Meeting transcript
Select Board of Finance- Special Meeting Budget Workshop Part 1
April 18, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay, thank you everybody. I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is the meeting of Wednesday, 04/12/2023, the Town of Andover Board of Finance special meeting for the budget workshop. Our agenda is very simple tonight, call to order, public speak, we talk about budget stuff and then we adjourn. So all that being said, I'll recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty, justice Thank for you. Okay, so the next agenda item is public speak. So I see two members we don't normally see. One is Adrian, who I had spoken with earlier, and he would like to make a few comments. And Carol is also here, and I think she wants to discuss a couple of things as well. And Carol, we can, you know, your discussion is particular line items relevant to your position and the town, we can probably take you just as part of the normal agenda, but you're more than welcome to add anything as a member of the public also if you have that.
Okay. That will be fine to do it the way you suggest.
Okay. Alright. So if you wanna wait. I think Adrian's the only other member of the public. So,
Can you guys hear me or? Yep. Okay. I just wanted to hop on. Kind of get some just a I know you guys had, you know, looked at the town clerk's salary last week. I wanted to kind of address that a little bit. You know, just for reference, this is something that has come before the Board of Finance as far as I know pretty much every year for at least the last seven that I know of. Certainly four that I was on the Board, you know, and three since I've been on Board of Selectmen at least. And I'll be honest, we never really addressed it directly. I think we thought maybe it was more of a priority to work on some other departments at the time. But all the other departments in the town hall have been addressed for the most part, and I feel like this is kind of the one that we, you know, kind of fell through the cracks. I would appreciate if you guys, you know, do have the time to maybe take a look at it. I think that there's a couple of things that are important to keep in mind, you know, with the town clerk in that our town clerk does a lot of things a lot of other town clerks don't do.
Certainly pistol permits, you know transfer station stickers. You know there's a lot of things that get dumped in her office that simply because we have such a small staff. And, you know, there's more hours in that office to be able to handle some of those things. But I think also overall, if you look at the history of it, you know, we haven't really addressed the pay in that department, given how long the town clerk has been there. And, you know, there's a wealth of knowledge, institutional knowledge there that really, we don't really want to see go anywhere. And I think that, you know, I think it is fair to take a closer look at it. If you can, you know, find some middle ground between, you know, maybe what she was asking and, and, you know, and what, you know, what, what you initially looked at. So,
yeah I just kind of I felt like it was important to say something. You know, and you know we probably should have addressed it sooner, you know, but I said, I think you know we've had some other budget years that have come up that were really, really tight And you know, we really felt like we were just kind of behind the eight ball on everything. And I think maybe this is the first budget in a while that maybe we're not in that situation and maybe can try to, you know, kind of make up some ground. At any rate, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Adrian. Okay, so that being said, we appreciate the input. Let's go on to our budget review. So what I would suggest is that we have a few line items we want to take care of, address. I mean, Adrianne just brought up the salary of the town clerk, And so we should discuss that. We also have Carol here to help clarify her position, her point of view is on the whole matter. She's also, I think I'm going to assume is going to address the question of the. Additional scheduler that they proposed in the Board of Selectmen's budget, which I think we talked about a little bit about The Recreation Commission was going to meet on that, and we were going to wait until we had their recommendation in hand before actually acting on that one. So that's another line item we need to take a look at. I think there were just a couple other things that we needed to talk about. We also talked about the elections, and I did forward to you the input from the registrars. They didn't feel like they needed to have additional funding in there that they thought that they would be covered
based on what they know. So we may not need to take any action, but that was kind of an open item from last meeting. So that being said, I would propose that we go ahead and talk to Carol first. So Carol, did you want to just, just as a matter of course, wanted to talk about the scheduler position and the bleachers? Just so that's probably a simpler, more direct one. We could knock that out and understand what the Recreation Commission is asking about.
Yes, I would like to address that and I also would like to ask if we could if you would add an executive session to discuss the salary.
Yeah, we can do that. Okay, all right. We have to take all the votes in public meeting, we can discuss the details with you in executive session. I think that's not a problem. Just ask to all you know, open debate and not necessarily open debate, but the vote needs to be taken in public. I understand. Okay. So
first off with the bleachers, and I do apologize for being so late with the photos of the bleachers, but I did send each of you photos of the bleachers, the condition of those bleachers at the elementary school, and they're a safety concern. It's hard plastic, it's brittle, There are big pieces missing. The custodians have taped those up, but there's still a concern for the kids to be cut. They're very sharp and tape doesn't add much. So, what we voted on with the recognition was to not ask that we take what the Board of Selectmen requested. We're just asking that you move that scheduler line out of the Recreation
Commission budget because we feel the only building that we can schedule right now is the elementary school. We have very limited gym slots when we have our basketball program. They, you know, those slots are limited. So, right now we have pickleball and we also have adult volleyball and adult basketball going on right now. But as far as the other scheduling, the fields are leased out to commercial soccer teams. So, there's no scheduling of the ball fields because they have them. The town leases them to them. So, but we're asking that you just remove that line and put it wherever the board of selectmen would see fit. I don't know if they've I know that your last meeting, you were going to ask for clarification from the Board of Selection as to what they intended that position for. So, we're just asking that it's moved out of the Recreation Commission and that you just add a line for the elementary school bleachers. I did send you a quote that we received of almost $13,000 for the bleacher removal and replacement.
I know that we're late in the game for that. We should have looked at this earlier, but the seats have deteriorated so much right now that we're concerned for the safety of not only the children, but of any adults who go in there. And the last time when the seats were damaged, there were three of them, and it was $600 that the Recreation Commission was asked to cover. And I just asked the school to please hold off so that we could look into getting folks on replacing the bleachers, because this is constantly happening and $600 for three plastic seats that are broken within a short period of time was just a lot of money to put out. So that's what we're asking.
Okay. So there's really just, if I could, Rob, it sounds, there's really two separate actions here. So one is that in the opinion of the rec commission, you don't feel that the schedule or position is needed. So that can go away. And then in addition, you're asking for $12,800 per quote to fund replacement of the bleacher seats. So so two different items, they don't really relate to each other. So yeah, would call them independent decisions.
Okay. Rob? But again, we did have mixed on the recognition. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt as far as not wanting to bump the Board of Select. Know, we don't, we felt too like you had suggested at your last meeting just to get clarification on that. K.
I was just quickly glancing at the quote. I wanna make sure I'm reading it right. This a full replacement job? Yes. With a whole set of bleachers? Yes.
With the wooden ones, you know, the nice wood finish, so they'll last.
Have you seen examples of what they are or if they're I just wonder what they look like I have not because the school did the school custodian
did, Steve did go and get that quote and did walk through with the people who gave you the estimate. I do know that we need to get a couple more quotes and we will do that, but we're just asking right now if you would do that as a placeholder for us so that we can get those wages.
Yeah, I think for budgeting purposes, this is fine. You certainly don't need to get three quotes in order to put forth a budget estimate. Never hurts, but okay. All right. Louise, you get your hand up. You have a question? Yeah, I have a question.
When I took that little tour with Valerie back about a month or so ago, we addressed those bleachers, and I recall her saying that they really weren't used a lot, and I'm a little surprised as to why I mean is does she know about this is she asking for them to be replaced Because it's kind of a conflict.
She is the one who emailed me the quote. The bleachers are used all the time. They're in the adult pickleball program where when one team is on the court, the others are sitting on the bleacher. Years ago, we used to use the stage. We would set up chairs on the stage. That was really awkward and difficult because you can't see the whole court if you're trying, you're a spectator there for basketball. So, we have had where those bleachers have been totally full with no space for anyone to sit during the kids basketball games, and even during the practices, because a lot of the parents stay there to watch the prep.
Right. Yeah, so I think one of the things is from the school perspective, they're not really used for school activities almost as much as for town and community activities. Right.
That's what was going bring up. It's going be a community thing or a school thing? That's why
CHIM is under the control of the Recreation Commission after school hours for recreational programs. So we do schedule the different programs. Like this year, we had an adult disc golf group in there. We currently have, like I say, the adult volleyball, adult pickleball, and that is really taking off. And we have adult basketball, men and women.
Okay, well, one question I would have, and this is not a question for Carol, but maybe Eric and or somebody from the board. Just taking a moment here to check. I don't see Eric on the screen. Eric, are you still with us? Yep, I'm here. Oh, there you are. Okay. I was looking for the town of Andover and seen you and I wasn't seeing you. Is this something that we just would fund directly from the town? I we certainly cannot I think we almost have to do that because we certainly can't add it to the school budget and tell them they have to spend it that way because we don't have the authority to tell them how to spend their money.
Right. I I think we could legitimately leechers are a capital expense, and the town could make the decision to fund that as a capital expense. A whole series of different ways. One, you could just simply add, you know, an extra $13,000 to the building maintenance fund and specifically earmarked that for bleachers, for instance, that would be one possibility, not saying it's the only one, or you could create your own, you know, one time line item for it if you chose. But the town definitely could do that. Obviously, we would have to coordinate with the school, you know, but the town could fund that if they so chose. Because historically the, the town usage of the, the gymnasium, you know, with some cost, you know, expected.
All right, thanks. Any other questions from the Board of Finance on this particular issue or comment, discussion? Eric?
I do have one more comment in that after the last meeting, I went back and looked through my notes and Jeff Murray was the person that originally proposed adding the standalone line to the, or the additional line to the rec mission. So, I asked him what he envisioned that was for. And what the board is thinking is that there's a wide range of things where we needed some additional work to be done that was outside the scope of individual current employees. And what they were looking at it as more like an overall pool at which you could pay employees to perform specific tasks outside current budgeted items. That's really, he wasn't thinking strictly for recreation commission.
He was thinking, you know, creating flyers, you know, spending extra time publicizing existing town events, you know, kind of a wider range of things. And they just chose to put it under the rec commission because that was kind of the closest to where it would normally be. So
Okay. And so the note that was in the, file about a new employee is not really how this was intended to be used then.
As far as per Jeff, that wasn't what they were envisioning, or at least what he was envisioning. I mean, the board of selectmen did talk directly about potentially hiring somebody, you know, to work six to ten hours a week and do a whole series of things. So they've gone back and forth, but he was the guy that made the original motion. And so I came back to you with his, his take on it. Got it. Okay.
And I can't say that I've spoken to the entire board, so I may not be representing everybody's opinion correctly.
Sure. Okay. Alright, Joanne, I think you had your hand up. Question or comment?
Yeah, I mean, clearly I see this as a safety issue, so I appreciate that Carol brought it forward, looking at those pictures. I too, though, my original question, I took the tour with Val, and she took me through the school and there was a number of things we addressed. And way back at the beginning when we were speaking, I guess I was processing whether it would be something. I had thought she had talked about getting some funding for it. And so I was wondering if it was somewhere included in the budget, but from what everybody has commented since, it seems like no. But it's definitely, I hope the school gets to use it sometimes, because working in a school that's very important. It's great that that and I'm not, you know, saying where it should be funded. Clearly it needs to be fixed. That's it's a safety hazard. There's cracked things sticking out. Someone could, you know, cut their leg open or something. So yeah, I mean, I know she addressed it. We talked about it. I hope that the kids can use it. There's a lot of good uses during the day when you have those kind of assemblies or things like that. Otherwise, hearing about and I it sounds like we're rolling into the scheduler thing because Eric just added some additional things. And no means was I look when I suggested last week, you know, when the first thing kind of went off the table and we heard that maybe the rec commission
wasn't happy about it, I understand and I'm glad they're pointing out their point on it. I did mention the stipend too, thinking that if people were doing work over and above their job descriptions, why not pay them for that? Just, I'll sit back and listen to the discussion.
Well, have a little concern about the fact that it's a separate line item. I guess we'd have to figure out where that money would go. We wouldn't call it a schedule or part time. Mean, really what we call it maybe is some kind of stipend fund or something like that. It makes, you know, it's possible. I don't like to have things undesignated for any specific purposes. Don't know. Eric, do have any idea about how we could manage that extra amount of money? Mean
I mean, I don't. I mean, we don't actually have a place. You know, I mean, certainly a lot of towns have some sort of bonus pool, but that's not what we're really talking about per se. We're talking about a specific fund to pay people for doing things outside of their normal job title. And the other thing I would say is that since the majority of our employees are union employees, this is not a super simple thing. You know, this is us going back and forth with the union for a particular employee and developing a memorandum of understanding that both the town and the union agreed to. So, you know, for a lot of our employees, that would actually take a fair bit of work to implement. Not saying it can't be done, it certainly can. Yep, Joanne?
Yeah, like Eric said, I think, boy, this would be difficult. I understand where Jeff's coming from as far as creating a pool and different people could pool from. It would create a lot of extra work for the management in the town hall. Know my simple thing of bringing it forward was clearly for the rec department and and truthfully she's on the meeting. I know that Carol's done a lot through the years with that. And I, you know, if the rec commission didn't want to take it on, I thought maybe someone at town hall, like one person, would get compensated for doing some rec department work. Because Jeff had talked about flyers and promotions
and this and that. But I definitely see being really involved with unions and things that being a little bit of an issue while this one gets paid a little bit more for doing this, know,
so. Wouldn't it be simple just to add $10,000 to the salary line items across the different functions and call it an overtime and you know, under other category, mean, or is it just not that simple?
You could do that if you have a fund where people are, if Eric specifically says that, or if whoever the board of selectman designates to do extra work would have to be preapproved maybe from that fund. That is a good thought. Stipends generally are attached to one person. They get extra money for doing something, but that might work, I guess. Stipends are problematic because it's not necessarily an hourly
wage, which when somebody under a union contract, that becomes problematic. You could have a fund for, yeah, like Eric said, and you pointed out with the union workforce, it becomes a little bit challenging to put that together, but, you know, and it's also undefined. I mean, stipend is just like, generally you get it whether you work ten or you work fifty hours, so it's a little bit problematic, at least in calling it that. But I don't know, Eric, do you have any thoughts about that?
Currently, we only have one employee that gets a stipend. And part of that is because legally we are required to have a social services person. And per the state, that person's supposed to be available. I forget what the total number of hours it is, but a pretty significant number of hours a week. And when the last person that had that role was no longer capable of performing that role, you know, there was really no way because it was a fairly small, they were making a pretty small salary, like $4,000 a year or something like that. The only way I could see where I've met the state guidelines and at the same time, met the state guidelines in terms of having the staffing was to assign it to, you know, an employee that was already there. And the only one I could really figure out to do at the time was Roberta. And so I negotiated with the union and with her to do that. That's kind of a one off as much because it's a state requirement that we have a social services person and the state expects that office to be staffed at a much higher level than we would for the amount of work that office has. Really?
Of the things I've long toyed with asking for, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't get it, so I didn't, is, you know, there's a lot of things that come up randomly in the budget year that don't fit in any neat category, you know, and we end up either assigning it to something that's kind of unrelated, but kind of as close as we can find. I mean, I've long thought I needed some sort of general fund to tap for smaller things that come up like a discretionary fund. And that could be used for employee salary. But I don't know how to put it in the budget so that the taxpayers wouldn't be very unhappy to see that.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you personally, I would not be happy to see that. I don't like miscellaneous funds, Understood. To
me, I mean, make budget transfers between different departments and line items all the time, different accounts, right? So for me, that's a way we've almost de facto chosen to handle it, maybe not explicitly, but understanding that things are going to change, things are going to come up, there's something, you know, so I'd almost rather just fund a different line and then make explicit the transfer when that happens. Sure. Brian's got his hand up, Brian. Now you're kind of clipping out. Gonna pass?
Or can I say one more thing? Go ahead, Joanne. Yeah. Course. I know that we've and and I appreciate that we're entertaining new things kinda late in the budget. Oh, and then I'm okay. I'll let him whenever Brian's ready. I don't wanna veer too far off course. You know what I mean? With Eric bringing up maybe a different fund. It was a good idea, but I know we we were pretty far along in our process and then some things came up. So we'll entertain those for sure, the things you talked about earlier tonight. But I hope that we can kind of stick to our overall where we were. I know we had the fire engine come up. We have the town clerk here tonight, of course. Those are important items.
And then the schedule.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really, I think the question we do want to stick to the program here, who will? So the real question is, what do we do with this $10,000 Do we leave it in there as a scheduler or scheduling assistance or something? Do we take it out or do we just move it into a different location, I guess, into a different account? Personally, unless we really feel like we need this additional amount, I would say take it out. I think it's just muddying the waters. We don't have a clear vision of what this is going to be used for. Now, if we did, or it was a little better defined, then I said, it should go in the departmental budgets. I'd rather see it in there, and then we'll make transfers if we need to. But that's just kind of my take on it.
I'm in agreement if we're going to be adding different things or deciding on other things. I feel like we're defining it as we go. So until it's more clear, I would take it out because we may be adding some other things in.
Okay. Other comments from the board? Hearing none, does anybody like to make a motion regarding the line item for the schedule for part time?
I'm going go ahead and make the motion to remove that line for the $10,000 amount for the scheduler in the rec commission
department. Anybody want to second that? I'll second it. Okay Louise seconds. Any further discussion? Okay hearing none, I'll take a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay we'll pull that one out for now. Doesn't mean we can't add a back end, it's something we change our minds, just pointing that out. So I think then the next item we have to take up is the request for the funding for the bleachers, because that really is a separate and unrelated item, even though it is related to the recreation of activities in the town. So personally, I'm in favor for putting that amount in the budget. I think it needs to get done. I would have liked to have seen it get done by the school, but I understand that the usage is heavy on the town side, and I think we should absolutely encourage those community activities and the coordination between the town and the school. I'm okay putting it in the town's budget for those reasons.
So that's my take. Other comment?
It's just a question where we put it exactly, right?
Yeah. I mean, personally, I I like like Eric's idea of putting in the building maintenance fund and then, you know, specifying that in our capital appropriations. Yeah. That you know, that's designed to cover that.
So, you know, I mean, I'm I'm happy to make a motion that we put in $13,000. The the quote's for $12.08, but I was just gonna round it up to 13. Round it up. And put it in the building equipment fund with a note that it is earmarked for the bleacher repair. So I'm happy to make that motion if anybody wants to, you know, clean it up for me. If I've made a lid at all, let me know. I'm
gonna go ahead and second that. Are we we're that's for a total replacement or repair. I thought it was a total It's a replacement. It's a replacement. Yeah. Yeah. The replacement part
about the seats and the risers. One of the reasons I asked Carol about the, if they'd seen it is, you know, she said the custodians had gotten the quote, so I'm okay with that. It's only a three quarter inch thick seat board, which to me seems a little flimsy, but I'm going to stay out of it because that's not what we're here for. I just want to make sure we fund that adequately. Anyway, it sounds like we have a second from Joanne. Yes.
Okay. Any other any discussion? Any other comments from the board?
So you wouldn't essentially be increasing the building maintenance fund to $180,000 Which, what line item is that? 438. That's Row 438 in the spreadsheet. Correct. Oh, Row 438. Oh, yep, sorry. That's okay.
So I have 437, this could be a disconnect. So it's currently the current budget proposed is $95,000 Is that what you had, Eric? Yes. So the motion then would be to increase the amount of that fund to $943,000 I'm sorry, wrong line. Dollars 108,000. Yeah. Told you I'd be flipping back and forth here trying to look. I lost the row count. Wait a minute. So Rob and Joanne that that's an agreement with your intentions, Yes. Okay. All right. Does anybody have any other comments? I do. Yep, Louise.
As far as the maintenance of those, would that be considered a town or a school responsibility?
I think maintaining and caring for them would definitely be a school responsibility. It's going to be a school property, so we'll lose control as soon as we fund it. But I mean it's in their best interest to maintain it so I wouldn't think we'd run into too many problems there but. Okay. Other comments. Okay, we'll go ahead and call for a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Hearing none, the motion passes. Thank you. I'll add that into the spreadsheet. All done. Okay. So I think our next act should probably be to go into executive session to discuss with Carol, the town clerk salary. Everybody okay with that?
As you go into executive session, you should specifically invite Carol. You can elect to invite me if you so choose. You don't have to. If you don't want to, I will assign you the host and you can put me in the waiting room and then invite me back in when you're done with executive session, whatever you choose. Yep, I think that's appropriate. And
of course we do need to do it. Thank you for the reminder there. I think at this point, let's just have Carol in there. So if you want to transfer the host responsibility to me, we'll move into an executive session and I will invite Carol Lee into the executive session.
Okay. You are now the hosts. Got it. And so now you have to put me in the waiting because I can't put me in the waiting room anymore because I'm no longer the host.
So you should be able to click on those little three dots. Okay. I just, I did Adrian first as an experiment, so I enjoyed that. We'll go ahead. Okay. And I am also going to stop recording.