Meeting transcript
Board of Finance
October 26, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Call the meeting to order at 07:02PM. Hold on. I think everybody's meeting. Okay. I don't see Kurt yet, but he can catch up if he joins in. Let's do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, for which and one nation. Oh my God, indivisible of liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay. I don't see anybody here. We have on the call. I asked Cheryl Miller to join us. She is the person we have hired to be our interim treasurer and to straighten out all the finance office and convert us to QuickBooks. So I wanted to have her come on, not that I wanna put her on the spot for any kind of report, just to say hi, and just to give us if she has any update for us on anything.
Diane, I was gonna make a suggestion. Yes. That we add, when we get to additions and deletions, you add item three B, which is treasurer's report, and let Cheryl Miller give that, and then add 3C of public works report. We've got some info that we really need to discuss from Jay that we just kind of got today.
Wouldn't you put those under either finance report number five or eight new business. Shannon Rather than three is just additions and deletions in the agenda. Shannon You could
all I'm asking is that sensor both professionals, you know, that are responding to an evening meeting Do them early. Them early in the meeting.
Yeah. You could it item four and move everything else down one numerical number. Right. We would have to do that. Yeah. We seem to have lost Cheryl. Scared her away already. Alright. So
She's back in the waiting room. I'll let her back in. Let her back in.
I don't see anybody on here for public speak. So I'm going to jump off of that. I see Cheryl there. Hello, Cheryl. Oh, can't hear you. She's on mute. Can you unmute her, Eric, or not?
Yeah, Cheryl. I'm about to unmute. Nope, I can't. Yeah.
Derek, you're unmuted. Speak now. Still can't hear you. Uh-oh.
Is it the volume maybe? Sometimes I think I'm talking and my volume's all the way down. I'm not sure.
You hear us, Cheryl? No. I don't think her speakers or microphone are working at all. Okay. And I don't even know if she can see her chat. And I can't type. I'm just sending her a message.
Carol, if you can hear us, give us a little wave.
Just sent her a chat. I don't think she can hear us. No. Oh, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Oops.
I mean, I guess when in doubt, exit the meeting, come back in the meeting. Try that. Because nothing else is working. I just heard her say no. Maybe that was with the voices in my head. He's trying that, I think. She's on now. I can hear her phone.
Yeah. And she was picture just popped up a couple seconds ago.
Enter your participant ID followed by tab. Please enter the meeting password followed by tab. Oops, I spelled here wrong.
Now we're gonna get the wicked reverb. I know. There are nine participants in the meeting. This meeting is being recorded. You have been added to the waiting room. You cannot talk or listen until a host has Okay, Eric. Did you admit her again? Course. I'm here.
Now we got the reboot. We can hear you, but you can't hear us. Well, I could hear you. And now I can't. That's me.
Alright. So we have to either mute your computer. I'll do it. I can do this. Do that? We don't get Now the right talk. I'm sorry? Perfect.
Perfect. Now we can hear you. Yay! Success. All right, quickly, we're going to move Cheryl and public works up sooner. We'll just talk to them now. Cheryl and Jay don't have to stay on the whole meeting. Cheryl, I want to introduce Cheryl Miller. She's the person who has been hired to be our assistant treasurer and to help work on the finance department problems and get us converted to QuickBooks. Don't want to put you on the spot for a formal report, Cheryl, but do you have anything you want to give us an update on or say?
Yes, I've been in contact with the auditors. I have received all of the documents for the 2021 audit, which includes their lead sheets. And what lead sheets are is how they group all of the financial statements for the town to put it into summaries as you see on the audit report. I have to have those in order to move forward. I received the auditors' bank reconciliation that they had done. Eric has also sent me mister McGuire's bank reconciliation. Again, this is for the 2021 year. I'm working currently working on seeing if I can track the outstanding checks from the previous years. We had they made an entry in the books and records for 2021 that I'm trying to research and see where if I can find out why what the difference is. As I move forward, I will have reconciliations for all of the 2122 fiscal year. We've installed QuickBooks on the treasurer's or the finance department's, computer. It's going to be an enterprise. I am working currently on the chart of accounts attempting to take yours and put it into the unified chart of accounts as the state of Connecticut wants. I haven't put anything in yet. It's all in a Excel format. Once I have the format as good as I can get it, I figured I would send it over to Eric, to mister McGuire, and to you, Diane, to review it. Once it's okay, I will input that into QuickBooks and then install the 2223 budget and then bring in the July, August, September, and now October
information, and then we should be ready to start using the QuickBooks, I would say, by the beginning of December. No longer using the Edmond everything will move forward with the QuickBooks.
Anybody have any questions for Cheryl? Carol, do you have any questions for us or anything that you need from us?
Nope. I'm meeting with Eric on Monday. There's a couple of documents for payroll that I still need to obtain. I'm hoping that once I log on to the payroll module that you have, I'll be able to locate the document. I need a cash lead sheet in order to make sure that it comes in correctly into the bank reconciliation. And then within QuickBooks, I'm also gonna set up a memorized transaction. So each time you have a payroll, you just have to open up the memorized transaction, put in the numbers, and close it. You won't have to start a whole new transaction. It'll already all be there and memorized for you. Once I get the lead sheet, I will contact the superintendent again, tell her how I found it, and then ask her to forward me hers also. I did receive all the check runs and check information that I needed from the school so I can reconcile those items for the 2223 excuse me, the 2122 year, and then she and I will meet again to start working on the 2223. I'm working on the spreadsheet for the reconciliation between the town and the school. And as soon as I have some idea of how it's gonna flow, I will send it over to the superintendent. We'll work on it together, and then I'll be able to provide it to the town and to the board of finance.
Alright. Anybody have anything else? Questions? Anything else? I am good. Cheryl, you are more than happy to stay on or you can get off and have dinner and enjoy your evening. I'm sure you have lot. If you would
If you would like like me to stay on, I'm happy to. If you have any questions that you want me to attempt to answer while you're going, I did print the agenda. If you have questions or issues that you want me to attempt to address, I'm I'm happy to. I I don't mind staying on and listening to your meeting.
The only thing we and this is really because it's still in Edmonds. There is an expenditure report in the packet, which is just a report that I ran. That's what we are where we are with Edmonds. So I think if there's any questions in there, that is something we can take back and do research. I didn't see any anomalies in there, but I know there are some errors in there. But those are things that we will fix going forward with QuickBooks, so I'm not that worried about it. So Okay.
If no one has any questions, then I will jump off. Okay. Joanne, do you have questions?
Hold on. No, I'm hesitated to ask. I can hear you. Okay, yes. Hesitated to ask because I feel like it's so new, but since you did mention you're starting a procedure, I think you said with payroll where they can just, you know, not starting a fresh process every time. Did you find in the past that was something that might have been a detriment that they started brand new every time instead of having something like that? Or is that not a fair question?
Well, previously, you were entering in your information into Edmunds. I'm not sure if it was a direct download from the payroll module into Edmunds or whether it had to be manually inputted. Eric may be able to answer that better. And I'm sorry, Eric. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I just don't have I'm not sure. Certainly, with the QuickBooks, it will be a manual entry each time that there's a a payroll processed. I'm sorry, though, I don't have a good It is done manually now also.
And it's not like there's 100 employees anyway, so I don't know if time would have. No, thank you. That was the only thing that came to mind because you know it's still so new. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome.
Cheryl, the one question I have with the being able to memorize the transactions and input the payroll indirectly. One of the things we've struggled with in the past was the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance wanted to see in each department total, like say you had the assessor's office, they wanted to see salary and all the benefits in the individual departments. And we had originally set it up that way. The problem we ran into is we got a lot of pushback from Marina and Sherry saying that that was way too many individual entries every month, as opposed to what we're doing, what we have set up now, which is to lump the benefits in, in just one kind of benefits pool of, you know, here's the insurance, here's the, you know, the Payroll taxes is something So, we talked here's the What are your feelings on that? Is it possible to memorize, do a memorized journal so that flows automatically to each department or is that too much No
it is not so the payroll once the once we have the payroll runs, and I memorize the transaction whoever's receiving payroll town clerk, tax collector, First Selectman, whomever is gonna receive a payroll, it will automatically be set up in the memorized transaction to flow to that specific department's line item. Then, normally, salaries actually, not salaries. The Social Security and Medicare match is just normally one group amount, not normally split out between each department. The benefits, though, that are being paid, you don't pay that through payroll. You pay that separately through an accounts payable when you're paying insurance and things of that nature. Once we set up the bills and I go in and set up the accounts payable for there, once you put that particular vendor in, I'll have it set up where every time it goes in, if the bill has not changed, it will automatically populate to the correct department separate. So tax collector, if she has insurance, will go there. Town clerk, she has insurance, it'll go there. It'll automatically do that. For any benefit that you want, just going to be part of the accounts payable process. It's it's not difficult at all. Okay. Great.
So payroll taxes will be a group unto itself, and then everything else associated with the employee and department will go flow to the department totals.
Correct. Yes. I mean, I could do the Social Security and Medicare separate, but it that's no offense, but that's a little overkill. You have to pay it no matter what. Right. Once you know their salary, multiply it by 7.65%, and then you you we could I mean, I can do it. I certainly can. But at some point, your budget to actual is going to be so big, you're gonna have multiple pages long. Right. And we have to kinda decide how detailed.
I just think we were looking because we have people who carry insurance who don't carry insurance. The department cost for each department can vary depending on how the employees have chosen their benefits. And that was what I think people were trying to get drilled down to, Eric. Was that correct? Why they wanted everything broken down? That is correct.
Yes. I I certainly can set that up so it will flow in that manner as as soon as it you know, as long as it's put in correctly, it should flow correctly. But that's something the review process on a monthly and quarterly basis certainly should pick up right away.
I have a question. Go ahead, Louise. Okay. First of all, I wanna welcome you, Cheryl. Thank you. And are will you be the only person who's gonna be making the the what? Entries. Entries into the system? Or will the No.
I don't mean to overspeak Eric but I do believe that that a additional accounting clerk will be sought and hired. Okay. So as of right now you will be. I well,
I I Eric, we still have Marina doing accounts payable. Correct? Yes. So our intention is not to have Cheryl do the the general data entry into either QuickBooks or Edmunds. Her job is to get us through the audit and to act as the town treasurer. We will be going just making some final decisions about the actual financial assistant before going out to advertise for that, which hopefully will be advertised next week. Okay, thanks.
Do you have anything else? Alright. We're good. Thank you, Cheryl. Cheryl, thank you for your time. Anytime
you need me, just scream, and I'll be happy to do what I can. Okay. Thanks. I'll see you on Monday, Eric. Thank you. Sounds good. Yep. Bye bye.
Alright. Now that I kind of messed up the agenda. Does anybody have any problem with Jay going next? No? Okay. All right. Eric and Jay, you guys are up.
Good evening, everybody. Thanks for letting me jump in here. So, as you know, we're getting ready for winter and we start working on our equipment. A couple weeks ago, we sent in one of our trucks, truck seven, the 2,005 international plow truck, to one of our vendors because we couldn't read what the problem was. It had to be plugged into the computer or their computers to be read. So we had some heavy exhaust problems. It seemed like we were having using some antifreeze, so we're concerned about that. Anyway, and short is just got a report back today after they diagnosed things and pulled it apart somewhat. So the turbo was bad. We have some injectors that are bad, and the oil cooler is leaking, which needs to be replaced as well. So, I sent Eric an estimate of repairs from the facility and the repairs to the truck are $14,285.84 So, want to make you aware, I'm checking into some other things. The parts that they listed are really expensive, so I was kind of checking into the parts through a different source, see if they're a little bit less expensive, which initially I got the turbo that I found was a little bit less, but I don't know if it's exactly the same one. I'm assuming that just based on our VIN numbers. So I'm waiting for a little bit more information, but regardless the cost it's going to be pretty expensive to repair. And that's Truck 7 is our frontline unit. Or one of our frontline units. We currently have in capital maintenance account. A balance. I'm showing a balance of $21,771 and I still have a few invoices left over waiting for a statement to come in from the sweeper parts.
So I still have those parts to turn in $6,644 which would leave me a balance in that account of roughly $15,000
So, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's not the pub, that's not the regular public works maintenance fund. That is the budgeted capital maintenance fund that we had for fixing the sweeper and potentially purchasing a new sidearm for the flail mower. Correct? Yes. The mower head, which Well
So that in your email, Eric, that account number doesn't exist in our report. So,
and this is where it gets a little funky in our budget. We have a vehicle maintenance under the public works department that has, I think in our report, has a balance list of $25,000 and then we have a permanent fund for capital for Department of Public Works of $100,000
We do, but if you look on page 13 on the top, there's also expenditure line item eleven-eleven oh one-seven zero one, which is town garage capital expenditure. And that was something we put in the budget specifically last year to handle two major, you know, repairsupgrades that we needed to do. One was to the sweeper. We've done that, that came in roughly where we expected it to was we expected the pet spend around 10,000 on it. And Jay, if I'm correct, we ended up somewhere in that ballpark.
Yeah, we're a little over on that, yep. Okay. And the second one was to
page. Are you on Eric Are you on the expenditure report that we have in our packet. Yes.
Yeah, it's the that's the actual page number of the report not of the page number 13.
I just want to get there because I want to make sure I understand this 13 capital expenditures time garage. Okay.
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess what we're saying is at this point, we've got such a significant repair to the truck, and we don't really have a choice. We have to fix that truck. That particular vehicle has cost us an awful lot in maintenance over its lifetime. And remember, if you look back at the capital equipment plan, our goal was to be purchasing a plow truck every five years, with the intention of having three primary plow trucks in one backup. So obviously the fact that we're still running around with a vehicle at this point that's eighteen years old. When we get the new plow truck next season, this international still going to be the backup. We're going to be stuck nursing this thing for at least another five years, well, six years from today
as our backup vehicle.
Wait a minute. I'm confused. Didn't Jay just say this was his frontline truck with the $14,000
repair? It is a frontline truck. Next year will be a backup vehicle as we get rid of our oldest vehicle, which is our current backup, which is a '97 Ford plow truck. Okay. So right now it's a frontline truck. Okay. That's all I But it's about to go, but we have to fix it because even though it's frontline this year and it will be back up next year, it will still be the backup vehicle for another five years. So we've got to put enough money into this thing to keep it functional for a fairly extended period of time. So, my suggestion to Jay is that what we do is we've taken the sweeper out of that line item for town garage capital expenditure, which we anticipated and we budgeted for right from the beginning. We additionally, instead of buying a flail lower head, which we do need, but we're going to end up having to put off, we pay for the repair to this vehicle
out of that, which will take, you know, a large chunk of the remaining money on that and essentially kill that account for the year.
So, this account has $30,000 in it. Correct. Repairs are 14. So what do you mean I it will kill the account? Well,
already spent some of the money but it's not showing any expended on this report. Correct? Right. As soon as you know, we between what the time you ran like we just, I just signed a bunch of bills for the, the repair of the sweeper that are going to be somewhere between what 10 and $12,000 something like that.
Correct. Yeah, just sent in. It's going go against this account. Right. But what are we using the vehicle maintenance account for in public works for then? That's our regular routine maintenance, oil changes, filters,
miscellaneous parts, brakes, and the routine maintenance current balance on the operating side is 20, I currently have it at 21,000.
So, reason why we're doing it this way is because right here, now, if we took $14,000 out of the operating budget, we know we would be way over by the end of the year. So by doing this and just saying, okay, we're going to shift our capital priorities, you know, we take it out of the capital and we preserve the maintenance budget because we know we're going to go through that.
Question on the quote, you know, it's a good chunk of money in there for replacing all the fuel injectors. Is that just preventive? It doesn't look like there's necessarily any identified failure there. Well,
we've had, there's one injector that definitely needs to be replaced. The other injector, there's a second one that's questionable. And once you start replacing one or two of them, you might as well replace them all because, you know, we'll turn around, get it fixed, and we have to bring it back to have something, have more injectors done. Okay. And everything gets timed correctly, the fuels are pressured correctly through the injectors.
So no action on our part at this time because it's got to go to the Board of Selectmen first. Probably. Right. Because they would have don't they have to prove anything over 5,000 before it comes to us for Or that's over. I'm taking over expenditures.
But we're not overexpending. We're just so my question to you is, are you okay with, because in the past the Board of Finance has had some defined ideas about what we could take out of capital expenditures. And since we clearly in the budget state that this is a essentially a capital, you know, town garage capital expenditure. Are you okay with taking that out of there? We know we can take the sweeper because we put right in the budget that that money was going to be used to fix the sweeper. So, when we pay for the sweeper repairs, we're doing exactly what we said we were going to do with the budget. But this part, we're not doing what we said we were going to do in the budget. We are paying for a capital expense, but not the original capital expense that we told the Board of Finance that we were going to be spending. Does that make sense?
I know. I still think of it as a truck repair, and I know you're calling it capital because it's a large amount. And I know it's not regular ongoing maintenance, standard maintenance, so it's an out of the blue repair.
Yeah, this isn't expected. I mean, we expected the sweeper we knew going into, we needed repairs last year to happen this year for the sweeper. Were just hoping we could get through the season and fix it in the wintertime, but it broke just before so we had to get it done right away. But to Eric's point, so we're we won't spend the money on the mower head, which it's not that critical that we have to exactly do that at this point in time. It is needed, but we got to get that truck, our truck back on the road because winter's right around the corner and we're not going to be able to wait months to do it. So that's where we're at and at this point in time, you know, I have a $14,000 repair which you know, I'm looking into it to see what our options are. You know, if it's only a matter of saving a couple $100, we'll just leave it right where it is. But if I'm going to save something extensively, you know, like we have the option of bringing it at home to take it someplace else. They just got to throw the oil pan back on and put new oil back in it and we can drive it home. But the truck can't be used. You know, as a service vehicle
because it it won't last. So that's kind of where we're at right now.
Well, well, we choose to repair it. We have to get the money from somewhere and that seems to be the only place that I can see on the budget to take it from. Unless someone can see some place else because if we're not gonna take it out of vehicle maintenance, that's the only other place
to take it from. Yeah. It's the logical one, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
I would say, I think as long as the Board of Selectmen is buy in and then I don't have a problem where we take the money from because we have the money set aside. It's just we're going do something different with it than what we had planned. Go ahead Joanne.
It just seems, I understand that it probably is necessary and it's going to have to be done and the money is gonna have to be spent on something different. Just I feel like we always get these things. I just need to point out that unfortunately, when I was getting ready for the meeting, I noticed that an email was sent at 04:00 today, so I just didn't get a chance. I know I could split screen and look at it now while we're discussing it, but I feel like at times we're always faced with these last minute decisions and don't even get a chance. Again, I understand, you know, so it's like, okay, I guess the truck is at the place right now so and I understand that so in order to get it back home it just feels like we have to make the decision tonight I feel like we're always kind of pressed into these last minute things that are put on the
agenda at the last minute but it's going to be a need. Just I'm not a type that wants to make a decision like that on the fly but you know of course we're having a board of finance meeting tonight how convenient that we can discuss it and maybe the estimate maybe it just happened but right and Jason that's my 2¢ we got the bill at 02:10 this afternoon
so right probably in order to get on the agenda tonight because we are having a meeting. It's it's just not the, you know, it's what we're striving.
Joanne, it under no circumstances did I get this done just to be on the meeting tonight. I got the information. I moved it forward as fast as I could. Yeah, because people need to know.
Of course, and I'm just pointing out that, you know, we have been. It's happened before where we have to make quick decisions, so I'm not accusing anybody of anything. If this is, know, this just might be a vote next year that we can't get something else because we need this money or whatever. That's all. It just I like to look at things. Like to be able to open an email, read it. I had been doing that prior to today and then I just kind of checked that there was a last minute email. Again, I understand the need for it for the town if it's a frontline vehicle and then it's gonna be needed for five years. Thank you. Not accusing anyone of anything.
Jay, have you heard have you thought of as an alternative using a contractor versus repairing this until you get the new truck? No,
have not. And that would put us into a No, I don't believe that would. And you know, now you're paying by the hour, you're putting them on standby pay, on call pay, that puts us in a whole another realm. I mean we have the bodies and it's going to cost a lot more than the repair of the truck and you're still going to have to have your people and you know they are a union and nobody can work until they're working first, till our staff are on board. So we'll be paying our guys anyway. Okay, makes sense.
Louise, the other thing to keep in mind is we're not, you know, it would be one thing if we were trying to get rid of like we were having this discussion with the board of finance or board of select them about what to do with one of with our oldest truck, because that also needs some work right now. And, you know, personally, if it were up to me, I would just scrap the truck now and I would wing it for a year until we got the new truck and hope like heck we didn't have a major breakdown and accept the fact that we'd be plowing slow in one vehicle short if we did. But the with seven because seven we're going to have to keep in the fleet for another six years from today, because we certainly don't have the kind of money to go out and buy two new plow trucks. We're faced with we're going to have to fix that one.
You know, kind of no matter what, you know, be one thing to try to limp a vehicle along if it's one year, but it's a whole nother story when that's going to be, you know, that's going to be your long term backup for a lot of years. At least that's my take on it. Okay, thanks.
I'm kind of thinking, and if anybody thinks differently, speak up. I think the board of Slypin has to, you know, obviously be informed of this because they're responsible for the overall operation of the town and, you know, and what risks we take with fixing or not fixing. Were just gonna identify where we're gonna take the money from. So I don't I think we've done that piece to say, yes, we have money in budget. We'll reallocate something to here. So I think as long as we're select we are is okay with the strategy you wanna go with Eric, then there's no holdup on this side. Does anybody have any other?
No, I mean, the two things that I saw looking through this was one, do we conform to the purchasing policy? And I think in this case we do because we're piggybacking off the state contract with Freightliner for both parts and labor rate. So I think that satisfies the existing and proposed purchasing policies definition, you know, of basically a bid process or an alternative to a bid process. And then the second thing was how do we come up with the money and Jay and I both feel that, you know, although we would have liked to spend the money in that budget on what we anticipated, this is going to be definitely a bigger priority now. And that's the only readily available pool we have to tap. So.
That's, you know, perfectly fine to do that if that's what everybody's consensus is. That's more important, you know, in the big scheme of things, that's the priority for the town. Yeah. Yeah. We have the money in that budget. A line item to do it. So we don't need to take any action tonight.
Nope. I just wanted to make sure you weren't gonna be mad when we took the money out of that budget later. Rather ask for permission than bank. Oh, just, you know. No surprises is good. You guys have any other questions? Okay.
Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Jay. All right, thank you. Good night all.
All right. Okay. We are now on to the town administrators report.
Okay. Sorry. I apologize for sending you the report late. I just wanted to talk about the things that on my report that are kind of related to finance. The assessor's office is doing personal property declarations right now. John Troponis has been out doing inspections. You know, with the tax collector's office, we're doing pretty well with collections. We did refer all the unpaid personal property declarations to a collection agency. We have gotten some money back from them. And the way the collection agency works is that once we refer it to the collection agency, they owe us what they owe us anyway, and then they have to pay collection agency on top of that. So the problem with personal property tax declarations is a lot of these are little businesses that have gone out of business and you don't, there's a lot of other ways, other debts that we can lean and get the money back. Personal property declarations is something we have a hard time getting some of that back money back because companies go out of business, blah, blah, blah, they move out of state and you don't really have any way to go after them like you do with unpaid motor vehicle or, you know, being able to lean a house if you're, you have back taxes on that. So we're working on that.
If any of you don't know, I have hired an administrative assistant, Kate Morrissey. She has the same email address as her predecessor. So if you have any questions for her, feel free to email her or call her at the admin number. She's good and personable and pretty confident. Her hours, Eric, what is she at every day?
Yeah. She's in Monday through Thursday, like 08:30 or eight to one basically. So we have been bouncing around the job description for financial assistant. Cheryl Miller had indicated that we she thought we'd probably be better off having that person not do the journal entries and keep the journal entries separate from that position. So we Your probably email was bank reconciliations.
Yeah, sorry. Okay, all right. Just Bank recs. Don't confuse me. I'm confused enough. Leave the bank recs for the treasurer, which which I think makes sense. We're going to pull that out of the job description and then advertise for that position. I was looking real quick at the money we've taken in from the building department seems to be roughly on par with last year. Doesn't seem like it's dropped off too much, even though the economy seems like it's slowing down a little bit. We're seasonally slowing down now, but it's hard to predict how much building we'll get in the spring. Certainly, it seems like new construction is going to be knocked down a bit. Still working on finalizing contract with the town engineer. We have very minor sticking points at this point. It's at our town's attorney for review again right now. And that's holding up a couple other little things, but nothing super big. As I said, last meeting, we did get the full funding for the American Recovery Act.
That was $478,848.4 which will be the second half we used to pay for the community center. And we're in the process of filing the request for reimbursement to the State Department of Transportation for the twenty twenty steep grant that we completed for the roadwork. So I anticipated submitting that today, but we didn't end up submitting that today because I need to give them a formal invoice for it. But that's okay. Nothing too big. We got the parts in to get our server, the new switch gear for our server installed, we need to add the get the car charger up and running. Soon as we have that up and running, we have, we should be in this, this set of bills paying Lenco for the electrical work for that, so I can immediately file for the refund from Eversource for the charger rebate. So most of you know, we did receive the $275,000 steep grant to tear down the old firehouse and build a parking structure for senior transportation. The kind of hassle we ran into is that the building we're carrying down is on the National Historic Register. And since we are a political subdivision of the state and we're tearing down a building on the National Register, we've got some hoops to jump through. So, met with the state historical preservation office. You know, there's no question they will give us the permission to demolish the structure because they all agree that it's not worth preserving in this case, but they're going to make us commit to another preservation
project within the district to compensate. So, I'm meeting next week with Scott Yeomans, who's the town's historian, plus one of the selectmen, and Kathy Derozia, who are all on a little committee looking into improvements to the Andover Museum. So my goal is to spend that money on an existing town budget or town building. And the only thing that's actually in the historic district that the town owns is the museum. That's our only shop. We're going to kind of agree on what a game plan is and what we want to do. And then part of that we would have to tackle ourselves with town funding. One of the unfortunate things is the state says, you know, by regulation, that if you're making up for the fact that you tore down something historic, can't get a grant to make up for the fact that you tore down something historic. So, we're looking at the cost of various different improvements we can make there, you know, and try to maybe package it with something bigger, and then parts of it we would be able to apply for a grant through ship out to do. Part of the at least one discrete portion of that project we're going to have to pay for ourselves and we'll have to figure that out. We have a couple years to do it, so it shouldn't hold up the actual construction of the senior transportation facility and demolition and all that. We just as a town have to formally agree to what we're going to do and get SHPO to agree and then we can proceed with the other project. So that's in flux. I'll give you more information on that as
soon as I know it. As far as the affordable housing plan grant, many of you know, we submitted a grant last year to help us, you know, develop an affordable housing plan, which we're legally required to do. We got the first payment for that. For some reason, they lost our second payment request. We resubmitted that. They accepted the second one, so we should get the final payment for that and close out that grant. That's one of those grants. It's a reimbursement grant. So, the paperwork is easier. You just submit a bill justifying, you know, why they should pay you. They reimburse you, you have the money. So we took that money originally from the PLC implementation fund. The reason we did that is because affordable housing plan is a required element of the plan of conservation and development by law now. So, and then we're refunding that the PLCD so it won't actually in the end. We will have taken the money from that and returned the money to that fund. That that project was fully funded. What else we do have a transportation grant that there's two elements to going right now. The first is a vehicle. As many of you remember, we were supposed to have had a new vehicle last May, a new 12 passenger van for senior transportation. And again, that's 100% funded grant. However, as we all know, with the backlog of vehicles, it never got built last year. So we're anticipating
that it will be delivered sometime this coming spring. They said no later than May. So, that's all we know about that. And we did, we have another year going on our existing cost reimbursement for senior transportation. So, have received all the money from last year's reimbursements, and we expect to receive approximately $9,000 this year from that which goes into offsetting the costs for senior transportation. The last thing a lot of you know, we did not end up signing contract with FC North for use of the athletic fields this year. So that has resulted in a decrease in the rental funding that we've gotten. And the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen both had agreed earlier this year that the rental income that we were getting for COOL program should have actually been going to the school. So we're not getting that. We're going to be short rental income on that. However, it looks like we're going to be successful collecting some back rent for an easement that the town has to crosstown property off of Riverside Drive. So, we should end up with about $2,000 so it'll offset a portion of that. And that's basically all I have for my report, unless you all have questions for me at this point.
Anybody have any questions for York? I have a question.
The historical thing that you were talking about is in lieu of a building, could you somehow direct it over to let's say an old road in the town or a monument or something like that, or does it have to be a building. No,
it's got to be in the historic district and it has to be something related to a building that's identified in the historic district. So, really are two options. So, had first proposed that what we're doing on Center Street, which was leaving the old Andover depot rail, you know, concrete beams exposed and putting up historical signage to explain it all in clearing that should count towards our contribution. And the office completely shopping down. I was trying to get away with, you know, not spending much money at all to compensate, but they're basically their rules are it has to be a essentially a significant improvement to an existing historical property.
Eric is there a dollar amount that has to be spent to do they have a percentage of, know, or whatever?
No, there's nothing official, but they made it clear that, you know, So, talked about a couple things that could potentially qualify. The first thing which I think is probably the most logical because it's something we know we needed to do anyway is a window restoration and potentially a door restoration project for that building. Because we know the front door and one of the side doors is pretty well rotted out. We've been talking about replacing that for quite a while. We know some of the windows are in pretty bad shape, so that's something we know we had to tackle. And SHPO, you know, their representatives said they would probably be willing to accept window and door restoration project as an appropriate scale for what we're doing. That's kind of what we're leaning towards now, but I don't feel like that's my decision. That's why I want to get the group together that's been working on figuring out what to do with the museum, you know, and get their final input. I've talked to them all individually, but we're going to come back and develop a list of projects that they think are most appropriate. And then go out and cost estimate them, so we know roughly what we're talking about and then bring that back to ship on say hey what will you, you know, the town will agree to this. Is this sufficient? Will you be okay with that?
Yeah. I kind of was wondering if there was a certain dollar level you had to meet in order to, you know, to offset getting the grant but I see what you're saying you're just gonna It's not gonna be $500
but it's not gonna be a 100 That's what I mean I'm getting the feeling that it has to be kind of significant so in order to get the grant which is great then if there's going to be a cost associated eventually that we have to put back into the town for improvement. And then the other question is I know you were talking about losing rental income for the field and then the other so about how much was was that? I know you said that offset I don't remember the total of rental we were anticipating.
Yeah, we had budgeted for I think bringing in $9,000 in rental income. So, we're definitely going to be short that. And the other shortfall that we really have no idea where it's going to come out right now, because spring is usually the time where you get the largest number of home sales. Building,
Yeah. You know, we, you know, we've anticipated because historically we bring in quite a bit of money on real estate transactions. We honestly don't know where that's going. I mean, we could, that could be a significant shortfall in revenue too. We just have no idea at this point. I would expect it to be, you know, we budgeted for a more conservative estimate than what we took in last year, assuming that it wasn't going to be as banner years last year. But you know it's it's just really hard to say right now.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could reuse some of the items like doors or windows from the building that's being demolished and put that into the museum? Anyone thought about that? Frames, I mean, glass,
anything? I mean, the the so the problem is is that the fire station does not have any original windows, does not have any original doors. There is some of the original hand hewn framing and we are talking seriously and SHPO may require us to salvage some of those materials when we when we demo the building. But that should be cost neutral because they're chestnut beams. You know, so we would expect that whoever salvage those would do it without getting paid, they would get, they would, you know, the salvage value for the materials would be equivalent to what it costs them to remove it. You know.
But I don't think we can salvage windows and doors. The thing you can't do with shippos like we couldn't go to the Andover Museum and put in all new, you know, modern windows and doors. You know, that would not make them happy. Just a thought.
Yeah. No, it honestly, it really annoys me that, you know, the town went through with designating that historic district.
Yeah. I mean, who Great to Is it designated the building with a plaque or is it just in the district that because it's really an eyesore. So it's not like it was a it's not like we're turning down a building that has any
No. So that building was so to speak. That building was the Sackett General Store in the 1850s. Now there is very little left of the original Sackett store, but if you look through the Andover Museum, you can see the original photos of what that building looked like, you know, 1900 because they have photos back that far, you know, showing that building in use. So yeah, no, it is a name structure and that building individually is on the National Historic District. It's not just in the district, it's a name building in the district, which is why we're stuck with mitigating for it. On the other hand, if we do this right, we're going to propose a project that we know we need to do any like we know we have to redo the windows of that building, so you know, in a sense. This just formalizes something we know we have to do anyway.
It'd be nice to incorporate that into the celebration for next year too, because it's historic somehow, Maybe a ribbon cutting or something.
If we could get it done, that would mean we'd have to take the money out of this year's budget. And I don't know whether that's possible.
We have no money in this year's budget. I can tell you that. Something we would have to plan. With the shortfalls that we're talking about. Yeah.
I mean, the only the way I could see us doing it is we could if the estimates come in the right for the Community Center we know we can build that with our funds. You know you could designate some of the money for the Multi use building fund to do that, you know, and pay for it that way. There's some downsides to that too. And I'm not suggesting it. Was just looking through and thinking about what resources we could bring to bear if we had.
So, Chippewa is not going to make us do it right away. It's something we have to do in the next year or two. We it's something we should plan out thoughtfully and well and find the money and appropriately budget for. Correct. Correct.
All right. Any other questions for Eric? We're good? Okay, moving on. Finance department reports. All I gave you guys was the expenditure report. I went to the town hall and ran it myself, so this is what we got. I didn't see anything that stuck out for me as alarming that we don't know about. So I don't know if anybody has any questions on that. No questions, Joanne?
I can't hit, you're on mute. Okay. No question, is Marina coming in weekly still, Eric, and paying bills or whatever? That's what it, okay. Yeah, she's
doing AP and she's doing payroll right now. Yeah. And then doing little projects for me when we can squeeze them in. That
would all be reflected in the total. So, or okay. That's it. Thank you.
Question for you guys. I mean, didn't give you any revenue reports because nothing's been posted to Edmunds for revenue and nothing's even been set up correctly for revenue at Edmunds. We do have access to the tax collectors revenue report if you guys wanna see that going forward every month, I would leave it up to you, but it's still not reflected on our books, so to speak. So that's kind of, and since we're in the process of converting to QuickBooks, we'll eventually catch up and get proper reporting. So if anybody has any desire to see revenue reports, can see what I can pull together for us. No, but I can't I can't tell you any of the other revenues. I mean, I don't know what's happening with it. Yeah.
I know it's in our bank account. I can tell you that. But I can't tell you that it's posted in our system.
Right. I have been going through, you know, and kind of looking at our expenditures and it seems like we're fairly well in line with where we need to be. There aren't any real major red flags for me. I mean, there's a couple things like, you know, we're pretty far down the rabbit hole already town office building equipment expenditures, but that's a really small budget. You know, any of them go 200% over that that's still $600 a year. You know, we are over our allotment on electricity, but that is partly because our electrical usage peaks in July. So July, August, September are very heavy electrical usage because of electricity goes way down in the winter and then comes back up again in May, June, July. So I think I was trying to look at where we were relative to the, you know, pie charts for the that we get from the utility company. And I think we're okay. There's not a lot else that really jumps out at me that says we're, you know, way over, you know, way over.
One of the things I want to ask you since the old firehouse we are tearing down and we're not keeping vehicles in it. Yeah. Right? So do we have to have electricity and heat on in that building?
We don't have heat on. We're not heating the building. We've drained the water. We do So, unfortunately, when we go to demolish it, which hopefully will be relatively quickly, we need access to power and we need access to running water. So it's gonna be kind of a dance because our costs to do the asbestos abatement go up a lot if we can't supply water, we can't supply power. So for now we are keeping that up. Hopefully not for too much longer though.
But so I'm looking at the report and if this is right, you know, we spent $102 in, you know, September for electricity for the old firehouse. What is costing $102 What lights are on?
It's a three phase meter. That's the majority of just like every meter, you get charged for every meter you have. A three phase meter costs a lot more than a regular meter. So I don't think that represents, I can look at it. You don't think it represents energy uses, it's just. No, I mean, we did turn the electrical power back on with a couple of weeks ago because they had to get some of the stuff out of there for the senior tax sales kind of hard to walk around there in the dark, but we haven't even been keeping the power on. Most of the panel is turned off. That's just that's a straight meter charge unfortunately.
Anybody have any other questions? Alright. Let's go. We're onto item six, budget. I'm assuming there's no transfers or over expenditures. Correct. Done.
Okay. Old business. You kinda got the audit status from Cheryl Miller on the twenty one-twenty two stuff. She's looking at what the auditor did and everything just to get us a good balance to kick off her reconciliation for last year. So if you think about it, 01/22, we closed the year up, but we didn't start the year with the correct starting balance. So she's just going back and validating that so she can make sure when she reconciles this last fiscal year to just past, that we have the correct starting balance. So that's kind of what's going on with that. Purchasing policy. Does anybody have any comments on this? It's I kinda incorporated everybody's suggestions. I kinda reformatted it and numbered it into a different thing. I just have one comment that I put in there that I want your guys feedback on, but I don't know if anybody has any other comments or wants any other changes to this Or how do you feel about how it looks? Or do you want another week to think about it and get back to me?
Regarding your the question that you had in there. Yes. Did we have anything in there like that before? Is that something you had? That was in there before. So I was trying to
figure out I'm thinking it was probably in there back in the days when if somebody wasn't picking the lowest bidder and somebody complained, he wanted some legal review, but I don't know if it's necessary or do we need to keep it in here? Is it overkill? Is it not? Is it good to have it in here? That's my I'm kind of torn on this one here. My gut is if it's already there, unless we have a good reason to remove it, to leave it. I don't recall it ever being used. We probably have never done it, so we probably never followed the policy.
So Anyway, that's my gut. My gut is leave it. Yeah, it's probably a quick review by the attorney. So I would say there probably isn't much harm. Again, the thing about the policy is if we find that this becomes onerous or we don't like it, you know, something just doesn't work for us or not as secure, we can always change it down the road.
That was just my question because I have never seen anything go to the attorney, we probably have never done it. But if we had a contentious, you know, something we weren't picking somebody with lower bid and somebody was, complaining about it, I'm sure we would send it to the attorney for review.
I mean, the attorney is not our financial advisor, so it's kind of an odd thing. I mean, I think we're generally within our rights to make a decision which feels in the best interest of town of Andover, but we do have to make it. I think it's incumbent upon us to make a our reason for doing so very clear, so that we show that we have our best interest in the town. In making such decision.
Having the town attorney review it, I don't know what that gets us but.
Yeah I don't know that it gets us anything either is kind of odd.
Well, so one thing to keep in mind and I'm not sure it speaks to this directly, but our standard RFP language we went back and forth with the town's attorney a bunch of times and made sure that we put language in there. So, some towns don't offer the ability to take anything other than the lowest bidder. So, have a series of contract document language that basically says we can accept or reject any bid, regardless of whether it's the lowest or not, just in case we do either we have questions about a particular company, whether we're really convinced they're competent or not, because most language says the lowest qualified bidder. And if you determine somebody is not qualified, that's easier to take to court than if you have a document that said, you can put out a bid and then choose whoever you want. So, that's basically what we do, but that doesn't get us around our purchasing policy. Our purchasing policy still states we have to use the lowest bidder unless there's a justification for it.
Okay, we'll leave it in there. I just wanted to, you know, see if anybody had any thoughts on it.
And this is really minor, but there's some odd formatting things, at least when I opened it in Google Docs, the header is a little weird, and there's definitely one page that's mostly blank. It just looks like a formatting issue. So I'm assuming we clean it up one last That could be Google Docs because when I look at it in word here on my computer, it looks okay. Yeah. And that might be it. I might have made a mistake opening it in the wrong program.
Yeah. We'll create a PDF file that should be clean. Yeah.
I mean, but Believe me. We are doing it the whole list of preferred contractors' idea. Or procedures for that rather.
I sat down last week and tried to sketch out in my head what I thought a policy would look like And I didn't get really all that far. It's going to take a lot of thought on my part before I can really even, you know, I mean, in my head, I know what I want to do, but, you know, translating what's in my head to a piece of paper and making it sound like it's, it's fiscally prudent, and it makes The average taxpayer, you know, is a difficult thing for me to do. I am working on it though.
So I did put a provision in there for, you know, I did put it in under the definition section preferred vendor and I put see attached exhibit A, and that's really that policy has to be developed by Eric to be the attached exhibit eight to finish this up. So Yeah. Kind of where we're at.
I mean, the the the obvious thing is we don't consider anything anybody a preferred vendor until we have an in place policy that identifies how we determine it and then go through some kind of formal process to determine, you know, who the preferred vendors are. So, I mean, I don't think we're going have a list of preferred vendors, you know, anytime soon. If we have that a year from now, I think we'd be doing well.
I don't think we need to publish it. It's just what is the preferred vendor program. We just need a framework for that program to be part of this policy. Right. Whether they get reviewed every two years or some and depending that could be based on dollar amount spent with them. It could be a million different ways you could put it.
So I would like to thank Diane for tackling this. This is something we needed to do. And I think this is definitely, do I have little quibbles with it? Sure. But that's just because I am who I am. Overall, I think it's a really well thought out policy. And I appreciate you guys being willing to tackle that.
Yeah, it's definitely a nice, I think it's a good solid document. I like it. It's very thorough, it's complete, it's without I hope being too cumbersome. So yeah, Diane, kudos putting it all together and I think we worked as a team to kind of clean up a lot of what made sense here.
Everybody's happy. So, Eric, if you can get some framework together and maybe you and I can work together to create a preferred vendor program. I need your thoughts, but I can put it together. Do you know what I mean? If we need help with that so we can at least get it out the next phase, get out to the to the board so they can get their input on that piece. Right. Put this to bed.
If you want talk to me tomorrow and schedule a time to sit down and go over this, I'd be happy to do that. That makes sense. And anybody else who wants to be part of that discussion, I guess.
Like Mark said, it is a work in progress and, you know, we just, we're just feeling our way and, you know, every idea is a good idea.
And what I would tell you all is that, and we called Diane because we had some questions, but I sat here with Jay Tuttle for about an hour the other day and said, we want to buy this. What would we have to do for the policy? We both looked at the policy, say, okay, we have to do this, this, and this. Well, is it an ongoing expense? You know, and one of the questions that came up is, you know, like for materials, like in a given year, we buy an enormous amount of gravel, for instance, or rock and stone from Coit or other vendors, you know, is it individual purchases or is it the fact that because in a year we might spend $15,000 or $20,000 between ballast rock and gravel and sand and stone dust
all from the same vendor but over an entire year in lots of different increments and like trying to really understand when this policy applies. And for the most part, we came to the conclusion that you know, we could live with this policy and it wouldn't be detrimental to getting stuff done. So, to me is the sign of a good policy. And it still seems pretty fiscally proven.
Literally, if we're buying gravel from this vendor and we have needs every month and it changes, but also if he changes price and we know somebody else's, we're not going to be tied to that person, we can go to somebody else, do know what I mean? We're always looking really in the marketplace who's the best price for our needs because we're purchasing on a monthly basis, not like we're buying a year supply of gravel at one time. Right. Right. Yep. Concur. Alright. If anybody thinks of anything or wants to change it, let me know because it's still a work in progress. It's a lot to digest. Let me tell you. When you're typing it, you look at it and then I get lost in it. And then I'm saying, god, this is so long.
You know? So
You're trying to hit a sweet spot of it being thorough without it being so long that it's impossible to deal with. Right, right. So, know. Well, I think it's pretty good.
All right. So that takes that. We already had a little update on the staff searches for the finance service. So for what everybody knows is Marina is still working part time for us doing accounts payable and payroll. We have to replace her. We have a job description, so that's going to get tweaked a little bit and there it's probably going to go to advertise next week and then we'll look at what kind of candidates we get online for that. Next thing on the agenda is let's talk about the meeting dates for next year. Page 29 of the PDF. Those are the meetings for next year. They're all Wednesdays, fourth Wednesdays a month except November. I move that to the fifth Wednesday because that's the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. We had an extra long month. Does anybody have any issues with those dates or we're good to adopt those?
If we're ready for a motion, I'll make a motion to adopt the proposed 2023 Board of Finance meeting dates. I'll second it.
Further discussion on that? We're good, let's take a vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Everybody said yes. So that's five, six yeses. No, one, two, three, four. Five yeses because we have two out. So that's good. No abstains, no nays, right? Okay. This is the approval of the meeting minutes from last meeting. Does anybody wanna make a motion for those?
I'll make a motion to accept the September 28, was it? Yep. Meeting minutes as written. Is that what we say? I'll second. That would certainly work.
Discussion. All in favor. Aye. Abstains? No? Aye. Yeah, me. I wasn't there. Okay, Louise abstains. Okay. And everybody else is a yes. All right, we're done on that. Liaison reports. Community Center of the design build RFP is up and out for it. So we'll see how that comes back in. I don't know if anybody knows, but the board of selectmen have approved Adrian Mandeville and Scott Persson to be the project managers of that build as oversight for that build and going forward. So really everything now is kind of in that group's hand until the RFPs come back. And once the RFPs come back, then the Board of Selectmen has to decide who they want to review them and appoint the people to review them. And then we'll go from there. But that's kind of where we're at on that. Anything to add on that, Eric, that you know of?
No, there will be the walk through with the contractors tomorrow.
Nice day tomorrow. Sun's gonna be shining, it's gonna be 70 degrees. Birds are gonna be singing. We have absolutely all positive signals. Rob, do you have anything on CIP?
CIP meeting was canceled this month because we had nothing on the agenda. Okay. Any other liaisons?
It's not quite a liaison report, it's related to CFP. So I'll put it out there. We had been told that our bobcat skid steer that the town had gotten through and had been waiting for for like the last five months. We were about to get it, and then it got stolen from the dealer in Manchester. So we are awaiting a determination as to whether they actually have a backup one to give us or whether we got a new build slot we got to wait for. So we might have it in the next couple, three weeks, and we might not have it for six months. All is flux. Wow.
Yeah. It kinda sucks. Yeah. That that really sucks. But it sucks a lot less if it got stolen after we got it. So Yeah. Yes. Yes.
That's true. I just wanted to remind everybody too that our next meeting is early. It's November 16, which is the week before Thanksgiving. I don't know, Eric, so really that's only what three weeks away, less than three weeks away. Yep.
If we don't have too much on the agenda, does anybody have a problem if I cancel the meeting or would anybody prefer to have that meeting canceled if we don't have anything to talk about?
I would prefer to cancel it if we don't need it. I would agree. Yep.
Since it's a short window, the only thing that we would have is an expenditure report. There's not gonna be much change from what we have now. Unless Eric, So unless something comes up that you need us for, so I will wait until like they say the week before and then make a decision and let you guys know if we'll cancel it. Yes. Does that work for everybody?
And remember moving where the December meetings moved up a week too, I think.
No. It's after. It's the week it's the Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. Which may be hard for people because some people may be on vacation, but we'll figure that out. Yeah. I won't be available for that one.
We could always move it up if we so choose if we've got something we have to talk about.
Diane, can I ask a question? Couldn't get on, it was like 702. Is everything okay with Kurt? I don't think he's been at the last couple of meetings.
He was, last time he was on our meeting, but he was listening on his phone because he's having major computer problems. Had texted me. Of course, I don't read my texts when I'm on here. I can't do two things at once. Over for me. So he did listen to our meeting and he did. And I didn't hear from him this time. I didn't look at my phone. So I do know he was on our meeting because he was that phone number that was on our meeting that we didn't know who it was. Was correct. But he didn't have any he couldn't connect audio wise and everything. So
so I won't Yeah. I was just yep. Thank you. Yeah. I just I didn't know if you said something at the beginning and yep.
And I did say that Linda Fish is on vacation. I don't know if you were on when I did that. She's on vacation. No. Didn't hear that one. Okay. Anybody have anything else you wanna talk about? Hopefully Cheryl Miller will work wonders. We'll get everything on QuickBooks and we'll have everything we need. It
was good to see her. Thank you for getting her on and it made me feel really good. I felt like she really, you know, besides the computer problems, you know, but as soon as she definitely addressed everything seems like she has a plan clear, concise, you know, so I'm feeling good about that. So, and didn't she mention something about December having everything all set up by December? She'll have QuickBooks up and running by December and our, this year's data converted into QuickBooks. Gotcha. And that's that does just this is the last quick, quick thing. I thought that we were going to not we, but maybe they were gonna let her get into it a little bit more before they advertised for another person and decided what was really needed for the town as far as the assistant.
I guess we're always gonna need one, but. Right. So we are gonna need somebody to do accounts payable and payroll. I mean, we need a person for that. You know, right now, we budgeted for a full time position, you know, whether it stays that way. I mean, literally speaking, if I don't know what our candidates are gonna bring to us and I don't know if we need somebody for forty hours if we get I just thought, right. That was more the thing. Know there's She's a interim treasurer. She's not gonna be our treasurer forever. So we still have to find a treasurer. You know? Yep.
And then she may say it could be a thirty week position or so. It's not like I'm looking to cut it. I just thought we were waiting for a little bit of guidance. That's all. Yeah. But we'll see.
And, like, we we need to advertise. We need to get some candidates in here. We need to see what the marketplace has out there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Obviously, we changed the job description to include QuickBooks experience because that will be the key for us. We can find somebody with QuickBooks experience, it should be fairly easy for that person to make the transition. Edmunds is not an easy piece of software to quickly learn. I still go in there and hunt and peck around and say what's happening? And their documentation isn't that great. Anything else? We have nobody for public speak. So can I have a motion to adjourn? I'll make the motion to adjourn.
Please make some motion to adjourn. Second. Mark seconds. All in favor? Aye.
See you guys. Thanks. Thank you guys. Bye. Thanks everybody. Bye.