TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ December 27, 2022

any amendments to be adjusted yes number six I'm gonna say County Board chair will not be here public comment portion Jennifer Connors to take a seat in the recently rename a seat of opportunity works has worked with us for several years and

talk us through some of the questions about trying to basically help us understand funds and our account balances and everything you know Jerry has been doing really yeoman's work diving in essentially trying to figure out for sure where everything is what the state of those funds are then I should say there's no concern that there's like missing money or anything like that it's just more understanding how the things are set up in the course of moving from a Town Administrator to a new town manager to an interim Town manager and a new Treasurer you know there's been a lot of there's a lot of institutional knowledge that has been kind of Lost in Translation through that so where this is a year where we're kind of reestablishing the Baseline of where everything stands um and uh so Jerry's been working with Miss College to do that and she's here to present some money so please offer any other background info you think is

necessary to get a good for your presentations no that's pretty much it um I did put together a presentation set of graphs and for anyone that has an older version of this I didn't update it this morning so I apologize for the last minute the changes uh the first part of the um the graphs are basically on it it's a it's a typical presentation

the last three slides or so we talked specifically about those balances you just mentioned the reserves catalog analysis is basically your cash so I'll just kind of jump into this and then I want to decide if anyone has any questions or comments feel free to jump into any time yeah all that we we did invite the budget committee to join us here tonight so um we'll have the presentation and then whatever discussion with the board or follow-up questions we might have and then I will open it up to budget committee members if you have any follow-up questions that perhaps we didn't get to um in our discussion with Ms Hopkins

second page to have the presentation uh we have an overview of the audit itself so the audit was actually performed the week of March 14th 2022 which seems like a long time ago at this point um it's actually it was a little bit later than when we usually performed the audit we came um in January but Natalie left since things weren't quite ready came back the week of March 14th the reports were actually uh finally interviewed and dated August 25th and as far as the financial statements themselves they did receive an unmodified opinion which is a clean opinion on the financial statements so that means your financial statements are materially correct and then besides the audit of the financial statement for the cell to be a rich Warrior to do some testing and we actually issue a separate report for that under those standards we are required to test internal controls as they relate to financial reporting and under those

standards the town did list even your material weaknesses excuse me Bridges kind of the highest level of finding the Hat you can have and that did have to do with the cash account reconciliation the highest bad level I'm sorry like like the word you mean like the worst level yes yeah okay yeah are the dice ISR well you said the highest what is the highest I want to make sure people understood that that wasn't a good kind of highest

weakness would be a significant deficiency and we also had two significant deficiencies uh one related to segregation of Duties and then the other one had to deal with the preparation of the financial statements themselves and the audit adjustment s and I can go into those comments a little bit more if you'd like as well I think that would be helpful so at least at a fairly high level people just kind of know what that means what is why that we got that so so uh as far as the material weakness those um the reason that it it was at the highest level or the worst level is as you pointed out um is because when we came for the audit itself we discovered that uh full Bank Market associations had not been done since April of 2021. and so for that reason there was a lot of unreported activity on the bank statements so the accounting records didn't match what was actually on the bank statements uh we did actually have

to do some digging for several months to identify the activity that had not been reported thankfully it was in your favor because they were mostly revenues that had come in that just hadn't been reported on the town's books uh but since you know knowing your cash balance is important

it's something that that really needs to be done on a month and I know the town has been working on that since then Jerry and I have talked about uh some of the steps that have been to town on the bank records of civilization yeah and I know most of that sometimes thing but unfortunately I'll call one time date for like 11 months or so well yeah yeah um the significant deficiency for segregation duties so for those that are not familiar with the concept of segregation of Duties that is when you take procedure or process and you break it up so that different employees are performing uh different parts of that procedure the usual example that we that we use is is cash so typically if you have an employee that has access to cash you don't want that one employee preparing the bank reconciliations doing the audit adjustments preparing the deposits and taking in that cash you ideally would have different employees

doing parts of that process so that there's some oversight some different eyes on different parts of it the more you have one person doing everything the more likely it is that you want to have errors or that something happened that someone's not going to catch and then the last part has to do with the preparation of the financial statements themselves and the audit adjustments we did have quite a few audit adjustments more so than we have had in the past and the preparation of financial statements would just be actual preparation of the schedules that we need to perform the audit and prepare the financial statements

um the inexperience of Staff yes yeah just not telling what needed to be done overview of the general fund fund balance and the fund balance is broken down into five different categories and the first balance is non-stepasable and that is a balance it's what it sounds like it's a it's a balance that is not readily available to be spent in 2018 you actually have a fairly large non-spendable balance and that had to do with Prepaid expenditures there was none in the current year a restricted fund balance those are amounts that are restricted by external sources and spent typically those would be grants and donations scholarship funds that the town can only spend on those very specific purposes committed fund balances those are amounts that have been set aside for specific uses for town both and they are gone lapsing so they carry board from your gear and we will talk some more about those those are your it's mostly

your Capital reserves okay that's what I was going to say that's what we would call our Reserve funds yes so Public Works reserves fire and rescue capital and so on we'll get into those details the next balance is the assigned fund balance and those are amounts that are carrying forward to be used in mostly in the next year's budget the town does treat its assigned fund balances a little differently in that those amounts are specific revenues that were received in 2021 but they've basically been earmarked to be used in the 2022 budget

so if they're not used then they do last to unassigned a balance there's no Future Care report of those amounts and then finally the last category you have is unassigned fund balance and that's the balance that is left over after you put amounts into those other categories is the amount that carries already used for any purpose could you back up one two on what you said about the assigned fund balance because that sounds what you said about what happens at the end of the year that sounds different than what I think I've read in the email earlier that I thought so assigned fund balance that if it was unspent did I hear you say that it would it would lapse into undesignated or last back into that assigned to fund it's an unassigned so without being like what would an example of one of our would that be like Recreation or nope so

an example would be excise tax revenues you typically identify those to be used in the next year's budget um typically they're shown as offsetting the amount there is for Public Works expenditures okay so um in so for example in 2021 you had excise taxes that you collected that you would be using in the 2022 budget but if you didn't spend all of that amount the operating amount you would just lapse to unassign okay

by about 216 000 from 2020 to 2021 an overview of the budget factual information itself I could explain why fund balance did increase in toll so you can see the taxes were about 61 000 higher than budgeted and that had to do with collections on prior year taxes the budget only reflects the 2021 commitment that sometimes you are still collecting on the amounts that were committed in Prior years as well as you had some unbudgeted supplemental taxes intergovernmental revenues were also higher than budgeted to to higher than anticipated state revenue sharing charges for services for about a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars higher than budgeted due to unbudgeted fire department revenues which included ambulance Billings of about ninety nine thousand dollars plus higher than anticipated server user fees and overall you can see total revenues are higher than budget by

which year would um the arpa funds that we perceived we purpose what about on the previous slide in the fund balance which category they are sitting in committed Ness mean if we continue sorry that's a pretty big jump and unassigned from 20 to 21. I mean that my question was no sharper funds in there okay okay

um to make sure you're under budget due to turn over in the manager administrative assistant position projects unclassified expenditures were under budget by about a hundred and six thousand dollars and the reason is that includes our overlay it was only used offset about twelve hundred dollars in abatements and then Capital Improvement expenditures were under budget again due to the timing of projects so overall total expenditures were under budget by about 3 three thousand

of the general funds expenditures so each piece of the product um is a function of the Town each percentage is the that portion of the expenditure compared to total expenditures so for example education makes up 56 of the town temperatures in the general

relatively the same from year to year education did increase by two percent Capital outlay actually decreased by five percent Public Works increased by two percent Community Services increased by one percent and all of the others stayed the same and that I do want to point out too that uh unclassified is showing up as zero and that's not because you didn't have any expenditures in there it's just that the grounding is less than one percent

three are our classes specifically about low balance so permitted fund balances again those are the amounts that the town has voted to carry forward forward forward and they do not lapse unless you have another Town Road that basically rescinds that original and I want to point out that of the

balance in the third column from the left of 473 000 that is the amount that appears on the financial statements and it's also the same amount in that graph that we looked at before fund balances however what we've found is that there were certain adjustments that will need to be reach those balances so the total of your reserves actually should be 790 uh Jerry and I have been kind of going back and forth with dialysis he did talk to Ruth and she brought forward some information that I did not catch so what we will do is we will adjust those balances going forward so that they reflect those adjustments uh one of the adjustments that we made so when I came to the audit back in January I talked to Kathy who was here at the time and uh she was talking she talked about how the town was getting away from moving unspent Appropriations to the reserves so what that is would be for example if your telecommunications

budget you budgeted thirty thousand dollars and you spent twenty two thousand dollars then that eight thousand dollars would get moved into the telecommunication Preserve the version of the spreadsheet that she gave we did not have those amounts on there so I assumed that they were basically eliminated they were not so those should have actually been added to the reserve and when I went back and looked at the Warren articles for 2021 what I realized is the way that they're worded is the town eliminated let's see if I can borrow this quickly the town eliminated the transfer of unspent Appropriations for the operations Department operations budgets for public works and Fire and Rescue only that's right so the amounts that should have still been transferred to reserves were the unspent appropriators for telecommunications the unspent appropriations of recreation of the unspent capital Appropriations

for fire and rescue and the unspent capital Appropriations for public works so you can see that we have an adjustments column here and then a final amount those amounts have been added to the total of the reserves the other thing that we caught and that I did not catch originally is on the spreadsheet there is an amount for Appropriations those are amounts that have been voted on to be added to the budget from the reserves in addition there's also a column for expenditures and some of those amounts were actually doubled up so when the fire and rescue capital there was an appropriation of sixty thousand dollars in addition there was also an expenditure of fifty seven thousand dollars and what I didn't realize is those two amounts were for the same item so it should have been one or the other but not both so the fifty seven thousand dollar expenditure has been added back in addition in the public works Capital uh

reserved it was also an amount of 180 600 that was also doubled up so that amount has been added back as well of expectations makes sense to me because I've been looking at looking at these but I don't know but I get the one and I as part of your discussion then I think I can't remember you talking about this or not but you know uh to offer like maybe like best practice that we should be using to chart things like this going forward so that we don't lose track of things because I know sometimes what happens and I know with the 180 whatever thousand millions that was that was a result of a uh a plow truck for public works it was approved like I believe in 2020 but and we boarded the truck and all that the truck wasn't actually delivered and the check wasn't actually written until 21. right and so that because it was a 2020 vote in appropriation so the accounting and tracking that through I mean uh any any

help you can offer on a best practice for us to use going forward I will say that the spreadsheet that has historically been used to track these balances tends to be over cumbersome and overly complicated and that is why that these things were missed unfortunately um at the time when I did the audit we did a draft with financial statements but there wasn't really on anyone at the Town who was familiar enough with these balances to know what they should be and quite quite honestly ideally growth are wrong but it shouldn't really require that it should be pretty self-evident in the documentation about what's happening right so I guess that's what we're looking for is how can what how should we be documenting these things going forward so that you know when somebody new comes in or you know a new auditor or whatever you know everybody knows the story right uh yeah

and again that's something that Jerry and I have discussed and I will be working with him on figuring out a way to do that yeah in a more simple way so great restricted fund balances and these are the amounts that are um as I mentioned they're restricted by use typically by the state or an outside agency or someone that has donated money to [Music] um the town and I did make the distinction of the amounts that are set aside in separate banking panel else that are carried in the general fund itself and that's something that we're also going to talk to talk about is that a lot of these balances even though it or restricted they're still sitting in the general

all mixed in together with the exception of a few separate bank accounts that have been set up so the in the committed fund balance is the restoration fund and the unspent bond proceeds are in their own bank accounts scholarship funds are held in separate bank accounts and then everything else is in with a general operating account should those things be in their own accounts each of the things on this list on they don't necessarily have to be um it would definitely make it easier to track them yeah and that's something one of the steps you might consider taking is maybe putting some of the larger reserves into their own accounts yeah exactly

reason they're all the same account because because of the peculiarities of our calendar fiscal year and then we approved a budget in April for a year that started three months ago and we don't collect any money for it until eight months into it um that's what creates a cash flow situation um so if we if we took all that Reserve money now and put it aside in a its own account and wasn't available for operating expenses um on a month-to-month basis then we would have a serious cash flow problem and would need to be taking out a much larger tax anticipation though much earlier in the year

will be part of the discussion on potentially moving to uh fiscal year versus the calendar the next slide so the very last slide that I have here is is kind of an analysis of okay you just physically account shortfall so um your total operating cash as of December 31st 2021 was 4 million and thirty eight thousand dollars within that amount um you are carrying restricted balances of about 13 000 and committed balances of about 711 000 which leaves about 3.3

million available for operations which is about four months worth of expense however as you mentioned beginning of August I did kind of a rough calculation at the top where your talk your non-tax revenues for the first seven and a quarter months and your estimated expenditures um in the first seven or months you would have a shortfall about 247 000 that is an over simple simplification that would be assuming that all of your non-tax revenues have men and equal installments and that your expenditures are all incurred

especially say don't and I will point out too that those expenditures are struggling just your offering expenditure so I did back out of that number any Capital related expenditures so this this is based on your 2021 actual expenditures but that is backing out around 215 000 worth of capital amounts so if you added those into the short problem actually a few more than

questions about I have a bunch of us on the airplane um so um you you address the material weakness that related to the cash account reconciliations and you you address the significant deficiency related to preparation of financial statements adjustments but the segregation of duties to me as when you're talking about it seems somewhat difficult with only having two three staff members and so how how do we address that issue

that is a good question um because really what you're going to have to do it set up in a way so that you have eyes on everything so for example if you have one person that is running uh AP horns and cutting their checks to to go out the door you typically want them to have somebody else that is reviewing those warrants um that's not really an area that's an issue it's more of the reconciliation process and the cash process itself because as of right now um I guess you're it right so I'm going to take over the reconciliations

laundry with these treasury from having to do at least that so I can help them off there so you don't want this person who's she's writing the checks so you don't want her can't you know reconcile them backstage either so that's all part of trying all of us trying to find that Groove and what we're good at strengths weaknesses and going for the beginning

extent but you know when you were talking about cash accepting cash I think and and so I mean I I understand this is you know not something that's serious but it's something that was raised right um and and how do you segregate those duties with everybody at the window is everybody's accepting that right and so so what we've done is they cash out their own their own that's and it gets difficult so the treasurer has some other duties that that needs to get done put on this reporting and so she cashes out at any time as a part-time it comes in and takes over that restaurant and then the part-time at the end of the day cashes out their loan and they put her hashes on her home before they were cashing out each other's drawing that can get a little dicey because if something were to go wrong then this is going to go on and say what did you do and so to avoid those situations just like in the bank if

you're a tolerant Bank you're cash to know you're watching so we're trying to figure out other things that we need to do but yet I got to do the window at the same time so it's hard to with this with the staff we've got it's difficult there's no question about it yeah ideally for the the people that are actually taking in the cash and handling the cash you should have somebody else who's basically doing the entries for those amounts and basically looking over their work for the day and maybe signing off in an Ideal World

and to be fair at that that's not a new message this year that you've raised back that is something that's a lot of small towns deal with because of small staffs but uh but I think things are the dollar amounts of getting bigger and things are getting more complex and so I think you know Jerry's taking some steps to try to move us down the road a little bit more and say we're being as much as we can yeah the main reason that we had that in there is because is because of the turnover when Kathy was there for the majority of the year she was basically doing a lot of it herself whereas in an ideal world she would have had one of the other people in the office doing the work himself and then she would have been overseeing it signing off on it and making sure it was accurate that that wasn't happening because she was doing most of it herself it wasn't really another set of eyes on it

that's eventually for what I have unless you have further questions comments uh no I um any uh from the board no I just as chance said we didn't talk anymore um we talked about like on page three we have these committed and designed um that spreadsheet that we've been trying to decipher all of that is same Expressions yes extremely convoluted and difficult are you playing a separate and yeah label the way these are labeled like yeah those accounts that's what we've talked about exactly because you almost need a translation document now because we've used different terms over the years versus what's here so that would be a great thing to have everybody using the same terms of knowing having the same understanding of what they need right um who's coming in here it's been very difficult to try to figure out but as we move forward I'm gonna I'm gonna work with Jamie Otter to come up with a better system that will all understand

and I'll share yeah I want to just publicly credit you again you know I mean the work that Jerry's been doing I mean the analogy I would use is I've been coming in to try to solve a jigsaw puzzle with no reference pictures to what the puzzle is supposed to look like you know I mean and and he's been doing a great job and he's getting it figured out and and it's still you know more work to be done but we're we're yeah I think the board I'll speak to the board just we feel pretty good about the work Jerry's doing you know with the auditor and he's had other people in here as well you know trying to like again re-establish that Baseline and so that on the go forward basis we know where what everything is and I appreciate that but really it's just bringing in the right people to help answer the question again I asked John today she had a time for a two-minute phone call and it'll be in 30 minutes

board I would open it up to any and there are a few budget committee members here tonight if any any of you have a follow-up um question I mean it might be might we may not have the answer tonight it might be something we need to do a little further um digging on but it's

well you did bring up a good point to uh Kevin about the segregation of Duties my major concern was since this is this has been this audience has been done by the same technology agent had this been brought up in Prior years which it had and it sounds like that we are addressing that now uh one question I did I guess it's a little it is in relationship to the art would be it is groups assisting with determining some of these items with Trio versus a spreadsheet all right tell me when you just spreadsheet not that well okay first question

think you're playing the plane going forward is to get it all in the trio yeah but you're still going to have to have spreadsheets involved somewhere but just better organized and more focused on like say our committed balance and assignment balance and not have them call people in the same expression I thought we were I was under the impression that we were going to be using Trio solely and being having the ability to download that into our spreadsheet well you can use Trio to track your balances and then when you spend that money you can go in and do an entry to know you're taking money out of that fund and pay for it but it's going to happen attractive my friendship is really no there's really no other way I've got to do it that I know there may be a way that you can go and do it okay I know some other clients that use Trio that have set up separate funds outside of the general fund to

track Reserves yeah that might be a possibility right but there's no way that it automatically comes out you'll have to go like if you if we buy a seven thousand dollar Scandal like we have that's going to have to be trapped that can be tracked and Tree on their General it can if you if you code it as an expenditure to that preserve fund instead of having a great evening but it would require social work because

thank you the one is the next audit schedule February 6. and we'll have that report when that's a question for him I'm sorry what was the question um so the next shot is scheduled for February 6th one while I wasn't really expect to report to the issued uh well hopefully sooner than August um I'm not sure I can answer that until we actually do the audit because it depends on how to address and if we run into any issues so it is somewhat Museum

turn around typically we come for the audit in the past week company audit around the third week of January and then we typically will issue the reports months and a half later somewhere around there so so in a if everything was

around April 1st we might see the report yep that's a that would be it might not have is the norm or yes I report yeah but that's a that's a big hit because we have employees that don't have the experience that you had in the past to be able to put that stuff together so it's not it's not Jennifer that does the report it is but it's the information that we give her so she can do the report

6th that you're saying might not be able to be incident in average fashion it could be how to go last time January and then we had to wind up rescheduling and coming back in March because not everything was ready so I think maybe the internet an analogy might be like if you have an accountant doing your taxes and you just dropped them off a box full of random papers and receipts versus a nice organized you

know paperwork and whatever you know you got to get one a lot sooner than you're going to get the other one and I think um but last year was uh for the box of paper than the well-organized and so what made the progress towards the well-organized materials I'm assuming we have some sort of a preparatory checklist of like or something that you you know that you need and yeah so um we're gonna do our best to get it as soon as possible yeah there are there are a lot over here and adjustments that are found that that only happen at year round for the audit things don't happen any other time of the year so that's something that we'll have to address is

might not go as soon as you like it today yeah so we're still in a learning curve right sure yeah since I haven't met you officially okay um so the question that I have which I don't desire an answer tonight is what is left

for training like what do we need for training to get everybody up to speed so that we are whether it's training or organization to have Trio the way we want it to to have the spreadsheets the way we want it to and to meet those goals what is required

do we need to bring in an outside trainer do we need to pay the auditor extra to get things done kind of kind of creating a plan because it has been to in my opinion too many years where this has been disorganized and knowing that we do have ARCA funds I think this would be a great way for that kind of one-time expense to get people trained and get people doing this properly so that if we do have changes and roles again it is clear and flowing as to what's what Trio is a very unique big program so training just doesn't happen like in one week's time or two weeks time it's over again that's going to have to do over a series of classes lately mechanic training is depending on what you're doing if that's everything it does not payroll taxes it does everything so I mean that's over to get to get a Treasurer really trained they're going to need two or three years of experience to even get there so

it just has to be we have to fund it right and that's why I'm asking a question because it hasn't been really brought up before in any of the budgets that I have seen where we you know we have a brand new person they need to learn Trio we need to set aside money to send them to school and training for this so that they're doing it right yeah or someone to come in and train them yeah or if it's a membership to the 1-800 Trio line I don't know but that's what I'm kind of curious to make sure that it is you know that we do have a plan moving forward I'm doing my best at putting in a budget that you'll pass or like but you know that's all I

can do I'm four months in and still trying to figure it all out myself so um yeah let's see let's you will see more money come in and do the bank reconciliations to get us caught up so we have a bottom line and then from there I'll take you over I I couldn't do it back from April 2021 it was just too much we're trying to figure everything out so hopefully well that'll get done I will have a bottom line and a bottom line will preserves that's what this whole process is just to try to get me to a bottom line and then we can move a bowl of a better track and a communication better everything I I just knew it's going to take money yeah so that's why I want to reel this back into any questions that might be relevant with Ms Connor's expertise since she's here

audit or the report or the regards to the staff in regarding the money and would that be eliminated if we didn't take that yeah as far as um to to really talk about any kind of payments that you take in because I mean it's still taking in a lot of checks you're still taking um credit card payments uh you have achs that are coming in automatically and someone still needs to be able to uh

getting paper bills across the counter it's still cash no I understand that I um I was a little bit confused as to who we were talking with the component of the two employees which say working in their drawer got me a little uh got me thinking on that line because you know a lot of places you don't work in cash simply because of those particular reasons there's really no way around uh fall through on where it goes or a check you can see some of your checklists and my calls or a credit card right absolutely missing at the end of the day I mean ideally the less cash you've handled the better because it does reduce the risk

um honestly I don't know how many people are still paying attention I'm sure there are some beautiful are you ready to have a question or because you still pay attention cash check for credit card if there's still a receipt that has to be has to be brought up so that should be part of reconciliation if you're paying cash you've never received it says you put that much in that draw yeah yeah you can back check that but it's just it's the drug it was in the drawer but where to go from it you know you have a receipt you know you took it in cash but where is the cash that's typically a lot of problems with you know even businesses that take in cash sometimes it's hard to track when the cash came in in person when the cash went out

especially on a holiday week appreciate you making time what Jerry tells me it's somewhat standard operating procedure that you you come to the towns and do something like this you don't have to reach out it and just not done that in the past so I think I think we would continue to you know keep that going as a practice that you know I've been coming to poured out you know after the audit next time thank you very much you're welcome

Amvets liquor license application this is a come on this is a uh so our on-premise license is for our basement area only that's on the walls of the downstairs shoes out back or any type of event outside of those walls uh Liquors it's a BYOB and so say you want to have a wedding party upstairs and that's fine you can rent a hall and then you have to fill out if you want to be apartment and so throughout the year we're coming to the town always for those people required we're trying we're trying to at least we're trying to lessen the burden on the panel that's clearly what we're supposed to do is you're all very busy uh we're also trying to lower the liability on our end of having BYOB because UOP tends to turn into not be more training on beers growing your own gallon of whatever you want to drink and so for liability purposes for less than the burden on the town for just overall better practices what we've tried to go

to as a club with care and what that means is we can leave the premise of our license which is the basement go upstairs and cater an event which means the BYOB permits are no longer allowed you have to get catered from us but they wouldn't be able to bring their off correct okay correct yeah and so once we've moved to that license it's not an option you cannot bring by the people and so on our rental agreement and check directly from Ross uh we're going to upgrade our rental agreement that says okay yes we want to rent your hall the next line item would be would you like to cater with alcohol that would be three months okay to buy us and say okay we're going to provide you with the bartender we're going to provide you with service and then that way we can now regulate our customers more appropriately the BYOB permits from the ambets go away it does allow us to cater as well uh say

there's a fair or an event somewhere we'd be able to take AMP theorem and that's post 13 and go join like the Cumberland fair and do a beer tent with the rest of the legionnaires or whatever else so long as we still abide by that pounds

license permitting requirements and so it allows us to go off practice our premise is just the basement that's the only thing that's promised so when we say premise everyone always thinks that the payments is a bigger license requirements is just the basement right here that's running

go ahead oh I don't know go ahead I don't want to interrupt so the premise is just that basement so what we're trying to do is okay if you want to have alcohol being served out back we want to provide you the bartender to make the drinks appropriately to

you it is yeah and so my question which has nothing to do with how I feel about it is sure what is the effect on the town do we get any money when they come in we're asking for a permit no right no we're just as a municipal Authority we we have to improve right but you have to pay the state license we have been state so the it's an increase the the current uh license that we're on is uh 495 foreign

we still are legally authorized in that premise we're just asking for the with catering caveat so that now we can bring a bartender and a bar upstairs build a bar out and cater it upstairs to the service center parties or and would it still be only would you still want to be able to because I remember I think the reason you did the original like downstairs premise license because I think originally it was the bars like with just the amounts correct so will this with this different license would it still be would it only be

a catering situations or does it essentially allow you to just open your doors to the public and there's a bar in Durham uh you know uh so the off-premise license or so so the on-premise of our license the club aspect of it is still members only okay it's still a private uh fraternity you have to be a member to access the downstairs area regardless unless you're a guest of a member yeah if we were to cater upstairs that upstairs again would still be okay so I want to have a baby shower I throw a baby shower I'm renting the uh haul out upstairs I'm just getting it catered I can bite all the people that I want but we're upstairs it's the only place that they can be is the rental area they can't go they can't go downstairs they can't access that downstairs and that's defined by the license not just your own in-house rules both okay the national Amvets has uh bylaws that say the whole membership and fraternity thing and then

the license itself restricts that yes sir if you know sometimes you guys have like a Halloween dance or something like festive tickets or something would you allow it to be would you allow these uh some alcohol during those events even if it's an event that you're holding it so we have talked about this in our meetings we're going to put it into our bylaws on what happens if a member wants to rent The Upstairs Hall and so we would no longer if we wanted alcohol up there we would have to rent the haul out from ourselves and have an on that rental agreement Check Yes I would like it catered and yes bring up our own bartender in-house and but still have the documentation that so on the finance company upstairs I would go to the members and say I'd like to rent the upstairs and in our bylaws we can make it we can it goes to a boat just like anything else we can make it okay well if a member wants to rent me upstairs you

don't have to pay full price or you don't have to right too because you could rent it to for ultimate or it's you for a dollar and you can kind of circumnavigate the license or are you wrong so even would that apply even to like your own fundraisers you know like you know maybe I'm asking the same question a different ways this is pretty much the same question

delicious because now I'm renting a hall even though I'm a member there I'm renting the upstairs program and so then I fill out all the paperwork and I signed the that I want to cater now it's on me as Nate Ledger I'm not refinance did anybody that's on you like the alcohol proportion because they're the licensee the liability so on there uh and we have actually called applications uh back uh we the and that's all you need to do one of two things increase our liability insurance to cover that party that's having their place or we can ask the people that are about renting out the hall to have their own insurance for for them purchases um and so that whole rental agreement is still being worked out on how we're actually going to certain navigate those those questions

the license is the license the license is your license right songs yeah like yeah I mean we're having an event right exactly and uh and I'm right and everybody's invited then that's where I believe that um any uh license holder whether it's the club without catering or with catering or any you still need to come to the tap for renewable every year right yeah so and I was reading through some stuff earlier about if it was attached to this about it because I wasn't sure whether a hearing was required and it's not required it says the municipal officials May hold the hearing um but that's part of where like depending on what the end use Vision was going to be or is that it may not influence whether

we felt the hearing was necessary or not you know like if so if if after to your point if and I do not for a second think this would happen but if for some reason you know years down the road when you know somebody else is in charge and then the board could basically you know denied

fraternity of it all we don't want nobody in the membership wants it to turn into approve the club with catering application from the AmVets so Josh another second discussions all right remember for this to pass because there's only three of us here I'll try to be approved all three of us need to vote yes all in favor of improving the club with catering application for the Durham and vets okay we have three zero vote

appreciate that everyone yeah yeah that one's uh things like that chief before he gets home so Calvin's sick okay anyway well you probably need a little bit of rest too Jesus I hope to convince you on my free thing is true okay let's start real quick for

the board minimum wage for the state increases by a dollar five an hour January 1st so it is 12.75 it goes to 1380 that'll affect roughly 14 members from the fire department are based on minimum wage so to support Personnel some some of the younger Staffing non-emts non-perdeals so roughly 1400 or something I'm getting a raise minimum wage but of course that affects the budget also with hours trained hours on calls that type of stuff is that is that built into your budget for it will be for the 2023 yeah we're figuring that out right now minimum wage dollar five an hour goes to 13.80

so just just on your way down um we'll talk real quick about the December 23rd storm roughly 14 to 15 calls for service for the fire department mostly wives down trees down blocking roads um what we found out was that this building this turns into an EOC an Emergency Operations Center over your shoulder if someone is writing down all the roads they're writing down where the blockages are you know rerouting to certainly working with Calvin I've talked to him 15-20 times uh good teamwork for his staff our staff here I appreciate it um so the public knows though when a larger storm comes in we go through our dispatch and say hey we're on scene hey the road shut down dispatch calls in really CMP they have an EOC in Lewiston and they sort of take over so we don't get etas from CMP unless it's a major thoroughfare the three rows that we have 125 36 and 9. later on their own timetable unless it's

an emergency as I'll get into a construction file that we cannot dictate how fast they get here room 125 was completely shut down for our the reciprocal is I don't get notified when it's over so unless Calvin and his crew are on the road or my crew or myself for driving the town again I don't know when those roads are open so it's difficult for the public to call here to say hey do you know the MBTA can I get home can I get through about to go all around you know talk some lizard time I can't use that I'm embarrassed I'm sorry but I can't same thing with power right restoration

aware that you're aware I don't think it's anything new to be like a wire down on country living I cannot force people to get there and you guys there or give an ETA not that rich actually asked for that and he did not right did not but you know that turns into a school bus a week later that the answer a week later so that you know and that's a public safety issue when toolbox did not turn around in theory Live Wire because every yeah um and it was brought up recently on social media on Bowie Hill a legitimate primary line down across public Hill that I don't want anyone to touch or take it upon themselves we set up cones barricades but we did not block off but we helped that's a decision that keeps me up at night like I don't want a bus stop to be there or a child to be bicycling through and say hey I'll get this wire out of the road that's a primary and it's considered mine yeah so it wasn't until yesterday that they were

there so very difficult decisions they really don't yeah so that's just what we ended the storm with a structure fire um we had extra Staffing here on Bowie Hill structure fires um they were every truck six drops including the rescue on scene made an incredible stop saved the entire house bathroom fan cut on fire put up into the attic they saved it good job two days later we go back to the same house yesterday for a structure fire completely different this is a wood stove in the basement that they're using they have no power just trying to prevent the pipes from freezing ashes got combustibles going and they had a full-blown Pace required so again full response in this time Lisbon Freeport pound along seeking and again Crews had to make entry with a line and prevent the house from going out a lot of smoking water damage so that they are out of the house I'll talk to the owner several times

making arrangements American Red Cross has been called so we've had two structure fires sort of unrelated to the stolen population yep before that several EMS calls on Christmas Eve with transports and several on Christmas and again your volunteers come out of Christmas Eve Christmas I think the first one was 12 30 at night or zero thirty hours on Christmas Eve but there's five guys there so I want you to know it without names but it is incredible to watch

that they need their own family to go help others um last but not least in front of you and in that packet is and calm star that's our ambulance Building Company ambulance billing service great and Comstock does about 200 fire departments so they're top 50 is the going rate and then that final column is actually what we charge is this a per call yes well it's her call but her

life support so that's an EMT uh you could have a paramedic but they're only doing a basic skill bleeding that type of stuff control mental health evaluations those types of things uh you can see als1 als2 you know that's the difference between sort of a heart monitor keeping pharmacological interventions drugs that type of stuff and then the mileage is a perfect example so you can see what Medicare allows or will reimburse really you'll see what the average the top 50 is almost five times that and our current rate so I don't need a vote tonight doubling our rates don't even come close to average it would be my recommendation after you all discussed and I'm sure you'll have a further question because we can do this at any time this is not a a Time dependent decision at any month we can

raise our rates it has not been done since we came on board and contracted the column star um so I know Jill you know asked a question how long does it get does it take a member to be trained currently the fire chief's been here 15 months and this is the first that I've dug deep enough to get into fees and schedules because you're dealing with other things so it'd be my recommendation for you all just go with the average bundle you know top 50 average is still average

um can you tell me how that works like so like yeah what's what's the money Trail here and watch sure let's do ALS too so that'd be one two three the fourth one yeah right above mileage right so we take a legitimate heart attack and we

only have two hospitals to choose to transport so that's CMS here are mainnet and we just had one the other day legitimate having a heart attack Medicare says and that's without Medicaid without supplemental but Medicare says we'll we'll allow you 670.

allow the person to be billed or that they'll cover the max that they'll cover there because ultimately they're not understand here is is paying the difference between if it was the average bundle for the sake of argument if that's what we charge sure and Medicare is paying

Medicaid individuals have private pay they have supplemental or they have that they make up the difference so an individual's insurance would pay one of four four things individual supplemental out-of-pocket I can show you the breakdown uh from Comstock without names it'll just say hey you had 300 transports this is how much private this is how much Medicare that type of stock we're leaving just money on the table as you can see just on that example where almost 200 right 185 or whatever it ends up being um that would not even judging I mean we're not even imagine doing Medicare yeah we're not even reaching Medicare status do you know like when the cost art gives you this information that average bundle of top 50 like top 50 drawn from literally New England would not make you and is there any distinction made between like um customer or their clients that are um you know the part-time per diem like

we are versus a full-time professional like City Lewiston type of Department no because they don't know the difference of employees so it's just built okay in my opinion our staffing which a lot of them work full-time other places Auburn Brunswick bath United Ambulance

which contracts are lowest in so those same individuals that were work here so it's not the employee's skill level oh sure I mean it's their license clearly you know you know um they don't get into Perkins or what's the cost of benefits for example whereas with the city of Lewiston they're definitely trying to cover the cost of benefits and whatever else yeah that is a true statement what we do get into if you write about benefits um fire service as they talked to before is really fire-based EMS just like here in this building is really supplemented by the time of the tax payers yep that supplement could be reduced

I think the idea in general is something that I could get behind my if what it seems to me though it's almost a tax on people who are using Services right yes so um what percentage of the people that received an increase or their own residence as opposed to residents of another jurisdiction

that's fair that's always the question that comes up to us yeah every job is achieved our previous Chief class that would be my first Halloween sure and you can't have separate whoever correct you can you can't charge like Durham residents not charge during residents but charge right and then you know this is a question I expect you to know the other things you know that I would want to you know Medicare charge is X

that's probably not the there are insurance companies that probably reimburse at a lower rate so I'm not sure rate now yeah for winning versions everything else is higher than that unless you're private bank I can't I understood that this decision for you I'll need more information uh I can pull Comstock or something

so you all can make a informed decision on an increase if that's what you need I'd be curious like what are they basing their fees on like where how like are they just oh three thousand five hundred sounds good let's charge that I mean or is there some like where's where does the number come from you know what I mean like are they actually doing some sort of a cost calculation and trying to try to charge true cost or

cost calculation maybe that's the question I was just trying to do that if we because I think it's certainly fair that we should um look to recover costs sure um probably more of a reach if we're charging three or four times what our actual costs are looking at it as a revenue Source yes so that that would be a different thing

you need it's a good discussion to have and I know you weren't expecting us to vote or anything tonight but I think it's I think it's good especially as we head into budget season you know I think it took in a lot of areas to make sure that whatever fees we have are appropriate and then we're covering our costs your questions help me gather more information and get back to you and make that informed decision so that's what we're doing tonight yeah again on the radar but those are the rates into this time I'm ready I mean you can see where you know a third of the just the mileage per mile that's at a mile eight dollars 40 cents per month that's what Medicare will give you 840 a mile so for everyone listen 840 is just reimbursable Medicaid and we're just talking Medicare yeah uh different you know private companies Blue Cross and Blue Shield a lot of the ones may give you more so and I guess

maybe maybe if I want to understand a little bit better how cotton star works so we perform a service and Comstar bills like yeah who like I guess like I guess I'd like to understand their process a little bit like what are they doing this you know okay we went to Medicare for this and Emily went here and then we went there and then we we've tried three different sources to bill out for this and is that is that what they're doing yes because they Garner more when they received so we have a contract with a flat rate usually per call and then it's a percentage so if somebody can be negotiated yeah so for somebody in one of these average top 50 communities if if um you know if they're on Medicare and they needed a service that they had no other insurance they're going to get a bill from Comstar to pay out of pocket the difference between the Medicare reimbursement and yes yes yes

delegate dance yeah trying to take care of the taxpayers and the people in this case Durham or others that use our service now I've been prepping everyone about other times because there's private ambulances around here not being abused or picking up the slack or Mutual Aid that only increases if it helps and I'll get you the information our call volume is up another five percent problem for the year now those are small numbers but we've been trending I think six percent fifteen percent probably at least five percent this year uh those are just trading 9-1-1 calls are you are you saying or I important is it your opinion that the fees we charge influence how often we get called no no okay not the fees

but the use of our staffed rescue you know it is being called on more and more okay um today because we have a really low fee here not because it was one of the cheaper option because we are okay okay no but because we are staffed because even at night when it becomes a volunteer service if you will people will still come and the staff thing that the members are top-notch so yeah I mean we have a very good responsive they are so the town I'll be reimbursed for that because the town staying up front yep ought to be reversed gee um I agree especially with the Medicare portion of it I mean we should release them right I would agree with that 100 um the only thing I would ask within the top 50 is you said this was the top 50 of the New England area yes is there any way to do uh top 10 of similar towns I I

can look at that only because you know I'm assuming you know but after we assume like you know I live out on Roxy's menu and I gotta get to you know a million met or something sure right and take out you know oh you lost to a ferry to uh exactly yeah exactly really skew the level of average yeah so I didn't know you know if we could look at a thumbs up perspective of just similar towns offering similar Services rather than or even average across the entire region not just not just the average of the highest could be right um but most hospitals again I could be wrong on this but in the past which their base would be set up the Medicare as far as any typical procedures that like for example if you're running for heart surgery we'll get paid 22 000 bucks for the surgery I'm going to pay 500 bucks a night for an ICU and 350 for Jack I think you're looking at it differently I'm looking at this

differently than what hospitals would charge a lot because they're writing off a lot they write about the Medicare side of things sure because a lot of people when you get into those 30 50 000 heart attacks Strokes that type of stuff with care afterwards either out of pocket or they just can't afford a socio-economic problem so they have to write off so they charge them high because their write-offs are high on our cakes the town's supplementing the rescue at you know a dollar a month really um but we need to recoup as much as we can for that supplemental that just I mean I hear what you're saying but it's kind of the same

I think um then you I know you take us from those of some of the questions we've asked so let's let's you know keep the conversation going and try to land plan somewhere that makes sense you know balancing all the various you know considerations as you can see I won't be great we are even locally under even what Medicare office I mean we're not even charging that and again I don't think that's the fee has been updated in years so

yeah and it might be and there might be an intermediate step here like maybe maybe a short-term action is to change the range to at least get to the Medicare reimbursement and then maybe there's a larger discussion about how much if at all we go beyond that yeah I think that's perfectly fine

the first one ended roughly 10 000 in damage in the second one was 75. same problem 100 odd that they do have insurance I haven't looked into the writer of it that's a little worried about housing and whatnot yeah so uh we just came back from popular for a memorial structure functions any other questions the storm I was going to get you a dollar amount actually how much the stone would cost in town just that one so and its thousands do we know if there's if there's any like federal emergency reimbursement money so the students are still correct they're still doing the dollar figure but it's very difficult unless people go through femur but like food loss or damage to the house that type of stuff yeah so a lot of times we are way under that in the state um sort of getting me first yeah I always do it and I always have it being that Emergency Management through the EOC through the EMA through a major

stocking so there's damage but there's not we didn't have trees through houses we didn't have physical images to people [Music] good so I I also want to read you know the respect that the department has throughout town uh it's it's something I don't think every Community has uh so congratulations on that to everybody um thank you for explaining the road closure bit because there was a closure near my house and uh you know it was there decides for the hair but people were driving through so we didn't know what was going on um and I had another question I just regretted thank you those athletes go straight to the membership better here um again I don't want to guess on a dollar amount but but those stones across the time and that's what it said Lauren it's budgeted for and whatnot there's no injuries but I think I have at least 12 to 15 members here running calls at least 24 hours oh uh there was a question there was a

question on the Facebook today about a warming Center oh thank you so we decided to do a regional warming Center even though the fire department was open and staffed we got one call from a family member wanting a woman Center in Lisbon's Police Department was the woman Center for this area so that information was provided we also get into home oxygen use so we only have like an extra generator but some in town that are on home oxygen use but when they start 12 24 hours without their own power generation they can't make their own oxygen at home and they need to be transported or oxygen dropped off so one individual was brought a special generator for them to use now that doesn't generate a call that goes sort of I'm witnessed but those things happen that's just different taking care of here so I think I think I think if you know when when the next step happens I think some way publicizing the divorment

center issue might be something that wasn't widely understood no offense I had a discussion today with the town manager about the appropriate social media aspect of that but clearly that's one of them yeah they trying to get it to the top webpage yeah that that was the first place I looked sure and that's where it should be rather than Facebook pages it should be either fire department related to the account but we can do better with social media thank you great thank you very much

is here could follow off but I have people ask me about after these storms there's massive amount of debris left in the road side of the road we want to Stack Up on guardrails like go around route nine it looks like uh you know keep people out of dead man's corner where you have like uh for Wilderness you set up in there it's a good luck if you go over um are they going to address that maybe other horse some of these

necessarily it might be a couple trees that they stacked up on the side of the road in this case on Route 9. out of a little bit what they do is Works today Russell Tomorrow there's a few sick Calvin's sick so I'm assuming they'll get to this yeah these are all cut up there's already they're all caught up they just they get stacked or they get put over the embankment like they probably would not go around the Dead Man's Curve there you know so you have things sticking out over the guardrail per se well those eventually be gone by because some of them are from not this one they're from

they come inside the drop time who's in charge of deciding the passing area on the Lisbon side of that curve because I almost had an unpleasant experience with the Chiefs on the passing right there so that would be the GOG

designs you can draft a letter as a selectment in expressing a concern and we can send that to dot on Tumblr just the second time I've seen someone about a service second time I almost got hit at all where is it exactly right on the on credit when you go through

passing just when you go on the Lisbon side just when you start going up the hill there's passing the passing line narrative I never noticed I never noticed until till this week and you know someone decided to pass a dump truck [Music]

eight on the agenda is a quick clean indeed we actually saw this last meeting but um we didn't realize we had two of these we had one before we get to the second one our notary uh went home um she's with us today um so this is another case where the uh the town had foreclosed on the property for a non-payment taxes the property owner has since met the tax obligations so the process is for us to issue a quick claim knee basically transferring the property back to the owner and releasing operator

claim deed as presented for the property at 128 North Durham Road tax map 6 114 B so Josh seconds any discussion or any questions on this one yeah yeah he gave me the original yep okay let's talk about the new Solid Waste contract yes

of June 30th and so we have an RFP before us very similar to the one we sent out last time yeah um a few other small edits but as well it's basically the same thing uh this one would start July 1st of 2023 and run until June 30th of 2026.

choose to do my um I've updated that the tonnage what you see in yellow come in maybe we don't even have to leave maybe we've got enough information charges there for the last two years I plan on sending it to Casella Waste Management Triano and Riverside before the night mode plus it'll go on the main Municipal website we'll go on our website to make sure because I'll probably put it out for three weeks three weeks may seem like a long time but if you're going to have all the bidders that are gonna look at this RFP carefully they need to scope up the area and make sure they can get have been knowledge it is it's pretty much ready to go I had one question and it was probably like this three years ago and I bought it but and it may not it may not matter because the way appendix a is worded but in the body of a contract number eight recycling standards but it says the recycled materials that we collected shall

consist of and it was a bunch okay page five it's okay it was um it only lists number two and number one plastic yet in appendix a which is I think what we want it was uh Plastics number one through number seven not just number one in 100 to choose so just if again I think appendix a because you know probably trumps what's in eight but it might be good to just have the language be consistent um so if we wouldn't want someone to come back to us and say well we only contracted to take number one and number two number two plastic yeah you guys will throw on everything yeah

and we still you know um the last contract three years ago was the first time that we asked for and we're asking again which is good for for the bid to break out and provide separate fees for bulky waste and Universal ways because the the idea would be to put that question on the warrant separately like we've done in the last year or two you know see if your account wants a bulky waste thank you

need it I just share I guess you're right we're ready they would give me some sort of budget number uh they could not give me one where it's going up today I don't really know why they wouldn't but I didn't want their VIN number I just wanted like a you know because the left keep in mind the last contract is three years old so this is before the pandemic increases so I suspect we're going to see it would be yeah and I think in the past you know um even if it and I don't know if this would be it might be good to do it sooner rather than later before we get even is to have somebody come and give us kind of the State of the Union you know solid ways they've done that in the past where like what's going on in the market like remember when we signed the last contract that was right when recyclables recyclable Market tanked and

what we would pay for recyclables went through the roof um and so it would be good just to kind of like you know what's going on in the solid waste market now versus three years ago the last time we looked at a contract because that would inform the better we know the market the better we're going to be able to evaluate bids

yeah and just continue it was a woman that came in yeah there was a wonderful things be good to know like kind of what's going on in that world right now as we look at report sir yeah I think we went on with Christmas everything I don't have a lot to report I I won't piggyback on what uh

Chief was talking about as far as fees and schedules so in 2023 we're gonna come to a meeting with a bunch of fee schedules we've been working with that on the coaching course good good on our constructions because they really do need to be updated and we passed a an article just last year or two years ago I can't remember where we basically we bring a new it doesn't go to town meet or anything but you know board votes on a fee schedule for the year yeah you know and Alan's putting that together now

other than that like I said John couldn't John Tyler couldn't be here because he wants to talk about the article language good for the you know in your office that's been really it's wholesale you know I'm pretty much digging into the budget getting ready for Budget we had a budget meeting meet and greet I thought that went pretty well um I just know the budget community

just gearing up gearing for that budget you know four months in trying to figure it all out is it's challenging but on a positive side because I mean I'm learning a lot about a bunch of the previous budgets what we have and don't have and what we should have and should have that sort of stuff so yeah and I know you know to someone raised the issue earlier about well it feels like we've been in this world for you know a long time and we have but you know you weren't here for that whole time and we're you know that I look at that first experience uh almost as like a false start and we kind of had to go back to square one so we're considering that you're that you're only four months and I think you know

many numbers because why we're comfortable with them or didn't really quite understand this there is a lot of co-main with the different sections of the budget and that makes it difficult to yeah put together and that really does just to clarify you know we use commingling in the free into mean confusing not necessarily nefarious right right absolutely yeah right it's absolutely how's it going there's nothing like that they usually do yeah when you have someone that's been here a long time and they know that it's easy for them to understand right right when someone new comes in and tries to get inside that hey that's that's yeah that's what it becomes challenging I'm always good for a good show great

uh consent agenda which the Casey just has um events and the payables warrant do you have to pay before yeah consent agenda as presented Josh news I'll say three seconds all in favor three zero on that um upcoming meetings uh select board and budget committee we start in those meetings uh January 10th uh 6 30 in the Eureka Center we're gonna start at six o'clock yes regular board meeting that night and do the board business

first first like you know like warmth and things like that um and then we'll move into the uh co-feeding which is like a country presentation and then on the 12th it'll be the department that's giving their judges okay all right do we need an executive session tonight nope entertain a motion to adjourn so

I'll second call there okay we are adjourned thank you