Meeting transcript
Board Of Finance Regular Meeting
February 28, 2024 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, I see Steven, Kimberly, and also Linda still with us. Okay, thank you guys for hanging in there. We will go ahead and reconvene this meeting in public public session. As you know, the reason for the executive session was to discuss the personnel matter of placing somebody on the Board of Finance. The actual selection does take place in public, but before anybody makes any motions regarding So we'd like to go back to the candidates. Kimberly and Stephen, hopefully you're still there and able to communicate. We'd like to ask you just one last time to summarize your interest in the board, why you think you would be the best candidate and what you're really bringing to this position. So if we could, I'd like to start with Steven, you're first on the agenda. One minute. Yeah. And if you could keep it to say one that we don't have like a long speech or anything like that, but just like you to give an opportunity to kind of summarize. If you wanna think about it for a second, that's fine too. No. My interest is to
get involved in town politics, helping the town with resources, managing those resources. I think my business background and my business experience speaks for itself as far as its success. And I think I bring a lot to the table in that fact. And, again, I plan to be a lifer in town. And, the town is very dear to my wife and myself. And we are looking for the best interests of the town and the future of the citizens of Andover.
Okay. Thank you. And Kimberly, same. An opportunity to make a last comment. Question because I got up. I'm very interested in this position. So we just wanted to you repeat your comment before that? It
was just an opportunity for you to explain why you think you're the best candidate and what's the most important thing that you kind of bring into this role?
I think I'm the best candidate because I have very deep roots here. I'm very invested in Andover. I love this community and I think I can offer lot to the Board of Finance.
Okay, very good. Okay, so I think that's really it in terms of the candidates portion of this, which you guys are contributing. Again, tough decision. We had a lot of good interest, and we definitely appreciate both of you stepping in tonight. So now the decision is before the Board. We are still on the agenda item of the vacant position. If any of the Board members would like to make a motion regarding this position.
I'd like to go ahead and make a motion. Two great candidates. Really appreciate the interest and the time you've spent, especially with us this evening. We take our board seriously, and we are happy to have the interest that you both expressed. At this point, I would like to make a motion to appoint Stephen King to the Board of Finance.
Okay. Do we have a second? Hey, Louise, I see you raising your hand, you're seconding. You're muted. Sorry, yes, I'll second that. Got it, okay.
Do we have any further discussion of the board members? I know we discussed the candidates in executive session also. Hearing none, I guess we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye.
So that gives it three. All those opposed? Nay. Okay, also three. No abstentions on the board. Okay, so that puts it that the motion does not pass. Kind of split there. Okay, so that brings us back to the start point. Do we have any other motions or?
Yep. I'll go ahead and move that we appoint Kimberly to the Board of Finance. Okay. Second? I'll second. Thank you. Okay. Bill? Okay. Any discussion?
And again, I'm just gonna state for the record, it's not an easy decision, it's nothing personal. We're bringing great candidates forward. We appreciate the interest, you both made your cases. Yeah, that needs to be said. So that's the little discussion. Obviously have spent a lot of time, more than we thought we were going to. So that says a lot to the quality of candidates that have come before us.
Agreed. Yeah, in this case it certainly does. Other comments or discussion? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Okay, we have two opposed. It's not hard to say nay actually, okay. No abstentions. I mean nay. Okay. So that motion passes four to two. So Stephen, Kimberly, thank you both of you for your interest. Stephen, there will absolutely be a place for you in Andover.
Yeah. Front over I appreciate it. Hey, is in touch. First I've ever, done at anything like this. Plan to hang around. So, you'll probably be seeing more of me. Please do. Please do. Yes. Please do. Good job, Steven.
Okay. Take care. So thank you. Thank you both. Kimberly, so there's some, you're free to remain and observe the end of the meeting, of course. And there are some formalities that you'll have to go through. You will have to get sworn in by the town clerk, right, Eric? Yeah. And there's some things you'll have to sign, etcetera. Correct. Okay. So Eric will fill you in.
Say that again. Are there any other committees that we are asked to join while we serve on the board of finance?
We'll come up with something for you. Any other group?
So we we have a liaison position. Yeah. Right now, I'm CIP. I'm on the capital improvement committee. Okay. Just sort of our board of finance liaison on that particular board. I missed our last meeting, actually. So if there's when we get to liaison reports, I'm useless this week. But most of the time, that's what I do is I Okay. Report back, and we have stuff like that. I forget. We have do we have
We have an ex officio member on CIP, the capital improvements planning. Yeah. I should know that, right? Yeah, right. So the capital committee, we just call it CIP. But according to the Charter, we're actually required to have an ex officio member on that. Other than that, nothing formal. So it's up to you if you can. It's great to observe, participate in board of selectmen meetings or listen in. You're just really a matter of member of the public, same with the board of education or anything else. But there's nothing formal for the most part. What we do have are a lot of budget workshops and things that we will participate in, but those are just really considered special meetings with the Board of Finance. So we have our regularly scheduled monthly meetings, and then we'll have special meetings from time to time, either budget workshops, or if there's something specific that the board needs to decide that cannot wait till the next regular meeting, we'll have a special meeting. But those are pretty few and far between.
And of course, we have Rob serving in a kind of ex officio capacity to working with the Board of Ed to come up with Yeah. There's to
I don't know how to put it, Rob. You could probably put it better than me. Well, it it's the finance and capital involves capital stuff. Yeah. You know, frankly, it's capital
budgeting stuff too. And, actually, I should probably have asked us to to push that off the agenda tonight because Shannon and I haven't had a chance to reconnect it. We both had crazy months. Okay. So
Yep. Okay. Mark, I had a thought just to and that's that's good for Kimberly to know, and I'm sure she knows being in town. That's what's gonna be coming up is all the budget meetings right now. So timing. Right? Sure. Then the other thought that I had was, and it doesn't sound like you're in this, one of the good questions would have been is like a timing thing because you had asked the question, timing's not an issue, right? With any time available. It's too late to ask that question now. You didn't think of that. You guys both did wonderful. Welcome to the board. Glad you're a member. It wasn't easy. It gets busy. There's a lot of demands.
Think we probably should ask that in the future, is time because we, someone got elected to this board and then not you or anybody knew, but then time became an issue for her and she had to give away her seat and wasn't aware of the time commitment, I guess, the time or vaguely. So for me,
I wouldn't have put my letter of interest in if I couldn't have helped. Yeah. Good, Pam. I
wouldn't do this if I couldn't get the time. I appreciate that because same. It is a level of commitment, so I love hearing that, and I had no doubt. But it's just
when you ask that question. A couple of years ago when I was working with a neurosurgery,
yeah, I couldn't have done it, but I understand the commitment and I'm willing to do it. Awesome. Yeah. Great. Yeah. It's really the next two months that's rough, and then things calm back down. Yeah. By the end of day. Keeping up too, because a lot of info is out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Okay. So we'll we'll be in touch offline. There's gonna be some stuff you need to to handle from an administrative standpoint. You'll get a town email. You'll need to make sure you monitor that, frankly. If you want to include your personal email, make that available to people, you can. That's at your discretion. Generally recommend for a lot of reasons that you manage the storage of your email and most of your correspondence through your town email address. Don't do it exclusively through your personal email address. The reason for that is that if there was a Freedom of Information Act request to review town correspondence, they would actually have access to your personal email, may ask for your laptop, all that. You don't wanna go there. So make sure that your town email is your primary mode of communication. So that'll all need to get set up. My time on this board will be extremely professional.
It'll be the time and address. Okay. No worries. I get it. I had to be very professional.
Yeah. Yeah. I understand. Well, it's it's it's more to protect you. It's just a little bit of an inconvenience to be used to just checking your information. Correct. All right. So if there's no further discussion, I'd like to move on to the next agenda item. Thanks again, Kimberly. You can feel free to listen in and we'll be in touch to get you set up for the next The next meeting is next two weeks? March 13, we have our first budget workshop, I believe. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So the next agenda item is 4B. So Rob, you said we haven't gotten any further on the policy for AES Capital. You guys haven't moved that along at all. Yeah. Haven't. I'm sorry. We we got behind. Yeah.
I actually got an email from Kimber
time on it, and we just didn't have the time. Yep. Okay.
I did get a a reach out from Celeste Willard. It's been over a week ago, and she wanted to chat, I think, just so she I would understand that a little better. I I'm just assuming. So I have not spoken with her. Okay. But that's just obviously, we can't decide any policy or anything. Think she was just looking for information and clarification. Nothing
transpired there, but just so you guys are aware. If she if for some reason you talk to her and she wants to talk to me, you know, send her my way too. Will do. K.
Sorry, Mark. Just to understand, she reached out to you by email and wanted to talk about it? Yeah. She just she just wanted to connect to talk about the policy. So you know? I hope There was there Okay.
Thanks. I'm hoping that at least by talking out loud at the lab, when Robin, Shannon were both there, and then we mentioned that the town is gonna be budgeting, you know, Shannon got more of a feel of what's going to happen. So I'd be interested to hear what Celeste is, know what I mean?
Yeah, it sounds like there was misunderstanding on their side about what we were intending. And I think that clarification
was really probably what she was asking about. Yeah. I don't think helpful. Yeah. Sorry. I don't think BOE really thought about the idea of us loading town money in. Yeah. And It's a lot more Shannon's fair minded enough to realize, wait a minute. Okay. If that's what we're doing That changes things. Right? Sort of a hybrid thing here. And, you know, she's a lawyer. She's not Yeah. You know, a fool about contracts. So she knows she needs to think about that and and get back to me. But, like, she works hard and I think she's just been really busy and I had a crazy month. I got deposed at work. It was crazy. So it's just been a rough cycle. Hopefully, we'll get back into it soon.
Okay. All right. So I guess we have nothing further to discuss on that. If everyone's good, we'll move on to agenda item 4C, which is the review of the budget to actual. Eric, I haven't had much time to look at this. I don't know if anybody else has. I didn't have any particular questions or concerns. Is there anything in here that you're aware of we should be focusing on?
No, we're in reasonable shape. We're doing okay on the snow budget, so that's not really a problem. This budget is missing some of the expenses just because Cheryl was off on vacation, so we had about two weeks of expenses not showing up in this budget. But generally we're in good shape. I don't foresee any significant shortfalls in the budget. They'll obviously be a bunch of little things that are over, but they're not over significantly that will affect the overall budget. We seem to be in pretty good shape.
Okay, any members of the board have further questions or any particular line items you want to bring up or discuss? Not on that.
Yeah. Okay. So if we choose, it may not be a bad idea to put that on the agenda for the budget workshop. If anybody has anything that they see that looks unusual that they want to ask Eric about, we don't have that typically on our budget workshop agenda, but we could cover it there. If you want to just let me know so we can make sure Kate gets it on the agenda. But we cannot change the agenda for special meetings. It has to be on the agenda. We can only talk about things on the agenda for these budget workshops because they are special meetings.
How far in advance do we have to let you know? Is it it's twenty four hours to get it on? I think we need to post the agenda at least twenty four hours in advance. So
it would need to be locked in then. So I would suggest at least give us three business days if you think it's just something you want to add to the agenda. It's not a problem.
Can I ask you a question about when you get your information for your readings?
Yeah. Typically what we do is we get the packet. We try to get it three or four days in advance. It's not always easy. Sometimes we don't get it until the day before. We don't always have time- And that has sent an email?
Yeah. We just yeah. Kate or Eric distributed it via email.
Yeah. I mean, some of the stuff we're aware of ahead of time. But You could also get it on the website too, if you just go to the calendar and then click on the Board of Finance, they always have the packet posted there as well. Yeah, under meetings and agendas.
We as the board should, Kim brings up a good point. It's been a little bit of a contentious thing in the past, and they've done a lot better job between the BOS and us of getting it a few days early so we have time to review it. Because like you said, we all have jobs. We have different things going on, and that way we can look at it ahead. Sometimes we were getting it, and it's hard to get all the information together, but we like to get it at least a few days ahead so we have time to review. That would have jumped to Before public, Right, definitely. Yeah.
Thank If there's no other discussion over the budget to actual, we can move on to agenda item 4D, which is the check register.
Anybody have any questions over that? I'm going to have a few. I had written down a few today, but I'll go straight to Eric with just the big ones that came to mind. Eric, I saw I don't have the number, but you'll probably be aware that AIG retirement services check-in the amount of $12.50 dollars I wasn't sure if that's the thing that I had been emailing you about to get an answer on that retirement account or if What was that for?
No. That is individuals in the town that choose to do payroll deductions to fund their own individual retirement accounts, and the town puts the money in directly because it has to be pretax.
And then is there like you so this is the employee based the employee elects it on their own. So do they reimburse the town for the amount that the town cuts this check for?
Well Because the town has no doesn't pay them that money. In other words, they elect to take a deduction in their payroll. Yeah. So make less money and have that difference pretax be put in in a retirement account.
Basically, a voluntary four zero one k or something. Right.
There's Right. There's multiple questions that I had that I was waiting for answers on. So I was wondering if this was alright. Because I know that alright. So that's the voluntary one instead of payroll. Okay. Because Murph goes to all town employees, they would alright. So that's okay. And then I saw something I'm sorry. I I didn't know we were gonna be so I'll try to keep it quick. I did have quite a I'm assuming let's see, liability checks to the union. I saw a couple liability checks to the union. Is that just a normal thing that maybe I didn't pick up before? They're not big amounts. They're like $2.25 and $1.25.
Sure, union members are willing to actually pay into it, get their dues voluntarily. Part of the unfortunate part being a town is that we are required to collect the dues for union members and forward that to the union. So that doesn't cost the town anything. It only comes out of the employees paychecks.
So that's a paycheck. It's hard to know what all these things are when you're really looking at it. So thank you, it won't become a Sure. I'll probably table this and if I have anything specific, I'll do it when our minds are fresher, because I did have quite a few and I don't want everybody to have to sit through if they're standard things and it's just hard to, you know, when you don't look at it all the time.
Yeah, and we could put them in an email too. I mean, there's no reason that Cheryl Eric couldn't answer it It's by not like we're voting on a policy decision. That doesn't need to be a public discussion. Would think from that standpoint, if you're just looking for information on the background, you know.
And this was just the first time I kind of went through it and a lot of them stood out. So I mean, I've looked through it, but a lot popped out. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so I'm going to table this for my own self and I will do that, Mark. Thank you. Okay. Honestly, there's only about 70 if you wanted, I'd run right down through the check register and tell you what all the bills are for. No, no. Just want an explanation. I always trust what's going on there, but a few of them just stuck out, you know, of things that I thought were handled in a different manner. So I thought I would just bring it up.
Trust but verify. Hey trust but yeah, exactly. Kudos for the eagle eye, you know? Yeah, thank you. I couldn't resist. All I'm gonna ask one more since Eric said that.
No, we're gonna go to email. Thank you. Let's No, that's okay. Okay. All right. Pass away. Anyone else? I'm only kidding. I'm good.
Okay. So agenda item 4E is the conduit installation and propane tank install. Eric?
I was going to have something more on that, but now I'm not because we kind of solved what our dilemma was. So it doesn't require, it's not going to be anything I'm going to come back to the board on. The only thing I would say about all the projects related to the fire department, the propane tank installation and the town hall electrical upgrades, is we did discover one pretty serious issue with the wiring in the building that we hadn't anticipated before, and that's when they constructed the new wing on this building. They undersized the electrical conduit to the elevator. So we're having to figure out how to deal with that. That's fairly serious because it's a wire that should be capable of taking a 45 amp load, and it is taking a 125 amp load. So it's not a minor oops, it's a major oops. And we're trying to figure out how to correct for that. So everything else is running pretty smoothly. The electrical updates are ongoing. This building obviously has had some real wiring issues. The one thing I would say is Friday morning, the town will be out of phone service for a period while they're swapping over the the main access to the VoIP system in the building. So that's it.
Swear I've had old houses that were less jury rigged than this place.
I know. My old house is a Victorian with knobbetched wiring. I felt pretty safe. I mean, every Every time I feel like every time we go to do something, he discovers something else. Else. Are you actually able to use the elevator?
Oh, we are. It's been that way for fifteen years. Know, they just We got away with it. Yeah. It hasn't actually Until you don't. The the problem is is it won't blow a fuse. It just overheats the wire. The only saving grace is the elevator's almost It just overheats the wire. Just overheats the wire. Right. Yeah. You know? Fire hazard?
Yep. Why isn't it fused? I oh, because it's fused at one thirty five.
Yeah. The breaker's at one yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's
it's actually fused on one side, it's fused at one fifty, and on the other side, it's fused at, you know, but it's a four gauge wire, you know, running through a very small conduit. So it needs to be derated anyway. So it's just a we're going to correct it. It's just it's one of those things where every time we pull something apart, we're like, oh, what about that? Oh, what about that? You know, but we'll get through it. Okay. It'll be good when we're done.
Okay. So nothing more to discuss on those two? Nope. Okay. Anybody have any other questions? Okay. We'll move on to new business item five. We have 5A, which is the initial audit results. And I know there's a lot of pages here and probably most of you haven't had a chance to really review it. The real meat of the matter, if you will, starts maybe on page 111 or so, 112 of the PDF. There's some recommendations there. There are some findings. As Eric had said in his email, a lot of it has to do with some of the concerns that the auditor has over the school's reporting. So there is a limited amount the town itself can do it for. Let me try to find the actual. Okay, yeah, the findings actually start on page 126. You'll see them there. It probably makes sense for each of us, we didn't have too much time to look through this for each of us to kind of look through, but there's some material findings, material weakness findings, twenty twenty three-one in the internal control of financial reporting for the school district general ledger. Twenty twenty three-two, material weakness in internal control or financial reporting.
The bank and inter fund reconciliations. So think that's between the school and the town. Is that what I Yeah. Yeah. So Eric's nodding and you can talk one more. Twenty twenty three-three material weakness and internal control over financial reporting, reconciliation of the town and schools GL so that the two different ledgers are not reconciled together. So it's probably worth looking through that a little bit. And I know for those of you that don't have much financial background, which is kind of including me, I've got some, it's a little tricky to kind of know what's going on. But Eric, do you want to address those or comment on them?
Can I ask a question first before we Thank you, Mark, for opening it up to us just real quick? No, first of all, I wanted compliment that we got it so early. We have to acknowledge that, right? I mean, I think we just had our meeting in November where we just went over the other ones. So, kudos to Cheryl and her team, Eric, and everybody there getting the information. Did kind of peruse it today, so yay that we're getting it so early. So that just needs to be said for the town to hear that after the many, many, many, many, many, many years, many finance departments and everything that we now have this done now to be looking at it, which is shocking. And obviously, Eric, I'll let you speak because I just wanted to make that comment first. So, we're making a lot of progress. And then as you're talking, Eric, I wanted you to fold this in if you could for us because this is it does, it kind of go, I did read some of the things and it was, now that I've been through the, sitting through it a couple years, several years on the board and then listening to his presentation,
I can understand those things that we are cited on or they're getting better. And you also mentioned that at the BOS meeting. But I am concerned, and hopefully you can explain it to us just quick. I know we'll talk about this more in-depth. You know, they did have some findings between the Board of Ed, their accounting, matching up to what was reported. And I'm very familiar with the state site that they report to, because I used to do that in my position, being reporting to the ED site at the state. But you had written that letter where we sort of broke apart, you know, that was So, can you explain
I mean, we are we back together? I mean, we're obviously audited together. Are we two separate audits that are then married? So that's kind of my disconnect with this, but thank you, Noah, shush.
Okay, so let me share my screen and we'll go through, hopefully you should be looking at something that says financial statement findings. So I'll go through the three audit findings and then we can talk through and we can talk through procedurally like what we do. The first is financial reporting in the school district ledger. Honestly, that I don't see, we don't have any access to their financial data. So I have no idea what the cause of that was or what the result of it is. That's not anything I can affect. In a perfect world, they, we would be doing a combined reconciliation of our accounts, but the school has steadfastly refused to do that. So we've kind of given up asking, and we've simply asked that they properly reconcile themselves, which this is basically, you know, a indication that they were having some issues with their own internal reconciliation and that they're not closing the year out properly, and they're closing the year out very late. Part of that was they were still writing checks on the previous fiscal year, as of like the October November timeframe,
which, you know, except under very limited circumstances, they should not have been doing. But that's, but they were. So the second one is just a straight statement that the school district's bank reconciliations were not completed and were not fully reconciled to the town's general ledger. And it's not that they're not fully reconciled, it's they're not reconciled really at all because they don't give us the information to reconcile. They're trying to be a completely separate entity, but the town technically should be one entity when it comes to the audit. So the auditor is required to marry the two sets of financial statements and create an overall financial statement,
which is part of that's answering my question right there. That's thank you. Now I now I have the full picture. So literally, like you said, you guys have given up. Thank you for letting me interject because that was really big for me. So we aren't allowed to ask them anymore. You know?
I mean, I've asked them many times, but what are you going to do? I mean, than take the school board to court. Okay. I'm not sure how you could possibly force them to do it.
Thank you, Eric. Yeah, I just, that's the part I wanted to understand is, are we doing the right thing? Are we allowed to do that? Or are we supposed to keep trying to get it? I understand. You can only ask so many times. And the reason I brought up the letter since this was the point interest to me was I felt like we did something or there was some letter written that we were gonna do it separate. Or is that what you just said reconciling separate and then marrying? Well,
so we're not arguing with the school reconciling their own accounts. That's fine. You know, they have every right to reconcile their own account, but then they should be forwarding that reconciliation to the town, so it gets married into the town general ledger. And that's really all that has to happen. You know, they've got a, you know, there's a series of information that they should be supplying the town so that these two can be married into one document and presented to the auditor. You know, and it involves both capital things, capital items, as well as, you know, other things. To be honest, this year, I didn't even ask the school, you know, for a list of their capital acquisitions
because, you know, I knew I probably wasn't going to get it anyway, so I just kind of saved my breath. So that's the two of the the second material weakness was involving the school districts, the actual monthly reconciliations that they were doing and ensuring those were correct. Again, those are not things the town sees. The town should likely get that reconciliation after it's done. But again, we're not even asking to do their reconciliations. We're just asking to get it when it's done. So the auditor recommended that they hire a consultant to assist them and get them kind of straightened out and reconciling correctly. So the third one was really the financial reporting and reconciling the combined ledgers of the two accounts. And as the auditor stated, the town general ledger is not integrated with the school district's general ledger, and therefore, entries have to be required to reconcile the activity between the school district within the town. And there should be established either end closing practices followed by both entities. You know, and so flat out, they did not give the town the information to put together a combined financial statement for the auditor. And so that was kind of the third material weakness. From my perspective, the good news on the town's end is that none of these things are in control of myself or the finance department. So all of the previous material weaknesses that were uncovered within the town's side of the financial ledger have been dealt with and are not repeat findings. The only one that really directly involves the town
is finding O3, which is a reconciliation of the combined general ledger. And again, unless we're provided the information, we have no ability and the treasurer's asked for it multiple times, as you well know, we just they're not giving it to us. So that's not a deficiency we're going to be able to correct, only the school board could institute a change that will make those three go away. So that's where we're at from my perspective. I would like to go back to around page one twelve because so there were some recommendations for what the town can do better, and I've read through those, and I'll take those to Art, and we'll come up with a procedure to tighten up on those. The first one revolved the school and the eGrant system. That's something that we don't have any visibility in anyway, so that's not something I want to tackle. We have a procedure in place for identifying capital assets. We were late in running that through this year. And that's on me. I should have sent that out earlier. We actually had all the information collated. We just didn't get it to the auditor in a reasonable fashion. So that's on myself and Cheryl. It wasn't an audit finding because we had the information. It's an audit finding because we didn't get it to them as, you know, it's a recommendation because we didn't have it prepped
when they won. We still have, many of you know, we used to have, oh, 70 liability accounts in the town for various different things, many of which haven't been closed out. We've closed out an enormous number of those, and we've really knocked down the list we have, but we've got to keep working on that because we still have way too many bank accounts and way too many accounts that have no real value to us. But it takes a lot of work to go back to each one, figure out when it was set up, what conditions it was set up, whether it's state or federal money, how it can be spent, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that one we are still definitely working on. Again, it's not an audit finding, but it's a recommendation from the auditor that we take seriously. The second thing is they, you know, when they come in and do random audits, they pretty much walk in and then ask for a bunch of information.
In a couple of cases, we couldn't give the information. It's not that we didn't have it. It's just we couldn't find it right while they were sitting there. And so we provided all the information, but they were like, well, why can't you produce it instantly when we ask? And we said, okay, that's a good point. We'll think about that. And that one I'm not sure how to address because some of our information is decentralized. You know, I mean, you know, there was of the test documents and they usually give us, you know, 70 to 100 purchases. There was one we couldn't find all documentation for right off the bat. I mean, we found it, but, you know, we didn't have it readily available. I think it got misfiled. So, you know, we need to do better on that. The recommendation number five was an interesting one. It's something I hadn't thought about, but it basically means they his recommendation is that we start doing a better job of documenting for each of our purchases that trip the capital threshold, that we have an actual sheet that goes with them, that says, you know, this purchase is X, which means on our purchasing
policy, we need to either go to RFP or we need to use a competitively sourced program like Sourcewell. We use Sourcewell under this contract, and just file that with each one. So it's easy because we don't do so many of them that we don't like he he can ask me and I can tell him basically for every major purchase, you know, did we buy it off the state bid contract? Did we go to RFP? But we don't, you know, that's a great suggestion. That's a great idea.
Or to kind of document that and put it right in with the purchase. So when the auditor asks, it's staring them right in the face why we did it the way we did it. And that's a great suggestion, too.
Eric, along that line, if you don't mind, just so that I don't belabor it. Read somewhere in there that they talked about the purchase order policy or instituting purchase orders. Is Cheryl very much against that just because of the amount of work? I'm in favor of it. I think it just streamlines the whole thing.
You know, we haven't talked about that specifically. Mhmm. I mean, Cheryl hasn't really had a chance to review the audit and the auditor's comment because she's she's diving down in, think, Cozumel right now. When she gets back at the end of the week, she'll have it and we'll discuss it.
I just think it just to thank you, Eric. I just think it does help as far as just in so many ways. I'm sure the school does it. Maybe the software that they use was set up that way and it just takes it from the right line. You just have documentation, instant documentation, which has you then create the files to have everything in an orderly fashion. That's all. I know we won't go into it deep, but once you all do review it, I did like that idea as well.
Sure. Yep. Yep. I mean, there's certainly some advantages to going to a purchase order system for everything. Disadvantages
too. Well, either have the purchase, you know, then I think of the work thing you either, you know, for me working in those departments as well, you either have the purchase order system where then you attach everything to it, put it in a file, have the file readily available with all the sign offs, the account number, or you do, which I'm sure you guys do now, do the reimbursement way. So it's not really like you're creating more work. It's just kind of streamlining it. But again, I'm not there. So you all will decide that. I'm just looking at it from afar. But I even answered my question because then I'm thinking there has to be some paperwork when you reimburse people if a purchase is made, you have to backtrack. This is kind of just doing it in the order that most people do it in. And it just kind of creates a natural progression
of everything getting married to each other, putting it in the file, easy to find later. That's all.
Thanks. Yeah, mean, typically when we cut checks, like normally the procedure is Christine once a week gives me a stack of bills, then she's already coded that bill with the department and line item that money will be taken out of, unless she's unsure, in which case it will be a question mark. And she's supposed to have checked to make sure there's actually funding in there to draw against that. And then I review all the invoices. I sign every invoice. If it's something that comes out of an individual department, the department head will have already signed that invoice. Like anything from public works is already pre signed by Jay. So, we don't have a purchase order system, but we do have
that sounds good. I understand exactly what you said. We used to have a stamp where we did exactly that. I guess it's more the permission, right, to right? I that's the part I'm not so do you approve all the purchases ahead of time is the thing. Whereas, yes, she's cutting the check. She's cutting the invoices. It's more the approval process to purchase something, I guess, is what I'm getting at. I and then we don't have to get into the weeds as Mark likes to say. Know we're not here for that matter tonight, but that's just my thoughts with the thing. Reading this on the outside, those are the questions that came to mind of how it could get better with some of his suggestions. But I have no doubt Christina and you are doing a great job with setting up the routines and everything that was talked about with the process of hiring for that position, so that's great.
But in answer to your question, there's no purchases that we make that I'm not aware of before we've made it or countersigned except for a very limited few things that run through the town clerk's office. But in general, I've signed for every expense that we have in this town. Okay. Which is burdensome, by the way. Okay. And so that was number six regarding the purchase order system. And then we have a few things in terms of funds that we've been running balances on, and we need to clean this up with the Board of Finance. The historic preservation fund, I'm not sure why that was over, we were trying to look at that. Transfer shed, that's been on the books now for four years. We just need to basically transfer that money into that fund, clear it and be done with it. And the equipment reserve fund was in part something that revolved around the purchase last year of the plow truck. And when we purchased it, we agreed to spend money out of the equipment reserve fund and a certain amount from the equipment reserve fund and a certain amount from the unexpended fund balance.
That's what we went to town meeting on. That's what actually got approved. But when the equipment reserve fund was actually audited by the auditor, he concluded that there was less money in there than the town felt was in there because some other expenses he felt were capital expenses and therefore should have been applied to that line. So that ran negative. And again, we just need to make a transfer to clear that, you know, to zero out the equipment reserve fund. You know, again, I don't think that's anything too big a deal. Again, they're not audit findings. These are just things the auditors are saying in the future, you could do better if you did X. So I always like to take those to heart. Other questions for me regarding the audits? And I can give you a summary. We underspent our budget and we brought in more revenue
than we thought we would, not by a lot, by a little bit. So overall, the town now that the current surplus, we're basically at around 12% of our annual budget in the unexpended fund balance. And remember, what we're trying to do is operate on roughly a 10%, you know, unexpended fund balance account to account for any emergencies or anything where we need a large sum of cash in a short period of time. So that's good. We're financially in good shape. We managed to grow that reserve and the Board of Selectmen has recommended that we use about 150,000 of that additional money to offset taxation in the upcoming budget. Conversely, the school underspent their budget by about $112,000 As you may have remembered, they were originally going to write us a check for about $125,000 but it turned out they didn't have that surplus give. So the auditor credited that account the 112,000 which is what their surplus was based on the motion that the Board of Finance passed previously, but acknowledging that it's less than the thing you passed. So that's, that's kind of it in a nutshell. I would like to sometime before the end of the month officially accept the audit report. So unless you or the Board of Selectmen find something in the audit report that you don't agree with, I would like to
accept it. Also ask Question there. Sorry.
Just because there's only two days left or what? We're at the twenty eighth. There's like one more day. Well, I Is accepting the explain
because I I feel like I only started looking at it quickly, but I forget. Does is accepting meaning that's it? Like, you said Cheryl hasn't even looked at it yet. Right. So I
I had that discussion with the auditor Mike, and I told him there was no way we were going to sign it by the end of the month. That's I filed another audit extension. It was not ideal, but not the end of the world. So we have the month essentially of, I don't want to file another audit extension because we essentially have the audit complete. The only last thing from the town, unless we find a material problem with the audit where we catch a mistake or there's something that we don't agree with, the only thing we have to do is we have to respond to the list of, you know, material weaknesses in audit findings that were made, and we have to respond with a corrective action plan. I did ask the superintendent to write the correction action plan because there is not a a thing in there which I can influence. So me writing, we're gonna do x and correct this makes no difference because I don't have any say. So I asked her to do it. Ultimately, it will I will be the one that submits that because
the town audits as a town. They don't the school doesn't audit themselves separately, which is why we use a single auditor and the town pays.
But Can you remind all of us, and sorry, Rob, just one last follow-up question. So we just got this a couple days ago. Understood. Again, I'm very happy that it's much quicker than it has been in the past. Just to remind us for the when when because you're saying now if we don't sign it by the end of the month or accept it, the words you you know, whatever your verbiage was.
What do we do so then we have to do more? So what is what is the deadline that ideally When you say when you say end of month, you talking tomorrow? We'll reach out to know March. We're talking end of March.
Okay. Alright. Oh, Eric. Well, that's where I was going. That's why I said, what do you mean by tomorrow? Tomorrow's the twenty ninth. There's it's a leap year. Yeah. No. So the way it works is
Oh, wait. That's a lot better. That's why I was, like, going through it. You either
file your audit by January 1, or you request an extension. Okay. You can only request an extension in one month intervals. Okay. So we put in a request for January, an extension for February. Now we'll put in an extension that carries us through the end of March. It doesn't get really bad until you go into June. But there's also no reason we can't file the audit officially in the next five to ten days as long as nobody has an issue. But I do want, I would not want to give the auditor the go ahead until the treasurer has blessed it, and I give you all and the Board of Selectmen at least a week to say, Hey, this I don't understand, or this bothers me. Mean, can get most of it, and I don't see any issues with it personally, but that doesn't mean that somebody else won't identify something.
It was easy to follow, I thought, and understandable, and it was better than last year's and all of those things. I feel a lot better with the end of March deadline. I could see us doing that, like you said. So to eliminate going forward again, we're getting the town better, like you said. Was just concerned with the one day. So Someday we'll hit that January 1 mark. Yes. That's the goal. That's the goal. Someday. Yes.
I and one more question, Eric. With respect to you asking Val to write the correct corrective action program, but you have sorry. Plan, but you have to file it because it's down. Would your filing be like, you know, based on information in town received from, you know, this is what it is, or were you just going to be asserting it and signing it yourself as if it was your product? That's my question, I guess, is
So that's a good question. It depends what's what's whether I agree with what's written on it. I mean, I'm not filing anything. Don't well,
I'm not saying I know, again, it's a bit of a black box. I understand where you're at. So I'm asking you know? And I can I can talk to Val too, but my thought is here, we wanna be careful if the town has little to no control over something? And we're gonna say, well, we're gonna do x, y, and z. That's what correction plan is.
Gotta be careful what we say. Right? Right. That's why I'm saying she's gotta figure out she's gotta come back to us of how she is going to eliminate those material weaknesses, because they're not material weaknesses I can eliminate because they're not something I have any control over. And we'll submit that and presumably, you know, each of each material weakness, there has to be somebody that's in charge of addressing that material weakness.
Presumably- It state under the deficiency notations that the school's management understands and agrees and will submit a corrective action. So hopefully, hopefully that's clear
and understood and we'll get that'll move this forward. That was always good. That just occurred to me like, you know, who's who's telling who what,
you know? Alright. I'm good. Thanks. Mark, can I ask a quick question? Are you opposed to are we because I was gonna bring this up later, but it kind of rolls into this. Are you opposed to how would you feel about you, your you, me as the chairman and the vice chairman inviting Eric and then setting up a meeting with Terry Smith and Val to kind of just go over a few things? Would you have an hour of time in the future?
In next I could if there's a clear agenda and we know what we're trying to achieve and they're amenable to it.
I'd love to sit at the table with them. As you know, I emailed all of you last year that I had gone on a meeting and I'll bring up the second part later just real quick. But I think that would be nice if we sat at the table with them and because I think the town is moving in a good direction, and that would be night. I'd love to see this all. So then we'll ask Eric. Eric, how was it received by Val when you asked her? Jasmine responded to me. Oh, you emailed her?
Yep. It wasn't a phone call or okay. Yeah, because I would like in good faith to go in. I mean, I definitely will take the time off from work. You know, and anybody that would want to be there, I don't want to make it too big until we do bigger things. But I'm happy to go in and I have a good relationship with Val and with everyone I try to. But in the spirit of coming together and moving this thing forward, getting some corrective things done, see what we can do. I'd love to do that. But I don't want to take that on without Mark being, you know, is the chairperson. So I don't wanna do it Anybody without
has that, yeah, can certainly do it. I mean, it's just, we can't obviously make policy determinations. No, not at all. But we can have communication to try to open that communication or discuss
options or something. I'll tie it in the second part after. But, yeah, I would love to do that. I I think you two would be great to do it if for some reason, like, when you're scheduling, you run into trouble and, you know, one of you can't do it or something, want me to step in, you know, check with me too. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'd really like to get this sorted and I don't I keep running into this issue where I don't quite understand what the heck the problem is. Given everybody involved, I think it does help to sit down. We had that joint board meeting, and it was actually, I thought, productive. So I think continuing along that line is a really good idea, Joanne. Thank you. Okay. Just think this is Very important communication time. Yeah.
I would suggest if you do it, you also invite Celeste Miller. Yeah, was gonna make the same suggestion. Great.
Okay, other discussion of the audit results? Again, we have time to review it, so nothing super pressing here. It's a good overview. It is worth noting that following those findings, is a page that addresses specifically that we corrected the two TOM related findings for the previous audit. So that's good to see. All right. So let's move on to agenda item 6A, which is the approval of the meeting minutes for November 29. I do want to take a look at that. So I note that on page 130 of the PDF or the meeting minutes, says review, the item number four is review with auditor the 2022 financial statements. And it said Mike distributed financial statement audit packet for the twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three fiscal year audit,
which is incorrect. Right? It should be the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two. '22 fiscal year audit. Right. So I'm gonna propose that we table the, the meeting minutes until that's corrected.
What I would suggest is that you just you have to do is make a motion to amend the minutes to state that it's a 2022 fiscal year.
Okay. In the interest of efficiency and time, I'm just going to make the motion that we, amend the minutes for Wednesday, 11/29/2023. Item four, to state that the Mike Van Deventer distributed financial statement audit packet for the twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two fiscal year audit. Second. Do I have a second? Thank you. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes six to nothing. Thank you. Okay. And I guess we need another motion to approve those meeting minutes then. Bill?
I oppose that we accept the minutes as submitted with the one correction as amended.
Okay. Second. Second. Okay, go ahead, Rob. All in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? No, very good. Thank you. Okay, we will move on to agenda item six. B, which is 01/24/2024 regular meeting minutes. Does anybody have any comments or concerns over those? Anybody like to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes?
I'll make the motion to approve the 01/24/2024 regular Board of Finance meeting minutes Okay. As Do I have a second? Second that.
Okay, Louise seconds. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And any abstentions? I think we got everybody. Thank you. Okay, moving on in our agenda then the next items are the administrator's report. Eric, you got anything we haven't already talked about? Sure,
I got a couple things that you will see, and that is it came too late to make this packet, but the Board of Selectmen and CIP have made a recommendation to you to put forth to public meeting the purchase of a piece of equipment for public works, for basically buying a new roadside mower, as well as an equipment trailer. So, I asked the public works foreman to go back and provide a more concise capital equipment plan to that, which will be in your next packet so you can review. There's a series of other things that will need to be addressed at a public meeting. So, I think we're still six weeks or so away from holding any public meeting. So, I didn't feel like it I didn't feel like it would be a problem to push that off to your budget meeting two weeks from now as a quick discussion point
before it gets recommended for town meeting. The second thing is we did submit a LOTSIP grant for the Route 316, you know, bicycle and pedestrian connection. So, essentially makes the connection between the municipal complex right here and the rail trail, because that was a long standing priority of the zoning commission in the long term plan and in the complete streets plan. It's a big grant application, we asked for about $2,900,000 which if you get it would fund 100% of the construction. If we do get it, and I'm actually pretty optimistic, it was a pretty good grant application, and I think we have a lot of things going for us. We put it in at a time where the state is really focusing on multimodal transportation. So, we're basically trying for the money at the right time when the state is really pushing those types of projects. So that's good. On the downside, we did not get the steep grant or the trip grant that we had submitted trip is a rural, you know, transportation improvement program. Interestingly enough, almost every single project they funded was for multi use trails or sidewalks or trail work or, you know, multimodal
connections, which is odd because it wasn't really the way the grant was structured. But for whatever reason, the review committee that was reviewing that must have really been in the trails because pretty much that's all they funded in this round. So we have to think about that for the next grant submission. I'm also looking forward and had some preliminary conversations with our, you know, from with Mr. Murphy's office about putting in for a congressional set aside. So, one of the things that I'm trying to accomplish is generator backup for the whole municipal complex here, as well as in public works. There is a fairly competitive FEMA grant that you can apply for. We're marginal to get that. If we get it, if we apply through our legislators, we have a better chance of getting it, but it takes longer. So I'm thinking we don't even know when it's going to be due because the federal government hasn't even passed the budget appropriation that was supposed to be passed in last October for this year.
So, they haven't even said when they're going to accept applications for next year. But I'm trying to prep one for that because I think that's important. We're also about to submit a grant to the DEP rec trails program to study another connection from the town hall down to a rail trail. And that honestly is really a fallback if we don't get the lots of funding as an alternative approach. So those are the big things coming through in terms of grants, and equipment requests. And I'm happy to answer any questions you as a board have.
Go ahead, Rob. Rob, I saw your hand first. Yeah. Well, I I missed the last CIP meeting. I was completely fried after being deposed all day, so I just couldn't handle it. So I missed the mower thing. Is this Eric, correct me if I'm wrong. We've been kicking around mower stuff for a while. Is this a completely different piece of equipment than the other one that I feel like we've talked about repeatedly? So
we we own two mowers essentially. We own one little one. It's called the Steiner.
Those are I think I remember. Okay. Those are about $30.
And then we have the big Wompin one for roadside mowing, which if you remember, it's got the big boom arm on the side and you can row mow at any angle in out 20 feet away, all that kind of stuff. Okay. Those are expensive ones. That's the one the one we have right now is around twenty two years old, twenty three years old. And, you know, we've just been having a lot of problems with the arms, and the hydraulics and the boom portion of it itself. Right.
And, you know, we've kind of had a robust discussion because it's only got about five thousand hours of run time on it, which for a tractor is not all that much. But at the same time, the thing about mowing is that, you know, the engine runs at full RPM when to drive the mower head because it's an enormous hydraulic load. So, it doesn't have a lot of hours, but it has a lot of wear and tear. And that's why, you know, Jay made the case to both CIP and Board of Selectmen exactly why. I asked him to tune up his message a little bit, so we can present it to the public in a kind of more coherent fashion. So, you will get as part of your next packet, you know, essentially the same thing we provide to CAP, which is, you know, the fifteen year plan for public works capital equipment. So you can kind of see where this all fits into the spectrum.
Was just gonna add that it was a thank you. It was a hearty discussion at the BOS. I mean, they covered that a long time. So there was a lot. I learned a lot that night and you know, they really went back and forth because it's going to be a big, big expense. So
one second for me. One of those things where you don't realize a a mower is this major piece of equipment that costs us that much money and then Right. And they went into it in quite the detail. So I mean, it's gonna be a good that it's going to public meeting. It was unfortunate. I couldn't make I just wasn't up for that meeting. Yeah. Well, you'll we'll have plenty of of time. So we'll cut I'll catch up. I was just curious because we had also dealt with the smaller mower, the Steiner that he was talking about. So
I had him conflated in my head, and I'm glad I asked the question. Thanks, Eric, for explaining. I just wanted to ask. So, Eric, my question to you with you know, we're gonna be having the public meeting and everything. We'll we're going to be able to hear from the town because there is a lot of trail talk lately, you know, just from everything I've heard. We have a lot of trails in town. There's the connectivity. Just as far as the priorities, are we going to be posing that to the town if that's their priority? Like you said, there's going to be a lot going to public meeting. I've been hearing all these things.
I get that all these different things that we're trying to achieve between community center and all these things and every this is why it's good to have a lot of different opinions involved because I'm thinking not everybody is going to think priority A is good for them, but they so I like that all these ideas are coming to town meeting before, you know, because like you have said many times, this involves so much of your own time and writing these grants and putting everything together and all of that. So I'm glad that we're going to go to town meeting finally, because I feel like it kind we kind of need to get some input, you know, just like with budget things,
if that's the way they want to go or what they want the focus of the town to be. So that's all. That's that's my part on that. And then you said that the LOTSIP grant will be a total of 2,900,000. But if we get that, that would be 100% funded.
Construction is 100% funded. And that is why before we ever launched LOTSIP that I applied for and finally got the design in the study funding. Because the thing about LOTZIP is I
have to move, so I'm still listening. To do the design portion of it. Yeah.
So that's why we went after congressional funding for that first. So we got $100,000 to do the initial study. And we've got some of that, a good chunk of that money left over. So the goal is to get as much of the design done out of our initial $100,000 allotment. So the town is not putting out a lot of money of its own, you know, and the construction's fully funded, which is the majority of it. So my goal is not to not to have the town pay for really any of this project. But I'm sure we'll have some costs related to it. Right. No, I think it's great. Like I get
the passion of all the people that are involved in the different areas and things that are coming forth. I just think probably with all the time and everything, it's good to just get to town meeting to get some of those priorities brought up, know, make sure that everybody's on the same page and wanting all the same things. I don't mind saying I said I'm a person of my word. I don't personally see Andover as a walk around town. You know, I wish we had little coffee shops and ice cream shops and the whole connectivity thing. So I have some other thoughts. That's all. But so, you know, kudos to everybody doing all the work and putting the time in and grants are awesome.
But yeah, I just wondered how much the town was going to have to provide for that. Thanks. Yeah, I'm well aware if I went back to the town and said I want $3,000,000 to put in a pathway. Yeah, and those weren't my words. Those were not Joanne Hebert's words. I know we would never do that. I know we all know. I've been to enough meetings over the years to know that,
you know, the way you get these things through successful is say, hey, we grant funded for this. It's not gonna cost you anything. Here's the benefits.
But the truth is a lot of the work has been done already. And the time and effort that you put into it all your time to get it ready. Sure. You had to do it in the pre planning stages. And there's no way around that either. So Sure. Me, I'm trying to wrap my head around having the town involved with some of the decisions of how they will you know, the lifers that they said tonight and everything. What and I hope that I'm here for a long time, but I just want everybody to weigh in on how they want the direction to go and hope they have a little piece of it.
I would also recommend that everybody on the Board of Finance, if you have not already, fill out the survey for the Planning and Zoning Commission that is on the town's website for the plan of conservation and development. So far, we've got about 130 replies. So out of roughly 1,200 households, that's not great, but it's not terrible. So that's one great way to make your voice heard. Yeah.
Other questions for Eric? Okay, we can move on then I think to item eight, which is liaison reports. I know Rob, you said you didn't make the last CIP committee. Anything else from anybody?
Think we basically got CIP from Eric, so. Yeah, yep. Okay.
We'll move on to item nine, which is board open discussion. Do we have other items for the board, some general discussion?
Quick question. Just quick question. I've been from going to the other meetings, Eric. I've been hearing that and maybe it was in the the River East, how Ram is giving back money to the town this year. I've heard it in multiple meetings that I've attended. Did we get any info on that? Did we get an email or anything with an update? Or is it too preliminary to do any of that?
No, that's the budget you should have in your inbox already. Has that number baked into it? Has the full From today or? Well, I just sent it to you shortly before this meeting. So Yeah. Okay. I don't expect you to have seen it, but you'll have it Oh, yeah. To review. Now when you say baked in, because you sometime I remember the year that we got funds back from RAM before.
How much are we getting back from last year's unexpended money? I
will tell you in two seconds. Don't call it all. I know it's late. I mean, it's in there and I can figure it up, don't do that. I ate in between, so I have a little more energy. I don't want to start
asking a bunch of questions. No, I should be able to answer that in about It's $3,119,000
For the Andover portion, right? Correct. I can't wait to see They their total usually have money left over. Okay. No, that was a quick question. And then appreciate that. And then just wrapping it up to Mark in my discussion of hopefully setting up a meeting with the school, you know, AES and Terry and Val. Did we want to pursue this year what we were trying last year? We could wrap it up with how they presented the budget. I know their budget's done, submitted, already. They did a great job on their website of presenting all their meetings. Did we want to talk to them about a quick informational page that will tell us the grants and the whatever, and we might be able to wrap that up in our meeting, just have a little discussion about that. Yeah, possibly. I mean, you know, I feel like I'll I'm go in with, yeah, but okay, Yeah, you go
was just saying, you know, personally, I don't think they do an adequate job of it, I have not looked at the budget documents for this year. I just haven't had a chance Well, before they make their presentation, but, you know, it's it's certainly something that they should be doing. Honestly, I don't think they do it adequately,
but we can we can certainly bring it up. Let me try to explain what I'm trying to get to. That that's all I wanted to bring up. Like, if we're gonna meet with them anyways, we can with you there too, we could just show them. I'll bring my little rough draft and see if they wanna do it, especially now that we're establishing the capital improvement account for them to, yeah. Just a thought. Because we started that at budget season last year, and, it wasn't anything that got dropped. I had one little meeting with them, but, you know, just wanted to know if you thought it was worth the while of bringing that up again.
Yeah, I think so. I have to structure it. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay. Any other open discussion, question or comments from the board?
I would just ask since we have about two weeks before the next budget meeting that, and Kim, I will also send you the budget as soon as I have an email address for you. So that's no problem. To know what did it what you want from me at the first budget meeting. What are the what are my deliverables in that you wanna see for the first budget meeting? What are there specific things you know you're gonna wanna do? You just want to go from the budget from A to Z, or how would you like to break down and how would you like to get information regarding the budget?
Eric, can I make a request? Thank you for bringing it up was my other little notation. If we can do our best this year to not have those last minute things come in, I just had the time, so I've listened to the Board of Selectmen in their presentation so I have a good idea of what's coming our way, and that will be helpful to me. But I think they did a good job of doing their things. I think we'll do a good job of our process, but I hope that we're not hit with, you know, like the fire tanker thing again or, you know, a couple things that we debated at the end. So hopefully we won't have any last minute add ons would be my prerogative.
I agree with you totally. I ask all the departments to give us me the information by the first week in January. I'd love to say I get it from 100% of them, but I don't. It kind of annoys me, but you know.
No problem, you do a good job of requesting it, presenting it to us, asking the right questions. I just, Maybe we could avoid that this year.
Well, one way we might avoid it is that if anything does come in, we can do one or two things. We can ignore the request, which I'm not sure is totally appropriate, although it is one strong-arm way to do it. The other thing we can do is, and this would be what I would suggest we consider, is have them come before the Board of Finance, explain what they're asking for and why it's late. Put them on the hot seat a little bit. Sometimes it's actually unavoidable and sometimes it's That's a very good idea.
Stuff happens, we know that, but I think that they should explain it. Right.
And I think I was more alluding to those big things. Hopefully those we would know. Yeah, I mean, we're gonna be faced with it. It's gonna go the way it's gonna go, but I'm just putting it out there. It's easier to be prepared when you have We can always hope. Yeah. We can always hope. K.
Other questions or comments, Rob? Well, I was just to respond to Eric because he kinda asked what we would want from him, and and I'll just give my thoughts. I don't know if this I don't obviously, just speaking for me. But the first pass of the budget, what I'd like would be kind of a high level overview. And then if we could take the five or 10 biggest expenditures or increases maybe drill down on them. I think we're going to get to the line by line Roto Rooter routine at some point, But I think first pass, what are the big changes and why? Yeah, would be my
I agree 100%. I think we should look at anything that's got an increase or decrease of more than say 10% with a value of more than a thousand dollars. Think if you do that, you're going to find that they're really, maybe there aren't that many. A lot of them are minimal increase, if any. But there are a lot that are like 159% payroll services. So let's kind of understand that. It's a $2,700
differential or something. Yeah. Help us understand where things are really bouncing up and down so we can understand it. Usually, I think, Eric, generally, we we do the thing where we look back three years. We look at what we've actually spent, what we budgeted, what we've actually spent. We can kinda bring that all together and say, okay. What's going on here? That's helpful for, like, identifying where the real issues are. Yeah. One thing I think we did last year, and I think it worked fairly well, I'm not sure how structured it was, but if
everyone can look over the budget and compile a list of questions, send them to me, I'll do the same, and then I can compile those questions in advance, get them to Eric and he can review them and try to have answers in place or ask for clarification if he needs it. My guess is there's probably 20 or 30 items that we're going to need to really talk about. Probably not that many more.
One other thing, Eric, I just sent you an email. I had I I went to get into my town email address, and I I can't get in for some reason. I don't know what I screwed up. So if you could help me out with that, great. But in the interim, if you could somebody could forward the email that we got on our town email addresses to my personal one, then I can I can access that easily? But no. I've somehow screwed up and Doing it right now, Rob. So apologies everyone for my technological incompetence.
I can't get in either, Rob. I I tried the password and username today, and it keeps telling me I've had too many login attempts, and I've been blocked out. And I only tried once. It goes it goes invalid
login and then I tried password reset and it was like, it gave me a completely different weird error message and was just like, nope, bye bye. Yeah, that's what I got. Do I have the wrong website entirely? Like what am I even doing here? So I admit this is almost assuredly my own fault. So, you know, I preface this with that, but help.
Mhmm. Yeah. Me too. I'm going to ask that you both call my admin assistant tomorrow, and she will walk you through, setting getting your email straightened back out. Because if you've logged on too many times, you'll have to reset your password anyway. I haven't logged on at all. It's a problem. Yeah. I think that's my problem. I never logged on, and now That's that's my problem. I screwed this up myself. But okay. Call your admin. Alright. I
have one more question when we're done with that part. Yep. Okay. So Rob, I just sent it to you. Think, you know, if you don't get it, let me know, but I think I have your No. I'm sure you have my email. Can't I can't do it for you, Bill, because the only personal email I had was your LeGrand one, and I think that's not active anymore. Right? Oh, you don't have my w just Rosie? Hot mail? I didn't see it in my contacts. Send it to me and I'll send it to you. All right. I'll forward it. Okay.
Oh, sorry. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead, Joanne. A question for Eric. I think this would be helpful this year. It just came to mind while we were thinking about it. Because a big part of the budget will be the funds that we add money to every year, the funds that we just Kim probably knows because I know she's been to all she's very involved in the budget too. But you know how we add things to the tree fund or the road fund or the this fund, you know, in the hopes of building it up every year. Can get a document that has totals on that Eric? I know we like say add 100,000 to this one. Can we get something that has the total? Because I know the Board of Selectmen would ask you that a lot too. Go, okay, we're gonna put in 150, but what's our total on that? If we could ask for that ahead of time and just even if it's a separate spreadsheet, not to make more work, but that will be really helpful to see where they're adding up to. Thanks. That would be great. Yep. Not a problem.
Other questions or comments? Okay. If we have no more further board discussion, we'll go on to correspondence. Does anybody else have any correspondence? I will just say I got an email already from Stephen King thanking us for the opportunity. I forwarded that all to you so you'll have it. Okay. I hope he stays involved.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think he will. You sounded very interested. We can always use BQ. All right, no other correspondence. We'll move on to agenda item 11, which is public speak. There really isn't any members of the public that I can see other than Kimberly, I guess. I don't know if you have anything you want to add Kimberly, are you good? You're muted so I don't know if you're talking to us or not. I'm good. Thank you.
Okay. The one thing you do have to do is go to the and town get sworn in by the town clerk, so you can be seated at the next meeting.
Can you hear me? We can hear you, Ken. It's just very delayed. Hello?
Yeah, was lagging a little Yeah, there's a lag on the video especially. Your video is very lagged. Yeah, I don't know if you heard Eric, but what he said is you'll need to go to the town hall and get sworn in by the town clerk. We'd mentioned that earlier. And
when do I need to do this, Eric? Before the next meeting. Prior to the next meeting because you can't be seated at the next meeting unless you've been sworn in. So the sooner Okay. Thank you. The next meeting is two weeks?
Yes. March 13, I think. And Eric, we're gonna have the RAM budget report. I think Colin's gonna do a report on RAM. Is that confirmed? Yep, that is confirmed.
Okay, or budget presentation I should say in that report.
So want details for that meeting, you want details on all the funds and then a info on basically the five to 10 largest budget increases. Okay. And we'll start from there. Sounds good.
That would sound reasonable, Eric. I mean, let's pick the big ones and drill down later.
Yeah. But again, if we have any specific questions, if you had a chance to go through it ahead of time, let's try to collect them and let Eric get out ahead of it. I think it'd be much more efficient for all of us instead of him trying to dig into it when we're on the meeting. Yeah, definitely better. None of us wants to spend any more time in budget workshops than we have to. We've had those four hour affairs and
we don't want to do that again if we can avoid it. Just so that I understand, we already got the spreadsheet or we're getting the spreadsheet?
It's already there. Okay. Sorry. Eric sent it right before the meeting. Nice. Yeah. Should be should be in your inbox. Okay. Yeah. And, Mark, I got your email. So it's here. I have it.
Just sorry. Along those lines, Mark, I don't know if you saw the email from, Valerie's secretary asking
you know, they sent their budget along, and then they're looking to get on one of the agendas, just something to keep in mind, whatever meeting. Yeah, I think it looks like we're gonna have the RAM budget presentation So at our next I'm thinking I really don't wanna do them both in the same meeting. I think it probably makes sense to follow it in the next workshop is what I'm kind of thinking. I can't think we could possibly digest 80% of our budget or whatever it is, 75%, 80% of our budget one shot. That's crazy. Correct. We got to set that up. Yep. Perfect. Yep. Can I ask who Valerie's secretary is?
Her Diane Cain. Okay. Yep. No problem. That's her name. Diane Cain. I think she she'll she sent an email this time with the attachments of their budget to us. Actually, I do know Diane. I wasn't sure that that was still her secretary. Thank you. I believe so, yeah. Welcome.
Did she just send that to you and I, or did she send it to every it looks like she sent it to everybody. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was sent on the twenty third. Again, when you get your email, Kimberly, I'll forward that to you as well.
Just do me a favor and send me a copy of it too because they don't send it to me. I'll do that right now. You can forward it. Number in for the school budget. Want to marry
Oh, no. He maybe he didn't. She didn't copy everyone.
It might have just been you and I, Mark, and a couple. We oh, no. No. Okay. Rob, Bill. Oh, okay. Ryan. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's posted anyways. When I get into Laine. Yeah.
Oh, to tell you. I'll call Kate tomorrow. It is Kate. Right? Eric? Correct. Because it's funny. I went to put in that email address, the admin, whatever, and it still comes up Linda McDonald in my email.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'd like to draw this to a close if we could, folks. Yeah. Any more so, Kim, you're all set? You can just wave if you're good. I'm all set. I'm all set. Thank Thank you very much you. So we have no other public speak. We'll move on to agenda item 12 adjournment. Anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I motion to adjourn. I saw Rob stand up first. All Mill all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, no abstentions. Thank you very much, everybody. We will see you in two weeks. Please do, if you can.