TranscriptBudget Committee Meeting ~ January 29, 2024

I'll see you next time. To be continued... Thank you. The End Thank you. We'll be right back. I'll see you next time. Thank you. We'll be right back. Good evening, everyone. Today, tonight, and Monday, January 29th, we're convening the first meeting of Durham's elected budget committee to review the upcoming budget numbers for 2024.

I'm going to ask everyone in the room to please rise, and we'll go ahead. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I think the first thing we should do is probably have each budget committee introduce themselves to the viewing audience. Just tell them something about yourself. I'll start. My name is Milt Simon. i live on the stackpole road have been a resident of durham since 1982 and a member of the budget

committee since 1999 got a better memory than i do i'm jill gastongue i also reside on stackpole road um been on the budget committee for a few cycles now what else did you tell people how long you've lived in durham when did i move here 2004 i live on day road

I've been on the budget committee for, I was off for a while, back on 30-plus years. I won't tell you how long I've been in Durham. Actually, I was born in a nursing home in Lisbon Falls, and I moved to Durham when I was six months old.

Been here ever since. I'm Phyllis Brannan. I live on Brookside Drive. I've lived in Durham since 1989. This is my first year, the end of my first year, well, the beginning of my first year of the budget committee. And I'm going to go for it and go for three more years.

John Talbot. I've lived here a couple of years and been on, this is my second meeting with the budget. Where did you live? Oh, 636 Stackpole. My name is Neil Berry. I live on Stackpole Road. I've been on the budget committee for six years and lived in Durham for 40 years.

I'm Jane Rice. I live on Bowie Hill. I moved here in 86, and I was on the budget committee for about nine years last time, and then this is my, I'm on another three years. Great. thank you um our first official uh thing we have to attend to is we have to elect a new chairperson

and vice chair since this is the first meeting of our elective process so i will open it up for nominations for chairperson mr chairman i nominate bill simon as chairperson second it's been moved and seconded that bill simon uh be chair of the budget committee any discussion i don't think

they're going to allow us to move. I think we're here. Is there anybody else who wanted to if this is part of your career path? All right all those in favor of electing Milt Simon as this year's chair please and I'll abstain it's a vote and open up the nominations for vice chair. I'll nominate

Jill Gastongay? Did I say it? I seconded. It's been moved and seconded to elect Jill Gastongay as the budget committee's vice chair. Any discussion? See you then. All in favor of Jill Gastongay serving as vice chair. Great. We are missing one member. She's running late tonight

because of a personal matter. Donna Church will be here shortly. With that in mind, open it up for committees of pitting, but rather she's a, you know, we're all important members and I want her vote to be part of the record. So I'm thinking to open it up with some discussion rather than

delve too deeply into the budget and voting on anything. Can we maybe just start with Joe explaining how things have changed this year? That's exactly what I was going to say. So Joey, I don't know if you have a presentation prepared for us or if you'd like to just review what we should be looking at in the budget.

The floor is yours. What do you want us to open up? Because we have no handouts this evening. So what should we be looking at? He said, if I may, he did send out an email address to the budget committee, which was very, very informative as to the different items.

Yep, and I can go through that if you want. Everybody got that in an email earlier this week. I would do that just so it's on the... Yeah, no, that's fine. So we submitted the budget last week, towards the end of the week.

I believe it was Thursday evening, for the budget to the budget committee for their review. We reviewed this with the town manager in two subsequent meetings, along with our financial advisor to the town at a meeting earlier in December and then January as well.

So we agree with what the town manager and the department heads came up with for budget items and the way that they presented the budget is in a very organized fashion, more organized and more readable than I've seen in the past.

um it's pretty easy to follow uh they have reorganized um the the budget this year and and i'll say bucketized it differently um more in aligns with um how you would run an actual business versus um uh and all the way where they they had more individual buckets but it's an

easier way to read it right now um we did add two things to the budget this year we did feel as though the board felt as though that adding $5,000 to the administration budget and building maintenance and repairs line 2072-53, and also $50,000 to the Eureka Reserve account

for foundation and door replacements that are needed. That was an emergent issue that came out during our meeting a couple weeks ago, or last week. So that got added in at the, I'll say, during our meeting. So the budget does a really good job of providing the same level of services to the taxpayers

in a fiscally responsible manner. So we are, like I say, really pleased with the town manager, Jerry Douglas's work, and his department heads, along with Mark Roy. They really did bring a level of organization that I don't think we've seen in the past.

We have a 6.2% increase shown in the budget this year from last year, 2023. Again, this is with estimates, estimating the school and the county taxes at this time, because we don't have those values at this point. Based on these conservative efforts or estimates, there's no reason why we can't hold a relatively flat mill rate.

Currently, it's at $21.35 for another year. So in the recommendation, we recommend using about $518,000 out of our reserve account. And that would basically represent a 0% increase to the taxpayer for this coming year, 2024.

So that's a very important point to make. It should be noted that we have $3.7 million in our reserve account that the town has been saving. I think we've referred to it in the past as a possible rainy day fund. We think using a little bit of that money to keep our taxes flat this year is a very prudent move.

You typically want to keep approximately three months of estimated cash on hand to carry you for a three-month time period when running the town government, two to three months. So based on that, that comes out to about $2 million that you'd normally keep on hand,

Well, we have 3.7 currently, using half a million of that to level load this budget, level this out to 0%, bring it down to 3.2 thereabouts. Knowing that in previous years, our taxes, the way we have estimated in a conservative approach, that would increase.

We would still see a net gain at the end of the year due to taxes being brought in for various things like fees and taxes on automobiles and other items in town. So we provided you a budget. Let's see. So some of the other items that were presented in the budget were the capital reserves.

Where's that located? Excuse me? Where's that handout? I didn't see it in the spreadsheet, the capital reserves. There was a separate handout. I believe it was a separate attachment to the budget that was sent the other evening.

It wasn't part of the spreadsheet. It's not part of the main spreadsheet. separate separate handout so the result of the CIP committee work you know the recommendation was to there were a number of projects put forth one was the

public works capital reserve the fire department reserves and municipal reserves at $10,000, assessing at $60,000, and Union Church $9,543. We did have a proposal, or the Union Church Committee did come in and recommend that we transfer the Union Church as

an item for town meeting to the Historical Society, and what the second request for that was to transfer the thirty one thousand dollars that was raised that was also in their budget from the previous years as well as additional ten thousand dollars that

was raised on the floor last year so that really came to a value of thirty one thousand dollars total freezing through my note I sent you here so so when in level funding the capital expenditures the select board felt as

though, that being less reactive to ebbs and flows in the budget and what's needed in the capital budget over a 10-year period, we'd be more proactive for capital planning, especially the public works and fire department and the municipal capital reserve account. We funded

these amounts at a level that allowed the 10-year plan to be executed evenly from year to year. Not saying that prices of things won't go up a little bit, they will, but the goal is as you're pricing out trucks and equipment for both those departments especially, you're using your pricing

to make your initial estimates and then extrapolating over the 10 years as to how much it would cost it each year to buy that particular piece of equipment. By funding the capital reserves ahead of time and evenly, it allows us the flexibility

of not necessarily putting it up on a warrant to say, we're going to buy a truck this year. You might not need a truck that year. You might be able to wait a year or two on that truck. but having the flexibility to purchase that truck when possibly the truck is at a better value

or you might have a truck that breaks down at some point. You have the latitude at that point to just go and buy that particular piece of equipment. So it allows flexibility for the select board to go do that on behalf of the town.

Having a 10-year plan in place, the CIP committee has been working on this for a number of years with the individual departments, is we're now having a mature plan that carefully details all our equipment. So again, back to giving us the flexibility to buy those at certain times when you really

need it, you could get extra mileage out of these trucks and not have to be fixed into a particular exact year to go and purchase that. So by level loading the capital expenditures, that helps with that flexibility. Joe, I have a question. Can I ask a question? So as we're thinking ahead those 10 years, is there a percent every year that we're adding

in there because prices will go up? We'll have to assess that on a yearly basis. The department heads I would expect to go in and reevaluate as every year they're going to reevaluate the 10-year plan. You're going to add another year every year that goes by. So they'll have to reevaluate the price of equipment at that point. We'll have to have that discussion of how much we go up or if we have to go up at all on a certain piece of equipment.

I would think it would be on an individual piece of equipment basis, but that would be a way to do it. We could discuss other ways to go and assess that. We did ARPA funding. There is still ARPA revenue available for use.

So we voted the other night to allocate 44,630 of unappropriate ARPA funds to fund three of the projects, the three computer-aided dispatch computers for emergency vehicles for $25,000, land use codification for $10,500, and a new heating system for the Eureka Community Center for $9,130.

There was one other overspent article in here for $3,235 for the fire department. So that would also be a separate warrant article that we'll be asking for, asking the town to fund. Can you repeat that, please? The fire department has a spending overage of $3,235 in their 2022 budget.

So that will be an additional article that we ask for above and beyond the budget that you have in front of you. So it was just a notation in there so that the budget committee was aware that that would also be voted on at the town meeting.

I'm thinking I caught all the high points here. General questions based on Joe's presentation? Yeah, I've got some, I guess, high-level questions, I'd call it, and one, a couple of statements. The percentages that Joe used in his overview letter to us were based on the budget last year, not on actual spending.

So the spending is going up 9% this year, not 6.2% over last year's actual. And that's reflected in all of those funding percentages that he's used in this letter. So one of the, this is, I must have missed it because you guys in the select board meetings were talking about the,

and I'm not opposed to the level funding concept, I want to do it, but I don't understand how you guys are saying that we can continue to do that without increasing taxes. keeping the fund the same i don't believe we actually said that but this year we're proposing

using five hundred thousand dollars of our undesignated fund to do that to not raise taxes and keep us at an even keel i think what you're going to see moving forward is you will see an increase in cost of equipment so that that number will go up and you also you'll you've got three

3.7 million dollars in the bank you you the town does not you um he does too yeah but you um so we can't keep using those funds year after year so yes so can we keep it level this year yes we could if we if we decide to do this and the town decides to put up that 518 000 to do another 500 000 next

year towards this we might have to raise taxes that's correct you might have to raise taxes so I didn't see any capital expenditures in the budget, any items. Like there's a mower, I think, that was being purchased. Like the actual, you're talking about the spreadsheets themselves for the actual 10-year plans.

No, I'm talking about the budget. Probably the CIP requests. No, I'm talking about the budget. Oh, we're a friend on that one. Like on line 15, or 14, page 14. Page 14. Can also somebody translate pages to the spreadsheet for me, please?

Yeah, I can give you mine, but... That'd be great. Like, what's page 14 up? Well, you have to look at the top of the spreadsheet. Tom White, Tom White tab. Yeah. Go to the Tom White tab. So, big page 14. Okay, thank you. So, there's nothing in there for capital expenditures.

You're talking about like the public works wanting the trailer and a new pickup truck, that sort of thing? Yes. You're asking where those do show up in here. Yeah. Those show up. I mean, I know you're transferring money to cover them, or at least partially cover them.

The select board at their last meeting was discussing whether to have the town vote for those purchases or whether the select board would just start doing it on their own. I don't know what decision they came to because...

Yeah, that may be part of why they're not there. I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Jerry, go ahead. Go ahead, Jerry. Where did those show up in here? So, Public Works, but he's talking about the mower and that sort of thing.

So, we look at it as equipment over a 10-year period. That 205 encompasses that mower and what he's asking for this year. No, I think Neil's question is normally in the budget, we see what the equipment purchase plan is, and we're not seeing that.

So is that in one of these numbers here, Kerry, that we're looking at? No, because we're taking the level of funding and purchasing those things with it. Right, so you're not going to see the individual items in the budget.

So you guys did decide that the town won't vote on big purchase items, the select board will decide that? That is how this is set up right now, yes. Does that require a town vote to give you guys permission to do that? No, no. It's state law. All right. But it doesn't answer my question, Jerry or Joe. Where in the funding requirements do they show up? Like on the summary page. You have funding requirements of $11,089,000. So on page 14 or 15, other finance uses transfers out, they're incorporated into that number.

So we're trying to pull all the capital expenditures out and just working with an operating budget. Give me a line. What line item are you talking about? $99. Right. You should have gotten a supplemental form that lists all of those capital requirements that we're asking for.

I see it. Okay, so they are included in the budget. Yes. Question and answer to you. Can anyone ask a question? I still don't understand. So where are they? They're on page 14, which is the town-wide tab. Yeah. That's what I think. On the very bottom of the page, second line from the bottom. Okay. 5-16-8-36. The transfer from unassigned fund? Transfer out. Transfers out. Okay. But it still doesn't list the equipment that they're buying. No. They list it on a separate page, which was that addendum that they found.

It wasn't on that addendum, though. Because I just found that. Well, they weren't itemized. The addendum that got sent out is those big large numbers, the 2005, the 180, the flat funding. Can I try to help with that answer? Mm-hmm. Sorry, I don't want to interrupt, but... No, you're fine. So that number comes from the CIP committee and what they thought was appropriate for each department, right?

And so we didn't get the actual items that were going to be purchased for this year. that was all presented to the capital improvement, but the expectation is that the department heads are going to be trying to think of the correct work,

but they're sort of tied to what was presented in that plan, the 10-year plan. They were tied to the schedule. Right, and so that's what the select board going forward would also be tied to. So it's not like the select board would be going out to buy a truck for the chief after he's got one.

It would be, here's what the 10-year plan says needs to be purchased in year X, and that's what the money would be used for. Does that make sense? So could we have that schedule available to us? What schedule? A 10-year plan. Sure. Yeah. It was provided, I think, two meetings ago. Yeah, it was. The CIT budget provided, I think, before the very first in the budget meeting had charts

that says it grows, you spend money. Right. You mean Mark's handout? So the $516,000 covers public works, capital reserve money, fire department capital reserve money, admin buildings capital reserve money, assessing, and just as an aside,

I want to increase the assessing amount to a lot more than that. I don't know what the number is, but I want to increase it to whatever we're going to need. And then there's grants, Union Church, and Eureka Reserve. Those are all net 516, Jill.

So, Neil, I think when you're talking about accessing, I'm not putting any words in your mouth, but I believe you want to increase that so that it reflects the true valuation, correct? I want to put everything that's required, estimated, to do the evaluation in that reserve right now,

where we have the money, so we can do it next year if we have to, if it comes up. It's going to sit in the same bank, doesn't matter where it is, I want to put it in there. Can I ask a question? So just so I understand this correctly, the 10-year plan that's out, all the department heads put on their wish list based on what equipment will eventually time out, right?

That's correct. They based it on knowing what that equipment will do, not necessarily a wish list, sorry. But it's the list of equipment that will need replacement at the intervals per industry standards. Okay, so then that list goes to the CPI?

CIP committee. CIP board, and they rank it, I'm assuming, based on what's on that list. That's correct. Based on that list, the department heads would have submitted a value for each of the items that were coming up either next year or for the reserve fund.

So if there was a specific item that they needed right away, it would be listed individually. If it was for a reserve for, say, an ambulance in five years, that would be earmarked as we need to put another $50,000 in for an ambulance in five years.

So there's no other discussion on that. Once it's on that list, it's pretty much going to be bought. It's pretty much scheduled to be bought at that point. And in the past, what's gone on is we have, when a piece of equipment has come up for, say, next year, 2024, this year, I should say, 2024, we say we need a truck or something, some piece of equipment, then that money gets allocated at town meeting and we go buy it because the town told us all to go buy it.

Doesn't mean... But we vote on it. We vote on it. Yes, we do. So may I ask why you're shaking your head back there? Can you fill me in? Joe has to recognize. Okay. So you do vote on, we have in the past voted on individual pieces of equipment

for a specific amount of money every year. And what we're saying is to level fund those departments, the two biggest departments, and allow the schedule to dictate the equipment purchase plan and not have to necessarily go back to town, vote to buy that fire truck.

And again, it allows flexibility to wait. When we say we need to go buy a truck this year and we get the money allocated, we need to go buy the truck. It doesn't matter if the truck will run another year. We go buy a truck. And this will allow you to extend ballot. Maybe you don't go out as many plow jobs this year and you were able to make that truck last longer than you anticipated.

I think I'm going to try to be jackful. This, in my eyes, it's a smart move to get the 10-year plan. I always liked that. Fire chief always did that. That was a good deal. I don't know if it was 10, it was maybe 5 at the time. But it keeps you aware of what you need. However, the piece that scares me is this. I feel like this takes the question right away from the public.

It takes the actual piece of equipment question away from the public, yes it does, but it doesn't take the plan away from the public. The plan is still going to be presented to the public. The idea is still to present the 10-year plan. This is why we're raising the money, this is the 10-year plan.

It still needs to come before the board to get approved. So it's not like the department heads can just go buy a truck tomorrow without getting some nod of approval from their boss, the town manager, and us, the select board.

So it just gives the option to be able to be flexible in buying that piece of equipment. Pickup trucks last longer sometimes. Since when? What's that? Since when? Well, I just, I mean, again, it allows that flexibility, prevents us having to go back to town meeting for something emergent as things come up.

And as long as we follow that 10-year plan and it's all out in the wide open, not seeing a huge difference in saying we're going to go buy a truck this year based on the plan versus having a 10-year plan and giving the decision to the select board to actually say,

yeah, let's go get that truck now. Thank you for explaining. I'm not sure I totally agree. Let me, can I try to explain? So we'll just take Public Works, for example. If you look at all of their equipment, and to replace that equipment today at today's cost over a 10-year period,

it's worth $2 million. So you divide that by 10, that's $200,000. So you'd have to tuck away $200,000 to be able to purchase that equipment close to when it needs to be replaced. So you take, so Calvin may ask for a truck.

If he's only got one opportunity to ask for a truck, he's going to ask for it at April town meeting. He may not need it. This gives the board in the town flexibility to say, well, Calvin, do you really need that truck? And then maybe put it off for a year or maybe even two years. But at least if something happens to it, the money's there to be able to purchase it.

Because if you're only going to give him one opportunity to do it, he's going to do it at town meeting every single time, whether he needs it or not because he doesn't want to be stocked without a vehicle and then if he needs it what do we do hold a special town meeting where 30 people show up and give him the authority

it's not really much different so that's kind of the the idea behind it it's a change so i'm just yeah i i get it i just want it out in the open that's all yeah so mr mr chairman we do not vote on upper money is that correct we don't no no uh one of the issues i just wanted to make sure i'm

clear on and it is live meetings that we have currently a live meeting to my knowledge is only broadcast from the town hall and are we in the future are we looking at because i know this one's being taped i believe and in the future are we looking at having live meetings here plus at the

eureka center we're live right now we're streaming right now i was going to say devin informed me were live starting now going forward from this building okay what about the Eureka Center we able to do Eureka with this system yeah we could but the reason

I asked that because I was under the impression that the select board was going to be moving their regular meetings out of the town office into the Eureka Center is that correct we had discussed that but the Eureka does need

more upgrades and it's not as I'll use the word user-friendly in regards to the way the space is laid out for town meetings so we do have to have a discussion on what to do long term in town right now we're using the fire

station meeting room is our as our main meeting room at this point the town hall is gonna need an upgrade there they're clearly out of space over there you know we've moved out I'll say temporarily the next year or so until we come up with a

more permanent solution Jerry's working on a longer term solution we're looking at the old plans that were laid out I want to say 2007 so those are being dusted off at least a starting point to look at what's the most efficient um you know having we

have the town's growing um and to service um everything that's going on in town we're outgrowing our our space over there so it is something we have to we have to look at in the future so that would be an upcoming project that everybody should keep on their radar because that will happen

sooner than later thank you for the clarification getting back to the budget so um um it's been stated that um select board wish to transfer five hundred thousand dollars from unrestricted and that is going to enable the town to not have to raise taxes to keep keep it flat for this year

my question is why um i know people don't like a five six seven percent increase in their taxes but There's very few people who object to a 1% increase, a 2% increase. You stated earlier that obviously you couldn't transfer $500,000 every year because you'd run out of money.

You're also optimistic that in each year, you know, some of the money will be replaced. So the question I'm trying to ask is why have you rated it so important that you keep it flat this year when you could raise taxes by 1% and I don't think you'd have an uproar.

I think you could raise it 2%, and there wouldn't be an uproar, and then you wouldn't have to transfer $500,000. You could transfer a lesser amount, which means that that unrestricted fund, you get longer use out of it. Yep. There's a number of ways you can do this, and that is we've proposed one way to do it.

Our thought process, twofold. The balance we have in our account right now, we keep on calling it a rainy day fund, but it is the taxpayers' money. Taxpayers now have $3.7 million in the bank that we're holding, the town is holding, and at this point, it's quite a large sum.

We're way above what would normally be kept by a town for unexpected expenses for a two to three month time period if you had to carry a budget for two to three months. So again, the number that was earmarked is about $2 million for that to occur to keep us afloat for two to three months while something else needs to happen if we needed more money.

So you now have $1.7 million, if my math is right, that is extra money that we have collected from the people of the town already that's in excess of what we normally as a town probably should keep in our coffers. So using $500,000 out of that account, knowing that based on our estimates, we'll probably end up with almost half of that back at the end of next year.

at least $150,000 of it, you're still adding more people's money, taking more people's money out of their pocketbooks every year just to hold in a town account. So that was a big part of the decision to say, let's use some of that money. We don't have to use it all. Knowing we have this town hall thing coming up, we could keep saving it and say, all right well we won't tax everybody when the town hall comes along that is going to come that

is going to cost a lot of money probably more than what we have in the bank but it's it's um you know at this point with the way the year has been with everybody's last couple years keeping the tax rate flat at this point is is everybody's probably going to like a lot

a lot more than raising i mean sure you could get away with assigning one or two percent to folks and they might not care but i think why why do that because well because um it's again it's partly the unknown and the perception i got from select board is you're trying to prevent spikes

but let's say because of a town hall or whatever and now there's a need in a year or two to raise taxes by five six percent or whatever so your feeling is that the town the town's emotions would be let's pay zero zero zero six in in in our in graphing our taxes as opposed to

paying a one percent increase a one percent increase a one percent increase and a three percent increase you're saying the town which you're you're feeling for the that the town would just assume, keep it flat, and then face a huge spike because of something unexpected.

Based on the way the 10-year schedule is laid out, keep the spike, I think, separate from what we're trying to do this year. What we're trying to do this year is just prevent the tax base from going up any further. That is going to gradually go up, but it's not going to be a spike. Has Mark done calculations to try and foresee the next couple of years or the next few years?

And what I mean by that is, from what I understand, and if my terminology is wrong, I apologize. But from what I understand, the undesignated went from about $1.9 million to $3.7 million, I think you guys said. I'm sure people are going to ask who, what, where, when, how, why did that happen.

but i think it just has to do with i don't need the answer right now i i'm but so we have all that extra money um we just saved 160 000 because we finished off paying the road bond last year next year we're going to save 132 754 because we're going to finish paying off the equipment

bond so has anyone done kind of a spreadsheet looking at the long-term picture like milt is kind of mentioning, so that based on what we do have in undesignated, what's the new word for it now? Fund balance. Okay. So has anybody looked at what we have extra in the fund balance,

along with what's going to be coming in due to less debt, to say, Milt, you don't have a point because by the time we get there, for everything that we're saving and the bonds will still be at zero or one percent or to say milt you've got a point because if we try and do this yeah we are as josh

mentioned the other night we are all of a sudden going to run out of money in the fund balance working on it sorry um and we would see a spike you know because that was mark's point was to try and keep the taxes flat um hence the word flat funding but i think it would be good to kind of

have a little bit of an outlook and if it's already been done great i'd love to see it i don't know that we've that i've actually done it it would be hard to calculate because you don't know what your revenue is going to be in two or three years you don't know really well you're estimating he just

said our revenue is going to replace half of what we're well what he's but what he's saying is even though you're using 500 what we don't spend in appropriations is going to go back in and what we don't calculate and revenue was going to go back in so if you're using 500 now and you get 150 back

you really use 350 that's that's what he was that's what he's saying but the we have no way to fund balance is also going to go up because of money coming into the town right well if we get the right if we use 500 we're down to 3.2 and we get another 150 put back in then you're it's going

up that amount okay it's not going up that amount going less that taking out 500 grand and putting 150 it's not going up it's going down so the fund balance when i go in and register my car my four wheeler and pay my property taxes where does that money go does it go into the fund balance

it gets it gets um it just goes in as revenue and then whatever we have in appropriations whatever's left over is really what you have in fund balance doesn't does it doesn't like it doesn't go into like fund balance because you because like was you here when mark was doing the whole i i watched

the video but it was oh you wasn't here it's a lot on my yeah it just goes in as revenue so you have revenue and you've got appropriations and whatever's left over okay and the definition of appropriations is this spreadsheet appropriating what right definition of appropriations is what

we're appropriating to spend correct okay so money coming in if we're for simplicity sake if for all of 2024 all of our expenses is coming out of fund balance i'm just saying for for discussion's sake if all that money is coming out of fund balance to pay our 2024 expenses

all of our income is going into the fund balance you know whatever's left over is in the fund you have a fund balance of 3.7 you have this budget so 3.7 if you use 500 you're going to be down to 3.2 that's your fund balance it just sits there right so we may collect more revenue

than we anticipated whatever that is goes into fund balance okay perfect that's that's okay and Whatever we don't spend goes into fund balance. Okay, all right. So it's always a guessing game. Even Mark's forecast of you should put in so much money is a forecast.

Yes. So I just don't know if he's able to do a forecast to try and help us to stay level in our tax rate. Well, so the goal over time, in most economies, you're going to go up between 1% and 4% somewhere in there. So that's where you want your taxes to increase along with that.

So that goes to Milton's point then. If it's supposed to be between 1% and 4%, should it be 1%? Now, I'm going to counter that and be like, Milton, they just found $2 million and you want more money from me? That's going to be the town's response. They're going to be like, no way, Jose. Like, you've got to prove to us that you know how to find money and keep the money.

You just, you lost $2 million at some point that just got found. So... Phyllis is waiting for the question. Thank you. Forgive me for silly questions. I'm new, so I'm going to be asking them. So is it, did we overtax taxpayers?

Yes. So is that one of the reasons why we want to keep it level and not raise taxes this year? because we have overtaxed taxpayers? I don't know if that's a fair question. I probably wouldn't classify it as overtaxing. The town's had, since I've gotten here, all the meetings I've been to have wanted to make sure we had some money

for, I'll say, a rainy day, lack of a better word, to have money there just in case something went wrong. It's a very conservative approach, and it's not a bad approach. have so you know at this point we've built up that fun Phyllis it's my

understanding that there was a miscalculation by this town last year I don't know if you remember seeing it on the meetings but yeah there was a lot of back-and-forth because we had one spreadsheet that said there was an X

amount of dollars and unrestricted and then we had another reporting that said we had a different amount so town manager brought in an auditor or finance finance person and found out what was the actual number and the town learned that the number was

three point that that all the previous estimates were wrong but i don't think it wasn't based on i don't think the question ever arose that the um the the townspeople were overtaxed it was uh it was a matter of poor accounting well that's what i'm asking i guess that's really the question is

If we taxed based on, we weren't sure about the number, we taxed based on a number that we thought it was, but it ended up being another number. Well, if I may, in the past, when Mark first presented to us, the philosophy behind the town, us being the budget committee presenting things to the town, the amount of revenues we were using, we were using the actuals from that year.

And Mark suggested that we should be using the actuals plus additional money, which we anticipate the revenues to be the next year, increasing that. But we had never done that. So therefore, we were leaving additional revenues.

I mean, we weren't applying those to reduce the taxes. We basically were increasing our unassigned account. And that's why the money, a lot of that is why the reserve is that much higher than what we anticipated. Joe, are you deferring to? Yeah, Josh. So you can call it overtax, but Mr. Berry said earlier there was 9.3 raise in actual from 2023 to what is in the budget.

I don't want to call you, that's not accurate because those actuals are not the final actual numbers, right? But essentially what that fund balance comes from is money, either more revenue came in than what we were expecting,

or the town spent less money. So it's not really overtaxed. We were taxed what the select people in the town thought was the right number to meet our obligations, but more came in or less was spent. So that's how, I don't want to, I wouldn't call it overtaxed because I don't think that's a fair description. It's really, we either raised more money through unexpected sources

or spent less money. I think it's semantics, actually. Well. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I mean, to me, overtaxing is doing it on purpose. It's not an intentional purpose. That's why I said, maybe that's not the right word. That's a good clarification. Thanks, Josh. Yeah. Hey, Eric? Thank you. Yeah. So I want to elaborate a little bit on what Alan was saying, because he's right.

So if you don't project revenues, then you're actually asking that to be raised in taxes. And that's what was going on. So if you used last year's taxes, and it was $100,000, right? but you collected $150 in revenue, but you only used $100,

you raised that $50 in taxes to make it all work out. That's how that transpired. That's what you've been doing for many years by not projecting or estimating new revenues coming in. You were always using the prior year. Can I just ask a quick question? I know in all the years on the budget committee, we always talk about never depleting that account,

And I thought it was because of our credit rating of our town. Am I missing the vote on that? I think there was, you didn't want to get to the point where you had to do a TAN, a tax anticipated note. Okay. So you wanted to make sure that you had enough funds in there prior to the taxes actually coming in.

And, you know, it used to be three months now, so it's more than that now. But that's what you're talking about, having that buffer of three months? in regards to avoiding a tan or not, but having the extra three months.

I was always under the impression that we didn't want to deplete the unbalance, is what it's called these days. We used to call it un-designated because if we needed to go, for some reason that affected our town's credit. So if we needed to go for bonds, that would make a big difference. So I just want to make sure that we are not going to deplete it over the next,

I don't know how many years that we're going to use it, and get us off in it predicamentally. I think part of the discussion should be what is the right amount to have on hold. And I think there's two ways to Google. There's a couple of different ways to do that. Two or three months of your expected expenditures, 16% of your total budget or whatever it may be.

And I think what I've heard is that we have, so that comes out to $1.7 million, give or take. we have 3.7 million so we have and that 1.7 should cover standard town accounting practice that should cover any unexpected issues and we're we got more of that so if we go from 1.7 to 2 we got a buffer

of whatever that is 50 20 percent or so so the buffer doesn't worry me i guess is what i'm saying i think and then the question is what do we want to spend that money on rather in my mind rather than hold it? Should we buy things with spending things with it? That's a payment. If we can hold down taxes by spending $500,000 as an example. Or why should we tax for a dump truck if we've got money sitting in the bank to do that with? And it has to be a smart plan. But I'm not saying go out and just spend money. I would never think that. Thank you. Okay, back to Joe's presentation. Any other general questions? I'd like to refer to the question that i emailed out to everyone this afternoon and that was regarding a potential

shortfall from the tax stabilization program um i believe i asked two questions and one was how much has the town of durham being re has have it been reimbursed thus far and then the second question was if we don't get if the governor's uh she's put in a special budget but it's already

been been stated that that won't that still won't be able to pay a hundred percent of um what's owed to every town so i'm wondering what is the our town's uh plan if we aren't reimbursed 100 where's that money where's that money coming from where are we going to about that differential very good

well i i don't have a good we don't this all just came down kind of last week emails was going around so we haven't gotten anything back from the governing yet so we haven't been reimbursed at all not yet the checks are going out though they're going on so i don't know what we're going to get

back and i have no idea what we're going to do right now i don't know what value that adds to the discussion here i don't know what we're going to i have no idea well i mean if we only get reversed and reimbursed say 50 percent then we have a shortfall right but that's a big if we

don't know that though we don't have enough information to it is the only reason why i brought it up is because from the news reporting, all the towns that have thus received a reimbursement check, those checks have ranged anywhere from 43 to 57 percent. So they're

all facing a shortfall. I'm guessing we won't be the exception. Now, the governor has put in a supplemental budget, but it's already proven that there's not enough money in that supplemental budget that that towns will be funded 100 so yeah it's a big gift but i don't

want to bury i'm thinking we shouldn't be burying our head in the sand either that we're gonna we could be facing a shortfall and i was my question was simply how has the town discussed uh a plan should that uh shortfall um shows did you want to comment nil well this all just came out a week

or so ago. So no, the plan hasn't talked about it. So the answer is no. Okay. Neil? Yeah, I don't think that's really of any our concern. It's not going to affect what we do here. The best way we can deal with that is keep the budget down. The budget is what controls the revenue. So you don't

feel that... We have nothing. The best thing we can do is keep the budget down. The budget controls the revenue, not the other way around. But the town must be anticipating reimbursement. So the budget would have been would have been based on that reimbursement. Well the revenue side might

have been but not the budget not the spending side. Of course the revenue side. We just deal with spending. The revenue side would be dependent on that. We don't budget revenue we budget spending. But if there's less money coming in that was anticipated that means we have to dip more into

the fund balance. Well that would happen but the solution is still keep is keep budget down as far as I'm concerned. Yes John. The question I would have is you've got a number for intergovernmental for 2024. So I guess my question is really, is that money part of your estimate? Did you assume

that the state was going to give you X amount of money or that? Where did that? So that's not even included in your revenue? No, no. That stabilization program was a one-shot deal. They implemented it in 23 and then they took it away. So all of this is still getting discussed in Augusta. No, there's

no assumption of any tax stabilization in this budget. No, no. I'm sorry. I didn't say that well. The tax stabilization was going to have a hit on us. So your estimate of what we were going to get from the state, I guess that's intergovernmental, did you include that?

No. Did you assume you were going to get that money or that this number here has nothing to do with that money? No, it does not. So why isn't the budget for this year the same as last year, at least? Why isn't it more than last year? Why has it increased? Why is the property tax levy less than we got last year?

Well, he's thinking about that kind of thing, so that's okay. I'd be the right home, so. But the other part of it is, I'm curious at how much that really is, because it was, you know, you had to be, I mean, I didn't qualify.

I'm over 65, but you had to live in a place 10 years and so on and so forth. So you may not know that tonight, and I may never know, but is it really that big a hit when it comes down to it that we have to worry about holding more money back or whatever. So two questions is, are we even counting on that money? And then the other one is, if it were, how big a hit is it? I think I remember somebody in the office saying there was 100 people that qualified,

and I qualified, and I think it was $200 for me. So what's that, $20,000? Give or take. So I guess it would be good to know, but I'm not sure it's as big a hit as we think, particularly since we haven't done a reassessment. Any other general questions pertaining to Jill's presentation?

Sure. So the other, so open for discussion, we also received an email from Jill. I've emailed. Jill said he would address these when we got to each other. Well, that was Jill's point of view, but it's our committee's decision. So that is the decision. I'm okay with it being answered as we get to it. I think it would be less confusing, especially since some of us are on a spreadsheet and some of us are on pages.

All right, so you're okay with saving your questions. I'm okay with addressing it as we get to it. All right. Yeah. We anticipated our eighth member being here by now, and she's not, so at this point I'm thinking we should go ahead and dive into the budget.

Out of courtesy to the fire chief who is present with us tonight, I propose that we start with the fire department budget so that he doesn't have to stay the whole evening if he... Which has been renamed public safety. Is there any objection to that? All right, so then we'll move to public safety, which would be page 9, spreadsheet given out by the town.

You don't find your little tech. I got you. I'm here. I'm here, spreadsheet. I was going to handle it all. You could have used the page. It's not going to have done that, so you'd have to just find it. If you're using the old spreadsheet, you don't have to just find it. The bottom says public safety. I don't know. Yeah. Yes, sir. Thank you. I believe other public safety, Jerry can talk about it, animal control.

Those numbers will. So let me just, so public safety is a category. So typically in municipalities on the public safety, you've got fire, police, animal control. So Mark just left it as like the category of public safety. So it's just the fire department. Like he has underneath it, right? Also, Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, one of your members who's not here requested paperwork mutual aid given and received for the last two years.

And I've made five copies for any one of your members that want to read those. That was important to them. Thank you. Can you like that? Please. Okay, so you can see at the top where it says. Maybe you can share. We can share. Yeah, we can share. Right, so there's 23, there's 22. I'll go around. Okay. I'll self-officially ask for my own. Sure, so you can see it's 24, 23. You can divvy it up if you want more copies, but there's five. Thank you. Certainly. And the math on there is some Massachusetts math, so I'm sure you'll double-check.

Double-check me if it's okay. I have the standard. I'm going to get to it all. Completely honest. I have it in my own tab. I presume you all have looked over the numbers. You've read the select board's recommendation and their notes.

Does anybody have some questions for the fire chief? Well, my understanding is you want to do 30-70-20 is an increase due to additional night coverage because 35% of the calls are at night, so need EMS coverage at night.

Did I understand that correctly? Yes. Okay, okay. But you feel you're still getting enough calls during the day to warrant the staffing level that you have during the day? Yes, so for those at home, we staff one member during the day, every day, 7 to 7, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Of course I work five days. that's a per diem they call it and that's an emt most of the emts are also firefighters so you get a firefighter emt at a base price just to staff the ambulance the rescue if you will and then we

call in a driver or myself or a part-time staff member during the day currently we're holding our own for the call volume you alluded to 35 of our call volume being at night that's 7 p.m to 7 a.m 35 percent of our call volumes at night that equated to a hundred exactly a hundred medical

calls last year at night and emts have moved out of town what you used to have people sign up for a 35 nominal fee that would respond if you will they've all moved out of town i have one gentleman that lives in town he has a full-time job and four nights a week he's not allowed to to respond

He's on duty, too, and contractually he can't respond. So everyone else has moved to Auburn, you know, Bowdoin, South Freeport. So I've picked up the slack. I've taken it upon myself that I will not let mutual aid, if you will, take a Durham citizen.

I mean, I come from Powell, off duty, whatever it takes to make the rescue go. But we've reached that limit, that 50-, 60-hour weeks for myself is just too much. two o'clock in the morning calls going to the hospital last week i think i teched five

over the weekend it's just to that point of staffing it so the sixty thousand dollars is for one guy um there's more to it than just the night coverage so currently we're looking at the nine months right april on and then um that's 66 000 roughly so that's 12 hours times 275 days

left in the year was roughly at an average of $20.50. That was an average of $66,000. But what I did, Neil, knowing you'd ask, is I actually took out the $35 from April on for the EMT coverage. We wouldn't need that. And $35 times 275 ended up being able to $9,000. So I reduced that. So we

need in theory 57,000 from april on to staff an emt per diem at night the rest is contractual you know upgrades and whatnot phyllis i'll have another question sure that's um so what would happen if this didn't uh this wasn't voted on what would happen to our service would we would

our service what would happen to our service three things will happen and the truth is there's nobody coming phyllis there's no backup you can't just say mutual aid you can't say rely on somebody else there's nobody there's like nine ambulances in the whole county and we have one of them

um what would happen is currently at night we're at 14 minutes getting you an ambulance if somebody calls 911 for an ambulance after seven o'clock at night it usually takes us at least 14 minutes to get there which isn't too bad for a 39 square mile town on top of somebody's coming from bed

to get the ambulance to go to your call that number is going to double you're looking at possibly a half hour if you call because somebody will have to come here it may not be an emt they'll have to evaluate whether they do mutual aid or not it's just unacceptable you know what uh i think

the american red cross says you know four to six minutes um to for for cpr for advanced life support we're at 14 now because because we don't have the staffing uh that that number would double And then three things would happen. People will get sicker. I assure you in this town, Durhamites are tough, and they wait until three days later to call the ambulance.

I know everyone's laughing, but you're nodding your head. You understand it. It's just true. They're tough. It's not hangnails and boo-boos. These are advanced calls. So something worse could happen. If we go to mutual aid, you'll lose revenue. I think we're projected to a six-figure revenue.

coming in for the ambulance and gathering that i'm just requesting that was taken away from the fire department i'm requesting to use 60 of that to reinvest in the fire department and then finally something would have to change for the fire chief any fire chief it doesn't matter who's sitting

here they can't work 60 hours a week they can't get up at i'm still doing 2 a.m running every call but going to the hospital and then doing an hour report is just not sustainable thank you other questions um i have a couple i as the board knows i typically abstain on voting on this budget but

i don't have to refrain from asking questions a couple of minor things on your gas and diesel line so um this year um for gas gas and diesel line less was spent than what was budgeted um gas prices and i'm assuming diesel as well i think prices are are a bit lower now than a year ago and yet

you're requesting a 91 almost a 91.5 percent increase in that budget to ten thousand seven hundred dollars can you explain that sure so so again i remind the budget committee the actuals you're looking at 50 fiscal year 23 actuals are not the end so that has gone up well over six

thousand due to um it's the busy time of year we'll receive more diesel so so that number is over six to answer your question if if you take the eight thousand that we budgeted for the year and you add twenty seven hundred that's where you get the ten thousand seven hundred so the twenty

seven hundred is actually what you were paying the fire chief for using his personal vehicle and now that you provided a vehicle it's the same twenty seven hundred so it doesn't cost the town extra, but now you're seeing it. Rather than benefits, now you're seeing it on paper under

gas and diesel. We also added the gas line because now we have six trucks apparatus that are diesel and the utility is gas. So that's where the gas itself comes from. But the $2,700 that was a benefit for the fire chief is now rolled right into this budget. So why would it be the $6,000

plus the 2700 why would you be asking for 8700 it's it's increased call volume as you know we were up 7.4 percent in call volume we were up five and a half last year we were up before that there's all projection of increased call volume and increased usage of the fuel understood um and

can you just can you break down the miscellaneous expenditures which were 784 percent higher than Yep. Also to the budget. I'll pull that up. Also to the budget committee. And I see why you're asking. Don't lose sight of, and this is why the select board, all of them are here. In June and July, the fire chief was warning and doing a parade that our call volume was up 20% by midsummer. 20%.

20%. So I recognized it. Nobody's talking about going over $10,000 over my labor line. I recognize that call volume is labor. Call volume is fuel. It's wear and tear on the trucks. I was telling the select board and the town manager that in July, we need to do something because I'll be

over completely. So I reduced every one of the ones that I could. So when you start talking about safety and equipment was down, you know, general supplies, dues and subscription, I didn't even signed myself up for the International Association of Fire Chiefs to be a member because it was $495.

So I was saving money anywhere I could skim just so I wouldn't go over budget because of the labor. To answer your question about miscellaneous, I'll tell you what is in that line and what it was spent on. But in July, it was recognized that I needed to cut everything.

Miscellaneous comes down to last year, computers, supplies, postage, office supplies, meals for storms, water service. I cut everything. So, you know, thank you for recognizing that I didn't feed the boys. I didn't get them pizzas when they did overnights during storms.

That was some staples, the company that under miscellaneous for office supplies and stuff like that, that just don't have a category. But I assure you it was recognized in July that we were going to cut every line item we could.

I hope, Mr. Chair, you recognize that workers' comp is down 34%, and we were able to save well over $16,000 with efforts. So nobody's talking about savings right now. I was just going to say, more of a comment, that the $3,000 for expenditures in 2024 is very much in line with 2022 before Chief went on his mad saving page there.

If he'd come by my house and help. I'm glad you recognize it, John. Yeah, something? Neil? Do you have the numbers on mutual aid calls that we gave and that we received? Second page. Yep. I gave you year 22 and year 23, and I have them in front of me if you have a question, Mom.

So honestly, my math in front of everybody, if you're looking at 22 on the left and 23, the first thing says EMS mutual aid received and fire mutual aid received, right? So what we took in, 22 was 62 if you combine them, and this year was 63.

So that's what we were receiving, same as last year. If you turn the page, you'll see EMS mutual aid given and fire mutual aid given. Last year, there was 65 of those, and this year, there's 82. So, is that 17 more? The area, just like Durham around us, is growing exponentially.

We're providing more mutual aid, both ambulance and fire. As a matter of fact, we gave 10 more fire mutual aids this year. That's amazing. Yes. Which one? You had said that when you were calculating the totals, there was a fire that was...

Sure. that counted for more calls. Yes, Heather's on to something. So you can skew data any way you want. We had a three-alarm fire in July 15th on Meadow Street. And, of course, we received, I think, 10 towns came. So that's 10 receipts of it. But one fire that we have, I think we did four structure fires and saved every house, by the way. We usually receive four or five towns worth. Otherwise, you need 17 firefighters on duty at any given time to work a structure fire.

So we have one. So we need other towns to help us. And I assure you, nobody has ever said no to us, and they appreciate Durham for what we offer. But it's not a cost savings, or it's not a cost outlier, if you will. The other thing you don't lose sight is if we send a rescue, mutual aid, and ambulance, usually there's someone on duty that we're already paying for.

And the drivers make $15 an hour. Some of them make minimum wage. We can bill up to $800 to $1,000. I think we're ahead $985 at the end of the day if we transfer. So not a bad thing. And that money goes back to you, Walt. Yes. A couple things I'd like to bring up. So, first, I understand, I'm not sure who did it, but you guys got better building for the propane.

So, thank you to whoever did that. Town manager. And you also got, thank you, Jerry. You're welcome. And I understand you got a grant that's going to buy four portable ratios. So, you're only requesting the town to spend for two.

So, I appreciate your grants, for sure. And then the other question I have, because I don't know, and you can tell me later if there's a better way to ask this, but public works split 7252 into 7252 and 7255. 7252 is equipment repairs and maintenance, and 7255 is vehicles repair and maintenance.

But you did not do that for the fire department. I'm curious why. For the site. Okay. All right. That makes sense. It's all in 7252. Yeah. Chief and I talked about that. We can split it out. Any other questions for Joe or the Chief?

If not, I welcome a motion. John? I'll make a motion that we approve the total fire department budget of... Actually, public safety. Okay. I'm just going to do the 603. Do we want to combine them? I believe that's what the article is going to be, is for public safety.

it'll be for the fire department it's just under a public safety category so there's one article for fire department to be a separate article for animal control just like there always make a motion that we approve the total fire department budget of six hundred three thousand five hundred and seventy dollars

so it's been motioned and seconded that we approve the requested budget of six hundred and three thousand five hundred and seventy dollars for the fire department there's any further discussion seeing none uh the vote is to approve the amount of six hundred and three

thousand five hundred and seventy dollars uh for the fighter pay fire department budget all those in favor it's unanimous with one abstention mr chair before the player chief leaves we want to cover his uh i think there's a very small cost over ease that we have to vote on as well

that's i mean we don't we don't vote on that our meeting that was just a note take it back thanks for trying john i'm sorry i'd like to just make a comment if that's all right sure i'd like to appreciate the budget committee looking at this i didn't even have to stand on my stool to thank

the chief for all of his hard work he is out there 24-7 he said he only works five days a week it's seven days a week through the nights through the weekends so I know it's a team effort but I just wanted to make sure I said it again that we really appreciate what you do every day every day in your

team and appreciate you keeping this department going the way you do so please keep up the good work yes thank you thank you so my thought is um we might as well just finish up public safety and then since uh jerry was able to join us tonight go to the administrative budget no one has any

objections yeah did you want to do the animal control yes i'm doing now oh okay yeah um so is there any any questions regarding animal control yes Jill I have one question Heather asked it at the select board meeting but I think her her wording

was a little fuzzy on my end so I'm just gonna ask it my way oh because I was the one that brought it up years ago so hard is the animal control budget amount does Does that also cover the emergency fee to stabilize the animal?

No, the Lisbon sends over their estimate or whatever their quote to do the animal control, and that's what I put in. I don't ask. Okay, so just so everyone knows, if the animal control officer picks up a dog or a cat that

is, for lack of a better example, hit by a car, they are required to bring it to a veterinarian to stabilize it most of the veterinarians are asked not to do heroics but to at least try and keep it alive to give him five ten minutes to try and find the owner which i'm going to stand on my

little veterinary stool and say microchip your pets um but so it is a just because being the veterinarian i know that the towns do get bills and if we're not able to find the owner of that animal, that the town is held liable for that bill. And I mean, I have a lot of animal control

officers that come to me because I don't really charge that much because I know it's for a town, but not all businesses act that way. So a couple of years ago, it was recommended to have like $500 in the budget just in case it's emergency. It's a small amount. I'm sure it could possibly

be absorbed elsewhere or things like that but that i believe that was the question that was being asked a couple of weeks ago is is this just the animal control officer's salary contracted service yeah or does it also include a little bit for emergency care coverage no are we getting

billed for additional i mean what are we paying for animal control it looks like we're paying 18406 so we're not getting the bill for whatever whatever she described i've seen any no it's like general assistance fund it's it's more it you're not just automatically going to be like hey give

me 500 just in case they need to spend it it's more like general assistance where if a pet went to the vet and they couldn't find the owner somebody then the town is responsible for that bill looks like what's in there has covered it over the last couple of years whatever whatever

we're getting asked to pay in addition to the contract and that's fine that's why i said it could be in a sense already there but i just wanted to ask any other questions uh welcome a motion i guess i do have one question so the animal control officer salary is 18,650 that is

combined with a coastal humane to coastal humane hold on i'll tell you what that 64 the 6400 is that what it is? Yeah. And then the rest of it is for the animal control officer. I'm going to make a motion that line 397240 for animal control is $19,000 flat. And that covers the animal control

officer's salary, the Coastal Humane Society's contractual fees, and just in case we get a bill from a veterinarian for emergency care making a motion yes i just said okay is there a second second all right so no any discussion uh yes is it worth kicking back to the select board

over 350 dollars well we have a few you have to do next i mean i'm okay for it to be a no answer but some one of the benefits last year of having the budget committee and the select board kind of hearing things initially is some people pick up on things that other people don't pick up on and

i think that's what led to it being more uniform in the end we didn't have that possibility this time so i mean we've got enough select board members that i know they're not allowed to talk but maybe we can give them permission to like shake their head or shake their head if they feel

that this is warranted any other discussion well nobody knows where that money was coming from if the town was built in the past, correct? I don't think we have enough experience people here to know whether the town's ever been built or not. I can tell you as a veterinarian, I have built

Mechanic Falls, I have built Minot, I have built Poland, I have built Oxford. We know last year we over-budgeted. Right, but it sounds like we're exact budgeting this year. And I do think in past years, I don't recall which year, but I do recall in past years we did have it budgeted in. So if

that was last year maybe that's why we under budgeted because we didn't get any bills but it sounds like we're exact budgeting this year for this line any further discussion so it has the motion is it's been made it's been motioned and seconded to raise $19,000 for animal control

all those in favor all those opposed even though I seconded fail sorry like someone else said seconding is to allow discussion so welcome another motion mr chairman i move we uh recommend eighteen thousand six hundred fifty dollars for animal control second it has been motioned by neil

and seconded by alan that the we raise eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty dollars for animal control. Is there any discussion? CNN, all those in favor of raising $18,650. Animal control, please indicate. Yes, unanimous. On to administration. Now titled general government. That's a

category. Okay, thank you. Page six, the sheet sent out by Joe. Request for $471,156. questions for joe or for jerry yeah jerry get comfortable you didn't bring your microphone with you no i gotta um so i have a couple of questions um okay so my understanding is full-time staff

wages no one got a pay cut and no one is getting a pay increase the difference is the fact that the code enforcer is now under planning is that accurate yes okay so no raises this year no raise pools yeah this money includes raises okay so there is a wage increase yeah but because we took

codes out that's why you're seeing the negative negative okay so um is there a general across the town everyone's getting a wage increase i proposed five percent cola okay okay so is it on that is there any flexibility for the department manager to maybe give someone three percent and somebody

one depending on their performance yeah or six right yeah okay and then it was discussed that there's a gazebo oh wait am i in the right spot no that's under municipal building gazebo is municipal building, right? Okay, I'll save my question for later then. Other questions? Yeah,

why are you getting a 10% raise, Jerry? You can ask the select board. We voted unanimously to give Jerry a raise to match the industry. We voted this summer to give him a 10% raise. So that wasn't part of his contract? No, it wasn't. Okay. No. I have an obligation to give him a review every

year so we gave him his review and an appropriate raise given the climate of the industry for town managers. So your note stated it was per new contract. It was a new contract or it was just a raise outside of the contract? Just a raise, a yearly raise. I don't know what you mean by...

Well in the notes that we were sent it said next to that line item. Just said per contract. Per contract yeah it wasn't a contracted rate in there it was just uh every year he's due a a review and an array so it's up to the board as to what that was there was a guaranteed minimum there was no

maximum that's correct other questions so i'm just curious it was budget was 97 000 jury was paid a hundred thousand eighty eight seven seven is that because the race kicked in part way through the year what was the difference there yeah i don't i don't take it until like august but you

a built one didn't you have a built-in raise increase in your contract last year so it wasn't a fixed percentage it was just 110 000 bottom line kind of number if you if you do the math it comes to 110 yeah pretty close real close yeah i don't i don't put cents down or a single dollars

i rounded up 10 over 10 over what or we can do the math now if you want i don't i just wondering How do you get to $110,000? Well, you got like a 3% raise or something like that that we voted on at the last town meeting.

And then you got a 10% raise this past summer, and that's what leads to the 13.4%. But the contract last year when you were hired, it was after a certain amount of time, there was a built-in service. He got that. Correct, like a minimum with his review. They just gave him a little extra. So he was at $95,500, and we gave him a 10% raise.

So that comes up to, I believe, $110,000. It's not quite $110,000. It can't be $110,000. My math's better than that. He got a raise last year based on the 95 to... 95.5. It was 3%, I think. So is it a number you don't trust? No, I'm just wondering how you come up with $110,000. I'm not going to support $110,000, Jerry, so it doesn't matter. I'll have to do the math. Actually, it doesn't matter. You've got 110 on there. That's what you're approving. That's what we approve. I was curious to get there. Other questions? I have a couple. So in the notes it says that the two part-timers who were each working 20 hours per week,

they're now going to be working 20 hours. They're each working 10 hours. They're each going to go to 20. Why did I read 40 hours? Because 20 times 20 is two of them is 40. So the 40 was for the total of two people, not each of them going from 20 hours to 40.

Right. Got it. I have a question pertaining to line 20-7253, building repairs and maintenance. 20-7253. Under municipal buildings, there is a line item 21-7253, also entitled building repairs and maintenance. What is the difference between those two line items? So the municipal one is for the administration office, and on the buildings and grounds, it's for River Park, Eureka, all buildings that the town owns except for the administration building,

public works, and fire. When you take those three out, municipal buildings, but we're not in buildings and grounds yet, that's where that lives. Okay, I understand that. But under the notes that were provided to us for under 21-7253, I'm just wondering if this is under the right item, because under 21-7253 is saying provide more office space slash new toilet and men's room.

Yeah, so those notes are older than the numbers, so you have to keep that in mind. I sent that spreadsheet to you with my notes that were dated way back. Oh, and it's funny if it's in the wrong line. No, it's not, because the 725320 was a line that the select board added that in at their meeting last Tuesday.

So the more office space in the new toilet is now notes under town hall? Yeah. Okay. So it's since been moved. So now it is included under 2075. Right, right. Okay. That's a little special. Yeah. So I have a question about that, then. I thought the more office space was a capital improvement.

Well, I was going to do that, but I couldn't really bring myself to put a full wall construction in there. So I'm just going to move my desk in there, and I'm going to try to get some cubicle walls from the state surplus,

And do you guys get like a definitive plan? Is that your thoughts? That is the plan. Okay. So before I was going to build a wall, put some electricity. I just can't do that. I'll just deal with cubicle walls and hopefully if I'm screaming on the phone,

no residents will hear me when they close it up the door. Well, I know, but you can still hear. I appreciate the fact that you're not doing hard construction that can possibly be torn down in a year or two. so thank you other questions yes yes uh you the 74 000 for business services last year was

was uh mark royer yeah which line item are you looking at 72 22 got it and you still have 30 000 in this year is that yeah because it's partially yeah it's partially him so he's no longer like working and doing our ap and our payroll and law so he's going to be on like as

a consultant to help us do our finances the year-round reporting and all that sort of stuff. So who's doing our AP now? We are. Did he train? Wow. So it's back in-house. So we're down half a man. So we'll do the best we can. I don't know how. We've had somebody step up in the office that is willing to learn it.

Do we have somebody? Is Mark going to teach it before he leaves? He'll be there to answer questions for us. And part of what he can do, if we have questions, he'll come in for the day and help us understand what we need to be doing.

Okay. Especially preparing for the audit and that sort of stuff and year-end adjustments and beginning balances. So how long is he going to be available? I think he's going to be a consultant for as long as we need. Okay. Yeah, it's really working, actually, pretty good for reading full time.

Yes. Did Mark know Trio or did he just know QuickBooks? Yeah, he knows Trio. He does know Trio? Yeah, very well. So this whole year, he hasn't been training somebody in account, you know, to set up the chart of accounts.

The chart of accounts are all set up. In TRIO? Yeah. So is this budget in TRIO? It's going to be once we get it. My budget's in TRIO, the select board's budget in TRIO. But this document didn't come from TRIO? No. And I like this document better than TRIO because it just lays everything right out for you.

I mean, you have everything here in one booklet. Like, TRIO's not going to do that for you. Any other questions? Yeah, I guess I'm looking at this real quick. So you're basically flat-funded this year. The CEO is gone. Well, he's not gone. He's just an appropriate... Well, there's $60,000 or so out of there for him. And there's $34,000 less for business services because you budgeted $40,000, I guess.

Technically, it's only $24,000 because $10,000 of it went to payroll processing services. So, I mean, there's $75,000 at least out of there, and you're flat-funded, you're up $10,000. Where is the rest of that coming from?

You're basically increasing by $90,000, right? No, by $84,000. You're saying administration is up $84,000? Yeah, I mean, if you look at the total administration, he's flat-funded this year. Meaning the bottom line, total general government? Total administration is flat-funded. He's $471,000 versus $467,000 actual. But he's reduced it by $84,000. Right, so... But increase, there's some obvious increases, but is there $84,000 increases in there?

So $60,500 is CEO. Yeah, it's gone. That's gone out of this, right, out of the administration budget. It's out of the, right, out of the administration budget and gone into planning and codes. I guess, Mr. Chairman, I'm wondering, I haven't added it up real quick, but I don't see where

this $80,000 is coming from in here. Last year he was budgeted $520,000. If you take out the ACO of $60,000, that brings you down to $460,000. So in a sense, from what he was budgeted in 23, he's up $11,000, not $80,000. Yeah, I mean, I would assume, to the spreadsheet,

did the math correctly, but you've got $10,000 for the salary. You've got, it looks like $30,000 for part-time staff wages I mean start we trust excel so what's the 30,000 increase in part-time staff I'm looking at it correctly it was 16,000

something in yeah I see it and then it's this year it's going to be 45 why do we need 30,000 and increased staff They're doubling the amount of work two people are doing by 10 hours each, correct? Right. And it's also pulled out of a different category and moved over. The IT people have moved into... There is no IT department, so we pull them out of there and put them in the department that they actually work for.

And the thought is by having them there an additional 20 hours a week, it gives somebody time to do the AP? Yeah, that and voting and... all of it it's going to be a struggle but we'll do the best we can you know if i could hire someone

i don't have no fear so we're just gonna we're gonna do we're gonna do the best we can that's why it's nice to have mark on because i don't think we're going to be able to do all that's required like do the bank statements it just isn't going to be enough time for that one individual

i know it says 20 hours part-time but it's really 40 right they're hiring 20 per person so it's 40 hours split between two people right but two people so it's 40 total correct okay 20 hours for each of them 40 hours total okay i'm just going to the office isn't even open 40 hours so

you're planning on somebody being there every single hour every single day of every single week no no well if you got 40 hours you're putting them in for right you're 20 hours a piece yeah but somebody's going to be there every single hour because you're calling it 40 hours. You'll have just Cindy and a part-timer there all the time.

Yeah, all the time, so it would be 40 hours. Well, I don't know where the 40 hours is coming from. We're not even open 40 hours. Correct, that's where I'm going. I'm sorry, we had two 20 hours in 20 and 20, just 40. Right, so... It used to be. So that's just the amount of wages that we need.

What's going to happen is two part-time is one's coming in at 8 and working until 1. The other one's coming in at 12 and working until 5, so there's always somebody at that window. But on accounts payable, when you take that over, if you code it the first time, after that it's very repetitive.

You don't have to code. I mean, once you write out a check to, like, the electric company, then it's just, it's constant, repetitive. So it should get faster and faster. I mean, it shouldn't take any time to do accounts payable. I mean, maybe four hours, four or five hours out of it.

They might get faster at it as they go, but right now they're going to be slow. Right. They're a general and cheese. They're a thing to switch around. It's not that simple. I'd like you to come back and do it with no training.

No training. There's no one there to train. They have to, like, try to figure it out as they go. They're getting better at it, and now we have at least a consultant to at least call. Does NNA have training modules that they will train?

No, only Harris Computer does because it's a proprietary piece of software, and they're the only ones that provide the training. Any other questions? I welcome a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move, because I think a 5% wage increase is very generous this year,

I move that we recommend $466,115 for the total administration budget, which is $5,000 less. $466,156? Yes. Is there a second to that motion? Second. So, Neil, no one second. So it's moved and seconded that we raise $466,156 for the administration budget.

Discussion? Mr. Chairman, I mean, I think it's easy to sit here and subtract $5,000, but I think we also need to remember that the select board has worked with them closer than the budget committee, And I assume and know that they spent a lot of time doing his evaluation and that's the number they came up with.

So I will not support this motion. I think we should rely upon the select board and their view of the individual. Neil, can you explain how you came up to $5,000? 5% raised. 5% of what? $187,000, $187,000, $877,000. Where are you getting that? We got paid last year. It's what presented, right? It's actuals. What, he got paid? Jerry got a 10% raise.

That's what they budgeted, yes. 5% will be 105. Okay, so you're asking them to either give him a pay cut or... We can't tell them what to pay him. All we can do is make a recommendation on the budget. Any other discussion? Hopefully so I have more time to process this.

You're all set. But we are in fact, I think we are in fact, it's not a pay cut from what he made last year, But it's a cut from what the select board thinks he should get paid. But you have to realize, too, that whenever we're making these recommendations for a reduction in a department item, our justification usually is per line.

But whatever that department head wants to do within that budget, they can adjust it accordingly. I understand that we don't want to just keep spending money and keep spending money. And I also understand what Alan's saying is a negative $5,000 is wherever you want it to come from.

But we haven't had anybody find us money in the 20-some-odd years that I've been living here. So I do want to thank Jerry. I thought him hiring Mark, I was like, uh-oh. But I do want to thank Jerry for doing that and for working hard to try and find that funding.

and my thought process is kind of the same it was with the fire chief i think the fire chief is doing an amazing job so do i really want to hire a whole new part-time person at night no but i'm that fire chief at my own place and so i understand where he's coming from and i don't want to lose that

fire chief and i'd like to keep jerry and keep seeing what he can do for this town i appreciate what jerry's done he's done a very good job he should be doing a good job making a lot of money 100 grand is a lot of money and jerry's still in training he admitted when he came here he's in

training he's still in training as far as i'm concerned yeah my other objective and while i respect alan's comment i hate to see us going down there well we'll cut it and they'll find the money somewhere else i mean either you know and i hate to say that okay now i guess the select

board would have to say take five thousand out of whatever else it may be because we really think the budget is more important than consultant services or something so i won't stop making comments joe do you want to recognize yeah i'd like to recognize colleague over here

i just would like to say that um while i didn't take part in jerry's review because that was actually a meeting that i missed i do fully support his race um and really echo the comments that jill said one thing that i would like to say about this particular situation is that

that review took place and that raise is in place and so what um alan is saying and and john also just reiterated is that that that's not something that's embedded at this point that happened at that meeting and it is now his new contract and so if you don't approve this amount of money

for this line it will come out of another line i just want to make sure that everybody's clear about that thank you any other questions comments this motion on the floor so it's discussion regarding this motion seeing none has been moved and seconded

that we raise four hundred and sixty six thousand one hundred fifty six dollars for the administration budget all those in favor one two three four all those opposed went to it's a tie vote which is why the select board should have crawling in to join the

budget committee we'll get a nice person but i don't get anybody banging at the door what's that we advertised for yeah yeah um i'll defer to you like it's a tie vote so yeah it's a no vote it's it right it's a fail it's a failed vote so i will welcome a new motion john i'll make a motion that

we approve a budget of 471,156 dollars. Second. So it's been motioned by John and seconded by Jill. We get the same vote again. It's gonna be a cold walk. That we raise 471,156 dollars for administration. Is there any additional discussion? I guess I want to clarify perhaps a comment that

jerry made along with donna's thinking um because this is a federal election not federal presidential election um i know you you're going to need more man hours for that like everybody pretty much would work a full day that day not that that equals 40 hours i understand that but um is it

more than just one day that you foresee needing to have these part-timers more than their part-time schedule to meet to make up your difference right so they'll work vacations when people are gone sick when they're gone and when they're in training so it's all of that and are you planning on doing

trio training i don't they can paris computer training so they can look up when their training is that they need and then sign up for it if they if they have the time and again it's very difficult find time for them to get in there and train well you just said the two part-timers have

in a sense extra hours for to allow for coverage of training so I was just curious if that was already a recommendation was to send somebody to trio well the trio is on the computer right in your right on your computer at work you have to go into a room okay send them to the men's bathroom

with a new toilet for their training. Right, and again, it's not an exact number either. It's a projection. It's in the ballpark. We had somebody that hurt themselves, so it covers that. It's just a budget number. If we don't spend it all, it'll go back in the next day and we'll refund it.

So it's just a number that's going to get you pretty close to what we need. We have someone on vacation right now, so they're in there working today. Right. This whole week. Right. All day, not just the part time. So it's built in, all of that's built in. I'd just like to, this is a comment, not a question, but the reason we found two million extra dollars or whatever is because prior to this spring, our accounting process was a go-screw.

I mean, it was a, you know, that's why we didn't know what we were doing. It'd hate us to go back. Whatever kind of training we need to do, we need to do. that we don't go back to, you know, 21 kind of. I agree. Question? Comment? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly,

but I thought the whole idea that we hired the guy, the accountant guy, was so that we weren't doing it in-house, so that no matter what, we'd always have that taken care of. So what changed in that? It changed on his hand. He's no longer working for it. The company closed. Yeah. He was a partner with someone else in the partnership, kind of.

I don't know what happened. All I know is he said, right, that's how I feel. He said he'd no longer be able to do the AP or the payroll. And you elected to bring it in-house versus go to another company? Yeah. There is no other company probably, right? Right, because he brought that expertise to that company.

So there's like a, again, we're getting into the weeds here. It's a little uncomfortable, but there's no compete clause where he worked, and so he has to kind of... No, that's fine. There's no other company. Any other discussion? I'm sorry. I know I came in late, but on the payroll processing, you have a $10,000 budget.

What was your actual, you must have got, you said you had three quotes. What was the actual quote on that? Because $10,000 is high. Well, just north of seven, but there are fees that get associated with that. so you're going to leave a little cushion. So if someone's bank account, they shut it down, they try to do a direct deposit, there's a fee for that. And they've got to set it all up to nail it down.

When they give you a quote, you give them all the information, and they kind of estimate what it's going to be, but that estimate for the actual will be what it will be once they're set up. They know how many employees they're doing. When they're doing them, like we do, 16 biweekly, And then I think there's 43 once a month. So it was just north of 7,000. So I just put a little bit in there just for those fees that we might have, that we may encounter.

And we'll know better next year as we move forward with this program. I'm just having a problem with this whole thing that it has been said over and over and over and over and over again that we have taken taxpayers' money extra every single year.

And I don't want to keep doing that. I've heard from a lot of different people that, you know, the budget committee is not doing their job. We're not looking, we're not cutting, we're not trying. And I am seeing where there's a lot of places where, okay, fluff here, fluff there, fluff here, fluff there.

Okay, I understand. And then you, and I'm sorry, I agree with Neil, you're still in training. You've had to spend a lot of time calling other towns to see how they do things and what they do. You have spent a lot of time with Mark trying to learn what to do. So you're still in training. So with all that being said, that's kind of where I'm at with this whole thing.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm not a finance. If you guys at the town wanted a finance director, they should have hired one. I thought that's what they were going to do. I'm not that person. I don't know what happened. Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, I'll call the vote. Thank you. Please. Yes. So it's been moved and seconded that we raise $471,156 for the administration budget.

All those in favor? One, two, three, four, five. All those opposed? Five, two, three. You opposed? You approved? No, I approve. Donna and you. Opposed? And Alan. Alan, you were opposed? Correct. Okay. All right. Joe, do you know if, or Jerry, do you know if Calvin wants to represent himself?

Because we can put his off to it tomorrow. Yeah, that would be better. Okay. Yeah, because he's been plowing the law. Not a problem. All right, so let's go on. Can I just give him a heads up? Somewhere here, do we talk? I assume the flags are the flags for Better's Day.

But is there money somewhere to repair? It's flags for every, that's flags, the whole flag, yes. And then for tomorrow, if we could talk to, if there's damage in the cemetery, it's hundreds of stones broken. Yeah, that's, there's also a tier. Are you going to wait? Because, I mean, all that's covered. Okay. Why don't we move on to general government, municipal buildings.

So this is going to be a new warrant article. Why don't we call municipal buildings? It isn't. So it's everything, municipal buildings and grounds, it's everything that's not town office, public works, and the fire department.

So it's what we used to call parks and recs. Yeah, when we don't really have a parks and rec department. Right, okay. So I'm just trying to clean that up and make it what it is. Okay. So does that cover the Eureka also? Yeah. No. Eureka has its own line item for building repairs and maintenance under culture and recreation.

there is i thought that too oh you deleted all those yeah it's all going it's all going to one central okay buildings and grounds are we improving the lighting at eureka that's basically done okay i know you had talked about it i didn't know that had been completed yeah so i have a question

in listening to the select board conversation the gazebo needs repairs yes which i guess is in 217252 53 53 my apologies okay um i thought recreation reserves was what we used i didn't write down the code number so i don't even know where i saw it

it's in the very last page the town-wide section the recreation reserve was 23 742 it's line 72 on page 15 the fund balances okay so okay so maybe it's potato potato so fund balances is undisignated so recreation reserve is now part of the fund balances so if we're transferring money out no

that's all of the fund balance it's not part of the fund balance but it's in the fund balance Okay. What reserve are you talking about? Recreation. Recreation Reserve. It's in the committed fund. It's under the fund balances tab, and I'm trying to wrap my head around fund balances,

so I thought it was part of the fund balances. Well, there's four parts of the fund balance. General fund, as they're calling it, is assigned, then unassigned, then is restricted, and then is committed. Oh, thank you very much. Okay. All those babies. The general fund, as they list it there, I would, you can check with Mark, But I would say that's assigned or not assigned. It has to be. I guess my question is, what are we doing with Recreation Reserve if we're not using it for municipal building repairs?

That's a good question. So, one of the things that I'm not seeing. Can I just say, the reserve accounts that you put away is more for like capital, bigger type repairs or maintenance, like new roofs or something like that.

Basic maintenance is just something that you, again, if you need to replace a toilet and then you reach a center, you don't want to take that out of capital. Or maybe you do. You wouldn't want to take that out of capital, I would think. Or if you needed to fix something here. Or you wanted to do something with the steps or something that's a little bit minor.

So every building has a little, or should have some sort of maintenance line to it. So the difference between what you see in the operating versus the reserves, the reserves was my understanding that it's more for bigger capital improvements.

Okay, and my understanding is that the town approves it after April 1st. We will no longer be in ownership of the Union Church. All right, and so then the only other, so we have Eureka and a Gazebo. eureka the gazebo the uh run around pollen building that gets right has sanitation stuff

river park is also down there we have a building down there we don't really do much with it but again it's just a maintenance pipeline in case we need to do a little bit of maintenance to some of these buildings outside of fire public works so this the select board now could elect to

use recreation reserves since the town doesn't vote for reserve spending anymore. That's not true. Yes, it is. No. That's what they just announced. The town only does not vote on capital reserves. The select board can only spend money from capital reserve funds.

They're the trustees of those funds. But they're not the trustees of reserve funds? Not the trustee of the revaluation reserve fund, for example. No. Who is? The town. There's no trustee for it. The town's in charge of it. The legislative party. Do you want to have Heather talk?

That's up to me. Bye, Heather. Jill, if you think about in the past when we've had money in the telecommunications budget or telecommunications reserve, we go to the town, and on the Warren article it says, do we wish to transfer out of those funds? This fund is that same exact kind of fund. So it's not a capital reserve. The select board has the ability to spend that money. This money in the recreation reserve that you were talking about mimics the same way that we would transfer out of the telecommunications budget.

Okay. And this year, the select board is not recommending to transfer money out of anything except for the general fund balance. That's correct. Other questions? I have one. So just to clarify, I asked for clarification on building repairs and maintenance.

line item 21-7253 um and i i thought the answer was that that money really should have been in 20 72 53 so i really should have been pardon the note should have been now that five thousand dollars is going to gazebo repairs and the five thousand dollars under 20 72 53 is what's being

it's going to the men's toilet and the office space redesign questions saying then i welcome a motion anybody ready with a motion mr chairman i'll make a motion that we approve 22 235 dollars for municipal buildings i'll second it has been motioned and seconded motion by john seconded by

jill that we the town raises twenty two thousand eight hundred dollars for municipal buildings what is it twenty two two thirty five that was the motion yeah twenty two two thirty i'm sorry so it's been it was moved by john and seconded by jill that we raised twenty two thousand two

hundred and thirty five dollars for municipal buildings now i open it up for discussion john the difference in your motion versus the requested amount oh i'm looking in there i look at the whole page sorry okay so it is what's requested sorry actually i didn't realize it was this section i

guess i do have another question now it's a time to ask so 21 7200 heat went down to zero but you guys are adding another heater because the heat pump scaled in the eureka building yeah that's the thing so there's no budget in there because there's no heat source in there for that right now

and that got talked about at the last meeting so so keep in mind that this budget was put together before we made that recommendation and yeah it's not going to happen until after april so we wouldn't get the heat in there until summer we've got a full tank of propane now you may or may not

need any but if you if you want to fund some heat in there in case not a bad idea so can you summarize the propane heaters a little bit for us or i can ask a bunch of questions calvin took care of that so he took uh he got an estimate to put two renai heaters in there ones that came out

and i think he got what came out i'm not really familiar i guess there was a furnace in there downstairs i don't know do you know no there was two there was two heaters on the main floor there was a heater there was a vertical heater in the center of the main floor and one down the hall

So those no longer work. So we're going to replace those with two Renai propane heaters. And what are you doing with the heat pumps? We're going to leave them, but those heat pumps aren't made to heat that. No, the town was told that when they wanted heat pumps, but yeah.

I mean, it's a supplement. I mean, if that building was a human, he'd be in super hypertension right now, high blood pressure, because it just doesn't, it doesn't cut. No, it doesn't. So the heat pumps are still good. If you keep using them the way that we're using them, they'll be toast pretty soon.

So hopefully we can save it. And then the heat pumps also still do humidity control in the summertime if they had to. They're a supplemental heat, not the main. Last year we had pipes freeze because the heat couldn't keep up. So is it safe to assume then we'll need less electricity?

Absolutely. So it would just be a transfer to buying protein. Okay. Another discussion. Seeing none, it's been moved and seconded that the town raises $22,235 for municipal buildings. All those in favor of the motion? All those opposed? It is 7 to 1. Pass. Second.

Moving on to assessing. Comments or questions? Welcome a motion. Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion that we approve $22,800 for assessing. I second. It has been moved by John and seconded by Neil that we raise $22,800 for assessing.

Is there some discussion? That is a 6.7% increase in pay for the assessor zone. Yeah, it's another $100 a month. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, it's been moved and seconded that the town raises $22,800.

For assessing all those in favor of the motion, please indicate. All those opposed, that's unanimous. All right. This board wished to set a time limit for today. We're moving right along. We definitely don't like to go past 9.30. We are approaching 10 minutes to the 9 o'clock hour. Would you like to end at 9 this evening and finish the rest tomorrow, or would you like to get as much done as we can and go to 9.30? I make a motion to at least finish general government. Finish general government? That work for everybody?

But anybody, I need to take a break. So you can carry on without me, or we take a five-minute break in case anybody else has to use the restroom. Take five? Yeah. Might be seven, it looks like there's a line. It's good for everyone's back to stretch your legs.

Thank you. Because I think we shouldn't, I think there's more of a need for the spending fund, which we can handle in several different ways, either by ordinance or by a warrant article each year, and I think we ought to work on that. It won't happen this year, but I don't think it can happen this year. But I think we ought to work on that. I think we ought to push towards more closely budgeted as best we can.

There's fat in the administration budget. There was last year. There will be this year. And I think we ought to work towards budgeting more closely. But they'll need an emergency spending fund if we do that. We do have an emergency spending fund. It's just not as robust as the select board is wanted.

They can't access it right now legally. They have no way to access it. Sure they do. They just ask us over for wine on Fridays or coffee on Wednesdays, and we have a quick meeting and vote yay or nay. No, they can't access it. There's no law or article that lets anybody access that right now.

My understanding was as long as we had a combined select board and budget. That was a one-time article in the warrant two or three years ago. Three years ago, I think it was. It has to be in the warrant every year to make that happen, or we have to have an ordinance. You guys should look into that, because the money's there.

$16,000. It's not a lot of money. No, but it's money. I'd love to have $16,000 in my pocket right now. My tip would be we should transfer that out, put it in the general fund, and create an ordinance or a yearly article that enables a select board to spend money in emergencies.

And I would add to the solid waste fund as well. So if there's a solid waste issue, they can spend for solid waste overruns and emergencies. that would be my take probably i don't know that's not our take that's not our discussion i guess

that's a select board decision but yep you should and this is the benefit of being on the budget committee you can actually talk and have questions answered back and forth with the select board so please take out your petitions your two options would be to either get on the agenda at a select

board meeting or speak your mind during the public comments on a select board meeting all right we're going to try to be on, I think, two more sections to go under general government. We're going to focus now on information technology. And I'll open it up for questions. Information

technology? You mean telecommunication? It's labeled information technology. I'm going to issue you. All right, so the part-time majors are out of there, so I'm assuming they're in the office admin. It is. On one report, it's labeled telecommunications. You are

correct okay but on the spreadsheet prepared by neil it's called information technology how come software licenses went up 24 000 that was in the admin okay so i just moved it to the it because that's really where it belongs so did we did we totally miss that in the admin that that money

had come out i'm not sure if we missed it or no no way to know no it's there it shows that it's yeah yeah 2073 56 is negated questions that the hot do we get an answer what is the hardware line hardware line is in case we have a computer that crashes and we need to get another one

what is data defined that's our it services that we contract out that's a company yeah okay yeah so they make sure that we don't get hacked exactly yeah and they provide all of our office 365 licenses, emails that type of stuff. And printing and copying? What did you say about that?

Printing and copying. I took it out of there and we put it in admin. Telecommunication, information technology. I just tried to keep relevant to that in that. I move that we appropriate $47,000 for information technology.

It has been moved by Alan and seconded by Jill that we appropriate $47,000 for, are we calling it telecommunication or are we calling it information technology, Jerry? Information technology. Okay, that is the new title. Further discussion?

Seeing none, it has been, the motion on the floor is to appropriate 40, to raise $47,000 for information technology. All those in favor, all those opposed, the vote is 7 to 1. I think it was really expensive. Yeah, it is. We're going to go into planning and code of enforcement.

Chairman, I will need to recuse myself since I am, I guess we're not calling it committee wages to indicate my answer. Understood, thank you. I will just also do that. You both can still comment. I would like to comment if we're asking. Definitely participate in discussion, just not to vote it. So, with that in mind, any comments or questions?

So let me just make sure I understand this. The full-time wages now, insurance has been taken out of there? It's been put in. I'm sorry, I shouldn't name it. The code enforcer. Put it in there. Okay, so that's added there plus his workman's comp, right?

Just lost it. And retirement. Is he the only one in that department that gets retirement? Yeah, because he's the only one in the department. Is that mainstay retirement? Yeah, he is. Okay. And so that's the town's portion of what needs to get paid.

And the part-time wages, this is the 10 and 10. This is George. That's the planner. And so just, you know, we've given him, he was working 20 hours a week. We're now giving him four more hours for 24. No rate increase, just more hours to take care of. If the land use codification passes, we need him to be that liaison

and just additional work, actually doing more. Since you brought that up, it's not up for debate about passing, is it? What's that? Land use codification. Well, if the town people... Is it coming out of ARPA? Yes. We don't vote for that. I think. Yes, it is. The town has to vote for ARPA. Yeah. The town does vote for ARPA? Yes. But the budget committee does not. Oh. John, did you say it a comment?

It doesn't affect the taxes. I mean, I'm here if you want to hear anything from me. John, do you want to recognize Heather? No, go ahead, Heather. Has that changed? When we did the special town meeting, the budget committee met to make a recommendation on ARPA funds when we had the special town meeting. Why are we saying that we don't make a recommendation on ARPA? I think it's probably based on usually whatever the recommendations

the budget committee has has an effect on taxation. ARPA does not. Therefore, we don't have a responsibility on that. We did last year, though. Well. Because, I mean, it was my first year, but one of the articles was to see if the town will vote to appropriate 105 from ARPA received by the town for us, so on and so forth.

And there was a select board and a budget company both recommended yes. But if we don't have to, we don't have to. Yeah, I was going to say, I remembered it more as, like, paying for something. But as far as I know, ARPA's not paying for something this year.

we're just i don't know i have no idea what the opera is for this show yes can i ask about the um postage why that's an increase well that's an increase there because we're doing more and if we have to mail out to a barter's or whatever's going on we need that postage in the way do you expect

that much of an increase do you expect double well it doubled from the budget um before so it just Depends. Last year we kind of got caught. We did the resource protection mailing. We were out of money the first month. So you don't know. I don't know. Like they're going to. It's hard to say.

It wasn't a problem because they were over budgeted by $15,000 anyway. So for the department. Is it legal to make a motion that Heather gets to sit next to you? Can you do that? I don't. I don't. Constantly having to go through all the loops of asking.

Can I make a motion that you allow Heather to sit next to you so we don't have to keep asking you permission to see if Heather can speak? You can speak if she'd like. Okay, so if I see her hand raised, I can just call upon her or the chair can?

Yeah. Thank you. Okay, just wanted to clarify. Nobody's behind my head here. I know, but I didn't want to step on any toes. Further discussion regarding planning and code enforcement. Heather has her hand up. Just a little adjustment on a comment I made. That $56,000, there wasn't a $15,000 overage because $10,000 of that was the $10,000 that Lois asked for.

It got assigned to planning when that was asked for at the town meeting. So it really wasn't $56,000. It was $46,000. Still more than that. It's bad. Isn't the select board asking for that back to donate to you and your church?

It's already back. Where did we vote that back? It's in General Fund. It just goes back to General Fund. It wasn't spent. No, no, no. In the budget, they're sending it back to Union Church. Oh, yeah. It's a different, it's too common. Yeah, we've got it there. Okay, thoughts changed. Heather had her hand up. Would you mind calling upon Heather, please, Mr. Chair?

Yes, Heather? I just wanted to explain the postage a little bit more. Whenever we have a land use ordinance change and properties are affected, like Jerry was talking about with the resource protection, we have to notify all property owners that are impacted.

And so we do have potential. Welcome a motion. Recommend for planning and code enforcement, $123,600. I'll second. It's been a motion by Neil, seconded by Jill, that we raised $123,600 for planning and code enforcement. Is there any further discussion?

I raised the right word. Appropriate? It's appropriate. Appropriate, sorry. I have just one question because we see that the code enforcer's pay comes in over here, but was there any raise attached to that? Because there's no... Yeah, that includes 5% in his too. Okay,

because that's not listed. Right, because it's kind of new to this place, so to keep an apples to Apple's comparison. You'd have to look in the admin where he was. Okay. And I have a question. Yes. So on the travel and mileage, is that for the Coast Enforcement? Yes. The CEO. Yeah, the CEO. So he uses his own vehicle to do all of his inspections and stuff. Is that part of his job

to do that? No, yeah. Well, no, no. I mean, to use your own vehicle. I mean, everyone uses their own vehicle, right? It's either that or we buy him a vehicle. You take a choice. He's not just driving to work. He's driving to job sites. Yeah. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, it's been moved and seconded that we appropriate $123,600 for planning and code enforcement.

All those in favor of the motion? All those opposed? So the vote is 512. 512. Yes, thank you. I think that finishes general government. So the plan would be if Calvin is able to join us tomorrow evening. Jerry, do you want to let him know we'll put him first? Yeah, he said he'd be, I talked to him just before this meeting. Yeah, we'll put him first so he doesn't have to stay too long. Yeah. And we should, I don't see anything that prevent us from getting through the whole budget tomorrow evening.

So we'll move this in there in two days. I make a motion to conclude the meeting. Is there a second? Second. Second, we adjourn. Second. Discussion? All those in place, second.