 Attorney Tom Maloney, leader of the Curtis Project. And did we have a second? Oh, second. Oh, OK. Is he the man who was here the last week when he named us? Correct. Do you need that spelled, or are you OK? No, I'll just from the last one. All right. The remainder of the Curtis Plum Dam project. Yeah. OK, Jamie's going to recuse herself from this boat. And I think we'll do a roll call on this one. And I'll just call it. So Gabrielle, how do you vote? Yay. And? I vote nay. Yay. And I vote yes. Did you get that, Rose? Yeah. 4 and 1 extension? No. Jamie's? Yeah, Jamie's. No, we had three yeses. No. And Anne voted no. And 2. No, I'll get it. I think you would have recorded this 3-1-1. Would you have recorded an extension like an absence? 3-1-1? But I think you would have voted how each person voted. Yeah. OK? I am going to pay you very much. So we're going to do it. All right. Now we will move on to additions or changes. Does anybody have any additions or changes to the agenda? The only addition that I have, I guess, is the consideration of the minutes that I circulated, including the file relative to the bargaining meeting. And so that would just be the addition of accepting the minutes from that meeting, which I think would be appropriate for the whole group to do. I think future ministers could probably just be accepted within the committee since it's already going to be in more meetings. But I don't know. I mean, in this situation, probably, I think for the first time in a minute, would the people not at a meeting abstain since they weren't now? I mean, I didn't. I think that's just a committee thing. I don't see why we would vote. Yeah. So you guys could deal with that, I think. OK. Well, then we'll just have to add it to the agenda for Thursday. OK. Anything else to add? Do we need to write it out? No. No. OK, good. OK, I would like to add where we appoint officials to consider a liaison to the sheriff's department when we get there. And I'll explain that a little bit when we get there. And I would also like to announce that yesterday, last night, I got an email from David Sheets who is applying on behalf of the Curtis Pondam Association and us for a certified local government program for $9,000. And I think half of it would be put in by them. Do you remember the numbers? I don't have the top of my head, but it's. I have the budget here somewhere. It is. The total is $9,000 to do an archeology study for the Curtis Pondam. They didn't break it out. Oh, here it is. We would get $9,000 from the state, and Curtis Pondam would put in $9,000. And that would be for $18,000 to do the archeological study. I went ahead and signed it because it had to be in by 5 o'clock tonight. And I got it last night. And all this is an application, but we can still refuse to accept the money if you guys don't want to. I guess what will happen is we'll get the money, and then we will have to sign a document saying, we'll go forward with it. So it's not actually committing us to anything. I just wanted to tell you guys. And it's specifically to pay for the study, archeology study that's required by the Army Corps of Engineers to permit. And Scott has a question. You won't get the money from COG until it's all over and thoroughly wrapped up and reported. It's a reimbursement grant. Oh, OK. So Curtis Pond can probably deal with that, and we'll get the money eventually. Thank you. OK, I'll take a motion to approve them. Or does anybody have any changes to the minutes of April 3rd? Motion to accept? So moved. Second? OK, all in favor? Yes? Aye. OK. Town officials. Every town official who is in a position agreed to re-up. You've all got the list. And does anybody want to ask any questions or make any comments about that? Are all those folks currently living in town? Barbara, do you know the answer to that? I would have to see the list. But I mean, I know I've developed the list. But as far as I know, off the top of my head, I'm looking at it. Everybody lives in town. OK. There's no. No for everything. Like, you can be on the planning commission Sandra Ferver does not. Who's on the list for doing this tax collector? Oh, yes. Jay Copping, I don't know. Jay lives in Dallas. Everybody else does. OK. OK. So I'll take a motion to reappoint all those officials on Barbara's list. So moved. And a second? Second. OK. And a point person who would be the person who collects all the road complaints, all the traffic speeding complaints. So that would mean that this person would get reports from any of us who received the complaints, the road crew if they received complaints, and collect them all in one place and transmit them in one bunch to the sheriff. And we need to have such a person. And I would like to nominate Barbara to be the point person on that list. Does she want to be the point person? She asked if you would like to be the point person. I would be happy to do that. We get the calls from to the town office anyway. So it's a good starting point. All right. So I would accept a mo- Oh, does anybody else want to discuss that further? Any other nominations? So I would accept a motion to appoint Jan Olson as the assistance owning administrator and Barbara Butler as the liaison to the sheriff's department. So moved. Thank you. Can I ask why you're doing it with one motion instead of two? For time constraints? Is there a problem? OK. It's fine if you want to break it out, Rose. Do we have a second? Second. OK. All in favor? Great. OK. Now we have a new one. We did appoint Jordan to the collective bargaining team at the last meeting, but we didn't replace him. And I would like to move that Gabrielle be replaced as the liaison on the Curtis Pondam issue. And Gabrielle accepts. I would second that. All in favor? OK. You budged? I was just thinking, should I abstain on that? I don't think I'm adding or anything. I got you all paranoid. OK. The shed horses are currently boarded up in somewhere that we're not supposed to know about. And the person who is boarding them had signed a contract with us, I'm sorry, with the former select board, and would feel more comfortable if we would re-sign the contract. The contract would not commit us to any longer than the horses stay there. But it would just indicate that we intend to pay the bills. And Anne, you are going up. You can do that. I went up and met with three of them on Friday. And yes, just the person had asked, because the last thing they signed was in May of 2022, saying for two weeks, possibly longer. And it is now April 2023. So it's just an extenuation of the current contract. Yeah. I mean, there are some other things to talk down the road. For right now, that was the important thing. She just wanted to have a current select board member in a fresh contract. OK, so I'd like to move that we authorize Anne Toulin to sign a new contract under this with the same conditions. That's all. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. OK. You all set then? You've got what you need. OK, then, yes. And one more quick thing, we have two Zoom accounts. As it's explained in the agenda, we really probably don't need two anymore, because we don't have COVID restrictions anymore. And so the question is, should we authorize the Jamie, right? You hold those accounts to renew one contract or two. Great. So we have been paying for two. I think that it's very uncommon at this point for both to be in use at the same time. And if that were to happen, myself and others have personal accounts that could be used for a meeting, if need be. And I forget off the top of my head how much it was. Do you remember? It was a couple hundred bucks, 250 bucks or so, per account. I did renew the select board one, because it was expiring. And we needed it for a meeting immediately. I haven't renewed the other one yet. So all you need is to know whether or not we should renew this one. Yeah. And I don't know if it needs to be a vote. I just wanted to get your all input. How quickly could we get the second one if we needed it? Probably immediately. I think it's a immediate thing. Yeah. Everybody fly with them? And I will talk to Cliff again and make sure he doesn't. Because Cliff Emmons has been administrating them since we opened them at the beginning of COVID. So I meant to check in with him today and I ran out of time. But I'll just make sure he doesn't have some dramatic reason why it's important to have both of them. Structure. I'll confirm this tomorrow, because I'm going to be talking with RV again. But the way that we've structured the Microsoft 365 accounts, like the office staff and some of the other heavy usage committee members would probably have access to teams through those accounts. So that would probably alleviate for the planning commission and the listers, they would likely have access to teams through Office 365. And so that would likely alleviate a lot of need for Zoom outside, with the exception of the other subcommittees that wouldn't have as robust accounts at all. Just do it. When you hear me do that, it means this computer's stupid. I'm timing, and all of a sudden it goes to a different line. I'm like, I'm down here, not over there. So Rose, I think the minutes can just reflect that we all agreed that Jane has agreed to. Yeah, it wasn't a agreement. Yeah, OK. Thank you. All right, we're now to the public comment portion. Would anybody like to make a comment? Teagan. I heard from Barbara that you all were interested in cybersecurity and us getting more training. I will be in Waterbury next week for two days doing a training. So if you all have any specific questions or concerns that you want me to make sure I find out about or ask about, just let me know before next Tuesday. Thank you. Questions for Teagan? You all know how to get her? If you have further questions. Yeah, so you're in Waterbury. Is it like a VLCT cybersecurity training? It's actually a firm out of Texas that's doing it. It's the one that you sent to Barbara, I was told. And it's two full days. It seems pretty intense. So I'm sure I'll get a lot out of it and take one. I guess the one thing I would be on the lookout for is tools that you can easily convey to the myriad of volunteers that staff or volunteer for all of these committees that are some of them are going to have new addresses and just the connection between even their personal email and how it can affect town business if there's a nexus between their personal emails. And I mean, I don't know all the ins and outs of how people get hacked, but I know it can happen to anybody anytime if they click on the wrong thing. So just like that's I think the importance of I'm thrilled that you're going to do that. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. So just like how you can convey that knowledge easily to all the people who have a nexus with the town. Or not all of them, but you know what I mean. That is something. I have a burning question. How's the mud on Moscow wood drill bit? It's not bad. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. I didn't buy it. As much as it's real good. It's pretty bad. Yeah, well, one of the town dogs spin most of the morning stuck in front of my house. They chained two graders together to pull it out. I know that spot. All right, I think it's time to call Sandra now. Can somebody work the phone? I have the number here. I got it right here. Do you have her number? I do. I've got it right here. Oh, all right. Thanks, Barbara. But yeah, the mud's really bad right here right now. You're glad you're not coming till next Friday. Yeah. It's month season. It's what we get. Oh, Charlotte. Yes? I just want to say hi to Sandra. And I'm really glad she's back with us. Sandra, this is Charlotte Bassage. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. All right. Well, Sandra, this is mostly your show. You have a copy of the agenda. So why don't you start taking us through this? All right. I'm very happy to. Can everyone hear me? Yep, yep. The question was can everyone hear? Yes. Yeah. I'm just asking if everyone can hear me. No one said no. So I guess so. So if you'd like to talk about the links with taxes at this time, you can have the links with tax reports collected close to $170,000 of those with taxes more. There are the links with taxes involved right now. I'd like to start with the link with tax reports. Yes. I'm just asking if everyone can hear me. No one said no. So I guess so. Let's see. Yes. So I'd like to talk about the links with taxes at this time. I'd like to draw your particular attention to four parcels. The parcels are alphabetical ordered by last name. There's Paris, Maza, Rogers. All four of these parcels have outstanding balances in those tax years 2021 and 2022. And just to get you oriented, 2022 are the tax bills that we all just paid. Bracket for the past seven years has been this. We provide the opportunity for the link with taxpayers as close to the tax effort we entered into an agreement providing for equal payments that would pay their taxes penalty and interest in full life in the 15th end of the fiscal year, right? Our fiscal year ends on this period. So if we're talking, for example, the 2022 tax effort ended in November 15th plus the great period. So folks who are delinquents would get the required statutory notice advising them that they are delinquents. They also get an agreement that says the life is painful, but as long as you pay by 15th, that will work. And that works for many, many, many people. We have several agreements on board. And then many people just pay for their tax returns and tax refunds that come in or other funds that they're expecting to come in over the course of those few months. These four taxpayers that I've brought your attention to have not paid, have not made any payment for their 2021 taxes or 2022 taxes. So that's the first thing we look at. Have they made any payments? Do they have an agreement? There is no agreement for all. None of these parcels are under the agreement. The second thing we look at is whether or not there has been any communication. And again, there's been no communication by any differential owners or their agents regarding taxes. So the third question is are they in the current year passes and in this case, that was in 2022. And they are not. Those three conditions are that it has been the practice of the prior select board and all the various iterations to send the parcel to the tax collection attorney. In the end, that is Gloria Reisman-Pillier. And she takes it from there. The consequence to the parcel owner is that once this happens, they are no longer able to arrange a payment plan with a delinquent tax collector or select board. And other costs of the tax sale are incurred, primarily, of patients with a record. So what I'm going to ask the board tonight to do is to make a motion, moving to make a motion to send all three of these four parcels to collection. The fourth parcel is the current parcel. He contacted me today. And the arrangement that he made was this. He brought cash to the town office today in the amount of $500 to show the board that he is serious. And he will pay the balance on the board June 14. And in his case, I would like the board to motion that his parcel will be sent to four collections to the tax sale attorney unless he complies with what is being agreed that he has made. And I can give you that word if you would like it. That needs to be a little bit specific because we don't want to come back to being specific if he fails to meet his promise. So that's the first piece of business that is to get these items together for tax sale. This is all we have for the 2021. So we're doing very well there. Depending on statutory time requirements for notice and certified mail, we may or may not end up in a sale situation before June 30. Typically I would bring this before the board a little bit earlier in the year than this, but because the board is brand new and there were so many other things for you to folks to look at. And for the accident board that they were looking at, that I'm bringing it now, I thought this was the first sensible opportunity to present it. The town has been very long women dealing with tax policies. I believe you folks, all of you have it at the PDF up on your screen. I suppose that we shorten that and that you give me the authorization to rewrite that and to set forth our very simple process which is no payment, no communication, two years in a row delinquent, you go to tax sale. And that's what we've done. It's a very successful process. The town experienced a lot of delinquent or the main delinquent passes for several years, but I think that this is a humane and dignified way to get the town's passes collected and it's also very effective. Everybody knows where they stand. Everyone has an opportunity to get their passes taken in a way that they can match. So that is one piece of that, that I am hoping that we can let the board to get to today. So Sandra, let's stop then and see if we can get those two pieces of business taken care of. Would you just repeat, the first motion you would need is to authorize you to send the delinquent tax parcels of Masa, Rogers and Waiter to the town attorney for collection or just to the town attorney. Is that right? To that town attorney for collection. For collection. Rose, did you get that? Yeah, except not the names, but maybe you could just... Masa? Is that MAZZA? Yes. Rogers? Okay. And Waiter? D-R-O-D-G-E? R-O-G-E-R-S. Okay. And Waiter, W-A-I-T-E-R. Is that right? Yes. Gotcha. Okay, just... Yeah, go ahead. Sandra? Who's going to make that motion? Well, we haven't made it yet. No, Sandra, this is Anne. I was hoping to ask just a couple questions. Quick. That's okay? Can you hear me? Okay. So with Mr. Masa, he passed in 2020. I don't know how much extended family he has Do you have, like, a connection to whoever is dealing with his estate? Yes. Donna Harman has been in contact with us for a few years and has suddenly stopped contacting us. Okay. I thought I was in the town office. She was always very pleasant and nice to deal with, but we have heard nothing from her for the past two years. Okay. And no payment. So I don't know if she has stepped away from administering the estate. I'm really not sure. Okay. But the mail that we send to her attention in this regard is not returned. Okay. And then my other one, Mr. Rogers, is he the gentleman whose home burned? I'm so sorry. Didn't quite hear that. Oh, Mr. Rogers, the other person that she wanted to send off, is he the one who had the fire? That is that a different Rogers? It might be a different person. Okay. Just thinking. Mr. Rogers is also deceased and is his surviving widow. There were many pieces of property in the estate, and clearly it's something very small. Yeah. So we just hope that she gets these passes paid. Okay. Yeah, I just want to know. You know. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Sandra? All right. So do we all understand? Actually, would somebody like to make that motion first? We're moving that those three parcels be sent to for collection. We'd be sent to the town attorney for collection. It's the town's tax collection attorney. It's not town attorney. Thank you. Yeah. It's not the town attorney. You guys deal with it all the time. Yeah. So her name's Gloria Rice, and she lives here in Calis. Yeah. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Any further discussion on that one? We all understand the motion. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Got it, Rose. Okay. I have a question. Does the town have to advertise in a paper or record that those, that those tax sales are happening? Is that one of the next things that happens after this step? The Gloria Rice, the attorney who will be handling those collections and the actual pack sales of all of the advertising. She will take it from here. It's a highly regulated process, and she knows it like the back of her hand. She's done it for the town and other towns for years. They're not going to a media tax sale. She's going to try to collect first before they go to tax sale. Okay. There are several, it can take about three months before tax sale can happen. All right. Now we need a motion to send the property of Harris to tax collection unless he complies with the schedule that he set up, and Barbara wants to say something. So this was going to get a little complicated. So I asked Sandra to actually write the motion out for you. Excellent. It changed a little bit because at the time that she made this agreement with Mr. Harris, he was going to bring $530 cash to the town office today. He brought 600 cash. So there's your motion. Oh, this should all be part of the motion. Okay. I will read it then. The Harris parcel number 212600 shall be sent to Gloria Rice Esquire for collection unless full payment of the 2021 and 2022 property taxes, interest and penalty are made as follows. $600 cash brought to the town office on her before 4pm on Monday, April 17th, 2023. And the balance currently $615.83. Subject to additional interest of 5% each month or part of a month is paid honor before June 15th, 2023. No, that would be the end of the motion, I think. Now keep going. Okay. No further motion will be required of the select board if the parcel owner does not make the payments as set forth. Please pass this to Rose. Yes, of course. All right. Thank you. Any discussion on that motion? Well, there hasn't been made yet. Would somebody like to make the motion? Yes. Would somebody like to second? Second. No. Any discussion on that motion? Do we all understand it? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Aye. And the third one is to authorize Sandra to rewrite the delinquent tax policy as she described. Is that right, Sandra? In other words, you're going to rewrite it to make it more succinct. Yes. And of course, the board would review and edit the draft as they stopped it. I would provide a draft report for that purpose. So we're asking Sandra to rewrite it and bring a draft to us for review. All right, Rose? I don't know that we even need a motion on that one. She's an employee, so we can just direct her. Does everybody feel comfortable with that? Yeah. I do. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So you got them all, Sandra. Are you all right? I want to bring to the board's attention a story issue. We as a town hold escrow funds on behalf of the Robinson. There was a tax bail a couple of years ago off of Robinson's parcel. I think it's sold at least one, maybe 20 since then. We continue to hold the escrow money until we receive an agreement between the party in interest to that property to determine how those money are to be distributed. There's about $40,000 plus in a holding account. It's also bearing interest for the Robinson. Not to belabor the situation. The legal, the person with a legal interest is the daughter. The father owns the equitable interest as the life tenant. So there are interest, competing interest for this particular cash of money. Gloria Rice has instructed the town and I'm now instructing this board that that money may not be released. So please submit to us a fully executed agreement between the parties of interest. So you just need to put that in the back of your head and understand that there is someone that we cannot release with regard to the tax bail. Okay, thank you. We'll certainly come back to you if that happens. If somebody requests us to do that. Where would that request be coming from? Jordan just asked one, Sandra. Would you repeat, Jordan? I was just trying to follow all of that, Sandra. I guess where would that request be coming from? Is there anything to do about that at this point? Well, Susan may call the town office and ask them for the money. And the town office would need to refer him to Gloria Rice. The town office would not engage in a discussion with him about that. So Gloria Rice would navigate that legal agreement with one ever be executed. I see Tegan taking notes. She got it. Any other questions on that one? We ready to move on to the audit part, Sandra? So the audit here, FY22 audit is an outlier of course, one of the aspects of it that you have not, that the town has not seen in recent years is that your internal controls were not in place in terms of debt practices. And that is because the numeric needs to do or still does our checkbook reconciliation, but they were also consultants and writing checks. And that is a conflict. And that was not resolved before the July 2022 audit. So that's a big black mark, so to speak, in that audit that has to be corrected. And it is, as of this point in time, they continue to do our reconciliation. That's what the auditors and the office worked out in a small town. It's very difficult to get a good internal control procedure in place because of the limited personnel. So they will continue to do our bank reconciliation. I will present your financial report, but reconciliation is they balance the checkbook. That's what they will do. They will no longer be writing checks except payroll checks at this point in time. And that does not, that should not and does not conflict them. So this year's audit, we was not scheduled. Oh, was there a question? Sorry. Questions on that one? Nope, we're fine, Sandra. Okay. The audit for FY23, which is the fiscal year that we are about to close, and that would be on June 30th, was not scheduled. However, I was able to reach out to sell the towers. They did have two days available for us in July to complete the audit. Typically, we have, the select board has entered into a three-year contract, which gives the town a discount for the consecutive audits and rich towers. One of the principles at Sullivan and Towers is just to get a contract over to the town. And I imagine you will have that by June 4th and August 1st, 4th. Now, there is a difference between, on your budget, you will see a mine item for a professional audit, and that is an annual audit done by a CTA firm, and it hasn't passed and done by Sullivan and Towers. We will see a mine item for a town audit, and that is the reconciliation services that NIMRAC performs at the consultancy. And they knew this in lieu of elected town auditors. It is... Elected town auditors really didn't come in and reconcile big check rules, so they wanted to check the balances with regard to the accounts of the town council. We went through this some years ago. Then, as we talked about, the possibility of a single audit. And a single audit is neither one nor the other, as we think. It's a federally-required and regulated audit that is triggered when a town expenses $750,000 for more and federal grant money. It's... With all the funds and gifts, all of the cash money were spent this year. We come within a tight range of that amount of money. Jeff Cancer and I have talked about it, and it appears that he is able to push all the last distribution from that BDCP grant to early July, July 1, or, you know, up to pull it out of this fiscal year. Those audits are very expensive. They have very time consuming. You have to go out to bed to find an auditor. You can't use your... The auditors that use your regular professional audit. And there's the possibility for reimbursement is a fraction of the cost of the audit. So, Jeff and I are working closely to do our best to avoid that, and I think we will. So, if you see those words being thrown around in any of the meetings you're in, single audit, it does... It is a musical phrase, and that's what it's all about. I don't believe that the town is going to have to think that it will. I'll let you know that at this point in time, it does not go to foreseeable. You're talking about for this fiscal year, right? Yes, $250,000 in any fiscal year, and this is the fiscal year question that we are keeping a closed eye on. Another reason we're, you know, keeping a closed eye on it and playing it close to the best is that we do have some highway grant expenditures that will come up before the end of the fiscal year. That's very typical. They start their road work as soon as the roads are dry. One and two, forms of this fiscal year, various expenses and revenues that were grant, highway grant expenses and revenues were misposted. Toby and I spent a couple of hours going line by line, expense by expense, revenue by revenue on the grant, highway grants that have been active in this fiscal year. We have found where those items are and we know where they need to be proved. I would say the highway grant is under control. We've identified all of these expenses and revenues and we just need to book them properly. So that's where we are with a single audit and the audit in general. So questions for Sandra on this audit? Sorry, Sandra, are you ready for questions? Oh, you are. Did you say it was $250,000 in grant money? $750,000. $750,000. Did everybody understand that? I'm not sure everybody's hearing everything. It's the East Calus Community Trust grant that's getting us so close this year and Jeff who's doing the work on that is able to split it and push a bunch into next fiscal year so that we don't get to the $750,000 cap. But isn't the trust a non-profit that is not the town? That's correct, but they're getting the grants. We actually have the grants and we sub-grant to them because the grants will only go to municipality. Scott has a question or a statement? No, just who would do the single audit? Could it be our guys or do they send in some fits? She said we have to go to bed. We get to pick the auditor but we have to get through a federal bidding process before we can hire them. Good, thanks. Everybody set on the audit piece and we obviously cannot sign the contract tonight because we didn't get it. So we'll put that on the next agenda because it'll be ready by next Monday, Sandra. Yes, I will send a tickle out, a reminder out to Rick to get that abrupt out to the board. Okay. All right. Next. All right, let's see. Where are we here? We're at current financial situation. The budget and all that. All right. No time for nail bite. Okay. No time for nail bite. That's good news. You want us to all pull out the town of Callis-Vermont Financial Reports document? Yeah. And start with page two, which is the balance sheet. I have one copy here. You guys want to look at it. I can sort of look at Gabrielle's. Is it online anywhere? Sandra, it's not really online. Is it? It's only in our e-mail. It's on the website. Oh, yeah. Sorry. That's got share. Oh, okay. Oh, Charlotte wants to look at it. Okay. Let me see. Yes. Okay. I think we're ready, Sandra. All right. I am going to do my best to use the same language that you have heard in a previous briefing. So you see your assets. There are several of them. Checking, HRA checking, the Robinson tax form, and the due to from categories. You will notice that all of the first three are positive numbers and the last number is a negative number. The due to due from numbers represents other claims to meet money in the checking account. So for instance, there is money in the town hall reserve account. There is money in the town office reserve account. There is money in the record preservation account. These are reserve accounts established for particular purposes. They are pooled with the operating money of the town. And this is the best class list for any of the challenges. I was going to have many, many little accounts to be fair. If you get a better interest rate, these monies are protected by the use of a sweet account. And what you see is a net asset of the town of, let's see, $800,000. What is that? $600,000 plus. And again, we have some liabilities outstanding. So again, we see your tax sales above. In the asset line, they are aggregated. And in the liabilities line, they are separated. So you see that Robinson X-Row account. And you also see the Jordan tax sale account. Actually, that is a real tax sale. And we can talk about that another time. But that property will go to the bidder in years. You have some payroll taxes that you won't see this number in April. Again, there was an overpayment of payroll taxes. And that has already been refunded by the IRS. And it will be in the first couple of deposits in April. And that number will go to zero. We have a number of prepaid taxes where folks have already sent money in towards their 2023 tax obligations. The thing on all this is in the process, or actually at the end of the process, I'm selling job licenses. And we will be sending money to the state to pay the state its share of the fee. And so that number will go down significantly towards the zero by your next report. That is your marriage loan. So these are all our bills and they are added up. So what you have next is the amount of general fund balance. So that's $521,000 plus. That is what was rolled over from the prior fiscal years. It's not just one year, but that is a combined roll over several years. And the fund balance that you'll see is reduced by $36,000. That is the result of our revenues in the general fund size being a less than expensive today, $5,600. And we'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to the actual budget line. So what we had the total fund balance at this point in time was $488,000. Who's the good? And so what does that mean? You're going to see it's purely mathematics that our expenditure between now and June 30 will be greater than what budgeted. And I think the board saw that in February or rather in March when they met with Wendy Wilton. And that $36,000 is going to grow somewhat. Now you're going to collect more delinquent taxes, but there's not too much more money that's going to come in. So that's $36,000 will grow. But it will certainly not grow to the extent of $488,000. So the town, as I said, this is not time to nail-biting. The town is in good fiscal condition. And you're going to see on that footing. Okay? Any questions there? Scott? Zander, this is Scott Massage. Can you see in the nutshell how that original 521 is calculated? Yeah. So over the, you know, Scott did a just piece one about it. When I first came to the town, the town had a deficit of roughly $208,000, which was reduced. It had to be reduced or removed by fall. And a debt of rather a young woman was taken out. She's paid it off or were about to pay it off to reduce that debt to bring the balance sheet to zero. And since that time, expenses and revenues have generated that $521,000. So over time, over the four years, I guess that I've been here and watching that number. One year was $100,000. One year was $150,000. Not all expensive things to say. Or we had more revenues than anticipated. Some of those revenues were co-related revenues. So this is how that was built up over the past four years. And that's exclusive of the Highway Fund? Yes, sir. Thanks. Other questions? Nope. No. Don't see any, Sandra. All right. So we're going to go to the next one, too. Three, four, five pages. On the sixth page, there's a really great summary at the bottom. What does it say at the top of the page, Sandra? The budget line. That's the most number line. Sandra, can you just say what it says at the top of the page? Some of us are having trouble finding it. Oh, sure. It says current year period nine, budget status report six. So that's page five of six. Wait. Current? The one that starts CD, Home Health and Hospice, Sandra? Page. I want to stand again, please. I start CD, Home Health and Hospice on top. Yes, it starts out with that line. So it's the next page. So it's page six of six. Everybody there? Yeah. Okay. So this is a great summary of where you are exactly in your budget at the bottom. You'll see the words total expenditures. And the maximum cost under budget says $980,111, right? So that was the budgeted expenses for FY23. And that's far. You spent $899. And it's $237.87. So if you are at up to print at so small, you are not at least roughly percent of your budget. But you see, you're only at period nine or at 75 percent of the year. So expenditures are higher than you would expect at this time of year. Even those in a municipal budget, you do not have the same expenses from month to month. It's not similar to a household budget. We have various loans that are paid throughout the year. They're not spread out over 12 equal payments, but are one-time annual payments for the length of the loan. We pay our service agency once we collect taxes that happens in December. So those are two examples of how a municipal budget is different than a home budget where you typically have the same expenditures, hopefully, month after month. But what we look at is the percentage of expenditures at the end of a quarter or at the end of any given month. So you can see that our expenditures at the end of March are pretty far into your budget. Now, you would also see that your revenues, your revenues are actually ahead of by a little bit where you might expect them to be at this time of year, but not enough to offset year-to-date expenditures. So that's where that $36,000 comes in. If you take the total revenues that we have received today and subtract the total expenditures expressed today, the negative is $36,000. And as I said, that's just going to go up. You're going to get some more revenues in, but you have another quarter of expenses. However, you have a very, very healthy fund balance on the general fund side that will be able to absorb that sense picture, and it will not put the down in any financial danger. There are budget lines that exactly exceeded what they were budgeted, and the board, that has been brought to the board's attention, and I'm sure the board is looking at them closely to monitor them as we go over to the rest of the year. The total lines are within the budget, but there are a few that are at the top at this time. Any questions on that or how that might work? Anybody? Does anybody want to know? Do we all know which ones are over budget and which ones are closer? Yeah, I think we should review those. Yeah, would you be able to tell us what those line items are where we're over budget, Sandra? Yeah, here, hang on. One of the most significant overages is legal fees, budgeted at $10,000. It's at $88,000 today. I'm going to click on that page. You have your contract line budgeted at $8,400, and it is at $57,000 today, and that is offset by the fact that you have no treasurer, salary, and related expenses. That's just... While that line is over budget, there's no salary on the other end of that. I'm just looking to see where that salary line is. That's a zero. Did you say it was budgeted at $400,000? At $8,400,000. So that covers the ordinary reconciliation that members would do on a month-to-month basis that we have contracted to them for the past seven years. It covers their payroll services and also the consulting services that they provided to run accounts, payable, to basically keep the town going while a treasurer was... the board was looking for a treasurer. Let me see what other lines really jumped out. Advertising jumped out. I am told that is advertising for the treasurer's condition. And to DPW. Thank you. I hope it's somebody else. So that line jumped out. Now, I'll look at these. In that, you know, the 20,000-foot view of the defense line, you have to keep in mind that hopefully these lines are going to repeat themselves in FY24, that we're not going to see the same weight on the budget in FY24, as you see in FY23. So that's what we're hoping for. Let me see what else we have here that stands out. I think Jamie has a question, Sandra. One that stands out to me is insurance, which was way over on all three. Let me find that line, Jamie. Page five of six on the legend. Thank you. Hang on. That insurance line needed to be broken up. And my guess, and I'm going to check on that right now, my guess is that $21,000 belongs part to general funds and part to highways. So I'm going to take a quick look at highway and see if insurance was posted there. Now, only $2,700 was posted to highway, and that's highly irregular. So that is a gen, so I would need to go back in between now and the end of the year and re-post that amount so that it is properly prorated between the two departments. And I would say that's the same with workers comp as well. Workers comp on the highway side is typically much higher than workers comp on the general government side due to the very nature of the tax performance. Again, I think that is just a matter of booking those amounts to the proper department. Other questions? Nope. Seeing none. Sandra? All right, so we are seeing that we are through the general fund budget and expense so we can take a look at highway funds. And the highway revenue lines are over their projection. My papers are out of order. And the highway expenses are under. And so what we have is so what we have is an amount of money to the good. Now what we saw looked at the general fund. We saw we were down to 36,000 but the highway fund has a plus of 290,000. So you will see there are a couple of payments that are going to come out or at least one payment I believe will come out of that and there will be wages that will reduce that amount of money. We will also be rebooking insurance amounts that will affect that amount of money. There's also, yeah. So that will change. That number will go down as we close it on the end of the fiscal year. And that will typically be in the process of the select board that will be turned over, booked over to the Highway Capital Equipment Fund. I don't see any questions. The page that follows the highway summary is the YouTube Grumps Summary Report and that number at the very top that 878,000 dollar number was the number we first saw on that balance sheet. Those are the list of reserves and committee or commission funds that have a claim on the amount of money in our checkbook. You can go down and through this list you can see what is in the account office reserve, what is in the account hall reserve, what's in the Curtis Con Dam reserve, the re-accrangel fund and so forth. You can see what we have there. You also see that highway number there. That's 283,000 dollar number. Now by law, highway money and general government money are separate so that the highway never dales out the general fund. You see that's a question that has popped into anyone's mind. No, the general fund however by law, by statute is in the position of having to bail out the highway fund if it keeps going through the negative. It went into the negative last year but because it is in the positive now that situation has rectified itself by itself. And so the general fund is not going to be booking any money over to the highway fund this year I'm going to say about that. So the highway fund and the general fund even though the account account does not hold those two budgets separately by statute they are viewed as two separate groups of funds. The administrative end of the account and that's a very important those maintenance aspects of the account and the reason they are segregated in that manner is because grants and state aid are generally driven by how by the highway budget and the highway client that now has and that must be maintained to a certain level. Any questions on that? I guess not. We'll say this again and in all likelihood by the third time you will be bored. And it will ever sound very familiar and it will feel very comfortable. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Also to understand and know that a budgetist owns a guide so when a select board goes to the town and asks for a certain amount of money it needs to show where they propose the budget and what they as a board in good faith think will be spent to administer the to administer the town offices and colleges and so forth as well as to maintain the rules. So it's all a guide and sure some lines are going to go under over the course of the fiscal year and some lines are going to go over and what you really hope as a board is that you get it pretty much in the ballpark and if you have a nice fund about which Calum does have at the moment you're going to be just fine and you can weather that big year where there were expenses that were on for a few years. Okay, I think you have a question, Sandra. Sandra, you mentioned that the fund balance would go to the highway equipment fund which according to the town report currently has a balance of about 20 grand. What would that roughly what would that bring the equipment fund balance to? Would you like to look at that number? I just want to grab that. So the highway equipment fund is currently a $40,000 plus and at about what do we have? $289. That $289 will probably go down to closer to $225. That would bring the highway equipment fund reserve to $265. Now Scott, you should know that according to exiting Road Commissioner or the exited Road Commissioner she and Toby Talbot and when he was here the town was in need of a new exit and it looks like that cost is going to hover somewhere around a million dollars. So the more money that the town has in that reserve fund to help all set that low the debtors, the tax rate will be it will get my money there. Is the transfer of the balance in the highway fund to the equipment fund, is that statutory or is that discretionary part of the select board? It can go two weeks. In 2015 the town voted to create that highway fund and to move that money if there was an excess of revenues or expenses into the highway capital equipment fund. There was a motion that was made and I think you could read it either way when I got into my position it appeared to be the practice of the board for a couple of years after that article was written to move that money from move the excess if there was one into the capital equipment fund what the board also did do and I kind of figured this was their thinking they did not budget for a capital equipment association. For instance a lot of town folks as part of their highway budget will say $40,000 a year to get into a capital equipment fund to offset equipment purchases and that was not done without that would have done once or maybe at Y23 but it has been done since that article was created so I and this was the practice at the time and so I thought we did not hear their thinking on that with me it was simply the practice. We lost you. I can hear you can you hear me? I think are you done Scott? How much is enough in that fund? And that fund well I think that is going to be a conversation between Toby Talbot and the left board how much is enough regardless of what has been that fund that highway excess of revenues over expenditures remains discretionary to the highway so it does not come over into the general fund salary. What the town could do what the select board could do is at town meeting time they could make an article that says if there is an excess then that excess is split between the capital equipment fund and the highway funds are down such as what the general fund enjoys at this time so when the highway goes into the negative the general fund would never have to cover for it didn't this year despite good luck but we wouldn't have to leave taxes to cover for a negative a negative balance at the end of any particular fiscal year so there are a couple of ways to handle that and sometimes all of them might just simply go into a highway balance and that's the how to purchase equipment the big deal is getting all this equipment financed and setting up a finance scheme that doesn't disrupt the tax rate two grand savings you want your tax rate theoretically the goal is to keep the tax rate as steady as possible with a small bump up and a small discount as possible so people's lives are so they can plan it so they can manage their finances around the tax rate let me just say as a comment to the board it used to be that the town voted a town meeting on new highway equipment acquisition and I think that was a good practice suddenly spending a million dollars on a piece of equipment of which we've already got to seems to be excessive but sorry that's not directly to you Sandra we don't know so it's certainly not up to me and I can tell you that when we're talking about a number that large that was no to a vote that won't be a five year vote that will be more like a 10 or 15 or maybe even a 20 year vote thank you Senator to clarify that's a threshold that's established in statute if there's if the terms of a loan exceeded five years it automatically triggers a need for a vote well almost if a loan is taken for a term of one year or more it requires a vote of the town and this is how towns frankly are able to buy equipment on the run if the truck goes bad and it's not repairable or the repair is not a they're able to do there's no limitation on leasing to buy equipment but a loan there are limitations on that a loan should be taken for a year or less without the vote of the town but anything more than a year requires a town vote and a lot of shops it's time to get the way in on that activator it's really close to two million dollars it's time to get the way in on that good thanks I think Rose you had a question yeah Lucindra gave us that presentation with the lady from NEMRIC we talked about this in 2015 there was a motion at town meeting that's right it was just a one year but the select board has continued to do it you know about that yeah other questions at this point okay are we moving on to the audit now or do you have more on this one Sandra I think I don't have anything more to say about that audit at this time I do want to talk to Sullivan and Howard about a couple of points I do want to withhold my comments on that there's one item on the audit that comes up repeatedly and that is not going to be correctable not by me anyway and we can talk about that in another section it's not anything that we're going to be able to talk but I do want to talk to them about it I meant to say the reconciliation did you want to talk about that the reconciliation all of the accounts found that's when we send the reconciliation every account found what went in and what not it's down to the our internal software so we're good that's this huge document you sent us okay I see yeah okay do you want to just explain about the East Calis community trust check then wait just a sec Jordan has a question we want to go back sure this might just be like maybe don't need to answer it now but as you've been kind of going through this report what doesn't stand out to me would be you know what the mechanism is for you know identifying when we're getting close to needing to take corrective action relative to budget overages and I'm wondering if there's a way to generate this information in more of a forecasting format that's kind of projecting expected costs for the balance of the year what I'm happy to do is to run off your period 12 balance rather budget and spend payment from FY22 that's our last fiscal year and FY21 and you can take a look at where we are what at that point in time what again what I want to point out is is that a municipal budget is not evenly spent over the course of 12 months and when you know cast has come in we look much brighter and more mature than we really are it's illusory and in the beginning of the year we look much less mature again it's illusory so what I'd like to see that a good focus is on where we are in the year are we at that in this we're at 75% of the year are our expenses roughly at 75% and if you're not why and every one of these budget lines Jordan you can give a call to the office I can introduce to you every a detail of every transaction that was made in those in particular budget lines for the entire year for several years back we in FY19 so that was July 1 2018 so we can go back that far in any budget line that you have an interest in it really was a push of a button all right I'd like to dig into that a little further but we can do that I think separately thank you Sandra I appreciate it you're welcome did that help at all it does in part I guess I'm where I'm coming from is a little less from the perspective of what's creating the overages and so far and our board's very limited experience we've had to make discretionary additional expenses that may or may not be associated or represented in the in the previous year's budget and I think there's room for that type of investment in the community but it would be helpful to kind of get a sense of how those are going to impact expenses through the rest of the year and have I guess a little bit more direction on whether or not some of those decisions should get punted to another fiscal year or budget if we're running in a year where we've already seen a fairly significant amount of overages so I'm not weighing on any particular decision I'm just just kind of noodling around on what could be developed as a resource for putting eyes on unanticipated costs or even anticipated costs but that are somewhat discretionary for the balance of the year. That's a very thoughtful and holding mindset and it's valuable this year if this is an unusual year because the expenditure side is top heavy. Your revenue side is on target if your expenditure side that is top heavy and as I said from that 20,000 foot view I'm going to I would wager that you're not going to see that same picture in FY24 although honestly you know what rose or a couple of at least one of those budget lines I'm not quite sure what rose that budget line as high as it is I can only look at the you know get a list of the checks that were written there again the county's in a very secure position even with the expenses being what they are at this point of time and what we can roughly anticipate them to be so you will get into your general fund there is no doubt about it you're going to but there's a lot better to get this into so we're going to continue to be secure and if you have an idea of what the discretionary expenses are perhaps you could get a list again to take a look at it and see really where and how they may impact where we land I have a question about that Sandra this is Gabrielle I have a question when you say discretionary expenses are allowing legal fees as discretionary expenses I'm not exact well I'm just using Jordan's term thanks a lot Sandra I have to alleviate your technique that's what I heard I'm just I'm going to guess that Jordan has some other discretionary expenses in mind or I think by the budget lines you wanted to talk about well I there are to a certain extent legal fees would and I think that those would be one that I think the legal fees would be an example of a current budget balance that we would want to take a look at to see over the last year what has contributed to those overages and decide what we might want to what kind of policies should be put into place to kind of which one seem more discretionary than others certainly I think everybody would agree that there are things in there that were unforeseen and somewhat out of our control there are situations that we're in that we have to continue to pay to get out of but there may be others that were more discretionary and could have been pushed to another year or tabled in the event we were anticipating some very predictable overages in that particular line item but when I was referencing discretionary decisions in this particular conversation I was thinking more about like the investments here in this building to make this a more usable space things that I don't think we can necessarily delay much further because I think they will add some pretty significant improvements and efficiencies to the operation of the town. Email systems being another one so those were kind of more the discretionary decisions that that I had in mind that aren't reflected necessarily in these numbers yet but we know they will be added so I'm just trying to kind of suss through what the mechanism is for capturing those things and maybe alerting Sandra to those kinds of decisions that we have and will continue to likely need to make so that we can have a more informative or transparent forecast on what our runway is I guess for the rest of the fiscal year. Sure. When you know the legal expenses some of which are unforeseen and some of which might be able to be lessened with policy decisions over time but those two items those two discretionary expenditures that you mentioned if we could put a number on them that's the information we really need and you can send me those numbers any time when you feel comfortable that you know what they are. All these invoices are of course on infiles at the town office so with a little bit of advance notice if there's any line I know in particular you're interested in we can pull those invoices make copies for you guys can study them you can do it in the town office for the original files or we can make copies for you so just know it just takes us a little while to pull them all together because they're not filed alphabetically by vendor they're filed by the date that the select board signed the board order it's a little chaotic but I thought I understood Senator to be saying she could do it with NIMRC with a report out of the all the stuff that generates all the invoices. Right we would be able to study the line items of the invoices all the billing what caused that billing you would know who we checked was written to and the amount but if you wanted to see the invoice behind that then you would see the original invoice if you're talking legal fees we'll get a 5-page invoice from them specifically about legal fees we would have to we would be able to get those invoices for you scan them and you could review the invoices for this year from the law firm or law firm that the case may be oh by the way that brings me to the tax collection attorney is not paid by the town the parcel owner paid the tax collection attorney those fees so that is not a legal fee that you're going to see invoice to the town and that's part of the tax collection process just as a yes Understood keep looking for more free lawyers ok Scott has another um Sandra, Scott has a question sure this is maybe too theoretical is there a could there be a mechanism such that for an expense becomes a warrant if it's somehow out of the budget that the board would have an opportunity to decide whether to commit to that expense does that make any sense if it is an unusual expense Scott for instance let's say purchases the town hall the board would have already decided what they were going to purchase and they would have already decided what it was what course of action they were going to take to improve the sound for an expense and so the board would be investigating and making those decisions before they hit the town office and I would be I would get a message from someone this is what we're going to do and you're going to get invoices from themselves but somebody could do incurred expense that the select board was not notified of and an invoice comes in I think the process would be that if it's in accounts payable Sandra would code it and pay it it would come as a warrant to the select board but we haven't checked yet and the select board looks at it then and says wait a minute we didn't know this was coming who did this who authorized this we're not going to sign this we don't mail the check and we would contact the vendor and challenge it is that correct Sandra that is exactly the way it works no check that could not get released without prior the left board approval and with a warrant comes the invoices there's there's no mystery nothing is released without all supporting documentation being present for the select board and it would be a majority of the select board that would be three members that the very least would be reviewing every invoice before signing off on the warrant and allowing those checks to be mailed out but that's still that's happening after services are rendered right so it's a little late to be you know questioning the expense at the time that there's an invoice and it and it check needs to be written I mean we don't want a town with a reputation of making decisions and then deciding after the fact that maybe our budgets inflated I think maybe Scott was coming from there and where I was kind of working towards it we and part of this is because this is there isn't any continuity from the previous select board so it's hard to get an understanding of what the budget items what the individual budget lines were informed by and how many of those that are coming under budget currently are expenses or projects or investments that haven't been made there's a little bit of opacity there to kind of overcome but maybe I can tell you and you're not going to it's going to sound glib and I don't mean it to be glib I mean it to be factual this year all the ventures are going to continue to put the town in a negative yeah at a negative number it's just the way it's going to be there are not enough revenue projected revenues to come in that are going to cover that so but that's not normally the case this is this year is then appears to be an outlier and this is what your this is a different condition that you inherited you were not necessarily this isn't unusual here no matter what you do you're going to go into the rest this year just that's it yeah that thank you Sandra I don't interpret that as glib at all and really my questions weren't necessarily associated with any action that needs to be any course correction that needs to be taken immediately it was more thinking about what the next year looks like and how expenses are managed through the next year as we continue to work through investments in the town and management of funds so plenty of time to work through that conversation in the future yeah I think the next year is going to be very different than this year and you're going to feel much more comfortable with those conversations this year is tricky it just is all right Sandra it's 8.30 are there we have four items left is there anything you could do very fast things I could do very fast to be reminded that a large cheque will be on the next warrant for the 24th the cheque will be drawn to the community trust in the amount of $238,000 that money will be deposited into the town's operating account on the 20th specifically for the purpose of the draw to ECCP so we will see that a cheque on the on the warrant that night and lastly I have been in touch with Donna Fitch and to be counted as I said regarding grants and all grants in play have been identified between the three of us we have a very good handle on what is going on with them there is one question about one non-highway grant and I believe Donna is a staff of the grant administrator to see where the management of his deadlines otherwise everything has been identified wonderful amazing yeah alright what does everyone say do we stop here we are so close but the two items that are left are surfaces you can provide Sandra and potential discussion about a finance advisory committee do you guys want to go on and have those do that we should at least have a preview synopsis okay is that alright Sandra I didn't hear that I'm very sorry the consensus is we should go forward at least with a synopsis is that alright with you oh yeah sure would you mind talking about what services you can provide services that the board will require to make informed and meaningful decisions would be a continuation of a monthly financial report very much along the lines of what when Wilson has done I I do a little bit more connotation with mine for instance at the end of every report I would make a note reminding the board not to leave the Robinson Fund so that it's there in writing in your archive I can see based on Jordan's question and what the board is looking at as project that there would be a weekly member with a meeting with a member of the board to address these questions as they arise and then to do the research associated with them to answer to answer questions such as what the report is I would be providing or archival research with to assist with your union negotiations you may need to dig into payroll and benefit information that is available in the software can be derived in the form of report if assuming you're going to do that fund I would do your bond application for you and there have been a lot of conversations about the timing of that so we don't really have to talk too much about that at this time I would be advising the board of coming dead or into a cyclical event for instance setting the tax rate, budget development the annual audit and I would be assisting the select board to understand these tasks and to manage them going forward in the future so for instance we're going to set your tax rate sometime on and before the first week of August so early in July I would be asking the board to amongst themselves begin to identify when they can meet to set that tax rate that's typically a 45 minute meeting, maybe an hour I will review the process and I have time about I have time depending on where the list of progress is on that you can get before the meeting a series of spreadsheets that would talk about each piece that's a variable that goes into setting the tax rate so you understand what makes your tax rate each year grant oversight I really thought Don Fitz was going to be the grant oversight but what she that made very clear to me and I think Mr. Ann is that she needs to organize the grant but she does not want to manage them and so what we've got and so Toby is managing the highway grant and doing it very nicely the three grants in play right now are Carpe and Gabrielle has that one the CCCP grant and Jeff Cantor is managing that one and there is a CLG history tour grant and that's the one where some deadlines have passed that Donna is reaching out personally to see where we are with that that really looks like the only grant that requires any kind of management of oversight that Donna would extricate herself from and I guess I would take that on show them forward and think to it that that was taken care of and then of course anything else that the board sees and needs for temporarily or long-term as part of the vision wonderful that relieves a lot of anxiety thank you questions yes Scott I assume you're keeping an eye on the federal funds and would let the board know if it's approaching the 750 I'm sorry what was that keeping an eye on the federal funds that we accept to help us avoid the cliff of 750 yes we're keeping a close eye on that great yes Charlotte I just want to say that a little bit about what I observed which is that after Sandra made an explanation there really weren't many questions and Sandra did a really lovely job of being clear and so we're lucky that she can explain things in a way that leaves you with not very many questions well that's good enough Charlotte but thank you questions are good they really put a fine point on the discussion but thank you so much I really want to be clear as clear as possible yes you are thank you Sandra so we've reached the end unless we could have a quick discussion about a finance advisory committee am I right Sandra yes and I don't know too much about that but I you did mention that early on when you approached me for this commission and I stand by my commitment to participate in that because I think it would be important for the town to have that kind of commitment I think it would help I'm actually not sure what it would do but one of the people who approached me about it happens to be sitting in this meeting so Charlotte, why don't you talk to us about what you see a finance advisory committee doing what we did tonight in this financial report was really look at how we're doing on managing the town's expenses but we didn't talk at all about where these numbers came from so for example one of the biggest expenses of the town is salaries though you don't know anything about how those salary numbers were determined because you didn't build the budget so what a finance committee might do is do some research guide discussion about certain items that would help you make your decisions so for example when it comes to salaries we might offer you some benchmarks and then you can look at those benchmarks decide if they make sense to you do you want to be on the upper lower side in other words you get to decide where what decisions you want to make but how do you make those decisions don't you need a little information don't you need maybe a recommendation or two that might guide you in how you do that so it's not in keeping track of what you've done but in deciding how you want your numbers to look and then as Jordan said if you sort of assemble those decisions you make what is the financial implication and what would that look like compounded over a few years so if you decide for example you want to have all the town salaries be say 2% over the average if you did that for 3 years in a row what would your salary look like over time and how would that affect your overall budget so it's providing a finance committee could provide you the basis for talking and would you be utilizing the treasurer's time to work those numbers up yep yep you don't make those decisions in vacuum some of the things as you've already discovered you don't have a lot of control over but of course the things that you do have control over those are the important things and those are the things that reflect your values what's important to you questions it sounds lovely we are paying a premium right now for contractual treasurer we just want to be mindful like we do with our legal fees as well about not over allocating resource that we don't have to begin with an advisory committee would be telling people this is not paid but if it's interacting with that we're paying a premium for it yep you're right I very much like the idea of it you know I might lean towards waiting until we have an actual hired person who would be more you know what I mean like a 30 or 40 hour whenever a treasurer looks like I think a lot of research could be done though even if you could settle on things you could at least pull other towns and get other information oh no definitely the fiscal part other questions just comments Charlotte I think that makes a lot of makes a lot of sense to Ann's point well first of all I think Sandra's got plenty of work to do to stay busy in the short term trying to keep us up to speed on how the current budget is tracking but to your point I think there's likely categories of expenses and planning and that I think a finance committee could could really help inform part of them are going to be kind of the inflationary forecasting that you would have relative to salaries those are somewhat known entities that are pretty easy to project others are anticipated investments in projects or improvements to town infrastructure that may be a little bit more discretionary and would inform maybe the budgetary process for the next year and I think a lot of that could probably be done without Sandra's support so I think what would be helpful would be to visit what the scope of that committee would be and what the kind of feedback loop looks like for the board so that we can kind of think through what would be helpful for this board and preparing for the budgeting process of next year and then start establishing kind of a pattern of a working relationship with the committee before we start to populate one and send it out into the wild to start putting together recommendations and pulling in resources. I was just going to say this likely ties into a conversation I've had extensively with both Tobi and Rick about capital improvement plans and looking at long term forecasting equipment and buildings and when's this going to need a roof and sort of tying in all those pieces would be really important. Rick is really good at that stuff. Yeah, I could see having a capital improvement committee like that is something we'll probably have a capital plan right now. I think we do. Would you? Sort of, yeah. So you're seeing that as different I was going to ask the same question would this committee work on capital planning? To some extent the committee is what you wanted to do what kind of support do you need what kind of areas do you want more information on or some recommendations from you know. So primarily you'd be responsive to what we ask you to do. Yeah, yeah. But also you know if this is your first round of budgeting coming up what might some of your parameters be what are going to be the real key variables how are you going to approach those that kind of thing? Rose, you and I. I was just going to say that there are resources at ELTC extensive resources I can remember from my time on the select board we're able to compare and because we're participating town and we pay into that or whatever you can access the whole salary for the whole state of Vermont like for the highway department at ELTC and you can also compare it by towns our size and population and so on and so forth so there's some really good resources that the info is out there and then again when you're going through the union negotiations again we compare unionized road crews like in Roxbury so again you can compare so there's a lot of information out there and the board does have an education and training budget line and lo and behold almost none of it was used so how would you structure such a committee would you want it to be two people or would you envision ten people with some people some I'm not sure smaller what kind of expertise would you look for well we have some terrific expertise among our the town what do they call they mostly do the cemetery fund at the moment but there's some fabulous people there and they have a lot of really good experience and if we drew them in for other purposes I think they would be a fabulous resource and they're not a boat water and they all live in jealous and they all live in jealous and so does gosh I'm getting so bad at names you know when we we do our appraisal the reappraisal reappraisal for the whole town Christine Chamberlain no not Christine yes what a fabulous resource he is he is so busy I almost hate to ask him but he would be happy to give us some you know when is an appropriate time to ask him and to ask him when is an appropriate time to ask him and to your point pulling in someone like Rick who has affirmed grass on projects and deferred maintenance projects and again selfishly to the root of my comments earlier it's like what are the discretionary decisions that we know that we can make what are the deferred maintenance projects that we want to inform the budget and make sure that we're trying to save for those improvements but may be able to have the discretionary decision making space to say we can put this off another year or we can't because something came up and right now I don't think we have enough eyes on what all of those different things are across all of the asset pools in the town whether it be equipment replacement planning deferred maintenance on facilities that's a whole pool of things that needs to have eyeballs on it aside from just kind of financial planning. Just a reminder Sandra is still on the phone she has a wealth of information any of those kinds of questions Jordan you ask such good coaching questions get them to Sandra she can really fill you in with knowledge and documentation I do want to say one thing and probably I can be off and that is with regard to capital planning Toby Calvitt does have a capital plan that he will be forwarding for equipment replacement then he will be forwarding to the select board and he looks forward to a conversation with the select board to talk about that and develop it further I spoke with him on Thursday specifically about the capital plan he wants to talk to it's a capital plan for highway equipment oh for highway equipment alright so that's on a future agenda should we let Sandra go and we can maybe continue for another minute unless Sandra you want to be part of this conversation no I think that you are brainstorming and I think it's good that you do that and you can do that without me I think we can alright thank you so much Sandra that was excellent thanks very much thank you have a good night everyone be careful of the mud good night good night so maybe we should try to get something in writing some kind of a description of what this committee would do I think maybe it would be wise since we are all talking about capital stuff and deferred maintenance to see what Toby has first because I would immediately when you were talking about salaries my mind did go to I'm sure that stuff is out there and I am also again Tulan said very protective of Sandra's time at a pretty at a contractor right to put it discreetly so I think we just really need to be aware of that and we need to have a discreet useful task for you and mine to be able to properly utilize the intelligence and enthusiasm and engagement that you are willing to bring for the town which I really appreciate but we just have to figure out what it is first have Toby come present if Rick would be willing to join him that would be really helpful the town has bought a lot of used equipment in the past and it has always been a good choice in my opinion so it might be nice to have more than one point of view I recall buying new equipment not used was other than that the prices are just in dollars for an excavation yeah alright so I guess we are going to continue to have this discussion so you can talk about what a finance committee would be without ever talking about ever talking about numbers yeah I think it would be a pretty helpful exercise I like kind of collaborating on the scopes of those things before kind of setting setting folks out with a task I think if you wanted to to very broadly just quickly outline what the scope of work would be and then we can have another conversation to add to that and start making lists of deliverable items or who put names on who would be participating in those conversations so that we can form a group and so primarily on the budget building side not the keeping track of side because Sandy was really good at that correct so would you be willing to do that then come back to us in a couple of weeks sure maybe just a draft that you would address the draft from and that would just get you thinking yes that would be great thank you so much so we'll be in touch is there anything else I think we made it to the end of the agenda okay then I'll take a motion to adjourn all in favor thank you