 I am Christine Deschler. I am the Chair of the Arlington Finance Committee. Please let me confirm that all members are present and can hear me. Members of the Finance Committee and staff, when I call your name, please say yes, starting with Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Sophie. Yes. Ryan. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Is not with us. Alan Jones. Alan Jones. Topher. Yes. Kiki. Yes. Altosti. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. And Dave McKenna. Dave. Yes. All right. Tara Bradley. Yes. All right. And if we have Shawn from ACMI with us. All right, this open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's second order of March 12, 2020 as extended on July 16, 2022, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings. And as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded, so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting, ensuring public access. Did Christine just freeze? I think she did. Christine, we can't hear you. I'd say her computer is a little... She's frozen. Yeah, she froze. Either that or she's staying real, so. Those lawyers are highly disciplined, you know. Probably it's a reboot or something, reattach. Darrell, you're in charge. You put a lot of coup. Put every budget down. What do you do? Okay, it looks like she disconnected from the meeting, too. Am I the only officer here? Yeah, you're in charge. I think Alan Jones has joined. Alan Jones just joined. He's going to say, be afraid, be very afraid. She'll be back on in a minute, I'm sure. This is Carolyn. I'll put myself back on the screen once I finish eating my supper. There we are. Welcome back. I'm sorry about that. I'm having internet problems. All right, well, I will continue as if you all heard me. I'm going to... All right, and for this meeting... Hello, Darrell. Oh, again? Precinct 19 is having internet problems, I think. I'm going to try to call her and send her the dial-in, or maybe she could just dial in from her phone. Good. Excellent idea, Tara. I only thought I was going to get that out of all the internet problems, but it's catching. It's catching. It's the same area. It's the same area, so... Same area, town days. Townsend off Turkey Hill Tower. Actually, I have problems once in a while too. I'm in the same neighborhood. You're up in James Street, so you're welcome. There you go. There's actually a dial-in on the regular invitation if you could tell a reminder about the dial-in. She's probably trying the internet connection once again. Maybe this is a coup by the vice chairman. Never. She can also maybe use her phone to use the... Yeah, use your phone. You could link in through your phone or you could dial in through your phone. Exactly. Use the internet connection on the phone. Either way, yeah. As a Wi-Fi... Oh, a hotspot. Yeah, my phone hotspot. Okay. Well, Daryl is actually going to have taken Uber right over there now and help her out because he'll do anything not to have to lead the meeting. Christine's here. There, Christine. Daryl is really great. I can hear you, yes. Yes, we can hear you, Christine. Well, can you hear me now? Yes. I'll try to continue as normal. All right. All right. So please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Supporting link, please be aware that other folk may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording while supporting the materials that have been provided. Members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the cheer notes otherwise before turning to the first item on the agenda, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. The chair will introduce the speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members and by each by name to provide any comment, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response. Please wait until the chair yields the four to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy without other members, please do so through the chair. Take care to identify yourself. Each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. Let's move on to the minutes. I received one update from Rebecca. Just noting the update for the different commissions that the diversity, equity and inclusion department work on. And that is noted in red here. Can you show that again? Yes. I changed DEI to human rights commission. And is that it? Does anyone have any other. Revisions or corrections to the meeting. The minutes of. The meeting on February 8th. Jennifer. Yeah. So there's one place where. I can't see it. Where under diversity, equity and inclusion. It referred to the board of house revolving fund and it felt like that shouldn't be in that place. That's F. Yeah, item G. Or is it G? Sorry. Yes. And what are you saying about. I would think it should be in just the health and human services budget. So you got to have that Tara. Yep. Any other. Corrections. Changes. Is there a motion? I'll move. Second. Second. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian. Carolyn. Present. Or abstain if that's what you need. Rebecca. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Darryl. It's Dan. I wasn't here at the meeting. Annie is not here. Alan Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. El Tosti. Yes. Dean. Yes. And Dave. Yes. All right. The minutes have been approved. Just a couple of. Housekeeping. Matters. Next Monday is president's day. We won't be meeting on Monday. The following week is the 27th. And we're expecting the capital planning committee to present on the 27th. And right now we are looking at. Wednesday, March 1st. As the night that Minuteman may be coming in. We just need to. Finalize. Yeah. Everyone to, to, to save. Yes. Finally on that. But it looks like March 1st will be. When Minuteman will come in. When we were doing the library budget. There was a question about how. Much was in the library. Trust funds. Rebecca, do you want to update us on that? Yeah, thank you. Yes. The question came up two meetings ago when we were talking about the library trust funds. So I reached out to the director of the libraries, Anna Lytton and her response was. The board of library trustees manages 26 funds. Ranging from very small funds that hold less than $5,000 to funds that hold over $1 million. These funds combined. Hold a balance of over $9 million. And she just further notes this figure is a total value and includes principle that's not available to spend. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. I sent, I forwarded you. Information that Julie Wayman. Sent to me regarding department head salaries that she. Compiled after spending $1 million. So if you want to add anything. Sent to me regarding department head salary is that she. Compiled after speaking with Dave and Sophie. Dave and Sophie, do you want to add anything? To. That. The two of you were the. The, the. The instigation of this. So. Sophie, take it away. We have one follow up question for her clarification. And we're speaking tomorrow morning at 9 30. So we'll, we'll have a final answer specifically. Our question is related to non-unit. Non-union employees. And a bit more information on, on those calculations. Charlie, you have a hand up. Yes. Thank you, Christine. My recollection is that the. Classification and pay plan that was circulated with the. In the town manager's budget. Did not have the. M schedule. In the, in that package. And the one that you sent out the other day. In your email includes on the last page, the M schedule. So, so people know that. Thank you. Thank you, chair. Thank you for that, Charlie. If I, if I may, that there was that one change that came up in our meeting with her, because we noticed it was missing. And then on one other schedule. It's still listed. It's the one for salary plan non-unions. The one in our books as fiscal year 2023. She updated that in the attachment that we all received to fiscal year 2024. That was the only other change. Thank you. All right. Who has budgets ready. Anybody. Somebody must have a budget ready. I guess I can do a budget. All right. Take it away, Charlie. So what I will do is the comptroller's budget. And I would like to just, I have a short. Presentation if. If you can get, let me have the screen. Okay. Now I have to make it work. Hang on a second. Here we go. So. Just talk about the meeting, the budget, the expense budget. And some other items and the recommended vote. At the meeting was either Cody to control or Topher and myself. It was a zoom meeting. And. Sorry, my mouse is a little. Fast today. So we looked at the control of salary budget. We have no issues in personnel budget. We have no issues with the personnel budget. And we did verify that all the salary detail. Complies with the master salary schedule. In the classification and pay plan. We had several questions. Mostly about those items that are. Highlighted in yellow. With respect to the overtime budget. Not surprisingly, the. Comptroller noted that most of the time most. And I can tell you personally from my experience that. Accountors accounting departments when they come to the year and close to. Produce a high level of overtime. And she has also been putting in a new chart of accounts, which created a lot of extra work and will continue to create work. But we will look to monitor that versus the actual in the future. Both Topher and I were concerned about in state travel and out of state travel. In. The in state travel is principally for something called a mass municipal auditor of certification. Eda Cody is a CPA. But you. They're also required to have a municipal auditor of certification. Category to be. Qualified in. Massachusetts in the municipal finance. Let me call it system or environment. And she also is bringing two other people in into this category, because she wants to have them certified and up to date as well. This, because sometimes these various rules and regulations about how. One deals with state requirements and keeps the books. Change from time to time. The out of state travel is principally for. For the state. And to finish. About the system systems, and she's got two people. I hope to have two people going to the munis conference. And apparently. You know, we are now using the munis cloud system. You know, Actually, it was more than just a cloud system. It's a windows version of munis and we recently transferred. as opposed to locally hosted. And as a result, it's being updated fairly frequently. So getting knowledge about the new releases and how to deal with them, it means that it's important that they attend these UNIS conferences. And actually, I have to say, having two people travel out of state to meetings for $4,000 is pretty short money from my viewpoint. And then in the training section, she's got more people going to UNIS training, well, I'll say someone locally, they have to pay tuition. And this also includes training for being a certified purchaser. And being a certified purchaser helps with dealing with town purchasing processes and with compliance issues. Meaning how you make sure that the sufficient quotations sent out for two potential vendors and ensuring that the process doesn't allow for any unseemly activities, otherwise known as corruption. And so she's striving to have as many people as possible to have this certification. And in general, she wants to have all of the people cross-trained so that she's got a certain amount of bench depth through redundant capabilities. So that's basically what those highlighted areas are about. Be happy to answer any questions on that, if I can. Just in general, yes? Carolyn has a question. You're on mute, Carolyn. I'm listening to you. And for those of you who are newer to the committee, I used to actually do the Comptroller's budget. And my recollection was that there were only three people in that office, the Comptroller and two others. Is that your, it sounds like there's now more? I recall there being more, but I have to say that what period were you talking about? Up until two years ago, maybe it was her, maybe it was the Comptroller and three others, but how many are there now? The Comptroller and three others. Okay, so it was three. I'm listening to all of these new responsibilities and it's occurring to me that all of them are going to be asking for an increase in their step or grade, a reclassification, or an increase in their step or grade or both based on all of this new skill set and or responsibility. Is, can you ask about that or? Well, we didn't ask about that and candidly I wouldn't because that's like trying to awake the sleeping giant, that's a personnel department issue. And if they go through the process, they go through the process, they have the right to do that. Right. I mean, I just don't feel it's our role to. I think we can anticipate those salaries increasing based on what you just said in the future years. That could be wrong, but. You mean because they're being cross-trained? Right. I don't know. That's not something that we actually, you know, that doesn't really, that doesn't mean that they're going to be doing a different job in their day-to-day work. It just means that they have increased their professional capabilities. So I don't, that's a subtle distinction, but I don't know how it would affect job classification. Okay, I just figured I'd bring it up. Caroline, I'm curious, other than we may be paying more and salary, do you, are you otherwise opposed to cross-training? And not necessarily, it's just that we are increasing their level of skill set. And so we just need to anticipate in doing that, that that may increase their responsibility, which would then increase their salaries. So I would argue that's not the case, Caroline. Okay. The job description is what defines the salary and the work, you know, compared to a whole, you know, ensemble of maybe 50 or 100 other job descriptions. But if somebody, let's say that the principal accountant, bookkeeper is asked to do the senior accountant's work during a vacation time or something like that. Right. The normal practice in the town is to give them out of grade, out of grade pay. For that time period. For that time period. So they're appropriately compensated. Okay. Sophie? Just wanted to ask since my question is also related to personnel budget, I noticed the longevity was decreasing. So I went back to last year's book and there hasn't been a change in employees. So I'm curious as to why it's on Shay, the bookkeeper. I'm curious as to why the longevity disappeared. But then I also noticed the steps went down. It was a step eight last year and it's a step five this year. Is that normal? No. Aren't we talking about a, you talking about the assistant controller? No. The last person Shay, the principal accountant, clerk, bookkeeper last year's budget book has a step eight, grade five, step eight, and also has a longevity of 500. I actually didn't check that. I just, I just looked at it because I noticed the longevity had gone down but there were no vacant positions last year. So that's what made me just look right now. Sorry. I would have, that's something sooner. I don't have any response to that. I can look into it. Caroline. If she got a longevity last year, that doesn't mean she'll get one this year. Why is that? Caroline, you're on mute. Sorry, I keep turning it on and off. It appears once in a great while. It doesn't continue year upon year. Isn't that correct or am I wrong? Longevity every once every one, and then every once in a while? Yeah. When you hit anniversaries, that's like five pounds. Once you learn, once you earn longevity, it's there until either you retire or leave. Oh, okay. Thank you for correcting that, David. Yes, thank you. But that leads to a question. Okay, so I can go back and check on why that grade went down if it actually did, or might have been wrong last year. Right, so two questions. The change in step from last year to this year downwards and then the longevity disappearing. Yeah. I don't have last year's book in front of me, but was it the same name? Yes, I do. I have it open in front of me. It's the same name. And this year's book doesn't show a previous person, which is what triggered me looking. Yep. Yeah, okay. Did the last year's book show a previous person? No. Okay. Any questions on the expenses? Anyone? Carolyn? So that training is a one-year training, correct? That's not gonna appear year upon year. It's well, it's shown here for two years. So we know it's those two years. I don't know what the future is gonna bring. It depends probably on what standards change. Okay. I have the impression from you that they had to stay current and that that could mean not the same training year after year, but new trainings would come up. I mean, the fact is that the munis package is pretty complex and pretty all-encompassing. And I mean, I'm not familiar with all of the details, but there is a general ledger. There is a cash management program, water sewer billing program. There's a headcount management, personnel management program. They have not, as I haven't mentioned yet, but they have not installed one of the packages yet, but they will probably do that during fiscal 24. But each of these packages has developed the company that provides munices called Tyler Computing or Tyler Company or something to that effect. And they upgrade these packages on a regular basis. So I can't forecast what the requirement is gonna be. Going forward. It's just a much larger expense than there used to be, but we can anticipate at least half of that going forward, it looks like. Josh? Yeah, I was just wondering in terms of their training and expansion, if they have any plans to put the budget back into munis? I don't know, I don't know. Geo. Do you mean our budget book? Mm-hmm. You know, so we could compare budget and actuals by department, by account. Sorry. My mouse is a little touchy today. But we didn't ask about that. We do get, she does have a program to compare budget and actuals. She can do that now by department, by actually not just department by line item, because I've seen such reports. In fact, I remember last year on a quarterly basis that the Comptroller provides the budget versus actual comparison to the town manager and the Board of Selectment. And I believe I sent one or two of those out to the entire committee last year. So I mean, I know that capability is there. I don't know that it's in the same format that we're used to looking at in this manager's budget book. Okay, thank you. And if I can add one thing, Josh, I think Christine sent out a document from Julie Wayman that shows the actuals by department for the last several years. She did, and I was able to take like those actuals and bring them into Excel as a pivot table. And then you can kind of easily, you know. You figure it out. Up and down, you know, however much you want to kind of explore the data. It's very helpful, I think. I agree. Yeah. I agree. This might be a good time to state this, but we are, we've struggled with the time. The way the budget report is presented to us versus the way we present to town, being the way the town presents its budget in other forms. And there, I know Al Jones has been advocating getting a better, more informative budget report that can be used by, easily used and transparent by different groups. And this is something we're gonna continue to work on. And in fact, I've had a conversation with Julie Wayman and Sandy Pooler in the summertime about getting our heads together and figuring out a better way. But for right now, this is what we have, but our expectation is that when this budget cycle is over, we might jumpstart that effort and see if we can produce something that is better. That's the hope. So, yeah, I hope our IT working group can come up with a solution to that, I suppose. Josh, just you reminded me one thing I thought I would mention to the committee. And that is those master spreadsheets that we got from the town are somewhat unwieldy to use because there's so many rows and so forth. But where this ID number is here, this actually, I think is column D in the Excel spreadsheet. And columns A, B, and C are hidden. And if you unhide them and you can set a filter up in the top row and you can actually, one of these columns is department. So you can create sort of sub spreadsheets with just one department in each if you want to be manipulating the data. I just thought I'd pass that along. Okay, so I'm gonna look up the longevity. I don't think I have anything to look up or get back to you on with respect to the expenses, right? That's correct. Okay. Does anyone have any other questions about the control of this budget? So just some general information. The audit was very successful. I actually haven't looked at it myself, the audit books reports, but according to Eda, they had no management citations. In other words, no list of things that had to be fixed for the next audit review. It went pretty fast in the towns. It actually required less time than in previous years from the auditors. And it's basically because the immune system is now implemented pretty well and it's functioning to a tremendous degree, making life a lot easier than it used to be. The new Munis Water and Sewer Billing, which you may recall we discussed last year at Finance Committee was not installed. And it's now installed and integrated. They were apparently waiting for the water sewer DPW to get the remote water sewer, remote reading water sewer meters in place. And that's been completed. And that was managed by Patty Sotel, who I guess has retired, but Eda Cody says she did a great job. Free cash came in at 16 million in September. So that's good news. And Topher and I were asking her about the audit firm, Powers and Sullivan, which used to be pretty small shop. And Jim Powers, I don't know the Sullivan partner, but Jim Powers is, he's a pretty senior guy. I mean, I expect that it's in not too many years he's gonna be retiring. And I was curious as to what sort of business continuity plan they had in place. And according to Eda, they have now many partners and there's a lot of bench step there. So I think the continuity of that relationship is pretty well assured. And finally, she reported that all of the Munis modules have been installed and working except for the general billing module, which she claims is not critical, but should be working in fiscal 24. That sort of begs the question as to why we bought it, but let's assume that it's gonna be more critical in the future. So what we're recommending here is, oh, questions. Yeah, Dave. Yeah, going back to that principal account bookkeeper position, it looks like there's a different person doing that job going forward because the whole line compared to last year's budget is completely different. So there might be a situation where this person somehow is retiring or have retired, but it looks like the whole job has been reclassified from the position, the dollar amount last year to the dollar amount coming. Can you see that? If anybody has the last year's book. I don't have it handy. I don't have it handy either. I have it handy. This is Sophie. If I could- What page is it? 39 in both books. And that's what I was saying. Maybe it's just a question if they didn't update the name of the employee or maybe the employee has the same last name, which could explain it. So it's either the numbers or it's the name of the employee that needs to, there's just something. And the budget is for less than what was the expense of last year. Yes. She didn't have any comment about that. And basically, I think we can look into it and check on it, but I'm going to recommend that we vote the budget as presented. And it's only gone up by $3,000 out of almost $350,000. So I think it's, even though there are some movement around different categories, it's pretty stable. And she certainly answered all the questions that we had for her. Would you agree with that, Topher? Yes. I'm inclined to want to vote this budget as well, especially since that, that the salary is going down, not up. I'd be more concerned if it were going up. Topher, did you have a question? I just had a, yeah, I did have one comment. You had mentioned about the general billing. Package. And being installed on that for 24. Given our discussion with IT. And they're being down a project manager. I just wouldn't want to miss out the expectations. I don't know if they'll get to it. And the whole IT working group and what, what gets above the line and below the line. It was less. I mean, obviously, you can't install the package yourself. And I'm not sure if IT will have the bandwidth. Just to comment. Just so the committee's not. And committees on committee understands. Thank you, Topher. I think Dean has a question. Dean. Yeah. I just have a comment. Maybe two. And that is. And, you know, in regards to that increases in training. I support it. And. I just want to give you my own sort of. This. Personal insight into it. And that is. You know, for a long time. For a long time. For a long time. For a long time. For a long time. For a long time. For a long time. And that is. You know, for a long time. People that write government. Accounting standards. Sort of ignored governance. As these like far off weird cash basis. And these that we didn't have to do anything. With. And then. You know, around like 1998. 1999. This realization set in. That. That was a bad idea. Because of what you just account for things on the cash basis. The. The. Unintended consequences. Political leaders. Can make promises that help today. And really hurt the enterprise. In the future. And so people are right. These rules endeavor to make these. Yeah. Take these sort of sleeping issues. And make them work. You know, we've seen that over the years. Right. We've seen. Using pension. Cost move on to the balance sheet. And become more transparent. And that movement has continued. Right. To put this into context. I always think that Gatsby statement 34 is when they started caring about coverage. That was written in. 1999. So, right. The exception of. Writing accounting standards. The 1990. Oh, for governments to like to. Get 34 of them. They just issued. Gatsby statement. Number 101. Last year. So he's had a huge ramp up. In the last year. So he's had a huge ramp up in the amount of. Accounting literature and detail that has to be followed. Consequently, you now have an accounting department that really has to keep up. To date with this in order to get the work done. And I think. You know, I think that's probably a lot of the struggle that he is articulating and wanting to. Follow up or continue education and things like that. I think the second thing, which I would point out is. Especially on the technology side. As. As the. I don't know what the word would be. As it sort of moves throughout our government. Like it used to just be in the control. Right. Now it's munis is used in treasurer's office. Once I see us retired. Now you're using a lot of sewer department. Once that's. Retired. Well, someone has to run the deck. Right. So it has to be like a centerpiece of the operations, making all work in that invariably is. You know, that's sort of this other area of complexity. That office that wouldn't have been there. 20, 25 years ago. So. Just by Tuesday. Thank you, Dean. Any other questions, comments. To. Are you going to have a motion, Charlie? Yes. I'm going to making the move. The motion. That we vote this budget as presented salaries, 351,456 expenses, 27,600 for a total of. 379,056 before the offsets and the taxation total of $347,608. Second. Second. All right. Any further discussion. All right. Seeing no hands. I'm going to take a vote. And the controller budget. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Tosti. Yes. Dean Kerman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. Controllers budget has been approved unanimously. Charlie, you'll get your follow up on that on the Shea issue and let us know what you learn. Anyone else have a budget. I think we can do assessors. Great. Okay. I will say there was we. We uncovered a small discrepancy in 21 actuals, which I can cover first in case that. You know, I don't. I'm new, so I don't know if that would sink the ship or not, but I will. I present that first and then. People feel like that's. An okay thing to proceed with. We can still have the discussion obviously, but I have brought it to. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. And he's looking into it. But let me share my screen and explain what that is. So. A couple of things here. So. This is the. Sessors budget. So what I noticed was. Inoff supplies here, this number in 2021 was. 1939. But if you look at the report that Julie. It's. Over here, it's 2092. It's a. Small discrepancy. That they were going to look into, but I haven't heard back from them yet. It looks like three on the order of 150. $150. So. I can continue on and present the rest of the budget. But I just wanted to highlight that first. Why don't you go up? Go on. Yeah. I mean, that's not a, that's not a problem. Then we'll, we'll keep going. Okay. So. I'm Charlie and I met with data man director of assessments. And had a number of questions that we went through. So. Let's see. So salaries and wages. We went through this. Charlie was good enough to check through the steps. I think those all came out okay. So I didn't see anything here that was. Way out of whack. We can. See if there's questions on that. But let me go through the expenses to just explain what's there. So stipends in this case, their payments to either volunteers or. I guess elected officials. The offset of the expenses they have. I do notice that the board of the. I believe we, we actually do account for the assessors getting. There's stipend down here in the. In the salary detail. I didn't ask about the auto allowance, but my guess is it's for personal use of autos by either the department head or others. The computer maintenance is. Entirely for their assessment database. And they did. So. As you may know, they did. Update to. The patriot web pro. This, this past year. And I'll talk more about the cost of that and where it comes from, but the maintenance goes in there and that is apparently the bump from 2,500 and 235. In state travel is. In this case, it's a piece of training. They want to send the data collector. To a training and you master summer to become a certified assessor. So that's why. That's there. The consulting fee is for appellate tax board appeals. So if somebody. Contests their assessment. And can't resolve it within the town and goes to the appellate tax board, then we would have to. Defend that. Given that it can be lumpy. And then. You know, one case can come up or not. And then. The office supplies were down in 21 and 22 data things because just people were in the office less. Through to the pandemic. So we agreed to like, let that stay where it is and look at it. Another year. See. So let us say it is for another year. We can continue to look at it. And, you know, otherwise unclassified is. I guess last year it was a laser measure tool. It. Goes through that. So. That's the expenses. There's one other piece of this, which is, if I go down to. Down here, I'll go to. Whoops. There we go. It's 200 in your book, but it's 208 here on the revaluation fund. And that's done. To support that's actually this year. That's where the. Actual, I guess, main cost of patriot web crow. Is coming from. Or the town manager. Said he said it will probably end up at 60 to 70 K. But that's where that's coming from. And we had a discussion about revaluation and the process. For that. So the revaluation is when they have to come through and. Look through your, you know, your houses and all, all property really. To look at that. And. It's not. It's, it doesn't have to happen in the full, I guess the full wall until it's like 2029. But there's an interim one that happens in 2025 and it needs to be budgeted for in 2024. So. That's that. Charlie, have I left anything out that you can think of. Yes. There was one thing the, they have. If I recall right correctly, they have 16 to $20,000 left. In the earlier revaluation article. And they've been using this is from several years back. And they've been using it to hire Patriot software. To do some specific consulting work. And the. The last two years, the month. I think it was $6,000 a year. Was spent on. Assessing the value of the. Utility. Utility infrastructure in the town, telephone poles and things like that. And the result is in each of it when they completed. And so the, the, the, the taxpayer there is somebody like. National grid, you know, or, or the telephone company or whatever. And so the result is that. Each of those. Expenditures of six or $7,000. Resulted in. $85 or $90,000 additional tax revenue in the year. For the town. So that's a pretty good. Use of the money. Yeah. Yeah. He said it was 89.6 K is in my notes. And the amount in the end of the reval account of the. Funds was like he has 12,000, five, 67, 63. That's left. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said essentially the personal property evaluation. Gets fairly complicated. And, you know, it can be business furniture equipment. It can be the stuff for the utilities. And how it's done. You know, affects how it's. The tax status of the entity that owns the property affects how it's taxed. And his quote was, you know, we leave that to the experts to, to determine. How it's done. So. But yes, they definitely the review of commercial assessments. Is important. Right. So we have a couple of questions. Carolyn. So again, this is because I haven't been on in a couple of years. Did somebody retire from the assessor's office a few years ago. And, or did we move. OPEB. From a separate account into each individual account. I was surprised to see OPEB in, in this particular account. But I could be completely wrong. I, again, I haven't done this in two years. Are you saying OPEB's not in the. Up here. Did you mean. I think Carolyn, excuse me, Silver. I think that sheet that. A total for showing was for the warrant articles. And it was. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I just. Using that account to pay for Patriot bro. I wanted to show that you had to jump down. Page 208 or whatever it was to do that. Caroline, did you have a second question? No. Jordan. So you may have, you may have answered this already, but I just wanted to make sure for my understanding. So on the warrant article, the $100,000 that's. That includes both. Consultant services that Patriot provides as well as additional consultant. Fees for the revaluation. Is that correct? Or are they both performed by my Patriot? They, I believe they are both. Yes, they're both supplied by Patriot. That is true. I'm trying to think. Yeah, it's not. Some of the consultant came out of what was left in the reval account. That's what Charlie was saying. And then, but yes, I believe beyond that. It was, you know, getting to the new platform. And I think it was both products and services. I can double check that with Dana if you'd like. No, and that's what it sounded like to me. And I just wanted to make sure that I heard it right. I know that we. Charlie mentioned that we have about. Was it 16 grand left from a previous warrant account. So we're looking to add another 100,000 for the. Patriot consultancies. So services that they provide. Regarding the reval, but then it would also cover. Any other additional expenses that we have for going to Patriot. They've just for the actual software portion of it. That's if I can enter a comment here. Yeah, that's correct, Jordan. That's for the, for the. Interim revaluation that has to be prepared. For the state. Which is in, I think fiscal year. 2025 is when they have to do it. That's right. And the money has to be voted the prior year. And the. The formal when we use the very unscientific term, big evaluation revaluation takes place every 10 years. It used to be every nine they have changed it to 10. So it's now. So it will be five years after the one in 2025 probably. Yeah. And thank you for the explanation. I just wanted to make sure for my own understanding that I understood the purpose of the warrant article. And also thank you for giving us the updates on when both the interim and then the full 10 year. Revaluation is there. Jordan Dave. Just to help Carolyn. Her question about the, the employees. Mr. Tanning. Took a job in another community. So he left. Mr. Field unfortunately passed away. So they had to have an election to, to reelect a new person. And Mr. really. Resigned as a result of moving out of town. So they had election for that. So that that's the change since Carolyn. What was last on. As far as the employees and the assessors office. Thank you, Dave. Shane. Thanks, Christine. I just want one more time on reevaluations. So this $100,000 from the warrant article is a one. Once in a. That a continuing cost that can just, just somebody explain what reevaluation is. I think I could do that. So far, is that all right? That's right. So. Let's just talk about a residential reevaluation, which is most of what we have in the town. So they, they do a. A sales price analysis. Of houses that have been sold in the area. And. Compare that to the physical. Actual. I think I can do that. So far, is that all right? That's right. So. So. Compare that to the physical attributes of the town, like, of the houses, like how many windows they have, how many doors, how many swimming pools, et cetera. And, and so they come up with. Regression analysis. And parameters. And then they go, let's say you've done that on five houses in your. A district and they have reevaluation. They have assessment districts is not exactly precinct, but they, they have territories within the town. So they, they apply that formula. To your house, because there were six other houses. Sold in that district in the, in the last timeframe that they're using. So you, you might have, you know, five windows and only one swimming pool. So, so they plugged that into the. Formula and they come up with. A valuation for your house. Okay. And that's having that fair market valuation up to date every five years. Is a, is a requirement of both the federal law. And state law. As a result of. Of rulings in the courts over the last 20 or 30 years. And then. Every 10 years. They actually have to go out and inspect. Every house. And make sure that, you know, you haven't added. A little. You know, accessory building that you're, you know, your Airbnb isn't, isn't added. And the towns. Hasn't calculated that into the value of the house. And that, that revaluation process, in addition to having Patriot software and Patriot consultants. They have to hire an army of people to go around with clipboards and cameras and. Expect every. Every building. And so that usually costs the town somewhere. But I think that's the, the last time I looked, I think it was three or $400,000. Maybe it's more. But it's in the multiple $100,000 category. And when I mentioned that, that. I was off 16,000. I was thinking. At the beginning, you know, before they spent that last chunk of money, but. That amount that's left over. Was left over from the last big. Reval where they went out and expected every house. That money stays in there in the warrant article. And can be spent by the assessors on maintaining. The fair market value of the database. The science question chain. It does. Thank you very much, Charlie. Jennifer. Yes. Thank you, madam chair. But another sort of big picture question. So in that every five year. An analysis. Do they also look at building permits? As I said, you said, you said, sort of, they talk about neighborhood comps, but do they also look at sort of improvements to the house? In those last five years. The, the, the answer is they look at, I believe they look at the building permits. Every year. You know, that's comprises the new growth when they, when the town talks about new growth. In value. That comes right out of the building permits. Right. Although there's some that count and some that don't. What I understand. Is that right? That. Some kind of improvements to your house count as new growth. And others don't necessarily from my understanding. I don't, I don't know the distinction. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions. Tofer, do you have a motion? Yes. So I will. Move that the committee except the. Assessors budget. Any further discussion. With 301343 and salaries. And 35,248 and expenses. For a total of $336,591. Second. Any further discussion on the assessors department. No hands raised. We'll take a vote. On the assessors budget. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Darrell. Yeah. Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yeah. Peggy. Yes. I'll talk to you. Yes. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. The assessors budget has passed unanimously. Any other budgets ready. For tonight. None. Do you have any update on. Commissions and committee? Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Commissions and committees. Whether they are anyone's asking for. Additional money. I know that. No one has none of the people that have responded have asked for additional money. Arts and culture can come in. Like the first week of March. And that's looking like that's when. The CPA can come in as well. I'm. Yeah. So they are available. Arts and culture. Is available. No sooner than the 27th. Correct. Correct. And they would prefer not to come in that day if possible. Okay. All right. And we have to see. The capital planning committee presentation that night anyway. So I'm just inclined to want them to come in that night. And on Wednesday of that week, we have a minute, man. Okay. I just want to. Bump them to the next week. But maybe we can also urge them to get any written materials to us. The week before so that we have plenty of time. To look it over and. And sharpen our. Questions for them. So that may be. Okay. So. The disability commission. Correct. Correct. So they too try to get them to come in at some point. They probably won't take as much time, but. We'll, we'll see when they're available and we'll fit them. Fit them in. But it seems like. Those is the only two committees or commissions. Yeah. So I'm what water bodies is still. Figuring things out. Yeah. So that'll be the third. All right. And. Altosti is still working on. Trying to get us a, a, a look at the, the warrant. This year. And as he reminded me. I think that's a little bit of a. A little bit of a. A little bit of a. A little bit of a. Earlier it was, we didn't see one into the end of February last year. So that may be what we are. Confronting this year as well. If you want to add anything. I sure was unacceptable. I'll, I'll go sit in on the selectman's office. Before I let that happen again. So. You know, hopefully. get it before they number it. So things, you know, gets in concrete, but I'll keep trying. Great, thank you, Al. And if that's the case, it seems like we may be scheduling more and article hearings in March, making it all more important to get our budgets done if we can before then, get as many done as we can before then. Carolyn, I see your hand is up. So the last year I was on, Annie LeCourt was gonna start working with the Arts Council to help them better prepare. Has that been happening? And have they gotten any better at having a little more substance or at least financial substance in their presentations? I think she has certainly helped them. I think the fact that we are asking them to come in even though, as I understand, Tara, they're not asking for more money. I think that it's a large amount of money that they have compared to the other commissions. So I think we just wanna keep our, just be vigilant right now. But I do think that Annie has helped and I think that they have improved in their presentation and reporting. But we'll see. And then I'm doing reclass with Karen Cove Malloy. It always takes a while on March 7th. So I'll be able to do that at that time. All right, great. Thank you, Carolyn. Tara, make sure we schedule that in the 7th. I'm sorry, can you just repeat that? Carolyn will do the reclass on March 7th, correct? Yeah, or whatever the next day after that. Okay, the 8th, okay. Yeah, all right. Shane. Thanks, Christine. We're working on, we're getting some time on the calendar with our new facilities director and DPW, it's penciled in. So, but that's just forecasting. It's not gonna be until probably March that we'll be ready because we got the winter break coming up. So, but we're working and we got some questions in and just for the group, we've heard a couple of times things are moving around the facility. So if there's any questions you want us to ask of the new facilities team in particular, but also DPW, please just let me know. Thanks, Shane. Having done DPW and facilities, it's a big budget and it is one of those budgets that is later in the lineup than others because of its complexity. This is a good time to remind people, look at the, not just your budget, but other budgets and get your questions to those on the committee who are working on them so that they are ready with the answers. So we don't have to go back and forth with our department heads to get answers to questions that we should have and could have addressed the first time around. So again, look at the budget book and get your questions to the appropriate subcommittee as soon as you can. Dave, you have your hand up. Yes, I do. Thank you. I just wanted to say that Sophie and I, it looks like the remaining budgets that we have to present will be presented Wednesday. Number one. Number two, for all our members and to you Christine, the study of the office of the town clerk has been completed. The Board of Selectment have received it and the study will be included in their packet to town meeting in the spring. But that study that was, town meeting appropriated the money in 2021 and it's finally been completed and passed to the Board. There are no recommendations, they're just findings in the report. And you can get that on the, I believe it's on the town website. It's on the website right now. That's my understanding. I do have a hard copy for our records. I didn't manage to get a hard copy. So when we meet again, I'll give it to you Christine. Could you give it to Tara? And Tara, could you circulate copies to everyone or somehow get it so that we can take a look at it? As I am eager to read it as I recall, we appropriated a bunch of money for consultants. I believe it was $10,000 Christine, if memory serves me right. Yes, and again, there's no recommendations, it's just findings. And I think with the urging of the finance committee, again, if memory serves me, we were strongly advocating that money be used to find efficiencies in the clerk's office. So it'd be interesting to see what the findings are. I can tell you from reading part of it that the findings, the clerk's office, as we know it, is adequate. That's a finding. That's not to say that they don't make comments about what should happen in the future. So it's based upon, the survey that this study group did. Dave, do you, oh, sorry. Yes, I've lost, yes. Do you have the study or should I ask Julie for it? I have a copy of the study and I will put it, I will put it in your mailbox, okay? Oh, the finance committee mailbox, perfect, thank you. No, no, I'll put it in your mailbox. Oh, perfect, okay, thank you. All right, so I do have a copy of the study. Okay, thanks. It's a copy that the study is on both sides of the page, through the comments. Okay. I somehow lost Christine. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. I can hear you, but you seem to be frozen. But you can hear me. Yes. All right, well, I'm shutting my video down. If you can still hear me, I'll keep talking. Okay. So Dave and Sophie, what budget is exactly you're gonna have ready on Wednesday? The select board's budget, the legal budget, the clerks budget, which includes the election budget and the registrar's budget, and the managers in the planning, hopefully. Who else might have budgets on Wednesday? We're meeting with the treasurer tomorrow, but I'm not sure if we'll be ready for Wednesday or not. Are people expecting to have budgets next week, next Wednesday? Christine, we're meeting, John and I are meeting with inspections Thursday, so we will have their budget for next Wednesday. Shirley? We're meeting with the retirement on Thursday, I'm sorry, on Wednesday. I don't know if we'll be ready to present on Wednesday night or not. There's a chance that we will. In the past, the retirement board has been pretty forthcoming and pretty organized in their material. So we'll see. It'll certainly be ready to final the following Wednesday. Well, I'll put this out for discussion. I am wondering whether we should skip our meeting on Wednesday and have a lot more full meeting the following week. How do people feel about that? I feel like we don't, with Dave and Sophie's budgets, we may not have a full meeting. I guess I'm new, but there's a lot of budgets there, right? Yes, but to respond, yes, there are, but it goes by pretty quick, hopefully. All right, well, I am inclined unless anyone objects to skip our meeting on Wednesday, on this Wednesday. We will convene again next Wednesday, and hopefully we'll have a whole slew of budgets we can deal with. Do you need a motion on that, Christine? No, I don't think we'll need, I need a motion, but is there anyone who has any other business for tonight? Dean. Yeah, just an interesting point. So Peggy pointed out to me that the school department has hosted their proposed FY 2024 project. Rather than making everybody kind of guess where it is, but searching for it, I will send you, Christine, and Tara a copy of the link, and then you can push it out. It's a new superintendent, it's a new budget format. Read it, understand it. I mean, I find it incredibly easy to understand. I think it's much more, I think it flows actually, some very nice narratives. But that's just my opinion, I might be totaling this again. And sort of consistent with everybody else's process, if you have any questions for the school budget, just send them to me, Peggy, Josh, and it's the largest budget in the town. So I know that when we have that budget, it usually takes up a whole night. But if we can pick up questions ahead of time, it's just so, you know, Ms. Dimation and Dr. Holden are prepared, and that would be great. Thank you. We don't want to let Peggy. Thanks, Dean. And I'll leave it to you, Dean, and Josh and Peggy to figure out when we can get the schools in to present to us. I sent you an email during the meeting. Josh and Peggy did a great job, actually, knowing that. So you can look it in and we'll try to go from there. All right, anything else that anyone has? All right, again, we have a list of budgets that we will be, we know will be covering next Wednesday and other budgets will likely be covering next Wednesday. Look at those budgets, get your questions to the appropriate people so that we can have the budgets presented, the questions answered, and take the appropriate action on these budgets. All right, so I will see everyone next Wednesday. The 22nd. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, thank you, everyone. All right. Thank you.