TranscriptSelect Board Budget Workshop ~ January 17, 2017

thought in mind that we would try and um fairly distribute the extra cost to the employees throughout all the employees. And it does change the distri distribution a little bit so that people who have families and spouses don't take as big a hit. Um and the people who are single take a hit as well. I would like to note, however, that I had sent everybody an email that talks about how much this would go up and the fact that in reality um each taxpayer would pay an additional I think it was 34 per thousand maybe it was three $3.40 per 100,000 on their home. So, if you have a $200,000 home, your taxes because of the health will go up $668,

amounts would would go up five, six, $700 each, which in effect gives us all a pay decrease instead of I think so. So, I think at this time I I would like to see if you guys want to try to start lowering some of the health insurance costs. If we start doing something where we um uh grandfather, you know, if you guys want to change the benefits, then over time the the town could save money by grandfathering the people who are here. And then as attrition happens, then you would save money because quite frankly, health insurance is just a cost of doing business. Um, so that's where I am with this

FICA's FICA. Uh, the main PERS is going up to 7% um as of July 1st for the employer. Um, I believe that the employee is 8 or 8 and a half%. Um, Medicare and all that other stuff. Okay. So, general insurance that is our property and casualty insurance. We have the bill for the first half, so I know what that is. The second half bill, I just added 5% to um and did that. You'll notice last year we underspent that line quite quite a bit. The reason it was underspent um is because we had a dividend, which does not happen every year. So that decreased our our line.

Yeah. 3,600 bucks. Yeah. It was it was Well, it was a little less than that. We were a little bit under, but uh workers compensation, we've talked about that. Yeah. Um computer hardware. This year we This piece of of comp is just the office for

it's just the office and I've even this year separated out the um telecom um for Shannon and Alden and the animal control. And we as an entire town, your your portion of that takes a hit even if the the accident occurred in a in a different department.

Yeah. Mine raises by the same percentage as everybody else's. The reason mine's so low is because most of my workers are office workers and we're not really expensive. Yep. Um workers compensation, computer hardware. Um I like to keep $1,000 in this line just in case one of our computers goes haywire. Um the other $500 is we need to add a printer um to our office this year because the MVR, the motor vehicle registrations are going to start being printed not on the carbon paper. We're going to have it on a laser printer. Um, and so we have to buy a dedicated laser printer for that. And so that's what the extra $500 is for. Um, I put nothing in software. I I bought Publisher last year, so there's nothing that I can think of that we would really need. Um, and if it was something that telecommunications needs, they have some money for software in their budget. So I'm not really very concerned about that. Trio Harris

software, it is what it is. It's what we use on a daily basis. Um, that's the actual price this year because we've already received the bill. I think we've actually already paid it. Um, the equipment lease is the copier in in uh the other room, the big copier. Um, publications, unfortunately, a lot of the books that Paul wanted to purchase this year didn't come out in print until now. Um, and so we have to kind of budget for that $1,800 again, uh, in order to purchase those MUB books that we need to have by ordinance here in the office. Uh, furnishings and equipment, $150 doesn't go very far, but in case we need a bench or, I don't know, bookshelves or something like that. It's good to have something on hand.

Much of a bench for 150 either. No, I know. Much of a chair for 150. Really? But IKEA all the way. [laughter] supplies has to do with with the copy fees that we pay in the other room. Uh which is one of the reasons it's gone up so much.

So, we're using more than we initially anticipated with that lease. I don't know if it's more than we anticipated, but we do spend a lot on the actual copies because we're allotted so many and we always go over um and around budget time, you know, we're paying $500 a month for copies because I make these books. [laughter] Selectman's discretionary discretionary um you know we use that for flowers and stuff when somebody who is in our community um we lose somebody or or somebody we need to send flowers to general services supplies. This is the cleaning supplies. That's where the $400 is. Um the security is not going up this year. Generator maintenance. We over spent this line last year because we had some issues with the generator. Um the $300 is actually what it costs for the maintenance. So the maintenance itself has gone up as well. Um Medicare and

FICA are for our clean cleaning lady. Um propane uh we get usually get two shipments a year about 500 gallons or so. So, uh, with the price that we've contracted with, I'm I'm pretty confident we can do that within $1,500. Um, let's see here. Telephone.

No, I'm missing something. Oh, maintenance and repairs. You know, I didn't put a lot of money in this line, mainly because, um, we're going to be going on in a second to um, a capital budget. So, we have money in a capital budget to do maintenance and repairs um, on this building.

Uh telephone, uh that's what we pay now that we have. Fair Point, um it's gone down quite a bit from our last company. Um and our janitorial is what we pay our cleaning lady. Uh electricity. Yeah. Go ahead. Back on that generator maintenance.

Yeah. Um you're asking for 300. Yep. That's just for when he comes. In the past years, we've budgeted roughly 250 250 or so. We've kind of spent it this year obviously for that, but the price of everything has gone up. I'm wondering if that's really is that enough.

It is for one maintenance. If anything goes wrong with the generator, then we have an issue. Right. That's that's what I mean. I mean, I don't want to I don't want to cut so short that we're okay. You know, I I just I don't want to be I don't want to have $10,000 and $1,000 savings account. I don't want to be too short.

To be really honest, I was very um low on some of my bids, I think, or my my numbers this year. Um because I'm trying to keep taxes down. I I I know. And [laughter] I and I am too, but there's certain areas we don't want to we don't want to cut too close. We kind of really need that.

So, how much more do you think we Well, I was thinking a couple hundred. Couple hundred. Bring that up to 500. Yeah. We expended almost six last year, right? And I And it is getting older. We had that problem. My my gut feeling is we may run into something like that again.

No problem. Okay. Okay. I have no problem. I don't really want to add it, but I don't want to be cut too short. So, okay. I'm take any any uh ideas that you guys have. That doesn't mean the budget committee will be happy about it. [laughter] But,

uh electricity, you know, chief was saying the other night that he thought it was going to go down. I've heard that it's supposed to go up. So, I took what we spent last year and added 5% to it. Um, and I did that with the street lights as well. So, because we spent last more less last year than we actually budgeted, um, it went down for the town building, but the street lights we overspent, so it went up for the street lights. uh [sighs and gasps] Union Church security, electricity, um telephone, that telephone went down because we changed to Fair Point over there as well. Uh election payroll, um we sliced that. Uh we're not getting any of the booths this year, so 1,500 should be more than enough for our election expenses. Uh FICA, Medicare, that's all for um for election workers.

Legal expenses. I may be cutting it down a little too far, but I made it down to 8,000. Last year, we spent $6,777, but that includes the money that we spent on the legal problems with the county. So, I think that we could, unless [clears throat] we run into a big problem, we could easily go within $8,000.

What did we send, Connie? and always sent them two different bunch of different a bunch there were a bunch of different monies. I can't tell you exactly how much it was. I think it was about $2,000 or $3,000. Okay, that's what I was guessing. So

So the actual and that also that 677 also includes $1,200 for our our uh tax anticipation note. So really we didn't spend that much money with um Lenel Chen Weber last year. Mhm. [clears throat] Will that cover if we have to have another tax anticipation note this year?

Yeah, cuz it it be it's $1,200 for the tax anticipation note. So, that still leaves the $6,800 for any legal issues that we have. And we also have um MMA as a resource. Backup resource, too. Yeah. Right. I know those are can be unpredictable, but

they're very unpredictable. you know, if you don't have any claims, but we are also protected somewhat, you know, and and uh we have had issues in the past that are covered by our insurance and we pay $2,500 is our deductible. Um but beyond that, they pay for all the the the um one that we had with the human rights not too long ago cost us $2,500.

Did we see an uptick in our premium as a result of those claims? Um, I have not seen an uptick in the premium premium because of those claims. Um, I don't I don't I can make the phone call and see if that's going to be an issue. Um, audit expenses are what they are. We've already been through our audit. We're finishing up the paperwork, but um, it's it's pretty much done. MMA dues have gone up a little bit. Um, GP COG dues, is that Jeff? Um, not Jeff. Um, Josh. Um, GP COD dues are what they are. They're the same as last year. Dues, training, and mileage. I lowered that a little bit. Not much. A little bit. Tax billing. That's when we pay to get our tax bills sent out. Leans and discharges. We We do a lot of leaning and we have to discharge the leans. So, it's very expensive. Um,

do we lean to the right or the left? [laughter] Um, town reports, printing, that goes in, uh, telecom. So, we'll get there. All right. Uh, advertising and postage. Postage. We have a lot of of legal paperwork that we have to send certified mail. So, it gets very, very expensive.

Any questions on that part? No. your budget went up just a touch by right less than less than half a percent. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And we also took more income in in the building permits, electric permits, um bunch of that other stuff. So I think we'll have to raise less. Now, right after that is an a capital budget that I want to talk about. [laughter] This building has [clears throat] um been ignored for a while. Um I keep putting $800 in for painting, but every time I put $800 in for painting, we we spend it on maintenance. Um and $800 will only buy the paint. It won't buy somebody to paint. And I've don't have any problem with painting, but somehow I've not gotten to it. But so I put $5,000 in to have the town hall painted

and then $20,000 for possible renovation. Paul's brought several ideas to you. Um we don't think that the biggest one would fly, so we're thinking that um one of the smaller ones maybe we can get to. Um the roof we have an actual bid on. Um I'm I don't think this place has been roofed since 1985 when the building was built.

No, I don't think so. Um, are we having issues? Are we having Not that I know of. Not yet, but I've looked at it a few times and it's time. Yeah. Usually what happens, they get to a point and then it goes all at once. That's what we kind of want.

And the other issue with with this budget too is all of the money that we put in this budget, if we decide we don't need it and it's not spent, gets back puts back into the specific funds. So, it's not this isn't money that we're raising from taxes. Um, and it's not money that's going to be lost if we don't spend it. And we always go out to bid if we do something. So, you know, we would get the best possible price.

This um this rough estimate that you have, you uh is this for asphalt still for the roof? Yeah, I think it's included in your paperwork, which we probably shouldn't hand around too much, but uh it is I believe so it includes

Oh, this right here. Okay. I don't see that. It just says uh architectural shingle. It'll all have to go out anyways again. So yeah, I was just curious if we had a rough idea how many square there was cuz I have numbers in my head that I know I use so I could kind of compare.

That doesn't mean I'm a little crazy. I just you organize a group of volunteers to come down and [laughter] you know I I've suggested that in the past about a couple things and people just get up in arms about it cuz it's what happens if somebody gets hurt? Well, if they walk into this town office and they trip and fall, what happens if they get hurt?

I know. You know, I mean I mean there was a time when people really did, you know, there was a whole sense of community and you jumped in and you helped out painted the town hall. What's up with the heating system? The heating system. So last year, uh, our air conditioning actually went down. It's the air conditioning side of the heating system, but it's all one unit.

Yep. Actually, it's two units. It's one for either side. Um, and the gentleman who looked at it felt that it might not last more than a year. [clears throat] Um, and so we're looking into the possibility of the what are they called?

Heat pumps. Yeah. Um, which are about $4,000 a piece. And depending on what we decide, we could do maybe one over here and one over there. Two or three with the backup of the electric. Yep. Um, so that's what that's that's what that is.

Is the electric still hooked up? Yeah, it is. Okay. Yeah. I thought I thought that that was been turned off or something. I thought so, too. But it it does work. Okay. I know cuz I get cold sometimes. So, that's what I'm thinking. We have the 39,000 actually in a municipal building account that's been building over time with interest. I mean, it's it's the interest that we collect during the year goes into that account. Um, and then there's something called town office reserve. Um, and that's not the entire amount in the town office reserve. Um, but like I said, those those monies would go back into those accounts if we didn't spend them. Could we take all of those monies and consolidate it into some kind of capital account for town hall or I don't know what whether it requires an active town meeting or what have you to to I don't think it requires a town meeting. These figures are from the assigned fund balance and

from what I understand from the auditors auditors those are kind of numbers for the most part that we've decided to do that these are funds that we've decided to um the only thing being um you know the town the the vote is needed for like where the public works funds automatically go into the capital account right where the fire department funds automatically go into the

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, you guys don't have any more questions on that one? No. Let's look animal control. We can look at animal control. That's next in my my in my book. Yeah. Okay. It is, but I don't have nothing in it. She handed it up to you.

Oh, that's the one you gave me. Well, that's actually just a sheet of paper, but I actually think I handed it out last time. trying to say? I can administration. Do you guys have the animal control or not? No. Want me to make copies of you for you?

Yep. Yep. I guess I don't have it. Okay. Well, I didn't know you guys didn't have it. I thought he handed out last time. Um, you actually I do remember something, but I don't remember what it was. I did. I just have to find it.

I'm kind of h scratching on some of this. that one. I don't know. You don't know? Hey, Todd. You're supposed to have one tonight. I am mind if we bust you guys out of here, right? I don't care. Sounds good to me. We're just about to do your budget. So, [laughter]

I don't know. We might do a raffle. Are you supposed to have an ordinance meeting in here tonight? Are you really? Yeah. Oh, At 7 or 6:30? 6:30. You're the only one here. What time are you guys? There's two more here. Who else is coming?

No, you guys aren't even standing right. No. Oh, we're halfway through. Halfway. We got a half hour into it. Yeah, we started at six. All right. Um, we can what what we could do is clo close over the curtain, stick them in Paul's office.

We go over the gray. Yeah. Yeah. Do that. Or you can go over the Eureka Center. Yeah. Thank you, Senator. That's right. You don't call it that. [laughter] That's back in the old That's old time. That's green. You want the key?

You don't mind. Awesome. Sorry about that. No, I guess we better check the schedule. Make sure we don't do that again. No, they're workshops. I don't do that. I've emailed Ruth, but I guess I don't like Should be a while.

Oh, yeah. I see. Now you guys do all three of them. Same amount of energy. Do all three of it is to do one. you. Trump There's no I had to laugh. Okay, let's go back to Animal King. Thanks, Todd. Fun. Oh, yeah. Bunch of fun. People without a country, they feel so bad for you guys.

All right. Animal control. Animal control is pretty self-explanatory. I did raise the stipen by 500, but the reason I did that is not uh necessarily as a raise, but as a mileage, good trade-off for the mileage. Y So, we took the 702 out for the mileage um and put $500 into the stipend. FICA, Medicare, there's workers comp. Um

the mileage is gone. supplies $300. So last year there was a lot of money left over from supplies and that was because of the rabies shot that were never um I don't know whether they were never gotten or whether the invoice was never given to us but my feeling is

Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. So $300 training $100 because he's required to do eight hours of training every year uh in the Coastal Humane Society. He is what it is. Y so it did go down a little bit this year. And I did as per your request, Mike, I put in um all the $25 late fees into the animal control. And so this year we have the$,559 for the animal control.

Thank you. You're welcome. That's the late fees from registering your dog. Yeah. So after Oh, was that many? Wow. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I made a ticket out of her budget and put it in Oh, that's that's where it really should be.

Yeah, it should. I brought it right down. He's supposed to as a licensed or certified animal control officer do eight hours a year of continuing CE required. Yes. And we don't know if it was done this year or not. I did not receive any invoices for it or any communication that he

or certification that it was. That should be in the reports that we're hopefully going to be getting here shortly. I hope I did send out that letter for the [clears throat] um late fees for the animals. They're $25 a piece.

Okay. And you said how how much money? Uh $1,559. That's the weight. Wait. Well, it's not all late fees. It's probably because they had a hard time catching the dogs trying to strap that thing to his butt. That [laughter] fish plate. What's next?

I don't know. Do we want to go? I was do a couple, but do you want to do assessing? Yeah, sure. Do you guys have assessing? No, we don't have assessing. We don't have cemeteries. We don't have Assessing gave you all this last

Assessing is a contracted rate last meeting, right? I have it. I just left it sitting on the piano at my house. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, maybe assessing is a contracted amount, correct? Yeah, it is a contracted amount. There's a little bit of extra in it.

I'll go over it then. Does it look good? Uh there's tax mapping, which is the 1,600, transfers 400, postage office supplies 150. So, it's it went up $100 from last year, and it's all raised. There's no um there's no uh fund for this one

and I wasn't here the last time. So, right now I do have uh cemetery conservation Eureka. So, do you have a pile of papers? Probably somewhere. Maybe in your in your box, I bet. No, it's not in there. No, you took it and put it home.

I'm just saying I don't know where it is, but yeah, probably. I'm going to say probably cemeteries. Uh the cemeteries. Wow, you guys are easy. Cemeteries. I like to cut where I can, but if I can't cut, I mean 3500 for the the mowing, 500. They need extra money for

now. The mowing is No, this is what it is, right? Is it a contract we going or wait? It's a year-to-year contract. Joe uh John contracts with uh Yankee Yard Works generally for the flat fee. Yeah, I mean, it's been the same for I was

going to say it hasn't changed in the Right. It has This goes back to 2012. Uh $500 for equipment and materials because they want to do a little bit of renovations uh to repair Bradberry Cemetery. They spent that last year, right?

Uh they did not spend that last year, right? Right. We There was a hundred There was a hundred last year. This year they're asking for 500. They never spent nothing last year. the 100 they spent they never spent 100 last year they

they want 500 this year because they want to do some actual repair super hopefully to control erosion um flags they just said they need 200 for the flags because they still have a lot so 4200 which is actually an increase of $350 and most of that is for the repair that they want to do on the cemetery

and no big cemeteries cemeteries well it's particularly they want uh Bradberry cemetery has a couple of issues I guess all Right. Conservation. Conservation is the same every year, right? It's the $2,000 for 4 club. Yep. And the $100 for dues and then $50 for supplies,

which they never use. But does the conservation committee meet? No. Far as I know, they really don't. So, that being the case, what is it that we're paying $100 in dues for? just curiosity, the dues quite frankly are are actually um donations uh to the Androskogan Land Trust and I think the other one's the Royal River. So, it's the a couple of conservation groups in the area and we pay them $50 a year each

and we're getting back, right? In past years, we've the conservation committee has spent some of this money or has spent the money. Am I correct? They spend most of it every year, right? Back when John Acriman was there. And

they spend $2,100 every year. Um, it's the $50 in supplies that they never seem to spend, which is, you know, fine. Do we have a list of who's on that committee? Somebody, as far as I know, there's only two members of the committee at this moment.

Well, we should we should. And they don't they don't meet. They used to though. Yes. at one time because I know some that was on it. But the and with some of the things that are happening now, you know, with Paul and his with Runaround Pond with the comprehensive plan committee, it may be something that that heats up a little bit more and there

we may want to re rejuvenate the Right. That's what I was getting at. Maybe we should touch base with the two people and kind of put that out there and see if we can Yeah. develop some interest. I think there might be some people in town that would be interested in

Oh, yeah. I would think so. Yeah. doing some work on the river park too, you know, clearing the trails and stuff like that. And yeah. Yep. It' be a good idea to put that put that out there. Maybe you can contact whoever we the two that we do have. There used to be I want to say there was five or six on there or six or seven at one time.

I know it was very active at one time and they were very instrumental in getting the river park uh done the way it is now. Um, but after the river park uh was finished, I think they just kind of petered away for a little bit.

So, donations, do we have a list of uh people that have solicited us for donations this year? I don't feel it's complete. Um, yeah, I remember seeing that one and Yeah, there's only four solicitations I've received so far. So, I think I'm going to give them another week and see what happens.

Um, that was the one that usually we gave up basically $3,000, right? Was that the one? It was 500 district, right? Yes. I have I have Jeff's book and of course he has all of the ones from previous weeks all organized in his [laughter]

Well, there's conservation administration. Okay, here's Eureka. That's all the way. So, Eureka's not it doesn't look like they're planning any major No, nothing major this year. They're they're working very hard at trying to um increase their capital fund um and

just working at trying to get people to rent it and get it used. I did note that it doesn't include any offset for rentals. Has there been any rental income? There is an off is it not on there? Oh, it's not on this version of it.

Uh there was $540 worth of rentals that that will be used to offset that this uh budget. So, it did go down by $533. Most of that is for propane because, um, we didn't use much propane and we have that new contract. Um, so that lowered it by

$1,000. Sure. They wanted to do some specific repairs. So, uh, we did put some extra money in the repairs line. We went from $750, which we over spent this year, to $1,200. Are there some specific repairs that that need to be done or is it just sort of general?

Just sort of general. She This wasn't very specific. Uh general assistance 3,000. We're just going to stay status quo. We didn't spend 3,000 this year. We only spent about 450. Yeah. Well, that's what I was actually planning on doing tonight. I finally got most of the information I need. Um, I still have not received an actual request from the snowmobile club, but I did put it in there. Um, so the sanitation has gone down to $600.

That's uh $250 twice to pump plus $100 for toilet paper. Um, park maintenance, $400. Why did I put that in there? for I guess for just anything that we need to do. [laughter] Maybe we could put that I'm We didn't We didn't spend it last year. I see.

Yeah. I'm trying to remember why I put it in as 400 this year. I see a 100 here. Did I? Oh, this see 13 or 14. There was 100. Yeah, I I see line 45, right? Line 100. I have line park maintenance. Park maintenance. 14 100 100 200 200 and then

Oh, I'm on a different park maintenance line. I was up on this park maintenance line. Right. All right. All right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I was on the wrong one. Well, you said 100. I found it, but it was a different different year.

I think I put the $400 with the thought that if anything happened to our new port or just to clean in the over there and Yeah. If we ever had to do anything. I don't know about that. [laughter] Nice. Um so, River then down to River Park. um just $100 for the part maintenance. We put it in there every year. We don't generally spend it, but it's it just goes back into the fund pretty much anyways.

So, we don't know why. Back up to the one runaround. We don't know why we have the park maintenance going up $200. We just I put it in there with the thought in mind that we might have to do some repairs to the the new thing.

So, you're already you're already putting money in there for vandalism is what you're trying to say. Yes. [laughter] Yeah. I'm kind of hoping that the people will police that themselves and keep the vandals at bay and I mean it's

catch them, smack them. I mean it's beautiful and the fact that it's so far out too I think makes it a little bit more difficult. You would think that the people would kind of appreciate that but there are some people that have a different type of appreciation.

Right. So uh then electricity for the river park may and that's $180. It's $15 a month. War Memorial Park. Last year, we had put in $5,000 to work on the gazebo and it was not spent um because we haven't been able to get anybody to do the gazebo. So, I've put it back in there this year um with thought and hopefully that this summer we can

get it fixed. Um there's money in there also for for new flags. Um, I also have to talk to Paul. The the flag pole that holds the American flag is listing. So, we need to he he doesn't feel it's safe to put the flag back up until we fix that problem.

Okay. That's what the Boy Scouts put in, right? Yeah. Okay. So, I don't know how they're going to go about whether we're going to fix it or whether they're going to fix it or I think that Paul would prefer that we put a different kind of footing in.

Oh, yeah. So, okay, we also need down three feet that someone said he thought that's probably the problem. They should have gone down four, probably five on that. Yeah, a big It's a big flag. Also would have rather had it square.

Yeah. Or rectangular as opposed to around saw too. It did. Yeah. So, well, that that could go either way, but just going deep enough would be the trick. All right. So, then the 800 880 electricity parade. Um, uh, Joe How has been working very hard at at, uh, making sure that the flags along the parade route are up and nice, and so he replaces some of them every year. So, he's asked this year for $1,000 to help with that. Um, he didn't

get a chance, time ran out last year, so he didn't get to spend it all, but he had meant to, so that's why the extra money this year is kind of a combination of the two years. Um, the Tritown Penguins, I haven't received anything from them, but we think we usually give them $1,100. The boosters have requested again the 3750. That's the second half of the 7,000 that they had wanted. Um, and the youth baseball has requested 1,500. Uh, the baseball uh people are also going to come and see you guys next Tuesday to discuss what plans that they have for their um property that they've leased from the town. So, they will come.

Good. I got some questions about property over here. I think it's over. It's It's on Is it on Swamp Road? Swamp Road. That's one they cleared on the right there. Oh, yeah. I got questions about that, too. I'm glad they're going to come. Good.

Yeah, they're going to come next Tuesday. Good. Um, so that's where we are. So, the 13,970, it's a slight decrease mostly because of the money that we took out of sanitation and the runaround park, and it all comes out of uh appropriated funds. What does the

recreation fund? Well, if you look on the very beginning under overview, there should be an assigned balance fund sheet, the very very first piece of paper on your overview. Um, and if you look down to where the state park parks, runaround pond, and the recreation fund are.

We underspent uh those lines by quite a bit. And as a rule, we don't necessarily put the money back in. This year, I took $5,500 and put it back into the recreation fund. That being the money for uh Do you not have it? I do. I'm talking.

I got I got two of them. the 5500 that that that is something that I have the ability to do if we want to and that money is earmarked basically for the um uh war memorial park gazebo. So I didn't want that money to go back into the other fund.

Okay. So So that gives us plenty of money. Oh, okay. I see that one's separate. Okay. I just know that we generally spend more in that line than we take in in we do in fee. So I wanted to make sure that we weren't just running all of that out and then well I figure because we really need to fix the gazebo. I needed to leave some of that money in there for the gazebo. Okay. So that's parks and wreck. Look at this. We're flipping through planning board. We didn't have a meeting in January, so I actually got to decrease it by $300 because there was no beating.

Look at that. Look at that. So, this is a reflection of the possibility of having um a meeting every month for the planning board plus four ordinance meetings. Uh they're not planning on hiring anybody to do their ordinance for them this year. So, um there's no not a lot of money down under ordinance review, but we'll get to that in a second. Planning board secretary and then the raise pool for planning. And that's just for the secretary. FICA, Medicare, um advertising, most of their advertising gets reimbursed because of uh the advertising is mostly for the appeals boards and the people who bring the appeals are required by ordinance to reimburse the town for advertising. But nonetheless, uh the historic district commission does do some advertising. Training, that money is for the historic district commission. and they requested $1,000 for training. I think I included uh did I include I don't know I may have included in your

Is there specific training? Last year they requested 850 and they only spent 550. This year they've requested a thousand uh commission training. Okay. say they want uh continued ordinance training and better in order for the commission to include new members. Um that's 500. They want to do the main preservation commission meeting to discuss historic district. So they they ask somebody to come into their meeting 150. And they want to initiate historic district commission outreach program, public events, special meetings and communication. And that's 350. So that's what they've requested plus the 150 for postage and document fees.

It's for the the historic district commission. Um supplies, basic supplies, postage, basic postage. Most of that's uh I lowered it this time. I had given them quite a bit of postage last time because I see that uh because of the um certified mail, but again the appeals board uh gets reimbursed for their certified mail. Um and quite frankly, most of it goes under the administrative. So I just put the 150 for the historic district commission. So and I upped my budget because we needed it legal $1,000. that so that the ordinance um people or the planning board or the appeals board can contact Jack and talk to him about any of their issues or Paul does too. 7700

is what the comprehensive plan committee is requesting this year. And I did put in here public meeting facilitation that's actually hiring somebody to facilitate visioning um GP COG support. They're uh I know they're thinking of hiring GP COG for certain numbers of of the actual um writing of the project and doing some of the um getting together putting together the figures, um supplies, advertising, and postage. Um

mailing, right? And I believe they have a visioning meeting already scheduled. They do. On the 31st of January, there's a visioning meeting. Um, I've contacted all the newspapers um so that we can get some hopefully free advertisement and we'll see how that one goes. The $500 for the ordinance review is is for the public meeting advertising that they're going to have to do before um the I think there are some changes they want to put in the warrant this year, but they're going to have to do a public meeting or public workshop before that. So, that's what that $500 is for. Um, but they're not hiring anybody. So, that's why it's gone down from 4,000 5,000 to only 500.

yet. Solid waste. I've included um I've included 18, 19, and 20 um in your budget sheets now. So, Oh, sorry. That's okay. [laughter] So, there's one that that's one for Pine Tree Waste. There's one for Ty Ways. Um, and then there's the the the difference between the two, the percentage and the actual dollar amount difference.

Yep. Telecommunications. The reason my budget was so good this year is because Jeffrey Leighton has uh agreed to take on some of the expenses in his budget. I do. Actually, I do need to back up for a second. Yep, that's wrong.

And the planning board, looking at the bottom line, planning board appeals budget. Yeah. You have a 2016 budget of 16,474, increase of 2,660, but that's not. That's an increase of $1,223. I was missing something in there that we need to add or um

8,000 9,000 9500 is the right figure. So, I I guess that last one must be wrong. So, I will fix that. Telecommunications. Communications. Do I have that one? Wait till the back. Good. Oh, right here. Yes. Okay. I didn't have a yellow slip that said that.

So, secretary, uh, that's for six meetings of the telecommunications committee. Uh, they have become more active. they they're meeting more and and working really hard at getting um some of the equipment that they've wanted to get for a while and have money for this year. Um there's the public information technician, that's Shannon. She's going to be working really hard on getting our our uh website up and running this year. Meetings tech, that's Alden. He's the one that covers all of our meetings for us. Um and then there's the raise pool, FICA, Medicare. I did move workers comp into this line. Um, it's not a lot of money, but um, I'm a little weird about matching things. Access channel expense, that $3,000 is for streaming on the internet and also on the channel. Um, that's what we're going to have to pay this year. Emails for the committees. Um, it went up because I took

every month we pay $69.90 to Comcast for emails and that had always been under website expense. Um, but it's not a website expense. It's an email expense because that's what it's for. It's for the emails. So, I've moved that into the email expense, which is why it looks like the email expense has gone up so horrendously.

Makes sense. Um, IT support. Um there's uh a contract that we're looking at possibly um getting into this year whereby we would have a company that would support us for it and we'd have a certain number of hours that these people would um help us with our IT in the town and this would include the fire public works in here.

Is this part of what Josh was talking about the other night? Yes. because that doesn't sound like the number that he was talking about. It's a little more. It's about $1,000 more. Well, I actually I thought it was less than what he talked about, but maybe

Oh, but that doesn't include the server and stuff. Oh, okay. So, we haven't gotten there yet. Okay. Uh postage and supplies, that's mostly supplies. Those are um compact discs and cords and other sort of things that they might need. Uh the technology hardware includes a server, and there's paperwork behind this. It's a server and a Sonic Wall network security appliance.

All right. That's the That's what he was talking about right there. Yes. Okay. Um so we don't want to uh widely put these numbers about, but this is the Yeah. cover that technology software. Um that's just in case um Shannon needs any publishing software or anything like that in order to do the publishing. um to put stuff on our web. Town reports printing. That's where the town reports are. That might figure I think is a little high, but um the money will go back into the franchise. That's the highest figure that I received as a quote. And uh because we're planning on putting some color in it this year because of the photo contest, it's a little more expensive. So that's where the 2500 is.

Well, it's about what we spent last year anyway. It uh it is, but I can make it work. Okay. $500 for training. That's for Shannon in case she needs any training on any of the equipment that we're purchasing. Um and then the website expense includes the $3,000 uh for the second half of the the contract that we're going to owe the $1,850 for um the posting and the 1500

in case they need extra money in order to incorporate the fire department into their our website. Um, they said it would be less than the 1500, but I want to make sure that we have the whole amount in there. So, the total amount

adds up to the 53221, which all comes out of the franchise fees. Um, and they have $92,000 in the franchise fees. So, there's plenty of money for that. The $10,000 of the equipment grant in 2016, which looks like we did not use all of we had

we did not, do we still We have the money. So what I I did didn't go away. That was my only concern is that it didn't go away. So what I did is I think that that the way that I had recorded it to begin with was incorrect. So me and the auditors together um made it so that it went into our grant fund line. So it's not something that we have to appropriate that's already received this monies. These monies are earmarked specifically for this technology.

Terrific. I just want to make sure it wasn't like a deadline to use it. No. No. I I Yeah. No. And that's that. Unless you guys have questions on other stuff, the quotes that um I know Josh put together the quotes on on the um IT

support and I don't know whether or not we have an obligation to to seek some additional quotes. I know he was very comfortable with this company, but you could always get more than one quote. I I would probably feel more comfortable if we we had a couple other options. I have um circulated an email around to people to ask them about people, you know, who who they use and there are a couple other options that we could look into. Um I think we need to find somebody though that we're comfortable with because once they know our system, it's a lot less expensive to keep them on board so they don't have to start from, you know, square.

I'm all for putting money aside, but like you said, we got to at least get three, right? And I didn't where we're talking about um purchasing some equipment re you know kind of redoing that whole system. I didn't know if it was a quote process or a formal RFP or kind of what what the

uh well for the equipment I think you could probably I don't know something to think about. But I don't need any just I want to make sure that we're following all of our our purchasing I requirements. I think we could look around and see you know we could have specific I mean if we even if we put it out for an RFP we'd want specific u requirements which I'm

sure Josh could help me with as far as well that's what I was thinking about with the formal RFP is that we do have very specific requirements and we need to make sure that all of those those lines are are ticked off. Yep.

for is Calvin's. We're waiting for Calvin's budget. Um, yeah, that's Is he any indication we could be ready or what? Um, I told him to be ready next Tuesday. Good. Um, so I've I've worked out his payroll. Um, we're looking into the possibility of hiring another [clears throat] person next this year. Um, you know, a fifth person like we've always talked about. We underspent payroll this year by quite a bit. So, um I think actually if we underspent a lot on there. So, I think we could actually um incorporate the money um the extra that he may have in his budget into the new person. So, it may not really raise his budget even if we hire a new person. Does he I know we talked about this last year and just because I don't have it in front of me. He I know he tends to break it out as summer and winter

for payroll and I get and the reason for that is I'm hesitant to jump too much into underspending payroll when we had such a mild winter last year that I don't want to sort of use that as our baseline. Right. Yeah, I agree.

Okay, I'll look at it again. Um, okay. So, with that, I'm just thinking ahead is to meetings if we're going to go over any of this. I mean, I want Jeff to be here when we do. We're going to revisit some of the fire chief stuff or whatever. Yeah.

Or any that we're going to Yeah. Do we have time besides next Tuesday set aside because I know everybody wants to be they want to be on this before they go to vacation for February because of the February vacation, right? So, I think we're probably going to have to start the process with the budget committee the first week in February, which is not next week, but the week after, right?

So, by the end of next week, we should have we have to have this this pretty revisit everybody and so do we want to wait till after Tuesday's meeting and decide if we should meet again either Thursday or something or Okay.

All right. So, I I want to make sure we try to give them time. I I get the February thing. So, yeah, I'm not taking off from school, but I know others are. So, um, and February vacation is it's the third week, I think. Third week in in February.

Yeah. Yeah. As long as we get the the budget done. I would like to get it to the printers about May 1st. Uh, March 1st. [laughter] Now, what's what I know it's a Saturday, but what's the date for our town meeting this year?

April 1st. April Fool's Day. It is a It is the first. Okay. Yeah. I'll be the election's going to be the 31st. And we hereby elect you to run it because Jeff has a uh a work commitment that day. Yeah. Bomb up for him. [laughter]

He has some big project he's been working on for a really long time that goes on. I guess so. We're all set. Alden. Oh, do you want to adjourn the meeting or it's a workshop, so I don't know that we have to.