Meeting transcript
Board of Finance Special Meeting
August 17, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. Thank you everybody. This is the, 08/17/2023 special, meeting for the Town of Andover Board of Finance. I'll call the meeting to order at, 07:33. We 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, nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. So I just wanna make a few comments. First of all, thank you for, especially the Board of Finance members for, putting the meeting or making arrangements to attend the meeting on short notice. Obviously this is the time of year we usually don't have that much business, so we like to give everybody a little bit of break. We've got a lot going on in the last, month or two. So appreciate your participation and attendance. The other thing I will say is that this meeting is a special meeting and as a special meeting, we are restricted very closely to the agenda only. And the agenda item, the sole agenda item is the Andover Elementary School Upper Parking Lot Paving. I think you're all distributed some information about the bid, the contract earlier. It's not in the packet, but we had the same one that was discussed in the Board select meeting on Monday. So that is what we are here to talk about. And then we, of course, will allow for public speak as usual during the meeting. So I would also ask that members of the public, if you have something to comment on, you do keep it to that meeting agenda item as well.
Okay, I think that's it. We'll go ahead and get started. So the first item on our agenda is the public speak. So Eric, do you wanna go around and see if anybody has anything to comment on at this time? Sure. First up on my list is Chris Bernard.
Good afternoon. First of all, to the Board of Finance for doing a special meeting for us. We are certainly very appreciative of it as Board of Education member, and just here to support what is right for the school and what is right for the town. Thank you. Next up, Valerie Bruno.
I am, going to just reiterate what Chris said. Thank you. I appreciate this meeting, and, we have the same goal and objective.
K. Next up on my list, Jerry Kerme. You're on mute, Jerry.
How about now? There you go. Got it. Okay, thank you. I want to thank the Board of Finance for putting this meeting on, and I too want to do what is best in the best interest of the school, the Board of Education and the town and the Board of Selectmen. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Next up, Celeste Miller.
Good evening, everyone. I do have some questions, but I think once we get rolling with the meeting, hopefully I'll be able to have an opportunity to ask them. So I don't have anything right now. Thank you. Okay, next up, Michael Beckwith.
Yeah. I'm just here as a board of education member to, voice my, support for making sure that the board of education and its roles and rights are withheld, upheld, and respected. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. Liz Lochak.
Hi, I may have questions after the discussion, but at this time I'm good. Thank you. Kimberly Prasad? Nothing at this time. Thank you. Thank you. And Caitlin McIntosh.
Again, just to echo everything that the other Board of Ed members have said, thank you guys for holding this meeting to discuss, the parking lot, which desperately needs to be paved. I twisted my ankle in one of the holes at it two weeks ago picking my kid up, from Cool Camp, so thank you.
Okay. Mark, I believe that is everybody. I don't think I missed anybody.
Yeah. I think you got everybody. I do just wanna say that we don't actually have like a question and answer period set up for this. Normally once we're out of public speak, it is just the Board of Finance discussing unless they have specific questions for the people in attendance that are involved in the project. If you do have a question, then we will try to get to that. But just use the raise hand function or something in the Zoom chat and we'll try to get to it. I don't wanna do a lot in the middle of the discussion. I'd like to keep it moving along, but I also respect that there are sometimes questions and things that do come up that you wanna express or you have questions about. But it's better to kind of state those upfront generally. Sorry, tried to get there. It was muted, I was saying, but we'll try to accommodate that. So that being said, we'll move on over to the topic at hand, which is the upper school parking lot paving. The paving is in not great shape, or the pavement there is not in great shape. So the request is that we
have that upper parking lot paved. And we, the school had gone out and gotten several quotes as I understand it. And there's the question about, you know, how we're spending it, who's making the expenditure and how to approve it. I think that's a separate question. Right now, what we do have is we have a mechanism in place by which the school capital expenditures can, be done. And we had voted on that in previous meetings and that's that we created a school capital fund specifically for, I think, these type of capital large projects. The intention of that fund was that we would potentially move any all excess funds at the end of the school year that normally would roll back to the town, you know, that are outside of the non recurring fund amount that would be allocated to this capital fund for the school. So it is, as I understand it, the wish of the school board and the Board of Selectmen also voted on this and agreed with it with certain conditions. They wanted some changes made to the specification or the proposal that was made by the contractor. And those were in a list that was sent to the Board of Ed. And as I understand it, we didn't think that that was gonna be difficult to get done. Eric, do you know if we've gotten feedback from the contractor on that?
I have not gotten anything back from anybody Yeah. Regarding
So I think what it is, the purview of the Board of Finance here would be to follow the process that we had established for these capital funds would be to basically agree that we would transfer the amount of these extra funds left from the school year into the school capital fund account that we had approved earlier. And then we would evaluate whether spending this amount on the paving is the appropriate thing to do with those funds. So that's I think where we are. I did forward to all of you kind of the information that Eric had sent out to the Board of Eds, Val and Jerry, following the Board of Selectmen's review. They had some requested changes and they also just wanted to make sure there's certain things that the town public works department is gonna be afterwards
with respect to this job. So I guess from that standpoint, I don't know. Eric, do you have anything more to say about the project in general?
No, I think the if they meet the if the contractor agrees to meet the technical requirements that the town would normally impose on a project like this, I think it will be end up a good asset for the town. You know, we need to repair the drainage, the pipe going into the basin first. But if it's done correctly, it should last a long time and be a good capital asset for the town.
Okay, that being said, I guess I'll open it up to the board. Does anybody have any particular comments or questions? Joanne?
Given that it's a project that needs to get done, it fits the realm of why we wanted to have this account created and so and and I did listen to the Board of Selectmen go through their conditions and then look over what you sent and Eric sent over And it makes sense. They know the ins and outs of exactly what has to be there just to protect the town, protect anybody that might walk around there or whatever the conditions are. Yeah. So I feel like although it it came up quick or something like that, it's exactly what we're looking to save that money for instead of spending it on other things at the end of the year to use up the budget. It kind of was money that was there left over. So long and short of it is I'm in favor of it being spent to fix the parking lot. I know we're at mid August already
and kind of it was in this case, it was nice that the Board of Ed went out and did get those quotes because they're there. And then I don't know the whole process that will follow in the future, but in this particular case and being a timely thing that has to get done, it all seems like it can come together and yeah, I'm in favor.
Okay. Other comments or questions? Okay. None? I mean, guess I'll echo what Joanne said that, you know, I think that, you know, we've done a due diligence reviewing the proposal. Obviously, the public works department got involved and, you know, people on the board of selectmen got involved. And I think that the changes that they've requested are reasonable. They shouldn't have any super material impact on the cost of the project seem appropriate. Again, agreed the work ultimately just kind of have to get done, and it seems like a reasonable thing to do is the first step in the process. Linda?
Hi. I'm just wondering if if if, like, we're gonna do if next if they decide to do the lower sidewalk or lower parking lot, like, next year or two years from now, is a proper route for them is to start with CIP and then go through the system rather than do everything at the last minute? Well,
I guess first I'd say that it's probably outside the purview of this meeting to talk too much about the process. I would think that yes, it should be, would be my first assessment. Obviously, there's some disagreements on the particulars and where the process follows after that. But I think that that is the topic for some other meeting probably and not necessarily something we want to get into here.
Mark? Yeah, Joanne? I just was going to make one additional comment. I mean, in this particular case for this particular year with construction that's going to be happening nearby with other things. I won't even bring it into the meeting. It kind of makes sense to get it done too. I find going outside of the process, the perfect process that we'll talk about in the future at different meetings worked out for this year. Just that's the way I see it.
Yeah. And the other thing too, and I didn't mention this, although most on the call are aware of it, is that one of the reasons that we're kind of rushing this along, obviously, is we like to get this done before the school year starts, you know, for a lot of good reasons. So just, I should point that out for the record. Yep. Bill? So I just wanted to ask Eric.
So, Eric, with the additions or changes to the contract that the board of selectmen and our Town Road Crew suggested, are you comfortable that they can still do the job for the same price that was quoted, or are you at all nervous that they might come back and say with those changes, the quote's gonna change or the price is gonna go up?
So to answer that, here's what I would say. Work on the basin is relatively minor. We've said right off the bat that public works will deliver three new basin tops. And the reason we do that is anytime you reclaim a road, you know, you end up with a product that lasts a solid 30. It will need maintenance, but the underlying structure of the repair is good for at least thirty years. So, there's never a reason to reclaim without replacing the basin tops, because the basin tops aren't going to go another thirty years. So, they were originally going to supply one, and what we've said is we'll supply three because there's only three there. So, we'll supply all of them. So, it's not it won't be a big reduction in their expense, but it'll be a slight reduction in their expense. They will have a little bit of labor in remortering the pipe that goes into or actually comes out of the one basin, which was the cause of the sinkhole that occurred in that parking lot before. So that shouldn't be a big deal. I believe the quote already had in the cost for the additional thickness of paving that the town asked for. So, I don't think that should be an issue.
And the town has basically said, we'll pay for the materials testing lab, as well as the proctor and the guy monitoring. So, and we'll handle backfilling behind the curbing at the completion of the job, which was not part of the original quote anyway, because most paving contractors contractors don't ever really do that, and you have to do it afterward. So there shouldn't be anything, if there's any increase in costs, it will be the fact that the town ordinarily requires the contractors to get an actual performance bond for the job. And that is because the town doesn't want to get caught holding the bag if they do something bad. And a performance bond just essentially guarantees that if there's something major wrong with the work, you know, you essentially have some way to file an insurance claim. So those are really the things, you know, I don't know what the cost of that is. It's not zero, but it's an ordinary thing done with paving projects. The other thing I would mention is that there is $8,000 sitting in the AES Capital Fund. So, if you had an overage, you know, less than $8,000 you would simply pay for it out of the existing money
that is already in the fund. The other thing that's possible to bite you, but doesn't look like it will, is all of these contracts have an asphalt escalation factor built into them. That is based on the cost of liquid asphalt on the week the job is done. And all the contractors put that in there because the reality is asphalt's commodity and the price of it goes up and down. And the contractors don't want to get caught holding the bag. You know, but that is generally, it looks like the prices right now are holding pretty steady. So it doesn't seem like there'll be any shocks from them. So my assumption is that they can do that. If the initial quote was good, you know, then then they should basically be able to do it for the cost. I don't know what the school had for contingency, the town would normally figure out at least a 10% contingency on something like this because anytime you're grinding up pavement, there's always a chance you hit something or you run into something you weren't expecting. But I can't answer. I've not seen any of the financial information for this, so I don't know what is there for that.
Thank you. Sorry, other questions or comments from the board? Celeste Willard, you have your hand up. We'll go ahead and take your question if you have one.
Thanks Mark. Will this have to go out for bid or is the bid that we received from Constantine, as long as they agree to those town requirements that you had sent Eric, will that be sufficient or will it have to formally go out to bid?
Well, that's a question only the Board of Finance can answer. I mean, per the purchasing policy, probably ordinarily, it would go out to bid. It would go through a formal RFP process. Okay. The Board of Finance can waive that. And if we're going to do that before school is going out, they would have to waive it. Cause there's no way we're going through an RFP process, you know, in less than a month timeframe. So that's not even, you know, it's either not done or it's done with the existing contract or in the existing bid.
Right. With all due respect, Eric, sorry to interrupt. I think that's why we're having this meeting, Celeste. Okay. Okay. Just so that you understand. I mean, the only reason we're trying to do all this, the BOS the other night, then us coming in, which we're happy to do so that we don't have to do that. Okay. In the future, they'll talk about that or whatever. But again, I'm not privy to how long the contract lasts and all of that, but I'm assuming the one that was presented and that everyone looked at and talked about the other night.
Right. It just what Eric had sent as the attachment, it looked like it needed to go back out to bid. That's why I was asking. No, I think it's a good question.
The way I understood everything I've heard and listened to and read, thought was if we could go forward with what was already presented and anything. But as
well. Thank you. No, so the board just needs to go back to Constantine's with these new added requirements. And if they agree, then it would be good to go on their end, on Constantine's end if they agree to it. Mark, is that correct? That's what I understand. Yeah, assuming the board agrees tonight, yeah. Okay.
And then I just, if I may, I just have one more question if I may and I do appreciate it. Know it's not practice to do this but just with respect to this fund that's been created, how does it and excuse me for my somewhat ignorance in all of this, but how does this work, this fund? Is it something that, so at the end of the year, if the Board of Ed has $20,000 left over, we would roll it into this capital project fund. Then if we needed to get money out of that fund, who do we then go to to get that money? Is it the Board of Finance or is it the Board of Selectmen?
Well, I think that needs to be stated clearly and made clear to everybody, but generally the process that is in place, and this is suggested, by Valerie, since the school does not have a, any kind of capital working fund, The idea was that we would create a fund separately, and so then if there was extra money right left at the end of the year, then normally, you know, that would either get transferred back to the town or the school would find some other way to spend it productively. But the idea was that if, you know, rather than just spend it and things in advance or do something like that, that really wasn't in the attention of the budget that we would, you know, if there was money left over because we got additional grants or some expenditures came in lower than expected, that that would go back to the town as usual with the understanding that it would be put into this capital fund. At that point, it becomes a little less clear, but generally I think the way the charter is written, yeah, the school would go through CIP for major capital expenditures. And then, you know, it's a little ambiguous in Charter. But then I think it would normally come to the Board of Finance you know, for referral at that point. The question has been like, what's a capital versus operating expense? And there's some questions over the interpretation of the Charter, etcetera,
and the Connecticut General Statutes. That needs to be worked out. And I think that kind of pertains to the questions that Linda was asking earlier. And so I don't necessarily think we're going to handle it here. But that
is an open question that we all have to agree on to move forward. Mark, I think, and I know Val has her hand up too, so I'm only going to be very brief. You know, I had raised that in an email to you too, should we discuss that? And we all had decided let's table that just to get the fine tooth wording and process for the future to be transparent with everyone agreeing or coming to consensus to how that's going to move forward. Because this happened so fast, we had created the account at one of our meetings, the Board of Selectmen had ok'd it, and now it does exist. So that's a good thing for everyone in that we can do this. We had said some little stipulations in that Board of Finance where we created it, but we never got to the exact process. So yeah, I just think it's important to be transparent and there are some townspeople on tonight, which I think is great that are probably interested too. Yeah, that we definitely hold to that in the future, But that's all I want to say. And maybe not get too deep into it or make any promises that we can't keep. I intend on always being in favor of something that's going be good for the school, good for the kids. The way my school operates, I'm just going to say it is, is it in the best interest of the kids? We definitely ask us that question. I mean, we can't do everything, but yeah, I'm going to let it go till we come
to that meeting that we discussed that. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Valerie.
Hi, Mark. I just wanted to clarify two things. I know that you had just said when I came to that meeting, we talked about having the capital account and that it was collect it was already created. It it actually wasn't because when we talked about creating that account, it would mimic the 2% nonlapse account. And that was what if you look at the the audio of your meeting that night, that was, as Joanne said, kind of the caveat was that it would be a separate new account. The 8,000 that Eric is talking about is in an existing town side account already. So there was never that come between from what you guys voted on, which is what's different from what the board of selectmen voted on.
And so to Joanne's point, it never made it that far. That new 2%, nonlapsing account for capital never was created. And so we just followed the charter as it exists now in 08/2005, 08/2006, and 08/2007, and and hoped that in the future, we would wind up with that new capital account. But I just you're right that I came to you guys to ask for that account, but that account was never opened. The account that existed was a town side account that had $8,000 in it from a a a project long before I even got here. So that was kind of the difficulty here is that that account was never opened because we never opened that with that same criteria where it would go through just the board of finance.
Well, I I I don't know that it functionally matters because the you know, it isn't like Well, it does functionally matter because the charter does say The charter doesn't reference any funds, though. Right? There's nothing in the charter about specific funds that we create. So I'm not sure. I mean Charter. Right. I'm not averse to creating a separate fund for it, but it I don't know that it changes anything from a practical standpoint. It definitely does because the Board of Education,
currently only has operational. And so it is in charge of of its funds now, so it would have followed the path that we followed to get to the contract with Constantine's. If you were to open that new account and the criteria was the same as the 2% non lapsing account, and the board of finance has control over that. That already exists again by state statute, what a 2% non lapsing account looks like. You guys have worked with us on that before. So it would be the same thing as that, but that account doesn't exist yet.
So that's the issue. Yeah. I I don't think it was productive to talk about it here. I'm not sure that I would agree. I think that it's just another town account that's been created. That's been created for a specific purpose, you know, which is the school capital. And it could be that this other account is not designated that way. So it doesn't it may not make sense to use that as a safe account. I'm not sure. But again, I don't wanna get caught up in the nuances here. All of us are spending extra time, so I think we have a specific purpose. So I'd kind of like to move that forward if we could. So I don't see any other hands up. I guess I would ask the Board of Finance if you have no other questions or comments, if somebody wants to make a motion. And I think the motion is two parts. One would be to move the amount into the cap, basically the capital fund for the school. And I believe the amount of the quote, Eric, it wasn't in the document that, you sent around, but I think it was 112,000 and some change.
You don't have it? The only thing I had was a screenshot. I I wouldn't guarantee what the amount was. The initial contract had the amounts cut off. The second contract we saw, it looked like it was $120,000 but I can't It was 120. 120? I thought it was 120. Yeah.
Yeah. So I would say for the purposes of the motion that what might make sense would be to motion to transfer, monies from the school into this capital spending account for AES and authorize the project to go forward for the re you know, a pay repaving contract in the amount of maybe $125,000 So it gives us a little bit of room in case something changes and plus or minus 5% if we think that we could do something slightly different. But I think that something like that would be an appropriate way to handle this.
Anybody have any other I'll make the motion. Okay. Do you want me to repeat what you just said, or is that gonna be Yeah. I think we need to state it clearly just to make sure everybody's clear on what's being voted on. So my motion is to move the money from the current school account over to the new capital funds account and that we approve the contract to repave the upper school parking lot with all the details that are stated in the contract for $125,000 plus or minus 5% to cover contingencies. If
I could restate that slightly and just tell me you're okay with this bill. What I would say is we'll we'll we'll motion to receive the money from the school district that they have available for this project into the AES capital spending fund and to approve the paving project as proposed with the conditions that the you know, similar to what the Board of Selectmen voted on in their meeting on Monday, because there are those specific technical changes that they wanted. So does that okay with everybody? Or is that okay with you? Should say you're making the motion. That's okay with me. Okay. Anybody like to second that motion? I'll second it.
Okay. Joanne seconds it. Do we have any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay.
Rob? I'm gonna abstain just because I've been so behind. I've been catching up on all of this. So Okay. No problem. I just wanna make sure we didn't miss your vote. Any opposed
and abstentions? Rob, you're on abstention. Correct? Opposite and abstention. Okay. All right. So the motion passes four zero one. Thank you. Okay. Well, I guess we'll move on to the next agenda