Meeting transcript
Board of Finance Regular Meeting Part 2
February 22, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Met everybody back in. Uh-oh. Okay. Waiting. Admit. Admit. Admit. Admit. Okay, I believe everybody that's in the waiting room is has now been readmitted. And the meeting is off.
Okay, very good. Thank you, Eric. Sorry that took a while for everybody. We just got into a lot of questions about procedures and what we should be doing as a board in this situation. Rob, are you back with us? We have all the board members. After taking a quick break, we'll just wait a moment. Sorry guys, back. Okay, you're back. We have Louise, we have Joanne, Bill, Linda. I think we have everybody. Thanks everybody for waiting once again. Appreciate your patience here. Sometimes that's how it goes. Thank you Brian. Would anybody like to make motions about the membership?
I'll move that we seat Brian on the board as our seventh member. Just to clarify, wouldn't be a member unless and until after he if he is voted on, he needs to get sworn in, right? Correct. Okay, sorry about that little commentary there. Yes, I move that we seat Brian. Okay, do you have a second? I'll second. Second it.
Okay, think I got Linda first, thank you. Okay. Do we have any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, thank you very much. So Brian welcome to the Board of Finance. We'll be in touch with some more details but you will need to be sworn in officially however again we appreciate your volunteering to serve. We'll relay information for you. I'll forward some stuff especially once you get your town email up and running we'll have to get that set up so thank you very much everybody. Thank you, appreciate it. Okay, so we will move on to agenda item 6B, which is the policy on the financial report. So Eric, do want to explain this one?
Sure. So, we had a fairly negative audit finding last year. Among the faults that we had were lack of fiscal reporting policies. So, the treasurer and I discussed this about a month ago, and she gave me a list in a frequency for when she felt she needed information in order to print to finish the reconciliation and present to the board. Is given that you are continuing to use the third Wednesday of the month. So, is based on providing the information to you as a board. So, the policy basically says all those entities have to provide the data that are listed and that the entities can basically be one month behind on reconciliation. So, other words, when they turn over the data to you on the fifth of a month, they're not reconciling the month that ended five days ago. They're reconciled through thirty five days ago, which she felt was a reasonable window. And then that also means treasurer will have the data by the fifth. She's got ten days to process and make sure that she's ready for the board meeting. And then on the fifteenth, which is about when the town normally does its ACH payments, we just say that by the fifteenth of the month, have to have done all the ACH payments,
submitted the RAM levy, the AES levy, the payment to MRF, and the RAM Insurance Consortium bill. So, that gives us when, what our window is to send this. And then there's also for some of the boards and commissions that are maintain smaller dollar values that the town funds just a couple of times a year, like the Board of Fire Commissioners, for instance, and also the library board, there would be quarterly reporting results. So basically every quarter, because they have a lot less transactions, we're not requiring them submitting every month to reconcile. We're asking to submit every quarter to reconcile. And that would be the library board, the Andover Volunteer Fire Department, the senior lunch program, and the senior trips fund will have to do that quarterly. And then, prior to getting this their second funding allotments, they have to show the town the books for up to that point. That way we can never get more than a quarter out of date on the small funds,
and we should never be more than a month out of date on the town and school board funds. And then, we also went over what the key dates are for financial data reporting. Again, these are to address concerns that Mike or Auditor had. And that is basically May 15. We send out letters to all the creditors asking for all bills to be submitted by July 1. And then after June 1, we don't do any encumbrances except for actual purchase orders and order slips or purchased services. And they then have to have an invoice dated no later than June 30. So, it's in the right fiscal year. And any good or service not ordered by June 31 does not apply to the current fiscal year. This gets us away from, we have on a number of fronts have had a bad habit of still continuing spending money off of fiscal year far after the fiscal year has ended. And I put myself in the guilty category for that also. So, I'm not just blaming other people, regard that. June 31 is the end of the fiscal year. Before July 1, we distribute the worksheets for capital assets, and we request them back by August 15 for all departments. If everybody's following the capital asset policy, they would have been supplying that information to the board of finance all along as the capital assets, you know, are purchased. It shouldn't be that big a deal. You know, by August 15, each department signs off on the capital asset list. That way that's never going to be a holdup for the audit. Remember,
of proper capital asset reporting was another audit finding of ours. Fifteen days after the fiscal year is over on July 15, supply a list of all the outstanding checks and encumbrances to the treasurer. Eric?
Yep. If I could interrupt you. So basically this is just to kind of summarize this is a proposed policy from you and the Treasurer. Yep. Okay, so you're asking for the Board of Finance to review this and I don't you know, if it's been shared with the Board of Education separately or the other entities yet. And what we need to do is review this, make any amendments or changes, and then this will be, I guess in theory under our purview to approve the policy correct?
Yeah and I'm assuming that you will probably approve it before the end of this fiscal year but I'm not anticipating you're going to approve it at you know, anytime really soon, because I think it should need review. I'm sure the school and other entities are going to want to weigh in on that. And yes, a copy of this was provided to the superintendent. It was provided to the chair of the Board of Fire Commissioners. It was provided to the library. And it was provided to Carol Lee, who oversees the, the senior trip program now. So did they get, they got it the same day you got it. So they had every bit of time that you've had to review this, which is not a lot. Right. Yeah. And, and I'm not here too. We're not expecting, nobody's expecting a decision. You know, if you take three months to make a decision, that's up to you, or you as a board of finance could decide not to have a policy,
but I think you probably should have a policy because that directly relates to you know one of our audit findings which is lack of policies on timelines.
I'd say I 100% agree that we should have the policy in. This one it needs some work there's typos and some incorrect information. End of the fiscal year is actually June 30 there is no June 31 so just stuff like that, you know, there's a couple typos, the email addresses or there's a typo and stuff, a couple spelling things. Yeah, that would need to be cleaned up anyway, but obviously the substantive effort here would be to review the policy, You know, just on a cursory review prior to the meeting and then you know from your summary right there. Mean a lot of what is in here makes sense. It's reasonable in my view and I think that it would you know the general outlines of this for all the town entities would make a lot of sense just that's my excuse
me Mark this is Terry Smith. Terry, hold on. Yeah.
Okay, we'll go ahead and recognize you. It's not really public comment time. But if you have a quick comment, we'll let this go. Yeah. Sure. Just a quick comment and thank you for allowing me to do this.
I'm new to the Board of Ed. I've only been there a little less than two months. And Eric realizes that have that the Board of Ed Rights Board policy and nobody's really had a chance to review it. I appreciate any time you could give us to do that. Would appreciate that.
Sure. Yeah, I don't think that we'll probably be, as Eric anticipated, we're not going to be approving this policy tonight. Would guess. Don't speak for the board in its entirety, but
okay, thanks. Yeah. Can I add a comment? Go ahead Joanne. I just wanted to take a minute to thank Eric for putting a document together. I understood that he was just getting something out there based on working with Cheryl so closely and Cheryl realizing and Eric together realizing that there really hasn't been any deadlines or schedule. Yeah, so I appreciate the document and I had noticed the June 30 thing too. But you know, I'm glad that we'll have time. We'll have to read through it. Like Terry Smith just said, they'll look through it and possibly have comments that they want to say. But there are a lot of things in here that I am glad to see because I think as a member last year I did bring up the June 30 spending, you know, that usually you're done with your spending in the fiscal year that your budget is running. So that's good to see. Yeah, so overall I think it's a good good to have a document in place. I'm glad Cheryl's on board and getting things, you know, worked on and giving some feedback and schedules and a workable schedule for the town offices along with everything that they have to take care of so that
they can do a better job going forward. So thank you, Eric, for taking time to get the document to us.
Any other members of the board have questions for Eric on this or general discussion? Right, Eric, didn't mean to cut you off but I didn't really think it was the time. I think at this point we wanna go through in the detail here but if the board members wanna review it, I'm more than happy to go through it and well, I guess we would say if we choose, we can continue the discussion over it. I just think it would be better if we had a little time to kind of review it. We just got it yesterday, I think. So we really haven't had time to kind of read through it. Other comments from the board members? I agree with you. More time. Agreed. More time. Eric, any other comments on that in general?
No, I'm not expecting you to adopt it in the next month or two.
Wouldn't be a bad thing, but we need we're going to need to get input obviously and take a look at it. All right. Okay, if we have no other discussion we'll move on to agenda item six. See this was the one that Linda asked me added to the agenda for tonight, and this is the oversight committee Linda you want give us a review of that.
Hi yeah tressa spoke for about a half an hour. Mean, what can you say? Is awesome. We're lucky to have a nonprofit. Andover's increase is, let me see, 97, well the increase is $3,596 The amount they want in the budget is $97,002 That's 16.27% the average. As far as the three towns are concerned, the total addition for the three towns is only $22,105 and she talked about they actually have a waiting list of clients they've hired or they've hired or are going to hire a new full time therapist and there's still a waiting list. And even with the full time therapist, that's going to cost them like $100,000 but the three towns, the cost is only going up $22,000
So again, because they're nonprofit, we're lucky.
Mark, if you'd like to see the actual budget numbers, can share my screen and I have the budget formulas there from if you would like.
I wouldn't mind seeing if they're there. Review and you can share them. Yeah.
Okay. So this should show a comparison of this year versus last year. And I might be able to blow it up a little bit. Yeah, was just gonna say, could you blow that up? Leaning leaning into the screen, taking my glasses off. That better? Yes, thank you.
I think the bottom lines are cut off, though. It's the only problem. Yeah. Well It's okay. You know? Tell me when, and I'll scroll up for you.
Eric, are you are you able to just to go to full screen? Does it do you have that ability to go? Well, I'm seeing it full screen.
Oh, I see. I am seeing a function of the share screen thing. Okay. Okay.
Alright. So yeah. I mean, it's kinda hard to go through. Obviously, it takes some time to get through, but this is good. Alright.
And I I apologize for not getting this ahead of you this meeting, but we only have this meeting this afternoon.
Yeah, it's not a, it's not, I think dire. We get this earlier. This is, it's good to, you know, it's a fairly simple budget as usual. It's pretty straightforward.
So what I did wanna say to the board of finances that unlike a lot of other budgets, this budget, the budget is actually because they are the town's youth services bureau. And there is a member of the board of finance and a member of the board of Ed, which I represent in this case that votes on the annual budget. So, it is approved unlike other entities, which just tell us what they're going to charge us, we have to actually approve budget. Now, we could do that at this meeting. The earlier the budget is put in place,
the earlier all three towns know what to be budgeting for. But you're not obligated to vote because you're just getting the information. And I recognize some of you may not be comfortable or want to vote on this today. So, that's my spiel, if that makes sense. The other thing I think is interesting when you look at this is combined between the two ten, between three towns, there's somewhere around $600,000 a little under $600,000 of their budget comes from the towns. The other $1,200,000 is grants and fundraising. So we're only paying a third of their budget. You know, as a, as a town, the rest is just because they've been very successful. There's, there's both state funding and then grant funding and then. You know, other monies raised.
Yeah, if we had to do this on our own there's no way we could do it for this cause. And if we have to provide the service right there isn't there a statute requirement? Yeah, statute says they have a really really a good program for us. Yeah, it is. You know, can just I think I say this every year.
My kids took advantage of when they were little, little, it was a very good thing. So you know, I'm always been a very, very, very much in favor of this program. There's one line item that just jumps out at me. I don't necessarily think we have to do a deep dive on it. There's a really big, I mean, big in terms of percentage change in the liability insurance. Did did something bad happen? Because, it's $3,600 last year and 12,000 projected.
It's almost, yeah, $69.10 there, liability insurance, and I'm just wondering if something went No. I I think I think it's the other way around, isn't it, Rob? I mean, it actually pretty much I
thought it was I I and I need the headers again. Yeah, it's down.
Positive, I think. It to the insurance guy to check the insurance guy. See exactly why is it correct
me if I'm wrong, Eric. This is a little confusing in that the new numbers are on the left and last year's on the right.
Correct. So it it is a little odd in that sense. Just so everybody's there. Okay, correct.
They initially sent it out to the boards with just the coming year, and I actually spoke, emailed Tressa last night so she did it this morning real quick added last year's budget.
Totally understand it's just you know staring at one year. Yeah and I appreciate that I think it's great to see the year side by side. It's just I think a lot of people you just intuitively expect left to right. That's all. So I yeah, of course, the insurance. I just jumped out on me, you know, as a as a big jump, and I'm just wondering myself, gosh, do they have a bad claim or something? I I I don't have an objection. I just it popped. Can I go ahead and say something? Yep,
go ahead, Joanne. So I always am a big fan and a proponent of as well. I'm just going to ask though, it's hard for me to see this well on my computer, and we know it's going to be part of our budget, it usually is, I'm gonna ask if we can get this sent to us so that I can take just a closer look. Again, it's not anything negative toward them. I always just like to be prepared and take a look at it before just approving it, getting it, you know, being able to see it on the on the screen. Yeah. I don't know how, you know, how anyone else feels about it, but since we just added it to the agenda tonight, we're just seeing it on the screen. I can't see my screen too well tonight.
I think that we probably would want to take have the opportunity to review it with a little more time. And there's we yeah, so I don't really see as long as that's not gonna create some new hardship. I mean, unless I don't wouldn't foresee us having much issue with this.
Right. I agree with that. I just think we all should just take a look at it. We know it's gonna be a line item on the budget. Like Eric had said, the only benefit would be the towns could zero in. We're just at the very, very beginning. So I I don't see it as too big of a negative to the yeah, hopefully.
I agree. Think we should all get it. I agree. That's a good point.
Yep. And we don't we don't need to wait till our next full meeting to pass this. We could do it at one of our special budget workshop meetings. Right, right. So now we have to wait the entire month to get there.
Right, I don't The sooner the better for them. Right.
Linda, I don't know if you know the answer to this question too. The other big change was actually negative change. It's a drop in contractor services. They were we outsourcing a bunch? You know, are we basically hiring
a therapist, but in last year we were scrambling? Yeah, think so because the salary went up even more, if you look at the salary line. Is that how that balances? Right,
they've hired somebody, they're hiring more people, the caseload is just unbelievable since COVID, and they aren't even, she said, advertising. I mean, these are just referrals from the school. That jibes with what I'm hearing. Yeah,
Yeah, my sister's a psychologist and she's been just they're they're all turning the weight work. They all have a pretty enormous waiting list.
And Tressa was saying some of the, it used to be they saw patients, saw a client, they call them clients like every other week. Now there's patients that they see every week and some patients they're even seeing twice a week. Yep. Things are changing.
Indeed. Makes sense to me, so thanks. Yeah, whenever you see big swings, I just like to understand them. But that's exactly what I was expecting to hear. We're basically bringing someone in house rather than contracting out or something. That makes sense. But then
when you get the income column and you look at the income, the income for this year under program revenue says up 237,000. Is is also the insurance payments for clients. Yep
okay. Stows you something about their services needed right there. Okay, anybody have any other questions other than the recommendation to defer a vote to our next meeting?
Can I go on because it's my first pass going So through this is something that we really don't have a choice? We have to be an we have to have this as part of our budget. Do we really actually have any input into any of these line items or not, or is it just a review for our, like how do we act on this information is I guess my question.
So if the board felt for instance, that the overall budget increase was too high, you would simply empower, in this case, Linda, because she's your rep, go back to them and say, you know, Andover feels this budget is too high and, you know, we want you to trim it. You know, that's certainly been done before by Ahm, you know, and it usually kicks off a round of adjustments and figure out what they can cut and what they can do. Most of the time, all three towns accept, just simply because the towns recognize that, you know, their portion of the bill is only about 30% of the total income.
You know. Right. And we're we're a piece of the 30.
Yeah. Right. Okay. Thank you. Linda, I have a question. In our case, it's much less than 30 because of the prorated amount. That's what mean, yeah. Sorry was that Linda Linda, or
do you know if they accept all types of insurance including like private pay?
I don't know any about thing about the interworkings that that detailed, but you can always call Ahm.
Okay. Because sometimes different insurances, sometimes they have issues with them. My daughter has, actually she just deals with Husky and it's so much easier, but you know it's different. Depends on you know how much people have as far as money wise.
Well being a town agency I don't know if they really have much of a choice.
Don't know though. I don't know either yeah I'm just kind of curious because sometimes there's insurance issues that really fall into play with some of their income. But just curious.
Okay, other questions or anything for Linda? Hearing none, unless anybody has any motions they want to entertain to pass this, which I think most of us decided we need a little more time to review. I guess let's move on to our next agenda item, which is the approval of the meeting minutes. So I just want to make a comment here before we begin our discussion. I personally would not recommend approval of the second set of meeting minutes. There's an error in the header. The date is wrong. It says Wednesday, 01/15/2022. It threw me a little bit, but I think it just should be Wednesday, 01/25/2022. So we should get that fixed before we approve those meeting minutes. But if anybody wants to make a motion to approve the 01/18/2023 special meeting minutes, we could do that now.
I'll make that motion, sure. Let's approve the one that's right. Okay, we'll approve the I'll second that.
Okay, thank you, Louise. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, benchmark. In
order to push it, do we just we just don't take action? We just don't take action. Yeah. Okay. We'll continue it on next week's next week's meeting's agenda.
Okay. Mark, you can also approve it with a correction. I mean.
Yeah, guess that's true actually, can we? You know, we've done that before. Don't actually, I don't know if we've done it here, but.
Yeah, mean, seems the simpler option if that's I the only
was very hesitant when I looked at it and then I realized that was just that one typo was probably all that was happening. And the footer is correct, and everything else that I saw looked correct. So you might wanna make a motion to amend those meeting minutes and approve as amended.
I'll make the motion to amend the meeting minutes as outlined to date and pass them as amended. Okay. The
date should be the twenty fifth, did you say? Yeah.
It should be it should say January 25 and it should say 2023. Oh, yeah. It says 2022. Every January man, every January.
Getting the new date in your head is Well, there's actually not a year on the previous meeting minutes, but it's in the footer, so I didn't really raise the issue. Okay. I'll second Bill's motion. This should be corrected since it's in the header. I second the motion.
Okay. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, thank you. Hearing none, motion passes. Okay, and we'll move on to agenda item eight, which is liaison reports. Anybody have any liaison reports? Linda already talked about anything
from CIP or others? CIP was cancelled. There was nothing on the agenda. We had nothing to discuss apparently, so nothing to report.
Okay. I guess probably the only liaison report we have other than the agenda. Yeah. Move on to agenda item nine, which is the board open discussion. Anybody have anything they want to bring before the board?
I'll just mention what I briefly messaged you about, Mark, earlier. When we were doing our meeting schedule, we should put something on the agenda for our next meeting to discuss the April 19 date because right as we were passing it, Valerie pointed out that that conflicts with the Board of Ed meeting. The Board of Ed members wouldn't be able to attend that meeting. Given that it's the public hearing or anticipating that it's the public hearing,
we might want to try to shift that date. So let's talk about that next meeting. That was just what I wanted to bring up. Yep, thank you. I was going to actually bring the same thing up. It's a good point. I think we need to make sure that we can accommodate the public generally for that stuff. Alright, further things Bill I think you said raise your hand.
Just a note that I still am on the zoning board of appeals. Most months we don't have anything but I think there's one coming up. I saw one conflict there I wondered if it would have impacted you. Yeah. No. I I don't have anything yet, but I think I heard some rolling that there was gonna be an appeal next month. So I just don't know if I will be on the next meeting or not. Sometimes it's really short and I can Is it okay to jump in late to these meetings if we were to finish?
Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, we're almost never at risk of having a quorum. So we should be fine. You just wouldn't have any vote for anything that happened when you weren't participating there. Okay,
very good. Thank you. That's another thing, Bill. I mean, if next meeting, if you're certain that there's one coming up, you can let us know. If there's the ability to shift it, well, we can ponder. You know? Yeah. We can we can work at it. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, you know, these meeting schedules, we do them on Wednesdays in part. I'm I'm kind of the fly in the ointment a lot of the time because of my schedule with my kids, but I can usually do Thursdays instead.
Okay, great. And the only thing I was gonna see if it's if it was possible to move because the dates are already scheduled. You you put in that piece of paper every year with the dates. So if my board would be able to meet at six or something like that, be done by seven and meet this meeting, but I'll address that when we get there. Yeah. All right, thanks.
Okay, anything else among the board members? Okay, nothing, we'll move on to agenda item, which is end public speak. Eric, do want to see if anybody has any input?
Sure. Go right around the room first on my list and Kerme or Jerry Kerme. No, thank you. We're all set. Thank you. Okay. Valerie Bruno.
Hi. First, Robert, thank you and to the rest of the board for considering the April 19 date. I would love us to be able to have those meetings not on the same night if it is a public forum, so thank you. Congratulations to Brian Briggs for being a new member. Linda, I would like to stress the services that the school gets from are beyond helpful, and they have picked up a lot of the slack, as you said, in the community where we just don't have enough resources to address the needs of the children and their families. And so I've worked a lot with Tressa, and I and I have to say they are definitely servicing Andover very well. And she does a lot with our insurance consortium. Tressa does over there, which is just an added bonus. It's a plus. And thank you for tabling the discussion on that policy, and, hopefully, I look forward to the board of ed and the finance director, in our building being able to weigh in on that. Thank you. Thanks, Valerie. Okay, next up, Brian Briggs. Oh, no. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate it. Okay.
And, the last person, Teresa, Teresa, Mrs. Smith, how about that? Can call me Terry, Eric. Fair enough.
Teresa's a little formal for me. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I look forward to talking to you all again soon. Unless I'm missing somebody, looks like it, Mark.
Yeah, I agree. I'm seeing a Steve on there. Steve is Linda. Okay never mind got it. When I'm looking at the list I don't see your picture so I'm like all right. I think that is everybody. Thank you Eric. Our next agenda item is adjournment. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? Bill raises his hand making a motion to adjourn the meeting. Any discussion? I'll second.
All right, thank you. I jumped getting ahead of myself. Now any discussion? Appreciate the streamlining Mark.
Yeah, I'm out of order but You're of line. My carpet's in the right place. You're right. Hearing no discussion, we'll go ahead and vote all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you very much everybody. Thank you Eric, Valerie, Kerry, everybody, Brian, welcome and you all have a good safe week.