ground care because there wasn't a real we didn't really want to make a whole separate category just for one line item for the old cemetery.
So that's so that category is really for general maintenance then and repairs. Right.
Okay. Okay. And if we hadn't got that grant money, we would have spent just $2,000 doing gravestone repair this year, because that's all we had. Okay.
So the question is, I think that we probably need to have at least a $5,000 expenditure to offset the grant. The question is, we want to have 5,000 plus the 2,000 we already allocated, I would hope that they would put to good use, or do we want to just leave it at the $5,000 level and be revenue neutral for the town other than the paperwork stuff.
So you have to use that 5,000 in the year?
Years, I think. Actually, you've got this, that particular one, you have up to two years to expend. Oh, okay. So,
but presumably, you know, dollars 5,000 really gets you the repair of maybe three, maybe two gravestones, depending on how badly damaged there. Because they have to basically remove them, you know, cast them, fill in the existent, the, the, and then epoxy them all back together and they do a bunch of cleaning of gravestones too. That's essentially what the money gets. Linda, you might be able to give more details since Steve's on the old on the committee, I believe. You're on mute. You're on mute. There
you go. He doesn't talk too much about the monetary issues, But if we left it at seven and put the 5 in the revenue, they'd still have their $2,000 The line item would still be there for next year if they didn't get any grants, and they'd have more money to spend.
I think it really just depends, you know, in my view is it's $5,000 I mean we're not talking about a huge amount here, so I would. Say, even though we have technically two years to spend it, you know, maybe they do, maybe they don't if there's something that holds them up from spending it, I don't see anything to not to put that at least that amount in the line item for this year, put an offsetting amount in for the grant in the revenue column. Then, you know, I think the only question then the question before the board is we want to increase it. We want to add the 2,000 plus the 5,000 or leave it at 5,000. Split the difference to 6. Somebody just needs to make a motion. You tell Linda?
I'm not gonna make a motion because my husband's on that committee.
You can still have an opinion. I mean, if memory serves, Eric said there's more than enough work to be done there. So my personal inclination is to leave the 2,000 and add the 5 from the grant. So I will move that we put $7,000 into that line item. We have an offsetting revenue of 5 for a net of seven expenditure. You know, budget expenditure.
We can always readdress. Oh, sorry. Someone has to second it, right? I'll second that. That does make Okay, we second the motion. Thanks, Lisa. Further discussion? I was just gonna say that's a good idea for this year. I mean, will look at it. I just wondered if the time was available. That's all. You know, we have a lot of things going on in the town. So but for 2,000, I'm not gonna quibble, we'll just readdress it next year if it's still sitting. They may well have already a,
I don't want to use the term shovel ready because it's probably inappropriate in many ways, but they probably already have the list of things that they're ready to do there. Maybe they'll be get Yeah, it I'm in favor. Right. We have a discussion. Aye.
Sorry. We're not voting yet. I'm just just stating my opinion. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Hearing none, we'll take a vote. All those in favor, aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. Any abstentions? Hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you.
Okay. And so my suggestion is that you add the revenue in line 14, which is the state miscellaneous revenue category. I think I'm not sure you need to break it out, and you should probably in the notes specify that 5,000 of that is from the old cemetery, you
know, gravestone maintenance. My only concern is that it's clear. Yeah. Yeah. As long as it's noted somewhere, I don't really I don't personally give it, you know, care really. But, like, if it's if somebody picks up the budget and doesn't know what they're looking at and can't easily tell, that would be my issue. Well Yeah. I mean
We just wanna make sure. I'd like to to know how much we spent. And if if we're gonna be able to know next year, putting it in that It it it It's only
$6,000 to begin with. So I think it's for small grants and stuff. Right? I mean Yeah. $5.
So Yeah. Oh, agreed. It's not a ton of money. I just I think Eric's right. Like, we just drop a note.
Alright. So I I put that in there. So Okay. Okay. Very good. Is there any other line items that anybody would like to address?
Mark, can I inject a couple things? There's couple things that you know the part of the problem is is that there's still a bunch of numbers I don't have yet and it's not because I haven't requested them it's because they're not available yet. The one thing I did have a talk with Kerma, our insurance company today. So I did get what their, that they were going to flat line there. So we are not going to have any insurance increase, which is good because I was suspecting that's what they were going to do when I baked that in. I still do not have the final numbers for ESIP, which is the insurance for the fire department. But the overall number that we budgeted for that should hold. Should be good on that line. I still have some ambiguity overall in line two ninety, which is the mowing line item, because the biggest chunk of that is the cost we get charged from Hebron Parks and Rec and I still do not have budget numbers from Craig. I've asked him again this week. I think I will have it for next week but I don't have that yet. So that's all I have to say on that. The one I do know that I've confirmed is an increase compared to what we put in the budget is line 78, which is contract software maintenance. I did finally get the hard numbers from quality QDS, quality data services, and that is going up approximately $600 and a portion of that is the increased cost of postage and then they
go up every year in their costs. So what is that number? We did have it at 12,353?
Right. So that number should be $12,959.50. The final number.
You know, we we the the easy fix here is we make a motion to just increase that line under 13,000 or or $24,959.50. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Which I'm happy to do. Did you say postage?
Well, in part it's postage. So our QDS budget, the what they give us is they give us two budget letters. One is because not every town uses them for the mailing. So the first is the software subscription and the virtual hosting. That's one set of, in printing of bills. And the second one is the cost for the mailing, you know, because these things have to go first class mail by freaking state law.
It didn't it didn't occur to me. I didn't I thank you. I didn't get it, but now I do. Yeah. I think we ended up having that discussion before trying to What is it? Probably. It it just seems incongruous when you hear software, you know, and then suddenly post this comes up. Okay. That makes total sense. I'm happy to make a motion to increase that particular line item to what was it? 1200950?
Yep, 1200950. So Rob I'm sorry, who was that? Joanne? Joanne seconded I'll second it. Yep. Yeah. So Rob, this motion that Joanne is seconded to increase line item 111438Dash3510 contract software maintenance to $12,950 which is the final quote received by Eric. Any further discussion? All those in favor say Aye. Any nays or abstentions? No. Okay, motion passes. Thank you. All right, I have I think two things that one thing that is this little nagging thing that we discuss every year and we end up have left it in, but there's a $2,500 line item for legal work directly for the Board of Finance. We haven't used it. It's really questionable whether we would use it. Know, we keep putting it in there because it's not that much, but you know whenever we requested a legal opinion from the town's attorney it hasn't been an issue. I think the reason this was put in because at one time there was some really bad blood between the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance. The Board of Finance felt that they did have their own legal fund available. Personally, I don't see the need. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and motion that we take this down to zero. Second.
Yeah, I mean, I'll just I'll just since we have a second now just for general discussion. Yeah, that came about many years ago when there was a concern that the board of finance would need legal advice that the board of selectmen wouldn't like. And honestly, it's never come to pass. And for years, I've backed leaving it in there because who knows kind of thing. But, you know, the longer we go without this being any kind of issue, the more I come around to Mark's view, which is that it's fine. Take it out. K. So Anybody else?
Okay. Hearing no further discussion, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. I guess I'll throw this one out there too. We do not need to take action, but we do have that oddball board salary for the Inland Wetlands Commission, is it? No, it's for the Board of Assessment Appeals. Yeah,
right. Yeah, yeah. So there's a $680 line item for proposed budget for the board of assessment appeals. None of the other boards or commissions other than the Board of Selectmen, I believe, has as a salary line item. So the question came up should this be zeroed out to basically be in line with rest of the boards and commissions? Good question. Strong feeling you guys pay that out every year? We do.
Okay. How much is it, Mark, again? Is it very low? $680. So
I just want to put a point out there, and that is that the board of assessment appeals has accepted, has given every single person in the last twelve months that has appeared before the board a reduction. And just so you know, the decisions they just made in the last round, ended about three days ago, reduced the town's total, assessment by $361,000 You know that is not a board that is friendly to town finances and I struggle to reward them for that behavior personally. Eric,
a question. Is that a reduction in the assessed value or the reduction in the actual tax revenue?
That's reduction in assessed value. That really only in practical terms costs the town about $12. But it's still $12 that we're not going to get.
Concur, just want to get the order of magnitude right in my head. That's all. Yep. Good point.
I I hesitate to take it away from them if it's something that they've been receiving for all these have aren't these long running people that have been on that board, I
wondering like where did that, I don't even think I noticed this before,
it must have been long standing. I did have a, I did do a little research on that. That money was added to the Board of Assessment Appeals essentially at one time in lieu of mileage because at one point, the Board of Assessment Appeals was actually going out as a group and personally inspecting all these properties, looking at all these motor vehicles and actually doing a significant amount of due diligence for their job. But that hasn't happened in quite a while. Yet the salaries have continued. So again, it's in your bailiwick because they're elected officials and you as a board determined that. But again, there's a lot of other boards that spend a lot more hours working than BAA does and none of them get stipends. Yeah, I mean, that's I think useful context,
the mileage thing, makes a lot of sense that how we used to do it and how it kind of, we've never changed course and things have changed. Makes a lot of sense to me. So
here's a thought. If that was the original intent and it's a reasonable approach, what we could do is convert that to a mileage reimbursement account if we wanted to leave that money in the budget, and then it would be paid out upon submission of a mileage report just like any other employee, right, Eric? You could. That would be an option if you chose to do that. Or if they're not doing it and it's just not necessary, we could zero it out. So how is it handled now, Eric? What changed? What changed? Nothing. Yeah.
It was a budget of $680 for the last four years.
I just mean like alright. So it used to be a mileage account. Well, it not a mileage account, but it used to be there for that purpose. And the last several years hadn't been happening. Is something is, has there been a significant change to how they do business or what?
Yeah. Now they just got everybody's assessment is what they do. I mean, last year, I I board clerks It's not that they contracted somebody to do it for them is my point. Right. No. They just don't really do it anymore as far as I could tell. Okay. So they say that having sat through six, five or six of their meetings last year and listened to them while my blood pressure slowly exploded.
Basically what works this year has some merit because in theory they could go back to doing the work is my point.
Well, you know, we but we could still reimburse them potentially without having an account for it, I suppose. I don't know if that's legit. Mean, they're considered a town employee, my vote is let's just clear it out. Mean, that's my thing. It's de minimis. It's really not that much money per pound, but let's just there's a strong argument to be made for having consistent approach to the boards and commissions. That's fine. That would be my position. In fact, I'll go ahead and make the motion to remove the BAA salary line item. It's 100 fifteen-one 100.51000. It's currently $680 but we zero that out. Or I move that we zero that out. I second it. Okay.
Rob seconds. Do we have any other further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Joanne, were you opposed? I was no.
I'm won over by the discussion, so I'm in agreement.
You can abstain too if you're not not She's she's no to a no. That's where we are. It's 09:15PM.
Two negatives. Oh, I'm negative on the logical construct will make a positive. Two negatives equal a positive. Clarify, have a yes. No? Any abstention? Okay, sounds like we have that passing unanimously. Thank you. Apologies to the board, but I think it's the appropriate thing to bring it in line. Just making notes here. Okay, so for me personally, the only other thing that I would like the board's input on is and we don't need to make a motion or decision, we can just make the request if we so choose. Do we want, well, for the town clerk seller, we've already made a decision on that line item. So I'm presuming that the board is not in, does not feel we need to hear from the town clerk further.
Anybody feels differently you can speak up and we can request that. Okay.
I think we got you can just address that with the research that we received from her the first time that you know. We got what we got. Yeah,
the second thing is do we want to hear from the registrars of voters to find out if they have additional input as to the election cost line items?
So like I asked Wally to come in or or one of them would be Wally and Linda or the two registrars.
Was it a 5%? We talking? Thank you for bringing this up because I was going to ask one final question. I think there's two things we're thinking about. They've
well they've got an increase. It's not really calculated here. Their total line item changes about 5% but you know it's it's mixed I mean they've got a reduction in a couple of things that have not gone up like equipment maintenance etc, but supplies and training and salaries have all gone up anticipating that there will be additional increases in meals also additional costs associated with the increased work around early voting laws that was passed in the last election in Connecticut. So the problem is, just don't know what form those that expanded voting is going to take it's got authorized, you know by the referendum but. We don't have any real guidance on what exactly that means for the smaller towns so could be a lot, might not be so much, but this was their proposed budget.
Eric, do have anything to add to that?
Just before he starts, what's the dollar increase? I don't have it in front of me. I mean, if it's not It's it's
Yeah. Actually, it's not very much. It's only about it's less than $2,000.
Yeah. Yeah. And you just don't spend that much on it.
Right. So I we could do is, you know, I could just individually rather than have them come to a meeting. I mean, could reach out independently just the Wally and Linda and ask them kind of what their their take is on this, you know, because it was I had actually in the original review we did I had raised the concern that you know have we really budgeted enough for this increase so we didn't have them come before the board. You know if I if I go out if I if one of us goes out to them or you know we go out just individually or separately outside of the meeting and just say hey what do you think you know, are we. You know, are you guys in a panic over this every every crazy do we need to add more or do you feel fairly comfortable that this is where we need to be.
We can always add it later, we don't have to make a decision tonight. That's all I was gonna say is I kind of trust if we're not talking, you know, huge amounts of dollars and I'm gonna trust that they know enough, or they're anticipating Right. We we could always add like you said. Yeah. I think it's worth probably doing this. I'll reach out to reach out to them. Yeah. And then we'll wait to hear back from you. Yeah. I I think it's worth just asking to double check. Dollars, I'm okay with.
You know, if they if they come back and they're like, you know what? We'd feel a lot more comfortable if it was $5,000 you know, it's a $3,000 difference. So, it's not going to break anything. So, let's just ask them, make sure that they are comfortable with the number. Yeah. And we do This is their number. Right? Like, they gave us the number. Right?
But to your point, Rob, I mean, is it enough? So maybe we should just take the lead and say, let's do It seems like if it comes down, it could be a lot more than 2,000. I'd rather be, you know, a little safe there than I'm happy to round up.
Yeah. When it comes to something when you have this kind of uncertainty,
but I think it's worth asking them first. Yeah, rounding up is only going to add $425,425 to it. So, okay, know, I'm going with a different version of figure
so I would never add more money to somebody's requested budget without a good explanation. So I mean, we're not talking about rounding amounts, but I don't want to add $3,000 $5,000 without guidance from them. No. I agree. I don't think we should just willy nilly do that, but let's definitely ask them what they're thinking. And if they've gotten any more, who knows? In the interim, maybe they've gotten some more guidance or something. Let's just chat. Let's just ask them. Yeah. Or maybe they just said, look. We feel a lot more comfortable if you threw in another five grand, and then I would be all for that just because I don't wanna thorn us or run us out and then you know?
Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, what's it's so much better to budget for that than, you know, pull from contingency because we didn't realize what we were dealing with. Especially that early in the budget year. You know, we we try to keep contingency pretty tight, so we don't wanna be relying on it too hard. You know, you get a bad snow year and
Yeah. Then you see it can go boom. Yeah. So, Mark, you'll you'll see how they feel you'll see how they feel and then ask them if they would be okay with an increase to 5,000
total? No, just want to ask how they feel if one or more of them says, know I'm really nervous about what this might mean. I'll say, okay, we're gonna invite you to the next board meeting.
Right now the ask is for 2,000 extra, right? Less than 2,000. Only about 1,600 or something like that. Yeah. So that would be status quo. Like, we would just accept that otherwise unless they had something to
Yeah. I think if either or both of them have concerns, then we probably should bring them before the board, make sure that we're comfortable because we do not want to under budget this. Yeah. Agreed. You know, again, it's not huge money, but I think we just want to make sure we take care of it. I mean, it's kind of an important thing, voting. Okay.
We're all gonna get slapped up. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I'll just
Welcome to budget season. So Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, hey. We've we've had budgets where we sat down and we spent four and a half hours. We went through things and we cut things by a $100. I remember. I was there. Mark was there. I know you were there. Consensus. Sometimes you gotta dig.
Does anybody have any other line items? Joanne, you got a question? I just was gonna ask you, Mark. Did you say something about the planner at the beginning? I thought you said you had other information. I knew you said that people reached out to you today. Was anything about the planner? No, not about the planner. If I used the word planner, I meant the scheduler for the rec commission. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be okay.
I think I'm all set for tonight if, you know with my line Hi,
I just wanted to mention I got an email from Tressa at and she just thanks the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance for passing the line item.
Okay, good. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Alright. So looks to me like we've nailed down a lot of this. We still have to maybe get some things squared away with that fire truck. Oh yeah. That's
the one kind of big thing I think that's kind of hanging over this. We haven't really decided one way or the other. We can take this up at the next meeting or somebody can make a motion. Eric, I don't know if you have an opinion about this, but I'm going to I'll read this to the board. So one of the items in the charter under special town meetings is that, and listen carefully here, this is section 304E, which says leases and or lease options to which the town, including the local Board of Education, is a party which involve a term or obligation in excess of one year, excluding leases of person personality, not personality, personality, and that requires a special town meeting. When I looked up, I'm not a lawyer, so I looked up while we were talking the definition of personality,
and that seems to be most non real estate or investment vehicles, which investment vehicle meaning a financial instrument, not a not a vehicle vehicle. So I think based on my four minute Google read of the definition of that legal term is that that means that a fire apparatus or vehicle would fall under that exclusion, but I'm not really sure and Eric I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or if that one's new to you too.
I mean, I thought, yes. So ordinarily, it would take a special meeting, but a town budget meeting and referendum where that is specifically mentioned, I think does meet that criteria. I think we've used that option in the past. If you were, if you wanted, I would be happy to get you a legal opinion from the town's attorney if you have any question about that.
Let's hold off on that I think it's probably not necessary we haven't made any decision just yet if we think we're in any kind of legal. Gray area, then we can follow-up I tend to agree with you, except that some of those other clauses actually state unless discussed at town meeting So, or it's less unless provided for in the budget. So that this clause doesn't state that, but yeah, let's let's hold off on the getting any kind legal opinion for now.
Yeah. And like I said, I'm not at all opposed to going to a separate meeting. If you guys think that's a more appropriate way to go anyway, do I
mean, I think it's totally legitimate to put money aside in the budget for that purpose, but then go to a separate public meeting and say, well, we've already put the money aside for this. However, you know, if that's how you wanna do it, I I think that's there's nothing wrong with that. That's for sure.
Oh, I'm just trying to remember what we've done in the past. I'm trying to remember the last time we bought a fire truck. Works. Yeah. I don't know that we did that. So it it's not maybe we did it wrong. Fine. But I don't recall us doing a special meeting to buy a fire truck last time. Just throwing it out there in terms of our history. You guys have special meetings to do other vehicles, not that a fire truck So Generally speaking, I think we've usually used a special meeting because we didn't budget Budget. Right.
And we needed to exceed something by significant amount of money, and it wasn't something we could handle by budget transfer. We felt comfortable doing that way. So we were gonna go to the town and say, okay. Look it. We need to do something here. So that's my gut take. Also not being a lawyer, but I work with cadres of them. And based on what Mark just said, I'm a little concerned. If the other clauses say unless provided
by the budget or unless they're dealing this is really great. Mean we know how we know how clearly the Charter is written, which in some areas is just not. And in in so you know my personal view is we probably I would rather just leave the apparatus fund at the 125 ks that we have it now. Yeah. And, you know, as closer we can make a decision before we submit to the town whether we want to request approval for the for the thing or not. If we don't and we need to take action then we need Avatar meeting. So it takes away some of the flexibility of the town of the Fire Department to act. Means we'll have to go through this through that process, but you know that that's just something we can decide on that later, But I think it's I think we probably need to read it a little more closely.
So you want to push this to next meeting? Does that have a meeting next week? It's
really two questions. One is do we want to change that amount on the fund line? Contribution of 25,000 to the apparatus fund. The second question is do we want to recommend to the town that we authorize in the town budget meeting that we authorize expenditure or this signatory of this vehicle or this lease up to ten years or something. So those are two different questions I think. Yep. I just say leave the line item alone unless somebody thinks it's way too low or way too high and we can decide when we finalize the budget whether to throw that approval clause in.
I mean, I'm inclined to do the approval clause, but, yeah, I think we don't have to make that decision right now. Yeah. I'm okay with making a decision, you know, since this has been a lengthy meeting, just kind of finalizing what we're gonna do next week. I'm I'm okay with it as it is right now too. Okay. And then just kind of read. In thinking just finalizing it, I mean we hopefully there'll be more quotes coming in, so we'll have comparisons. It is a million dollar piece, you know, whatever it is, almost million dollars for the town, so it's worth making the right decision. So I'm all I'm, you know, we're having a meeting next week kind of to look at our figures where we are. I think I'd be more fresh thinking next week too, but that's my 2¢.
Can we ask Eric? Can you can you talk to the Fire Commission folks and double check with them on two things for us? One being the the last time we spoke to them there were two other contractors they were trying to get bids from and the other being the thing that Adrian mentioned which is other financing options.
Yeah. Well I think we could probably as part of that just make that you know this every you know tell them that's part of our policy we're going to implement a policy before they need to come back with x amount of financing options and we can select which one makes sense.
Right and remember that they haven't gone to final RFP. I mean, the fire department still intends to put out the formal RFP that you've gotten a copy of. So they've gotten preliminary numbers from a couple of vendors, but they haven't formally gone to RFP on this, which they will. You know, and obviously the financing is a separate discussion. So, but I think their point is that they were not going to formally issue an RFP until such time as they had actual approval from the Board of Finance, and they knew they were actually going to be able to pay for it and sign a contract when they went through that process. Now we're kind of talking about big picture stuff and are we going to approve it? And then if it is approved,
then, you know, the the rest of the dance takes place. You know, now we've just done a little hand holding. K.
This leads me back to my inclination to to specifically approve it and but maybe just remind them of what we're looking for. Yeah. I would agree. And and actually what's required.
Yeah. You know? And we can, you know, again, we can we can make that decision at a later time, right before we go or whenever. Anybody have any other line items we should address or want to address tonight? Okay, hearing none. I just want to make one final comment as I mentioned in the email to each of you I'm going to be reaching out to the chairman of the board of Ed as well as the superintendent asking for a clarification on their budget, because what they presented was not a true budget was not financials. Really all it was is the net expenditures per per account line item. It's the most important information but it's not complete and I think that the town deserves to have that information. I'm going to make a somewhat informal request. Not going to put it on you know letter or anything like that at this point. Hopefully they'll understand and and provide that information
but we'll we'll take it from there and kind of see where that goes. Honestly if there's a if there's an issue of kind of massaging that the point that could be made is hey the way that we want it presented is a way for them to highlight
how well they've done with getting grant money. Yeah. Because you want the grant money in there too. That's the whole point. I know I think. Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think Joanne said it. I mean, they did she did a good job presenting it this year. It was much more clear I think than what we've had in the past. Not complete, and that is the right thing you know kudos to getting those grants that's awesome. Right so let's highlight that too, but instead of just like netting it out fully fully
visible on what's going on, and I think everyone will be much more comfortable. Yeah. And it just it just as a way of making sure that it doesn't come across as hostile because it's not. It's just, hey, guys. Like, we we just don't think this is exactly the way it ought to be displayed. We actually rather like your budget, but, you know, include this information and then it's more holistic.
Yeah. And then I think Val will get that. I just you know, and I'm happy to help with that if you want me to. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll I'll draft that. I've already started drafting it. Actually, I have a draft, and it's very similar to kind of the language you're you're, you know, suggesting there. I'll send it around to the board if any of you are, you know, want to add or put in your 2¢ or uncomfortable with something I'm saying. I'm not necessarily sending this on behalf of the Board of Finance. I'll just do it as a Board of Finance Member and each of you would have certainly have the Just as much ability to do this as an independent you know board of finance Member, but just for the sake of efficiency. Think we're all in agreement we would kind of like to see that additional data,
I think it will do them a lot of good just to make this fully transparent clear for everybody. It's more line item, so it would be confusing to some people, but frankly, it's just the right way to do it. So I think that they'll they'll get a lot less pushback if if it's as clear as possible, where the sources of funding are coming from and what the you know what the numbers are so. We'll you know we'll I'll throw it out there, and you know I think it will be helpful to them if they can provide it in that more clear format. So that's really all I got. Anybody have anything else? All right hearing none I guess we kind of entertain a motion to adjourn. A motion to adjourn.
Okay, Joanne, motions to adjourn. Second? I'll second it.
I saw Bill hand up. Bill got it first, you lose. To her.
He's gonna go walk around the Arch Of Saint Louis. He's like like like this, like at the the ticker tape lay at the end. Yeah. I got it. I got it.
Alright. Any discussion? The usual lanac ice cracks? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Hearing none, we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you everybody. I think we made good progress. We got a couple things we